Listen to the report here.
Earlier this year, Jeff Gambord realized he couldn’t remember the last time he had a physical exam. So he requested his medical record from Coalinga State Hospital, the psychiatric facility where he’s been a patient since 2006.
Gambord learned it’d been more than a year, and he was curious if this was common so he encouraged others to request their records, too. “When we went back and looked up a couple other patients on this unit, some go back as far as two or three years as not having received exams,” he said.
Will you join us in honouring the great James Randi?
Also a secret wizard.
7 Answers
Yes, thanks, I will. And I can hardly wait to see what sorts of messages he sends back via mediums and readers.
I happened to be friends with a person who collaborated with Randi on the Popoff expose, and so I heard about it first hand. Like so many other things, it’s easy when you know how.
Listen to the report here
In late December, Clementine Sanders called her son at Coalinga State Hospital to make sure he had received her Christmas card. That’s when his bunkmates informed her that her son, 58-year-old Shannon Starr, had died three weeks earlier. “I was just totally shocked,” she says. “Nobody called me.”
Since then, she says, none of her messages to staff or reception have been returned. “I still wasn’t notified and I still haven’t heard from the [hospital],” she says.
When Sanders and her daughter instead sought out information from the Fresno County Coroner’s Office, they learned that Starr’s body had already been cremated and his ashes disposed of off the coast of San Luis Obispo County. “I’m just numb. I don’t know what to do,” Sanders says. “I’m upset. I don’t know exactly who to be upset with, except for them, and I can’t talk with them.”