Zachary Bowen, 27, went missing about two years ago. On February 13, his mother Suzette Cereghino received a phone call. A woman who identified herself as Jada explained that she was outside the Central Library in downtown Seattle and may have found her son, Cereghino recalled. She said Jada told her she remembered seeing Bowen's picture on Slog.
"I don't know how she recognized him," said Cereghino during a phone interview today. "It really is a completely divine intervention that she recognized him and took the time [to stay with him] and that he was alive. A couple weeks more on the street and he probably wouldn't have made it because he was so thin."
Since he was found two weeks ago, Bowen has been recovering with support from doctors and mental health counselors, his mother said. But he still needs more help.
Shortly after her son was found, Cereghino started a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for a four-month treatment program for Bowen, which would include intensive therapy and counseling to help him recover from drug addiction. As of this afternoon, the campaign had raised $6,605 of its $30,000 goal.
"This has been a full blown exposure to the love and humanity you wish was out there in the world all the time," Cereghino said.
Since seeking treatment and reaching out to his family, Bowen is regaining his health and putting on weight by eating "double meals and Ensure," his mother said. "He's doing a lot better mentally. He had to go to a place in his head to endure being on the street and homelessness and feeling like he had no one. It took him a while for him to recognize me and not think he was dreaming and would wake up under a bench somewhere."
Cereghino said that while Bowen was on the street, passersby would often give him food, or sometimes even cash.
"He said, 'I felt like someone was looking out for me. I'd wake up and there'd be some food or something to drink,'" she said. "And I'd tell him, 'People care, Zachary. They really do.' That's what kept him barely alive. He didn't feel safe in the shelters or to go for food."
She continued: "When I was going out to put out posters, I would have baggies with juice, cheese sticks, and power bars and I'd hand them out thinking, 'I hope someone is doing this for my son.' To find out that they were, it made me feel like I have another mission in life once Zach is better. I want to start a program from my own car or house to help the people out there who feel like they can't be loved."
