Leonora_LaPeterAnton

Don Lewis started out as a trucker. He asked his 14 year old girlfriend to marry him when he was 17. He started fixing up washing machines. Together, the couple got them ready for sale. Then he bought and sold cars. At one point he got a hold of some dump trucks and sold them, his daughter said, always at a profit. Then he started a truck hauling business of his own. Ann McQueen drove for him, as did Kenny Farr and Farr's father, John. Then Lewis got this contract with CSX, which needed someone to remove the wheels from storage containers that arrived on trains and to ship them to companies around Florida. Don did this and then kept the trailers and sold them too. At some point, he got into buying cheap properties, then moved to bidding on them on the courthouse steps. Carole Baskin also did this with him. He kept buying property and eventually he and Carole amassed an empire of properties that they sold or rented to folks. Around his disappearance, the business produced $50,000 a month in revenue. When he disappeared, he was worth $6 million, according to court documents.

We heard rumors about this but could not confirm it. We are not sure if it is true since we could not confirm it.

There are dozens upon dozens of property transactions involving Don Lewis, Carole Lewis and trusts they established in the public records. We did not and could not look at all of them. We can just say what we did find. Based on the records I saw, there was a pretty good accounting of all his properties in the court files, that added up to the $50,000 a month and the $6 million. But people also said he squirreled away some of his fortune. There is no way to know.

Insurance pays the bill most of the time but parents also must pay a portion of the bill, depending on their insurance. One father told me his daughter slept in the waiting room the first night but he was still billed for that day. "On the phone, they told me they had a room for her," said John Arthington, a university professor whose daughter was involuntarily committed to a facility in Bradenton. "They had no room for her, yet they charged us $2,000 a day."

I'm so sorry this happened to your wife. It sounds very traumatic. I heard this often from families. And an expert told me this is one of her biggest concerns: that someone might have such an upsetting experience after being involuntarily committed that they might be afraid to seek help in the future. In our story about schools, another mental health professional said that kids are being encouraged to speak up about their troubles but "the problem is when kids talk and the response is so dramatic, then eventually, they'll stop talking." I'm not sure what can be done except everyone needs to be aware of how traumatic an experience this can be. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.