A Phone Call From a Stranger Triggers an Anguished Search

The phone rang at 6:45 a.m. at Bob Parent’s home in Simi Valley.

“Your brother’s been injured in a train accident and he’s on his way to the hospital,” the man on the other end told him.

The stranger said William Parent had given him the number to call. They were both passengers on a Metrolink commuter train that had just crashed in Glendale.

“Is his condition critical?” Bob Parent immediately asked.

It didn’t appear so, the caller responded, telling Parent that his brother had multiple internal injuries, including broken ribs. The caller said he had to go but promised to call back.

“God bless,” he said.

So began the anguished search for Bill Parent, a 53-year-old stock clerk for the Los Angeles Unified School District who commuted on the train from his home in Canoga Park.

After hanging up, Bob Parent, a 46-year-old state corrections officer, called his sister, and together they spent much of the morning and early afternoon calling dozens of hospitals. None had any record of their brother.

The pattern became frantic. Hospitals told them to keep checking back, so they kept calling. Friends periodically went by their brother’s home, hoping he might return on his own.

“We thought if they took him to surgery, he had whatever operations he needed and was recuperating,” said Elaine Parent-Siebers, 51, a dental hygienist who also lives in Simi Valley. “Then we thought maybe he checked out or was in shock and wandering around somewhere.”

By midafternoon, the siblings’ anxiety was peaking.

“After I exhausted all my avenues, I was starting to get nervous,” Bob Parent said. “Things weren’t right.”

He called a phone line the Glendale Police Department had established for families of missing and injured passengers. Police told them to go to the station, where investigators and counselors were helping family members track down missing and injured passengers.

Joined by a couple of family friends, they drove the 30 miles to Glendale.

They were ushered into a community room away from the press, where police officials spent hours helping them make more calls to hospitals and coroner’s office investigators.

By 8 p.m., there was still no match. Neighbors called to say Bill Parent was still not home and that his car was still parked at the Northridge station.

Bob Parent, looking weary, stepped outside the police headquarters for a cigarette.

“Nobody has him,” he said with heavy frustration. “It’s been a long day.”

Bob Parent continued to call until about 11 p.m., when he returned home with no resolution but with a new ray of hope. Authorities had told the siblings that they believed all the dead had been accounted for and their brother was not among them.

They spent a sleepless night rehashing the possible scenarios. Was he still wandering the streets? Was he still unconscious after surgery? Had he found his way home?

“When you don’t know, you have to sit and wait,” Bob Parent said.

They also spent time simply thinking about their missing brother.

Bill Parent was the oldest of three children who had grown up in Simi Valley and remained close as adults. He was not married and had no children. He liked to camp and fish and spent free time with his brother at Mammoth Lakes. He was known as the neighborhood handyman who restored antique cars and drove them in parades.

He took the train to work because he didn’t like the stress of driving, and Metrolink offered him a chance to read and think.

At first light Thursday, Parent-Siebers went to her brother’s home again and found it empty. She checked the Northridge station and found his car.

She called Glendale officials again.

“He’s still missing. You have to find him,” she said.

About 9 a.m., Bob Parent’s phone rang.

“There’s somebody down here I think you guys should look at,” a coroner’s investigator said.

The siblings jumped in the car and drove to downtown Los Angeles, where officials showed them a Polaroid snapshot of their brother’s body.

Coroner’s officials told them that they knew the Parents were looking for their brother but that the John Doe they had seemed too young. Investigators thought the man was in his 30s.

Authorities said that the force of the collision had torn the backpack containing Bill Parent’s identification away from his body. He had been pulled from the wreckage and taken to the triage area. Somewhere in between, he had asked the fellow passenger to call his brother. He never made it to a hospital.

“That’s why we could not find him, because he passed away at the scene,” Bob Parent said. “We were looking in the wrong place.”