John Robert Terry

Age: Time of death:

March 13, 5:27

Location: In his room at the Eddy Hotel, 640 Eddy St. Cause of overdose: Fentanyl and methamphetamine

John Terry captained his high school football and track teams at The Summit Country Day School in Cincinnati. He taught himself advanced algebra and achieved regional honors in writing and math. He might have earned a football scholarship somewhere, but wanted to attend an Ivy League school, so he accepted a full academic scholarship to Columbia University — then walked on to the football team.

What his proud parents didn’t know when he left for college was that he had begun to hear voices. It was as if his coaches were barking orders at him, he said later. He thought it was normal.

Less than two weeks after he moved into his Manhattan dorm in September 2001, hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center. He was unsettled, but he pledged a fraternity and studied hard. At 5-foot-8, 146 pounds, he was the smallest player in the Ivy League and suffered two concussions his first year. He started smoking marijuana. After his freshman year, Terry struggled to figure out how to return home. He’d lost his identification.

Terry never returned to Columbia. Instead, after the family moved to the Bay Area, a visit to UCSF turned into a 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and later bipolar disorder. A lengthy hospitalization in Houston was the start of a pattern that would last the rest of his life.

For six weeks, he would be the responsible, caring and bright son his parents raised, but then depression would hit. He wouldn’t sleep or eat, he’d talk about time travel, and he’d go missing for days. These episodes became so routine that his parents would start marking their calendars for when he was due for one. “When he wasn’t high or in a manic state,” his father, William Terry, said in a phone interview from his home in South Carolina, “he could do wonders.”

Terry persevered, studying at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg and then Cal Maritime Academy in Vallejo, where he graduated in 2010 with a degree in global studies and maritime affairs. He got a finance position with the city of Richmond, but was let go after he stopped showing up. He held numerous jobs. He’d succeed and earn the trust of his employer, only to disappear — sometimes to Berkeley’s People’s Park — and get fired. “He was frustrated with his own brain,” said his mother, Miriam Terry. “He couldn’t believe what he was thinking, and he had to

check in with himself.”

Once, while living in a sober living house in the Marin County community of Strawberry, he gave a roommate a ride to work. Then he pointed his Volkswagen toward Reno — a trip that ended with a high-speed chase. When the Nevada Highway Patrol caught up with him at a gas station in that state, he said he worked for the CIA. He’d thought the officers were his escort. The court case yielded diversion to drug treatment, but Terry’s trouble was only beginning.

For a short stint, he thrived at his father’s company, helping with shipping logistics. But one evening after work, instead of taking a bus home, he traveled to San Francisco. He never returned to his job. In San Francisco, his parents said, he had repeated brushes with police and bounced through Behavioral Health Court, a program for people struggling with mental illness to connect them to treatment instead of incarceration. He was assigned caseworkers from Citywide, a UCSF partnership that helps seriously mentally ill clients navigate services, find housing and facilitate recovery. Seven out of 10 clients actively use drugs, according to the agency.

At one point, he was stabbed outside a bar and stumbled to a fire station. His heart stopped three times on the way to San Francisco General Hospital, where doctors saved him with open heart surgery, his parents said. Terry never spoke about what happened.

“We thought, ‘OK, this has got to be a wake-up call,’ ” his mother recalled. “But it wasn’t.” Over the years, they paid to put him up in hotel rooms when he couldn’t find housing and sent him clothes and shoes. But he also spent nights on the street, often behind bus shelters.

His parents knew he was using drugs, likely including fentanyl. He moved into an SRO unit on the third floor of the Eddy Hotel. That floor has seen six fatal overdoses since 2020, including one in his room before he moved in.

The last time the Terrys spoke to their son, he asked them to stop calling his caseworker and to only reach out to him directly or through his attorney. They didn’t understand why.

William and Miriam were driving home after buying some plants from a nursery when they got the call from the medical examiner’s office. “For me,” his father said, “it was: He’s in a better place than he was, and it was probably inevitable.”

Terry