I met Michael David Crawford (MDC) for the first time when he was mickeyed up in the San Louis Obispo (SLO) County Jail. One of the other kuro5hin.org users had figured out that MDC hadn't been posting because he was in jail. He'd headed south from the Portland area, wrecked his car in SLO, and was arrested for being a nuisance at McDonald's -- probably for helping himself to free ketchup.

They dropped the charges and released him the day after my jail visit. He'd been locked up for several months, also spending time at the Atascadero mental hospital [1].

The criminal justice and mental health systems certainly did NOT do anything to help Michael with his actual problems.

[1] Atascadero State Hospital - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atascadero_State_Hospital#Popu...

I told about my efforts to reach out to MDC on kuro5hin.org (k5 diaries reposted on my site):

I sent some paper and envelopes to Mr. Crawford - https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/09/i-sent-some-paper-and-envel...

Immigration anxiety at the county jail - https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/immigration-anxiety-at-coun...

More about visiting SLO - https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/more-about-visiting-slo.htm... / etc.

harvesting life's gardens - https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/08/harvesting-lifes-gardens.ht... (a picture of the card I sent him - it had seeds embedded in it).

Selective Electromagnetic Interference - https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/02/selective-electromagnetic-i... - This one had a portion of the letter he'd sent me from jail: "... It really helps to know that I'm not forgotten in here."

Some months later I went to Oregon, and swung through SLO on my way back to Arizona. He'd been living at a shelter, I bought him breakfast and gave him a crossover cable for his laptops (any old network cable probably would have worked).

somewhere... pictures. They're on... .. . imgur. Picture of MDC pre-/post-haircut:

https://imgur.com/aQO4kyE / https://imgur.com/IYPS7To

Sometimes what a person really needs isn't much: someone who believes in you can make a huge difference. He got a job after my second visit... Made some progress at debugging their problem, but then he fell apart again, I don't remember the specifics.

OH YEAH - Michael Crawford cycled through his Kuro5hin.org usernames regularly (he was good at getting himself banned). one of these was "Zombie Jesus Christ", which inspired me to name my kuro5hin.org account 'TaxiCabJesus':

origin of the 'tcj' moniker - https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/04/origin-of-tcj-moniker.html

So long, and thanks for the 'nick.