Tatiana Leone at her home in Bremerton on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Meegan M. Reid/Kitsap Sun)
Tatiana Leone never leaves her Bremerton apartment without a reusable grocery bag filled with documents detailing her son’s history of mental illness. She doesn’t know when she will run into her son, who lives unhoused in Seattle, and she wants to be prepared if he’s in a crisis.
She’s used the pile of documents — including records of his behavioral health history, jail stints and hospital stays — once before. In 2020, she successfully asked a Pierce County judge to involuntarily detain her son, whom she asked not to be named to respect his privacy, under Washington’s Joel’s Law. Leone, like others caring for loved ones experiencing acute mental illness, had spent many painstaking years trying to get her son help, only to find a fractured and complex mental health system that did little more than send her son to jail. She felt like she had exhausted all other options…