Strangers in the Middle of a City: The John and Jane Does of L.A. Medical Center

Summary

He had a buzz cut and brown eyes, a stubbly beard and a wrestler’s build.He did not have a wallet or phone; he could not state his name. He arrived at Los Angeles General Medical Center one cloudy day this winter just as thousands of people do every year: alone and unknown.Some 130,000 people are brought each year to L.A. General’s emergency room. Many are unconscious, incapacitated or too unwell to tell staff who they are.Nearly all these Jane and John Does are identified within 48 hours or so of admission. But every year, a few dozen elude social workers’ determined efforts to figure out who they are. Too sick to be discharged yet lacking the identification they need to be transferred to a more appropriate facility, they stay at L.A.’s busiest trauma hospital for weeks. Sometimes months. Occasionally years. That’s an outcome no one wants. And so hospital staff did for the buzz cut man what they do once every other possibility is exhausted.Social workers cobbled together the tiny bit of information they could legally share: his height and weight, his estimated age, his date of admission, the place where he was found. They stood over his hospital bed and took his photograph.Then they asked the 10 million people of Los Angeles County: Does anyone know who this is? This unidentified patient arrived at L.A. General on Feb. 6 after being found unconscious in East Hollywood. (Los Angeles General Medical Center) Share via Close extra sharing options Just before 8 a.m. on Feb. 16, paramedics responded to a medical emergency at 1037 N. Vermont Ave. The man was face-down on a stretch of sidewalk lined with chain-link fences and sandbags, near a public restroom and the entrance to the Vermont/Santa Monica subway stop. Pink scrape marks blossomed above and below his right eye.Paramedics estimated he was about 30 years old. Hospital staff guessed 35 to 40.He had no possessions that might offer clues: no phone, no wallet, no tickets or receipts crumpled in his pockets.He could n...