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HOMELESS VETERAN EVICTED FROM LONG-TERM

CAMPSITE ON STANFORD CAMPUS -- After spending the

better part of a decade sitting cross-legged in quiet solitude

and listening to his short-wave radio, Worden Miller has

finally been evicted from his tree grove home.

 

 

Story here... http://daily.stanford.
edu/article/2007/7/12/camp
usTreeDwellerEvicted

Story below:

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Campus tree dweller evicted

By Gerry Shih

After spending the better part of a decade sitting cross-legged in quiet solitude and listening to his short-wave radio, Worden Miller has finally been evicted from his tree grove home on Stanford property.

Now passing his days with suspicion and anxiety at the Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park, Miller fears that he has forever left his radio, his tranquil study and a sense of safety back under his tree 50 yards off Palm Drive.

Stanford Police initially arrested him on July 4 on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. Miller appeared in Santa Clara County Superior Court the following day and pled not guilty. He was released after his pre-trial date was set for early September, and police took him back to his tree, where he had long sat with his wheelchair and grocery cart.

But by Monday morning, all that remained next to the tree was a worn sleeping bag, old newspapers, several trash bags and an olive, extreme-weather military-issue winter jacket. Stanford police had already taken Miller to Valley Medical Center.

“They’ve kidnapped me twice and now this is taking away my freedom,” Miller said via phone from the facility’s patient care unit.

Stanford Department of Public Safety Deputy Chris Cohendet, who has been at the Department for five years, said that police have been routinely checking on Miller since Cohendet first arrived. Miller claimed to have spent seven-and-a-half years in the grove.

Stanford police, fearing that Miller’s physical and mental condition had been deteriorating, checked him into to a Veterans Administration hospital for 33 days last year. Police said that Miller’s legs had atrophied to the point that he is severely handicapped.

“He can’t move, so he’s been sleeping in a rotting sleeping bag and defecating in the environment,” Cohendet said.

The Department of Public Safety consulted the University’s legal counsel last fall and issued Miller a “stay away” order, which Chris Mattison, Miller’s public defender, said was simply an attempt to get her handicapped client off the University’s hands before he died on campus.

Mattison questioned why the University decided to evict Miller now.

“He’s got real problems with his legs, but this is how he lives,” she said. “How has anything changed? I haven’t seen a compelling reason why he has to leave now instead of two, three or four years ago. If they let him stay there until he dies, which is what he wants, then that’s it, we’re done.”

The University’s legal representatives did not respond to specific questions about Miller, but Director of Communications Alan Acosta issued a statement about the case.

“Over the last several years we have consulted with local social service providers and the Veteran’s Administration in efforts to encourage Mr. Miller to seek needed assistance,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, he has chosen not to avail himself of those services. As a result, the University has issued a ‘stay away’ letter to Mr. Miller and we are hopeful that he will comply with this directive.”

Cohendet insisted that the police were following through with their moral obligation.

“We can’t just leave him there at this point,” he said. “We’ve used the criminal system to provide Miller proper medical attention.”

Miller doesn’t see it that way.

“They’ve been harassing me day and night for years, and now they break into my home,” he said. “It wasn’t good enough that I had a court appearance; they had to just to harass me. I sit quietly in the sunlight and eat fresh food. I’m no big-time criminal.”

Miller said he used to work on a destroyer as an electronic technician with the U.S. Navy. He added that he was lucky enough to leave the Navy before combat operations began.

“I heard them shoot the guns a couple of times,” he recalled. “It was really loud, but that was it.”

He thinks he may still have family in upstate New York, where he formerly worked as a technician.

Miller said that for years, friends would bring provisions to his encampment. He also claimed to shop at Andronico’s supermarket and said he chatted with other shoppers about health topics — as Miller’s last few years have been devoted to the study of health, there is no conversation topic he likes more. He listens faithfully to alternative medicine doctor Bob Marshall’s daily radio program on AM 770.

This was Miller’s life until police, he claimed, began harassing him, before stealing his sleeping bag for three months and eventually taking him to the hospital where he now waits nervously.

Miller is very suspicious of the treatment he is currently receiving, and said he has refused to take a number of medicines, afraid that synthetic drugs would degrade his DNA and hasten his aging.

He is also nervous about the nurses; he said he looks into their eyes and sees that they want to psychologically probe him and feed him unhealthy, processed food and synthetic drugs. When he walks around to talk to the veterans who suffered permanent trauma or injury in the war, he becomes deeply moved, and he blames the government.

“Have some pity on the men over here, won’t you?” he implored. “There are real veterans here and they’re being screwed. How is our government any better than Vichy France?”

He still doesn’t understand why the police won’t leave him alone, and he dislikes being confined in the hospital. He often thinks about how much he appreciates the open air of his grove home, because “most of society is a concentration camp.”

“History of man is a history of slavery, and freeing yourself is not a joke,” he said solemnly.

So if he is eventually released and free to do whatever he wishes, what would he choose to do?

“I’m not really that imaginative,” Miller said. “I’d just sit under the tree and be quiet, really, and keep my fresh outlook.”

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Larry Scott  --