Pete Earley
Desperate to get help for his mentally ill son, journalist Pete Earley told Chicoans Saturday he did things he never thought he’d do.
Earley said he lied about what his son had said, violated his own professional ethics by threatening to summon feared investigative reporter Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” TV fame, and “literally went out and grabbed a doctor” from a crowded emergency room hallway to evaluate his delusional son.
Eventually, Earley’s wife advised him that he couldn’t help his son, Kevin, as a parent, but that he could as a journalist. “For once, I listened to her,” Earley said.
The product was his 2007 book, “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,” a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Earley, a former Washington Post reporter and author of 15 books, writes a weekly blog about mental health. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Butte County brought Earley to Chico, and he spoke May 5 to about 75 people at Sierra Nevada’s Big Room, bringing some to tears.