If He Could Take Those Words Back, He’d Get His Life Back

Looking back on that last Friday morning in February when his troubled mind produced both dark thoughts and a rational diagnosis, Frank Gardner still doesn’t know what he did wrong.

But, oh, the damage done. That’s much easier to assess.

A respected San Clemente High School teacher, he spent two months in jail. He lost his job. His 24-year teaching career may be over. Although free on bail, he still feels somewhat of a captive in his own home. And, for good measure, he faces the possibility of a trial that could land him another year or more in jail.

How he got to this point is less Gardner’s fault and more that of a flawed system for treating people with mental-health problems.

I wrote in early March about Gardner’s plight: that he had a minor disciplinary meeting with school officials on Feb. 23 and became so upset that he left school (with permission) and went home. Once there, he realized he was in bad shape. He describes his state that day as mostly distraught because of a cumulative set of personal issues; however, he also felt just enough suicidal and, yes, homicidal thoughts that he knew he needed help.

After calling his doctor for a referral, he drove himself to a psychiatric hospital in Laguna Beach and asked to be admitted. After describing his feelings, he was admitted. It never occurred to him, he says now, that he was incriminating himself.

Later that night, without having left the facility, Gardner was arrested and jailed for having made terrorist threats against unspecified supervisors at school.

After more than two months in custody (either jail or the mental hospital for diagnosis) Gardner posted bond eight days ago and has been home. In the interim, he’s been dismissed from his job after 21 years in the district.

Sitting and talking in his living room last week, Gardner, 49, is a combination of wry humor, fresh religious evangelism and ongoing frustration with a chain of events that altered the course of his life.

“I should have been at the mental hospital for three days [as permitted under law] getting help, then gotten out and gone back to work and taught on Monday,” he says. “That’s what I expected to do. That’s all I thought I needed.”

Because most of us don’t understand and therefore fear what depression or mental impairment can mean, that may seem simplistic. But we can relate to going to a hospital, describing our symptoms to a doctor and expecting not to be arrested for doing so.

“I didn’t go to a mental hospital to threaten my supervisors,” Gardner says. “It doesn’t make sense. I was looking for a calm, safe environment and I’d be OK. I just needed someone to take care of me for a while.”

All cases have nooks and crannies, and I’m not attempting here to revisit Gardner’s. Hospital officials wouldn’t discuss the situation when I contacted them in March. School district officials confirmed both the February disciplinary session and that Gardner hadn’t threatened any of the three supervisors at the meeting.

Gardner’s arrest made the papers. While out on bail, he must stay away from school district sites and some 30 supervisors. Gardner says the Orange County district attorney’s office early on offered a plea bargain in which he’d cop to a misdemeanor charge of making a terrorist threat. Tempted, he declined, imagining what a charge like that would look like if he applied for another teaching job.

At this point, he says, he wants to settle the case but is willing to risk a trial.

I hope prosecutors know it would be unfair to take Gardner to trial. Reason has begun to emerge; Gardner once was held without bail and now is free on a $25,000 bond.

Small consolation, but after two months in jail, Gardner is thankful for any favors. Still, he concedes to an ongoing captivity.

“I have problems with going out alone,” he says. “I can’t do normal things. I’m scared to death. If I walk down the street alone and one of them [those named by the restraining order] sees me, they can say I’m harassing them and instantly, I’m back in jail.”

Gardner cracks a smile when I suggest that sounds like paranoia. “I don’t see moving objects or funny things on the wall, but, yeah, there’s an amount of paranoia,” he says. “And it’ll take some time.”

He wishes now he’d called friends on that fateful morning but says, “Mental health is not usually something you talk about with friends.” The resultant publicity “bothered, embarrassed and humiliated” him, but he came to appreciate press coverage because he thinks the issue is worth airing.

Other mental-health experts told me in interviews a couple of months ago that it was appropriate for the hospital to inform police of Gardner’s direct or implied threats. They went on to say, however, that hospitalization was called for, not incarceration.

Gardner conceded that, because he thought hospital officials were interrogating him like a criminal, he got upset and asked to leave. I asked if the hospital called police because it feared it couldn’t keep him there and considered him dangerous. Gardner says that wasn’t how things played out.

“I never intended to hurt anybody in the first place. I had troubled thoughts, I went where you’re supposed to go. I was confined by a mental-health facility. I was no danger to anybody. To take and throw a person in jail under those circumstances, who admittedly is not rational at the time, is terrible.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821; by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626; or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.