This article is the first in a series on gaps in Portage County’s social safety net. If you have an experience you’d like to share or solutions you’d like to share, please write to [email protected]. If you are in need of emergency mental health services, call 988.
The Feb. 9 coroner’s report is brief. Remains belonging to a “John Doe” had been found in the woods by 408 Devon Place, site of University Hospitals medical facilities and a nearby Bob Evans restaurant. No trauma or suspected cause of death could be identified.
An Ohio Edison employee walking in the area found a human skull and notified Kent police. Portage County coroner investigators were called and found six other bone fragments in the area.
“Bones included a possible rib and fragments, vertebrae, and possible humerus,” the report stated. “Photos were taken, and bone fragments have been collected and labeled.”
A followup report on Feb. 12 indicated that “numerous old and vacated camp sites are observed throughout the wooded area. Kent PD reports this area has been known to be used by homeless individuals in the past.”
The campsites were abandoned, and appeared to have been so for some time, the report stated, then added, “Evidence of ‘one pot’ methamphetamine manufacturing supplies were observed at or near several of the abandoned sites.”
About 260 feet southeast of the skull’s location, investigators located a single long bone which they believed might be a tibia or shinbone. They also found the remains of a Coleman cookstove, but nothing to identify any campsite occupants.
Then, near a small pond, coroner’s investigators located bones they suspected to be ribs, a vertebra and a single long bone. They were uncertain if the bones were human or animal, the report states.
Coroner’s Investigator Robert Wain transported the remains to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office for further examination, possible identification, and DNA sample recovery. By Feb. 13, that office identified the remains as belonging to Chris Matthew Varney, who had been missing for about two years.
Soon enough, Townhall II Crisis Intervention Specialist Andrea Holshoy was called into her boss’s office about the body. Her job is to help people in the community dealing with mental health and substance abuse emergencies.
At first, Holshoy thought the body might be that of a Townhall II client. It happens sometimes unfortunately. Then it became clear: The body was that of her brother.
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Holshoy hadn’t seen Chris in 20 years. DNA testing led authorities to Holshoy, his only next of kin.
Varney would have been 45 when his remains were discovered, Holshoy said.
“They think he had been out there for around two years due to the discoloration of bones,” she said. “I wasn’t surprised. I knew that the next time I saw or heard about him, he would be dead,” she said.
To this day, Holshoy believes Chris could still be alive if more funding was available and if resources meant to solve various mental and substance abuse issues were “synched up in a way that people aren’t waiting so long to have their needs met.”
She tries. As a National Alliance on Mental Illness board member she facilitates monthly meetings for people who have either been diagnosed with mental illness or who think they might be mentally ill. She organizes speakers and activities, and encourages people to become activists for the cause.
“This isn’t a battle that we’re fighting. It’s a war that started way before me, and I’m just one member in a large rank. We just keep on fighting, and there are improvements, but it’s by no means the right way of doing things yet,” she said. “It’s my hope we’ll get there some day.”
Before she lost track of Chris, Holshoy recalls him as violent and unpredictable toward family and community members alike. He’d been abusing any drug he could get his hands on since he was 12. Their mother’s attempt to move the family out of state, away from peers and places that were negatively influencing him, failed. After a tumultuous youth marked by stays in rehab centers and juvenile detention, “one night he kind of flipped out and disappeared,” Holshoy said.
“He’s not a hero. He would not be the hero of any story,” Holshoy said.
Suffering from chronic mental illness and substance abuse, Varney melted into obscurity, with no home or any way to reach him. Holshoy surfed local court records for years, hoping to locate him, but always failed. His given address was often “homeless,’’ and various shelters were unable to provide her with meaningful information.
Even so, she was able to speak with a Kent-area social worker who had encountered Chris through the years. The picture that emerged of a nice man who would help prep meals and wash the dishes was not the brother she knew.
“It sounded like we were talking about two different people,” she said. “Even in the most extreme adversity, people can change.”
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Through the years, Holshoy had kept a book of devotionals for men which her brother had left behind when he disappeared. She was finally able to return it, adding it and a few photographs to his cremains.
A volunteer member of Portage County’s National Alliance on Mental Illness, Holshoy said society can do better.
“No one should die alone in the woods, being dismembered by animals and strung out all over the place,” she said. “If group homes were funded better, we could have more of them.”
Instead, Holshoy pointed to Kennedy-era policies that transferred responsibility for people with mental illnesses from the state to families and communities, and to Reagan-era policies that shuttered many institutions housing people with mental illnesses.
“Congress said they would put in a community support system for people that have mental illness, but that didn’t happen,” she said.
Holshoy said she will never know if the increased funding Gov. Mike DeWine proposed this year to address mental illness and substance abuse issues could have helped her brother.
She said her own experience with homelessness opened her eyes to how difficult it can be to transition from unhoused to housed. In October 2021, she found herself in Coleman Professional Services’ residential crisis unit. It took until June 2022 for her to get a Portage Metropolitan Housing Authority voucher and a small apartment of her own in an apartment complex Coleman manages.
“I don’t want to bring trouble to these agencies because they’re necessary. But people can get disillusioned with that system, and then just be like, ‘Nobody’s going to help me so I better do what I can for myself,’” she said.
The Mental Health & Recovery Board of Portage County devotes taxpayer money and state grants and funds to provide services for families, adults, teens and children who are impacted by addiction and mental illness or who may be in crisis or at risk for suicide.
The Board funds Children’s Advantage, Coleman Professional Services, Family & Community Services, Townhall II, Hopetown Recovery Housing and AxessPointe Community Health Centers.
Ted St. John, founder of Hope Town Recovery Housing, said the system does work and can be life changing. Addiction, which is his primary focus, and mental illness, often walk side by side, he noted.
“However, connecting treatment services and case management services with fundamental basic supports — housing, employment, transportation — all work in conjunction, and all need to be met all at once,” he said.
Though saying so tastes of blaming the victim, St. John agrees that clients must want meaningful help, which is not always the case. Large buildings could easily be filled with people who need help, he said.
“Recovery is for people who want it. This program for recovery is for people who do it. Whether they do it because they’re required to do it, because they’re supported to do it, or as an effort to mitigate consequences… I don’t care what the motive is. I don’t care why you’re here. I don’t care how you got here. The question is, ‘Do you want the pain to stop?’ The answer generally is yes. They just don’t like the plan for how to get there,” St. John said.
Space is available at Hope Town’s two recovery ecosystems — St. John’s term for housing that addresses multiple needs — in Windham: a 15-bed facility for women and a 20-bed home for men. Anyone thinking about recovery can access Hope Town online at www.hopetownohio.org or call 330-326-6032.
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Coleman Professional Services maintains a residential crisis center and permanent housing for clients who qualify, but, “There clearly is a great need for different types of housing for people in our community, from Coleman or some other agency, so we can manage the people in our community and help them where they need that help,” said Kathy Myers, director of Communications & Advocacy for Coleman Professional Services
Coleman Professional Services excels at providing care for people in crisis, she said, but ongoing assistance not only for housing, but for all other basic needs, can be challenging.
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would increase Medicaid reimbursements for clinical staff. If it passes, nonprofit community behavioral healthcare agencies would be able to offer competitive wages, something they haven’t been able to do for decades.
“We need the increase just to keep up with inflationary costs and to compete for workers,” Myers said.
Townhall II CEO Tammy Hunter said resources exist, but the agency is experiencing a significant employee shortage.
“Our client to therapist ratio, and this is statewide, is 1-to-350. With Covid and the overdoses, we have people entering the system in large numbers, and our system, and almost every agency in the state, was never built to withstand that,” she said.
Medicaid reimbursement rates haven’t changed in 30 years. Affordable housing in Portage County is a huge problem, and recovery housing is even worse, she said.
It comes down to dollars. State and national budget cuts have repercussions, Hunter said, and access to care is one of them. Housing is another. Assistance with transportation, psychiatric care and employment support all suffer. Right now, there are no answers, and vulnerable people can do little but wait.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.