Six months after amnesia robbed him of his straight-arrow life as a churchgoing family man, respected lawyer and Boy Scout troop leader, Raymond Power Jr. is trying to put it all back together – with help from family and friends he simply does not remember.
“He has no idea who I am,” his wife, Jane Power, said yesterday. “He doesn’t remember anything – he doesn’t remember anyone.”
The New Rochelle woman is overjoyed that her 57-year-old husband was found this week in a Chicago homeless shelter. “I’m so happy about having some closure, because the last six months were horrible,” Jane Power said.
But she’s mystified as to how he completely forgot his identity and left home. “My husband is a very loving person,” Power said. “It’s not anything he would do. He doesn’t have any memory of leaving here.”
Power, a former New Rochelle police officer, vanished Aug. 1, when instead of heading to his job as an insurance company lawyer, he drove west.
He finally stopped in Chicago, where he visited a city hospital and then showed up at the Pacific Garden Mission, a 600-bed homeless shelter with a strong religious program.
A shelter worker who befriended him said Power was very upset over the idea that he had a life he couldn’t remember.
“Every time he would start to think about what he didn’t know, he would start to well up with emotion,” said Michael Dunn, the shelter’s assistant director of security.
“So I would always shift gears on him and say, ‘Let’s at least think about what we do know.’
Finally, on Monday, Power’s pal Ron Fitzgerald checked the Web site of the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” – and found a picture of Power and a description of his case.
Fitzgerald contacted the TV show, which in turn contacted police. Chicago cops picked up Power at the shelter, and confirmed his identity with New Rochelle officers.
Hours later, cops found Power’s car parked a few blocks from the shelter. Beat officers knew the car had been parked on the street for some time, but it was a coincidence that they finally decided to check its out-of-state license plates on the day Power was found, a police spokeswoman said.
(p. 19 in metro and sports extra)