Family shares Warwick’s homeless walker’s story
Not all who wander are lost, but some keep walking until they are found.
Linda Lachance Wagner called Warwick home, as she had no home of her own. Known to many in the community by face if not by name, she was easily recognizable as she walked endless miles of the city’s streets while carrying the weight of her world in an overstuffed backpack.
Last Saturday, after more than a decade of homeless living, Linda died.
“This story is about a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, and about dignity and respect,” said Linda’s daughter, Kim, who along with her family wants her mom’s story told.
Rumors of Linda’s life swirled like wind in an alley. Some had heard she lost family members and fell apart, others had heard she was alone or had drug problems. But her story was much more complicated.
The 69-year-old’s journey began in Fall River, where she came from a family of six children. According to her daughters, Chrissy and Kim, she had a very timid mother and a father who was physically and verbally abusive. Yet Linda was known as the defiant child who always stood up for and protected her siblings from any wrongdoing.
She attended Catholic schools, but dropped out and went to work at assisted living facilities, helping mentally challenged adults. At age 18, she married her first husband, Raymond, a Navy serviceman who served in Vietnam.
Linda and Raymond had four daughters together as his time in the service was split between home and overseas. While her daughters aren’t exactly sure what initially happened, Linda eventually suffered a sort of breakdown and decided to get up and leave her family. Chrissy, Kim and their sisters were then raised by their father.
“She left when we were all little,” said Kim. “They never really had a relationship as a couple, and then she came back several years later, remarried, and would pop in once in a great while and we saw her very rarely.”
She remarried a man named Steve, a nice man who also suffered through problems of his own. They had three children together, a girl and two boys.
Once she remarried, her four daughters saw her more. Sometimes she would follow through with family plans, other times she wouldn’t. What was clear to her family early on, however, was that Linda suffered from underlying mental issues.
“She never got diagnosed when she was young, and had she been diagnosed correctly when she was younger, maybe they could have done something, some trial and error with medication,” said Chrissy. “But it was the ’70s and I’m sure my mom was a hippie girl, so that didn’t happen.”
Her daughters say their mom was extremely intelligent, but found it very difficult to fit into society. She was never good with money or planning; she would rack up bills, find herself in a sticky situation, and then just up and move. She was very demanding; clothes had to be from a certain place as she had high standards, and she also had an obsession with body image.
Throughout the years, Linda held various jobs in Rhode Island and elsewhere. By the 1990s she had found a job with GTECH.
“I called, pretended I was her, got on the phone, did an interview, and got her a job through a temp agency,” said Chrissy. “She always refused assistance and stated that she could work. She always said she could work.”
There, she was happy and did well for quite some time, but eventually things turned again. She would come home from work and state that there were straws coming up through her workstation to spray her with mind controlling chemicals. She stated that’s when the “games” started, and her distrust of the company and government grew.
“She had a battle going on inside her brain,” said Kim. “She heard voices and admitted it to us but nobody else. I walked into my garage one day and I found her just banging her head against the wall, and that’s when it became real for me.”
The family constantly discussed getting her help, but as she wasn’t a threat to herself or others their legal options were very limited. By around the year 2000, things really started to turn downhill for Linda. She lost her job at GTECH, and went on to find other jobs but wouldn’t stay and eventually would walk away again.
“She walked to stay ahead of her brain. She bounced from family member to family member and was not on her own,” said Chrissy. “It would get to a point where ultimatums were given in attempts to get her help, and then she would get up and leave.”
Linda’s independent streak was a strength but also a great detriment towards efforts to help her. The family eventually tried to force her to go for mental evaluations, and she did go, but would provide nothing to health professionals that would indicate she had any problems. She continued to not ask for help, stating she was fine.
“I think the final straw was she went through all of us in the family, and she had just started staying in homeless shelters. She disappeared for several months, we found her, and tried to bring her in for help again,” said Chrissy. “As soon as we got in the car on the highway she realized what was going on and she tried to escape and jump out on the highway.”
From there she disappeared again, only to spend time in various homeless shelters, where she was thrown out for fighting. Linda started to shoplift and got in trouble with the law. She also knew how to navigate through the community, getting haircuts or food and drink from certain establishments or from sympathetic community members who knew parts of her situation.
In an effort to take care of her and do what little Linda allowed, her family purchased a bus pass to get her around and provide a temporary respite from the elements. Her children found that she stayed at a 24-hour laundromat using a card they had purchased for her.
“We all tried the tough love thing – if you do this then you can come and stay with us again – but it was impossibly hard trying to convince her,” said Chrissy.
They held interventions. They contacted elderly affairs, they tried every possible avenue, but kept hearing there was nothing legally they could do. Every time they heard about a homeless person on the news, they wondered if it was about their mom.
Two weeks ago Saturday, the family got a phone call that Linda had fallen in front of the 7-Eleven store on Warwick Avenue and had suffered a severe laceration on her head. The 7-Eleven staff, who knew who Linda was, helped, kept her there, and got her the medical attention to arrive before she walked off again as she was trying to do. She was taken to Kent Hospital.
At first, the hospital was going to discharge her after attending to the wound, but, according to Chrissy, Dr. Carolyn Blackman took a special interest and delved deeper, seizing on the opportunity as Linda hardly ever sought medical attention. Eventually, bloodwork and scans found Stage 4 cancer in Linda’s liver and lungs. She was only given a few weeks to live.
It was then that the family again tried to obtain guardianship, established Medicare assistance for her, and found themselves in a whirlwind of paperwork and emotions. The family jumped through multiple hoops and had hospice established while they feared she would walk away again.
“I just have to walk it off, I just have to walk it off,” Chrissy said her mom stated when learning of the diagnosis. “You don’t have to worry about it, I’m going to be fine, I just have to walk it off.”
But this time, Linda didn’t.
She came to accept her fate and was discharged on June 9 to stay with Chrissy. Even if there was a chance at a recovery, Linda refused additional treatment as her health declined.
On Father’s Day, her grandchildren and family gathered to celebrate one more time. It was one of her last days outside, where she enjoyed one of her last outdoor cigarettes (which she was known for and always had). It was a chance for all to say goodbye.
Though the family thought they would have longer time with her, a few days before her passing, Linda took her last steps. Gone was her 60-pound backpack she always carried, filled with everything she needed for any weather condition along with the books she loved to occupy her time.
In Chrissy’s home and bed, with her now thin body exhausted, Linda passed on with her daughters nearby.
“If you have to go mom, you have to go,” Chrissy last told her mom, who finally listened as she squeezed her daughter’s hand during her last life steps. “I was glad I was there for that, that she wasn’t there alone.”
While funeral arrangements have yet to be finalized, the family would like the community to know about Linda’s life and death. They also want others to know that while Linda walked Warwick’s streets alone, she wasn’t.
“She was loved,” said Chrissy.
