Mom's mission springs from tragedy
SANTA CRUZ WOMAN SHINES LIGHT ON MENTALLY ILL
By Patrick May Mercury News 2/27/2006

As the afternoon was dying, the sunset over the ocean filled the living room. The nightly news shimmered on the TV screen. And something clicked inside Steven Margo's head.
For years, even as he tried to silence the voices with medication and street drugs, bouncing from park bench to group home to psych ward, they had told him what to do, who to trust, who was trying to kill him.
This time, something made Steven pick up the knife.
Margaret Margo saw her son come out of the kitchen and walk up behind her husband. The good-natured fisherman shone like a lighthouse in his son's darkness. Sal Margo had stood by Steven for 35 years -- holding the little boy awakened by nightmares; bailing out the teenager messing up on drugs; lobbying for the young man diagnosed as paranoid-schizophrenic and discharged from the Navy.
It was 6 p.m. on June 29, 2001. Two lives would end in a bloody blur as Steven Margo stabbed his father to death and then turned the knife on himself. But for the other person in the room, the horror of that day led to a new beginning.
Each year, mental illness savages millions of families, leaving many forever hobbled by the pain and shame that come from the stigma. But Margo's tragedy instead inspired her to bring hope to others.
``It could have been three of us who died that night,'' said Margo, now 67 and living alone in the family's oceanside home in Santa Cruz. ``I was left alive for a reason -- maybe to shine a little light for others struggling with mental illness.''
Margo is infectiously upbeat, hard-charging. Her sorrow is not buried so much as woven into an almost evangelistic sense of purpose. She has published her journal excerpts and insights in a book, its title inspired by the voices that tormented her son: ``The Uninvited Guest -- A Mother's Story about Mental Illness.''
``I've never really worked through what happened that night,'' she said. ``I talk about it. But I don't sit here alone and visualize it. And I think that's a gift from God; God wants me to be there for other people. And I can't help people if I'm always breaking down crying.''
In the void left by the unspeakable tragedy, Margo found meaning: She would honor her husband's devotion to their son by forgiving Steven for what he had done, the first and only violent act of his life as far as anyone knew. And she would devote herself to helping others cope, by peeling back the shroud covering mental illness and letting in the light.
``How many people will say, `My son is schizophrenic'? They're ashamed, and they feel it means there's something wrong with them, too, that they're somehow responsible,'' Margo said. ``But mental illness is nobody's fault.''
So she does all she can to get people talking, to help families explore the causes and accept their loved ones, just as her husband did. ``He'd always say, `Steven, I'm proud of you.' He'd try to make him feel like he was a real person, not weird. I can still see Sal lying in bed in the middle of the night, hands behind his head. `I have Steven on my mind,' he'd say. `What can he do? He can't hold down a job. He has nothing and no one in his life.'
``And I'd say, `He has us.' ''

Personal stories • Mental illness, homelessness

It's Tuesday night. A crowd gathers in the hall at St. Joseph's in Capitola, where Steven Margo once served as an altar boy. It's another in a series of talks about mental illness, coordinated by his mother and inspired by a lifetime of love between father and son.
Tonight's subject is mental illness among the homeless. Pam Rogers-Wyman of the Homeless Persons Health Project steps forward with the big picture: 2,700 homeless on the streets of Santa Cruz County on any given night, more than 7,000 different people out there over the past year, 20 percent of them suffering from a major mental illness such as bi-polar or post-traumatic stress disorder, or schizophrenia -- about double the general population.
It gets worse. Of those homeless for five years or more, as many as 60 percent are mentally ill. Bay Area counties are trying to link computer systems to get an accurate regional count.
But a 2004 survey in Santa Clara County found 20,000 unduplicated homeless people on the streets or in shelters over the course of a year, and more than a third reported experiencing some form of mental illness.
Next came Joy McCorkle. She was a teacher who fell apart. A psychotic break, she called it, describing the day the clouds turned chartreuse and engulfed her school. She quit her job and soon lost everything, ending up in a tent city, destitute, sexually exploited, washing her hair in toilets.
For years she wandered the streets of America. Eventually diagnosed as bi-polar, McCorkle, now 65, said, ``I'm finally getting the right medication, 23 years after first seeing a psychiatrist. Back then, all they'd do was put me on tranquilizers.
``Now I'm a voice for the homeless,'' she said, beaming with pride. ``I'm stabilized, and I want to tell you that a diagnosis of mental illness is not a death sentence.''
Then Margo introduced Joe Bahl, 40, a tattoo-covered tough guy suddenly struck with stage fright because he had never spoken before a group. ``My addiction started when I was 6,'' he said. ``Diagnosed hyperactive, they put me on Ritalin. I'd see a psychiatrist every month, and all we'd do is play cards. My parents divorced, and I got into drugs and crime, in and out of jail since I was 13.
``I've been in denial about having mental-health issues,'' Bahl said of the stigma he felt being thought of as ``crazy.'' ``I'd rather be a convict or a drug addict than admit I had a mental illness.''
But he was sick. And like Steven Margo, most of his life had been a whirl of drug binges and jail time, hospitalization and suicide attempts, and the chronic fear of telling doctors how badly you really feel because they'll only increase your dose of soul-smothering psychotropics.
In his most recent visit to jail in 2004, doctors gave Bahl two new medications: Wellbutrin and Seroquel. Finally, after a lifetime on the streets, ``things quickly became clear to me. I realized the only person I really have is myself, and if I can't help myself, then why go on living?''
As Bahl paused to compose himself, Margo stepped forward.
``I identify with your story, because I had a son, the youngest of our six kids,'' she said, pausing a moment, ``. . . and being mentally ill doesn't mean you have to be abused by the world.''
Bahl looked at the well-dressed woman and nodded: ``It's sad,'' he said, ``that a stigma can keep someone out in the bushes for 20 years.''
Margo spoke again of her son, how everyone had thought he was normal as a kid, that he was doing drugs because of peer pressure and not self-medication. When she said ``Steven was the love of our lives,'' a young woman in the audience interrupted.
``Why do you keep saying `was'?''
``Because,'' Margo said, stunning the audience with her story, ``he's deceased.''

A love story • Father and son had close bond

Like the lectures, Margo's book confronts mental illness head-on. In family photos and remembrances, father and son come alive. ``This is a true story,'' it begins, ``about a father and son.''
It is also a love story -- of Steven Margo following his dad like a shadow; of the father guiding his son through a strained mental-health system, in and out of therapy, bounding between over-medicated, under-medicated and the fragile reality in between.
``Sal always felt Steven deserved respect,'' Margo said, adding he'd make sure his hair was cut, that he had rides to get around, that he was included in family get-togethers.
``It was like Sal was continually holding his arm around Steven, guiding him down a path, like he was still a little boy,'' Margo said. ``Steven would act as if he were making his own decisions in life. But it was really his dad looking over him.''

New day begins • A window into the past

Mornings are the hardest. Most days, Margo walks into the living room and opens the blinds.
``I think about Sal a lot and how empty our lives are without him. I think of Steven, especially at Christmas, and I'm sad he had to live this way and leave this world the way he did. But I'm even sadder that people who really didn't know him may judge him by his act, not that he had a severe challenge.''
She often scans the sea across the street. She looks toward Pleasure Point, where she used to watch her goofy-footed teenage son try to surf. She thinks about her husband out there in his fishing boat, the Margaret Mary, headed off toward Soquel Point.
``We've got so many homeless on the streets, sleeping on benches, and most of them, I'm afraid, have nobody in their lives.''
But on this day, as Margo sets out to publicize her book and prepare her next lecture and organize emergency shelter at St. Joseph's for homeless women, the sky across East Cliff Drive is endless and the ocean is empty.