VACAVILLE, Calif. — For the 16 years James Mark Rippee lived on the streets of this Bay Area town, his sisters Catherine Rippee-Hanson and Linda Privatte unsuccessfully begged politicians, bureaucrats and medical professionals to give their schizophrenic baby brother the help he so clearly needed — but didn't want.
Their advocacy made Rippee possibly the most famous homeless man in California — known well to state and local legislators and repeatedly written about by media. But it did no good.
In late November, Rippee was dumped at a hospital in the middle of the night gasping for breath, still too deep in his severe mental illness to understand he needed medical care. He died a few days later at the age of 59.
