Massachusetts woman travels to L.A. to search for missing brother
LOS ANGELES — While setting up a chess board at a mental health treatment center in Agoura Hills, Jack Stein looked past his roommate like he’d seen a ghost. The 24-year-old went to his room, laced up his shoes and walked out into the midsummer evening.
That was the last time anyone saw him. His sister, Zoë Kustritz, is still trying to figure out what happened.
Kustritz, 27, flew into Los Angeles from Cambridge, Mass., last weekend, continuing the search for her only sibling.
As she strolled the boardwalk between Santa Monica and Venice Beach, she handed out stickers she made. “Was Jack here?”
Kustritz said her brother had taught surf lessons at a nearby shop a few summers ago. He loved the beach.
One man — a 53-year-old who goes by the name Leaf-n-Thewind — said he’d hung out with Stein a few times. When Kustritz said her brother kept a sketchbook, the man showed her some drawings he believed Stein had created and said: “This is him.”
“You’re giving me some hope right now,” Kustritz said.
Stein is one of more than 41,400 adults who went missing in California in 2021 — about 60% of whom were men, according to a report from the state attorney general’s office. Roughly one-fourth of the cases were in Los Angeles County.
Last year, nearly 29,000 people reported missing in the state returned on their own or were found by law enforcement, the California Department of Justice reports.
But not all had happy endings. More than 1,400 missing persons were arrested, and 831 died, according to the state report.
Many agencies consider someone missing for more than a year a “cold case,” according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
Kustritz wants to make sure that doesn’t happen with Stein.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Shannon Rincon, who is handling Stein’s case, said law enforcement officials think Stein is still alive, likely living between Venice and Malibu.
There have been numerous sightings of people who match Stein’s description, Rincon said, and several deputies think they may have encountered him. But so far, they haven’t been able to track him down.
“I would love to bring him home to the family,” Rincon said. “Unfortunately, even if we find him, if he doesn’t want to return, we can’t force him.”
Stein graduated from the University of Minnesota in the spring of 2020 with a degree in economics and landed a job as a broker at a financial services company in St. Paul, his sister said.
Kustritz described him as an ambitious and charming person “who could befriend anyone.” He’s also a talented artist, she added, and an accomplished athlete, especially involving anything with a board — surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding.
But he was plagued by psychological demons, his sister said, and for a long time he refused treatment.