‘We can find people like nobody’s business,’ says the founder of the nonprofit, which has celebrated more than 300 reunions across the United States
“Everyone is someone’s somebody.”
That’s the motto of Miracle Messages, a San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit dedicated to reuniting families nationwide with long-lost loved ones living on the streets. The concept is simple: Anyone looking for a family member can call into the hotline and leave a message. Miracle Messages takes it from there.
Kevin Adler, founder and director of Miracle Messages, got the idea after passing homeless people on his way to work every day on Market Street in San Francisco. Adler grew up with a beloved uncle who was homeless and frequently absent from the family. Filled with memories of his Uncle Mark, Adler began stopping and asking homeless individuals if they had family.
After he helped facilitate one reunion in particular, he saw the healing power of reconnection. He quit his job immediately and started Miracle Messages. The nonprofit now has a network of more than 1,000 “Miracle Messengers” who work to find and deliver messages, and they have celebrated more than 300 reunions and counting.
“It’s a chicken-and-the-egg kind of thing,” Adler said. “People don’t think to either ask or offer this service because they don’t know what to do if the person says, ‘Yes, I want to reconnect with my family.’ Where do you even start?”
Miracle Messages has, as Adler described it, crowd-sourced the detective process and the message delivery process.
“We can find people like nobody’s business,” he said. “We have a team of detectives, trained volunteers and private investigators who have been in the business for 30 years and more. We’ve delivered messages to remote villages in Kenya. We had a man who had been sold into slavery who escaped and was reunited with his family after 50 years” at their farm in the mountains of Zacatecas, Mexico.
All they need to function even more efficiently is more messages, Adler said. “We want to get more people to record messages.”
Adler estimated that of the more than 300 reunions, 15% “have led straightaway to stable housing or living with family again; 80% have had a positive outcome in terms of mental, physical and social health such as feeling less lonely, suicidal. The average age of our clients is 45 to 50 years old. The average time disconnected with family is 15 years. We are working with a very hard-to-reach, generally service-resistance, older subset of the homeless population that has been on the streets for many years. And this is a service that seems to reach them,” he said.
Miracle Messages is also there to help with the reintegration process.
“Just because you have reconnected doesn’t mean the underlying trauma and difficulties and issues will somehow resolve themselves,” he said. “There may be a honeymoon period where things are happy. That is the moment to have the conversation about long-term plans. If I was going to try to sum up what we do in a few words, it’s re-facilitate conversations. That’s the core of our work. We’ve evolved a post-reunion support packet with conversations starters, a list of resources including support services.”
Street Roots has shared many stories about homelessness from the perspective of those who experience life on the streets. The other side of the coin, however, is the experience of families who have gone years, sometimes decades, without word from a loved one missing and presumed living on the streets.
Susan lives on the Oregon Coast and uses a pseudonym to remain anonymous, citing ongoing tensions and upheaval in the family as a result of her son’s continued homeless status. Her son has been homeless on and off for two decades.
“Homeless is even a difficult term to define because intelligence, charm and resourcefulness usually made it possible for my child to have a place to stay with someone,” Susan said. “There were also periods of treatment which lasted up to a year, opportunities to transition to supported living — which were usually very positive and brought the family a great deal of hope — and then leaving again, and another period of wondering where and what was happening.”
Susan said she and other family members searched for him repeatedly over the years.
“Searching included everything from driving around, calling connections to word of mouth and searching jail records. Finding usually came from a phone call from my child, and that was a wonderful opportunity to tell him he was loved,” she said.
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“I know other families who have had a similar experience with varied outcomes,” Susan said. “One father, who spoke at his son’s funeral, said that they received the phone call they always dreaded but also expected. During the period of not knowing, the dread of that phone call is real. During that period, you find yourself searching the faces of every homeless person you see, thinking you might find your child — and sometimes thinking for a moment that you have, only to be proved wrong.”
Susan has advice for others who have a loved one on the streets:
“It is important to … take every chance to remind them they are loved. Keep the door open for your loved one to make contact, even if it is just a phone call, because knowing they are OK is a gift and a chance to tell them you love them and are not angry, a special opportunity not to be missed. I firmly believe that addiction is a disease, and while we may despise the acts and behaviors, we still love the person.”
Another woman with a missing sister described the anguish of not being able to connect with her sister. She wished to remain anonymous, citing the privacy of her sister’s children.
“Judy and I are two of 11 kids,” she said. “Many of us have anxiety disorder as a result of very traumatizing childhood. Our father would become violent in his mania and would be hospitalized. My mother raised us by herself. We were all within 15 years of each other. It was a pile.”
Judy had extreme mania at age 16 and struggled with bipolar disorder her entire life. She raised four children, operated a day care, and managed her symptoms with medication more or less successfully for many years. That changed when she began to see a different doctor.
“About five years ago, Judy had a doctor who wanted to experiment with different drugs, weaning her off medications she had relied on,” her sister said. “She became extremely manic and kept going down a destructive path. She gave up her home, which was really important to her. She had good housing through a (Department of Housing and Urban Development) program. Then she went on the streets, into her car.”
Judy’s family tried to stay in communication, but she gradually cut off all contact. Her whereabouts were difficult to track. They knew she had a couple of run-ins with the law.
“We’re not positive, but we think she was homeless for two to three years,” her sister said. “None of us knew. It was so dangerous. Three of us in the family are mental health workers. We all tried contacting her, getting messages to her, contacting local police. We kept dead-ending.
“Having a loved one that you couldn’t help, she was always on my mind. I pictured her as a child, as a mother, as a wife, as this beautiful person she is, and yet trying to picture her current situation. I would rack my brain trying to find a way to help her, find out where she was. It was misery; it was surreal. It was a feeling of desperation, uselessness, sadness and frustration. I found myself getting angry at the system we have, although I work within that system as a mental health provider.”
Judy’s sister believes she Judy is in a group home now. But for those years when she was on the streets, Judy made it clear she didn’t want to be contacted. Many homeless people are resistant to services, Adler said.
“What part of her is unwilling, though? I have to ask,” Judy’s sister said. “Is there a way to relate to a part of her that is willing? I refused to give up on her. Of course there was a part of her that wanted a home, wanted treatment. We were just not able to help her, not able to find that part of her.”
MIRACLE MESSAGES
For more information about Miracle Messages, visit its website or call 800-MISS-YOU.
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