Copyright The Oregonian
It was 2 a.m. when a car pulled into the empty campsite at Milo McIver State Park, about 21 miles southeast of Portland, on a cold Friday morning last month. The driver unloaded the few possessions that belonged to his passengers, a disabled homeless woman with a documented history of mental illness and her scrawny white pit bull. Blankets. A beach umbrella. A wheelchair. A walker. Assorted grocery bags. About 90 minutes later, after lighting a fire for the woman, who had no tent, sleeping bag or camping stove, the driver got into his car and made the winding 30-minute drive back to his home in Milwaukie alone. The man behind the wheel: A top Portland City Hall staffer, who says he had let the woman stay at his home while he tried, unsuccessfully, to find her assistance she would accept. Amani Kelekele, then-chief of staff for Councilor Jamie Dunphy, had scooped the woman off a Milwaukie street days prior in an attempt to help her avoid arrest, he wrote in a memo to his boss obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Less than 36 hours after Kelekele left her at the isolated campground, park workers asked state police to remove her. She would not cooperate, records allege. Police used a taser to shoot electricity through her body to subdue, handcuff and arrest her on Sept. 27. The woman’s dog, which she described as an emotional support animal, bit a state trooper before it bolted into the woods and disappeared. The episode, pieced together through interviews, incident reports, court documents and other public records, appears to represent a story of good intentions gone horribly awry and is a stark reminder of the remarkable challenges that can come with seeking to assist some of the Portland area’s most vulnerable residents. It also raises significant questions about a senior political staffer’s series of decisions that some specialists in the field said defied professional standards and, at times, were outright appalling. Despite Kelekele’s written account, police and social service outreach workers in Milwaukie said the woman was not about to be arrested. In fact, advocates trained to work directly with people experiencing homelessness and mental health crises had spent days attempting to get her help. Don Holden, one of the many outreach workers who spent hours with the woman, said Kelekele’s actions reflected a reckless lapse in judgment and undermined their coordinated efforts. “He left a person who can barely take care of or fend for themself miles away from any services or help,” said Holden, a homeless liaison with the group LoveOne. “I think it’s horrible abuse.” Kelekele, who earns $131,000 annually, declined to speak with The Oregonian/OregonLive for this story or answer a detailed list of questions, referring a reporter to what he included in his Sept. 30 memo. “This has caused a great deal of emotional distress,” he said in a separate statement. “I would like to clarify that I led with my heart in my sincere attempts to aid (the woman). “However, if I could do it over, I would do it differently.” Dunphy, in an interview, called the events “awful and heartbreaking.” “This is obviously the worst-case scenario of how things could have turned out,” said Dunphy, who noted that Kelekele had also once been homeless and overcame other difficult circumstances. “It was done with the best of intentions and with some errors in judgment that, I think, come from a person who has an incredible lived experience that makes them want to try and be everything to everyone and be as helpful and as thorough in that help as possible.” Attempts by The Oregonian/OregonLive to locate or speak to the woman were unsuccessful. Records show that she is 46 and spent most of her life in Florida’s Tampa Bay area. In high school, she penned a pair of letters to the editor at the St. Petersburg Times about the 1992 presidential elections. She was later among a group of 34 students to receive a scholarship that the newspaper provided to those interested in pursuing careers in journalism. As an adult, the woman took belly dancing classes in Tampa and worked as a landscape designer, according to news articles. She owned a gardening business with a focus on permaculture and ethnobotany. It is unclear when and why the woman left Tampa, though records indicate she has been in the Portland area for at least the last seven years, a period of time punctuated by cascading crises. John Schlosser, a Portland attorney who met the woman in 2021, said numerous encounters she’s had with law enforcement and other authorities in Portland left her with deep psychological and emotional scars. “She has an extreme fear of just about everybody but especially the police,” Schlosser told The Oregonian/OregonLive. He said that while he’s never legally represented the woman, he has periodically tried to find safe places for her to stay and ways to access needed services. It’s never been easy. “I don’t know if there is anybody that can help her,” he said, “or give her exactly what she wants.” Slow, painstaking work It reportedly all started with a random phone call. Kelekele claims that his first contact with the woman came Sept. 17 when she called his work cellphone, which is not listed online, asking for help. His memo does not say how she got Kelekele’s number, what time of day she called or how long they spoke. He said he directed her to the city’s 311 hotline. Three days later, on Sept. 20, he said she called him more than a dozen times in the middle of the night. When he finally answered at 1:30 a.m., she frantically said she feared for her life and begged Kelekele to meet her where she’d been camping near the public library in Milwaukie, the same Portland suburb where he also happened to live. When he got there, Kelekele said he found the woman in a wheelchair with her dog. She told him that she had autism and a history of “violent interactions with police” that had caused her to suffer from both neurological damage as well as Broca’s Aphasia, a language disorder that makes it difficult to speak. The woman also said that Milwaukie police planned to arrest her that Saturday morning if she stayed put, which an officer patrolling the area confirmed to Kelekele, he claimed in his memo. “With nowhere to relocate her that she would not later be arrested, I decided to bring her to my house to give her some peace until we could get her services,” he wrote. However, the woman faced no actual threat of imminent arrest, Milwaukie police told The Oregonian/OregonLive. And, apparently unbeknownst to Kelekele, a battery of outreach workers had spent more than a week trying to assist her. Sgt. Mark Inman said police in Milwaukie first made contact with the woman Sept. 8 at nearby Scott Park. Over the course of the next week and a half, she moved her camp a couple of times within the city, always keeping her items neat and tidy. During that time, police had about seven separate interactions with the woman as multiple social service providers and crisis teams attempted to establish a relationship with her and assess her needs, Inman said. “Everything was day to day with her,” Inman wrote in an email, noting that the woman’s case was “abnormally” challenging. “But as far as an arrest, despite whatever was communicated to (Kelekele), she was a ways from that reality.” Holden said he and at least a half dozen other teams of behavioral health specialists and nonprofit service providers spent hours with the woman. It was slow and painstaking work, he said, given the level of trauma and vulnerability she exhibited. “She would shut down, become physically distressed,” Holden said. “She was shaking, could hardly talk.” Yet, Holden said he believed he was making progress and gradually building a level of trust required for her to accept help. “The amount of time and resources we provided was above and beyond. We really tried everything,” Holden said. “There were so many eyes on (her) just to make sure she was safe until we could figure something out.” Then, she disappeared. Fraught history While it’s unclear how the woman came to live on the streets in Milwaukie, court documents reveal she had a long history of instability and fraught interactions with Portland police and mental health providers. In October and November 2018, she was cited three times for illegally parking an RV with Florida license plates along residential streets near Southeast Powell Boulevard and 28th Avenue. None of those fines were ever paid. Five months later, in April 2019, a team of police officers, mental health clinicians and animal control officers forced their way into her motorhome, then located in a Southeast Portland church parking lot, after she allegedly barricaded herself inside with her pit bull for weeks, court records show. Responders had to don hazmat suits to enter because of the amount of trash and human and animal waste inside, according to reports by police and animal control. The woman, who refused to leave the RV or let go of her dog for more than an hour, was eventually physically restrained, sedated and taken to a hospital. Records show she spent more than a week at the Unity Center for Behavioral Health. A nearly identical episode occurred a year later in April 2020, when authorities forcibly removed the woman and the dog from a Northeast Portland hotel room filled with furniture debris, feces, garbage and insects. The woman later lost permanent custody of the pit bull as well as the right to own any animal for three years. “No dog should be forced to live in such squalid conditions that they actually threaten his health,” a Multnomah County hearings officer wrote in a March 2021 order. In a petition seeking a review of the order, the woman reported that she suffered from agoraphobia, which involves fearing and avoiding places that could cause panic, and post-traumatic stress disorder due to what she described as a past abusive relationship. She said the dog functioned as a trained service animal for her. The Oregonian/OregonLive could find no court records for the four years preceding Kelekele’s intervention. A dead of night decision Once the woman was at his house, Kelekele waited two days — the entire weekend — to begin seeking help for her, according to the timeline in his memo. He tried to “acquire resources” for the woman “through Multnomah County” but was rebuffed because she was not in the county, he wrote in his memo. Kelekele said he was also unsuccessful in finding her help in Clackamas County, suggesting he hit roadblocks because the woman didn’t want to provide any identifying information. Kelekele did not indicate what agencies or organizations he contacted in either county. However, his document does say he made one additional call — to his boss at Portland City Hall. “I informed my office of the situation and let them know that I could not leave (my house) because of the situation,” he wrote. Dunphy confirmed to The Oregonian/OregonLive that Kelekele contacted him on Monday, Sept. 22, and disclosed he had brought a homeless woman to his house and was now trying to find a place for her to go. The councilor said he offered to assist his staffer, but Kelekele declined. “He’s really talented with being able to navigate through different bureaucracies to find out who the right person is,” Dunphy said of Kelekele. “I would have gotten involved if he needed my help.” At that time, Kelekele was serving as Dunphy’s joint chief of staff for community engagement, though the councilor said his office was undergoing an organizational restructure. The next day, emails show, Dunphy announced that Kelekele would move into a deputy chief of staff role though remain a senior council aide in his office. Dunphy insisted the leadership change was unrelated to Kelekele’s involvement with the woman. On Wednesday, Sept. 24, Kelekele said he presented the woman with a list of social service providers that could take her in. The woman burst into tears, he said, writing that “she feared they would beat her up and mistreat her and that she did NOT want to go to any of those places.” When a pair of case workers from the state’s Adult Protective Services division came to Kelekele’s house to try to intervene the next day, she met them with “extreme hostility,” Kelekele wrote. After speaking with the woman in private, Kelekele said he agreed to send the case workers away and try to take her someplace else. Remaining at his home, he told the woman, was out of the question. “I informed her that I do not own the house, and the owner was not too pleased with having her on the property,” Kelekele wrote. He said he spent hours with the woman and her dog that Thursday evening driving around the Milwaukie area looking for a motel room where she and her pet could stay. Six different places turned them down, Kelekele said, because the woman did not have an ID. It was now nearing midnight, he said. “The only option remaining was to find her a place to camp (legally),” Kelekele wrote. After being unable to find a nearby campground with availability, Kelekele said he drove the woman and her dog to Milo McIver State Park in rural Clackamas County, where he eventually pulled into a site that, while reserved by someone else, sat empty. “My thought was that they would not be setting up camp at 2am in the morning so I purchased a one-night ticket and unloaded her stuff,” he wrote. No known plan Kelekele said he planned to check in with the woman later that Friday. However, that changed after he spoke with one of the state protective services caseworkers, who he said advised him to cut off contact with the woman. Elisa Williams, a spokesperson with the Oregon Department of Human Services, declined to comment. “We cannot speak to interactions individuals have with our agency regarding services they decide to receive or decline,” Williams said. It’s unclear whether Kelekele has spoken to the woman since, although at some point that Friday she texted him: “HELP.” Records show that campground staff making their morning rounds found the woman and her “heavily emaciated, limping” dog at about 8 a.m., noting in a log book that the woman was “handicapped” and did not have a reservation for the previous night. The woman would not provide her name or a phone number but disclosed she had autism and “trauma from police violence.” “Speech is difficult to understand,” reads a copy of the log book. “Offered services but she declined, indicating she only wants to stay here.” Park staff later contacted Kelekele, who had included his name and information on a reservation he made for the woman starting Sept. 28, several days later. “He just dropped her off here days early with a bunch of groceries and her dog with no transportation or known plan,” one park employee wrote in a nightly report to staff. Park employees later had the Clackamas County Mobile Crisis Unit and several social workers come out to the campground to meet the woman but “she refused all help,” records show. They eventually agreed to allow her to stay one extra night, but told her that she had to leave by 1 p.m. Saturday or else they’d contact the Oregon State Police. According to a park incident report, state troopers arrived to remove the woman from the campground that Saturday afternoon. Things quickly escalated as police attempted to separate her from her animal and take her into custody. “She was bear hugging her dog, and resisting arrest,” the report reads. “The officers were yelling at her, telling her to stop resisting, as she was very combative and trying to break free.” As the struggle continued, one trooper zapped the woman in the back with a Taser. “After tasing (the woman), they were able to successfully apply handcuffs and put her in a prone position,” the incident report continues. “The dog started biting the officer that was restraining it, and he broke free and ran away.” Once subdued, the woman was taken to Willamette Falls Medical Center in Oregon City and admitted for a mental health evaluation, state police spokesperson Kyle Kennedy told The Oregonian/OregonLive. She was also issued a trespassing citation. A state trooper was treated for minor dog bites, Kennedy said. ‘The guilt is immense’ On Sept. 29, two days after the altercation at the state park, the woman called Schlosser from the hospital. The attorney said he hadn’t spoken with her in at least a year. Schlosser said he paid for the woman to be medically transported from the hospital back to Milo McIver the next day, a Tuesday, so she could look for her dog. “All I knew was that she was tased and that her dog had run off,” Schlosser said. Some staff were alarmed by the sight of the woman, who was wearing no shoes or socks when she returned to the campground. “She literally sat in the rain in a wheelchair waiting for her dog until finally at the end of the night, she ended up getting a ride,” one park employee told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a text message. The employee requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Records show the person who picked up the woman on Sept. 30 was Schlosser, who said he learned about what had transpired at the campground from the park manager. “It was clear that everybody was traumatized,” Schlosser said. “I just can’t imagine what the scene must have looked like.” Schlosser said the woman asked him to drop her back off in Milwaukie, which he did. Schlosser hasn’t seen or spoken with her since. Neither has Milwaukie police nor Holden, the homeless outreach worker. “I feel really bad for her,” Holden said. “This situation, this ordeal is one of the hardest I’ve had to witness in a job where I see death and overdoses all the time. How much a community tried to support her, only to have someone take her away.” Schlosser said that given his history of trying to help the woman, he could in some ways relate with what he imagines Kelekele must have experienced. “What do you do with somebody in that situation?” he said. “The guilt is immense.” “I empathize with the guy,” Schlosser continued. “But I don’t think dropping somebody off in the middle of nowhere is an acceptable decision.”
