A Mother’s Search for Russell Love

The odds were 1 in 8 million, but Beverly Elliott thought she had to take the chance.

Her only son, Russell Love, 27, was homeless somewhere in Los Angeles County. She had not heard from him in two years, had not seen him in four.

Elliott, a dark-haired office worker who lives in Houston, thought about coming here herself, but what chance would she have to find her son with no clues to his whereabouts?

She called the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department for help but was told that people come here to avoid their families, not to be found by them. Besides, they said, Los Angeles is just too big a place.

So Elliott, 48, a payroll specialist for AT&T;, hit upon another plan. She decided to place an ad in the personals section of the local newspaper.

It ran in The Times for 12 days in October:

Maybe someone who knew her son would see the classified ad, she thought. And maybe he would say something about it to him.

And maybe he would finally come home.

Ralph Campbell, 55, has spent 25 years living on the street while working as a printer, roofer, landscaper and laborer.

He has accumulated some regrets about his itinerant life.

“My mother was trying to get a hold of me 18 years ago when my father was dying,” he recalled. “I was in Seattle, walking all around King County trying to get a job.

“She tried for 2 1/2 years. I got home (to Casper, Wyo.) and everything had changed.”

He did not want a stranger to share that bitter experience, so Campbell, an inveterate newspaper reader, took note when he saw an ad about a Houston mother trying to find her son named Russell.

A few nights later, Campbell came by some extra sandwiches and offered them to a friend, who turned to another man and said, “Russ, do you want a sandwich?”

“I said to this guy that he should ask Russell sometime what his last name is. I told him about the ad. A couple of days later, my friend sees me and right out of the blue, he says, ‘That’s him!’

“I said, ‘Why don’t you tell him his mother is trying to get a hold of him?’ I cut that ad out of the paper. I said: ‘Drop this on him. See what he says.’ ”

Then Campbell got the idea to call the newspaper. “They would have resources to check out whether I was genuine and to contact his mother,” he reasoned. “They would know I wasn’t trying to put up any false hopes for her or to get the mother to send me some money.”

He called The Times and told an editor: “I think I know this guy who this woman in Houston is looking for.”

A few days later, while he was washing a jacket in a bucket behind the car he sleeps in, a visitor arrived.

Campbell was clean and neat in blue jogging pants, a blue and white pullover shirt and a blue windbreaker. His head, which he shaves because it is easier to keep clean, was covered with a blue and white cap.

Agreed to Help

Campbell agreed to help look for Love. He led a reporter to a parking lot on Western Avenue where he last had seen Love a few nights before.

Six large shipping containers the size of railroad box cars lined the back of the lot. Behind them was a 3-foot strip of asphalt invisible from the street. On the other side of the asphalt was a concrete block wall.

Campbell walked to the hidden asphalt area. There was no one there. But he looked under the shipping containers and found two sleeping bags neatly rolled up and hidden.

“I think this is where they are,” he said.

Later, he talked about why he decided to help someone he barely knows.

“I’d just like to see the guy get home and get another start,” he said. “I don’t think the guy belongs in L.A. He’s very naive about big city life. I think he’s kind of up against a wall.”

Hidden by the shipping containers behind the parking lot, someone was sleeping at 8 o’clock one recent morning. A man on his side with his legs curled up. Was it Love? Who could tell? The only thing visible was blond hair protruding from a bold yellow print blanket.

But one thing was sure: Whoever this was, he slept soundly. He did not stir even as the sun moved high in the sky, traffic roared by on busy Western Avenue and car doors slammed nearby.

Shortly after 10, the man awoke, and, still reclining, lit a Camel cigarette.

When a stranger approached, he looked up from his blanket, his shoulder-length hair and beard giving him a disheveled appearance. Are you Russell Love? he was asked.

“Yes,” he said quietly. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. He wore a raincoat, a print shirt, thin cotton pants and running shoes.

His mother was looking for him, he was told, and he’d been found through her newspaper ad. What was there about his life that a mother would need to seek her son this way?

‘I’ve Been Traveling’

“It’s not too much of a story,” he answered. “I’ve just been traveling around. The only reason I haven’t called is that I’ve been traveling.”

He was polite but reluctant to explain himself.

When was the last time he talked to his mother? “I called and talked to her in 1986 and I’ve been here since ‘85,” he said. “She knew I was in Los Angeles. That’s why she placed the ad.”

Russell Love--slender and about 5-feet-9--stood up and combed his hair and beard, then folded his blanket.

“It’s hard to survive but I do OK,” he said. “Sometimes I panhandle. Sometimes I do odd jobs. . . . I study a lot. I go to the library and find different topics. I just want to continue traveling. I like being free.”

Would he like a copy of his mother’s ad? Yes. Clutching it tightly in his hand, he left the parking lot and walked down Western Avenue.

Beverly Elliott, divorced from Russell’s father and remarried, busied herself in her office as she waited and hoped. In the weeks since she had placed her ad, she had taken plenty of calls but not the one she wanted.

Fifteen men had phoned collect, three of them from prison. “You sound like a nice lady,” one had said. “I’ll look for your son here. If I find him, can I come live with you when I get out?”

None of the callers had any news about her son. What she knew, she told a reporter by phone, was that Russell had dropped out of high school. He did get a general equivalency degree but had no specialized job training.

While at home in Texas, he had held odd jobs--the best was managing three office buildings for about a year. But when Houston’s economy went sour in the early 1980s, the jobs disappeared. Love left home and traveled to Washington state, then to San Francisco before arriving in Los Angeles.

The first few years he was away, Russell Love called his mother at home.

Never Good News

“He never had any good news . . .,” she said. “He would tell me things like he was living on the beach or the street and it would hurt me. I would cry for hours. I did not want to suggest something to him. I thought: He was 24 years old and that he could make his own decisions.

“When he called a few years ago, I asked him if he would come home. I told him I would send money and he would not have to stay if he did not want to.”

Then, her son stopped calling.

“He was probably getting to the stage where he was ashamed,” she said. “I know he had a little problem trying to find a job.”

She said she was comforted by the thought of her two married daughters in Texas, but she worried still about her boy.

“I would love to talk with him and give him a message,” she said. “His sister has gotten married and has a little boy and he doesn’t know any of these things.

“I know he hasn’t forgotten. It’s just (that) . . . I don’t know what is going on. . . . I don’t think it’s right to live on the street,” she said, crying softly. “It’s really up to a person’s family to help him through hard times.”

Russell Love finally called his mother on a Friday. By the following Monday night, he had phoned three times.

“The first time he called,” she said, “I told him that no matter what was the cause, he didn’t have a reason to shut his family out and that a family should stick together.

“And I said that I missed him and that his sisters missed him and that we loved him and wanted him to come home for Christmas.

“He said he would. I said, hopefully, I would be able to get him a ticket by next Friday when I get paid. I told him I would send him some money. When it sunk in, he laughed a little and sounded very happy.

“He called the next day because he did not have the ID to get the money. So I took care of that. Then he called Monday night and he was really lonely.

“He told me, ‘I should get a job.’ I told him that since it’s impossible for him to get a job with no ID and no address, that it could wait and that he should come on home. Maybe he’ll spend his birthday here Nov. 19 and stay for Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

Love’s mother has sent him an airline ticket to Houston and hopes he’ll use it.

“I’m going to see that he gets all the ID necessary to get a job,” she said. “I’m going to try to make it possible for him to rethink his decision and come back into the world he came from and to make a better decision.”