CA CA - Rico Harris, 37, Former Harlem Globetrotter, Yolo County, 10 Oct 2014

Wow I am so glad to see Rico being featured in Disappeared! I was just thinking about him yesterday. Lots of other cases being featured this season - awesome.


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Tonight is his Disappeared episode if anyone is interested.
 
I was thinking of of Rico just a few days ago! I'm glad Disappeared is featuring his case and I hope it sparks a new dialogue.

Where are you Rico?
 
Just watched the Disappeared episode which seemed to be done very well. Such a sad story. I wish so much Rico would be found.
 
I can't seem to find it, it's 955. Usually disappeared is on ION but no disappeared today.
 
Why would his backpack, with jumper cables in it along with his cell phone be found on the side of the road? At 6'9" and 300 lbs, he's not what I'd call an easy target.. Very strange..
 
I watched as well. Who stays up 40-50 hours straight? Didn't know that was possible. I'm dumbfounded, where could he be? Dogs would have found him. If he got a ride why did he leave his bag behind? Why leave is ID in his car. Sounds like he wasn't thinking straight and was having some sort of mental episode.

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Why did Rico drive to So Cal in the first place? It would be a 16-hour drive if he averaged 70 mph. He left on Oct 9 and was supposed to be back in Seattle Oct 10 for a barbecue and had a job interview on Oct 11. Who plans a trip like that? It's crazy. And what did he do in Alhambra? He had dinner with his brother, talked to his mother, and packed up a few mementos. This was something he could have done any time - he could have done it the following week when he didn't have any engagements to get back for - or he could have asked his mother to pack up his mementos and mail them to him in Seattle. It sounds like he went to say goodbye to his family members and took his basketball mementos that represented the best times in his life. If he was truly trying to get back home to Seattle for the barbecue, he wouldn't have made the side trip to the mountains. It sounds like he could have been looking for somewhere peaceful to end his life. But, then, where's his body?

My other thought about the trip to Alhambra was maybe to buy drugs. He should have been able to find drugs in Seattle, but maybe he hadn't made a contact yet and thought it easier to do on his own turf. But this seems unlikely as there was only one bindle wrapper in the car.

The grandparents who found the backpack and cell phone... Were they just going to keep it? My husband has found two cell phones. On the first one, I dialed "Mom"and said we had found a phone that apparently belonged to one of her children and gave her my #. The guy called me and we dropped the phone by his house when we went out. I forget what happened with the second phone; maybe it had lost its charge; but we turned it in to the police dept. If I found a backpack with a cell phone along a road out in the boonies, I'd think that someone might possibly have been abducted, or been hit by a car and dragged off the road, and I'd call the sheriff.

Maybe it was a hit and run at another location and the driver pushed the body down an embankment and the backpack was left at the side of the road in a different location.
 
So he played his radio and ran his battery out. Then what if he walked out to a main road to get another vehicle to jump him (or he had plans to meet someone there). They drove to his car and he opened trunk to get his jumper cables when he was attacked, thrown in other vehicle and his backpack grabbed and thrown in. Maybe the jumper cables were still in his hands. would have to be more than 1 attacker given his size. Then they went through his backpack looking for stuff to steal and shoved his jumper cables in there and tossed the backpack out the window as they drove. Then they killed him and ditched his body somewhere. Just throwing out possibilities.
 
I watched as well. Who stays up 40-50 hours straight? Didn't know that was possible. I'm dumbfounded, where could he be? Dogs would have found him. If he got a ride why did he leave his bag behind? Why leave is ID in his car. Sounds like he wasn't thinking straight and was having some sort of mental episode.

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BBM:
Raises hand...I do.
I am bi-polar and since I am not medicated I stay up for days when I am manic, which sometimes, is most of the time. :skip:
 
BBM:
Raises hand...I do.
I am bi-polar and since I am not medicated I stay up for days when I am manic, which sometimes, is most of the time. :skip:
I didn't know that. Wow, hope you are doing well.

Do you think he met with foul play or hiked out in to wilderness and died? Wonder what he was eating to stay alive. What's the temperature like in that area?

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I didn't know that. Wow, hope you are doing well.

Do you think he met with foul play or hiked out in to wilderness and died? Wonder what he was eating to stay alive. What's the temperature like in that area?

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Trenchmouth, I am not familiar with this case. I started watching his Disappeared this morning while making the bed, I only got 10 minutes in and I read the last page
of this thread and posted before I knew anything, so I don't really have an opinion yet.
Thank you. I need meds real bad, but I am holding on till I find a Doctor.

ETA: I have no idea what the temp is there, probably not real hot at all. I live in the Carolinas.
 
I watched as well. Who stays up 40-50 hours straight? Didn't know that was possible. I'm dumbfounded, where could he be? Dogs would have found him. If he got a ride why did he leave his bag behind? Why leave is ID in his car. Sounds like he wasn't thinking straight and was having some sort of mental episode.

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Literally as soon as they said he was awake and driving for 50 hours I thought "amphetamines" and then his friend went on to talk about how he used to be addicted because he loved that he could just stay awake at the gym for hours... then they mention that he had recently relapsed...
 
Literally as soon as they said he was awake and driving for 50 hours I thought "amphetamines" ...

I also thought amphetamines. I was briefly on Adderrall. I do not have ADHD but have a brain disorder that causes brain fog, trouble with concentration, etc. The Adderrall helped manage those symptoms but even at the lowest dose I couldn't sleep. I stayed up 72 hours and started hallucinating. It was the scariest thing ever. I ended up having to go to the ER and getting Xanax to help me come "down." I never took them again.

Several possibilities with this one...He was meeting someone there for drugs. He had a psychotic break and no longer remembers who he is. (But then why haven't people spotted him or come forward?) He was picked up and murdered, his backpack tossed from the car window as someone else suggested. Or he walked off into the wilderness and died.

My thoughts about him returning to Alhambra were that he either returned to say his goodbyes or he went to buy drugs. Either way, I don't think he was in a good frame of mind.

I spent most of my life wanting to be a country music singer. Everything I did was built around pursuing that dream.I even moved to Nashville and got a degree in Music Business from Belmont University. I soon learned, however, that for various reasons I was just not cut out to be a singer or performer. I went through a 10-year period after that of feeling at a "loss." In fact, I am still dealing with ramifications of the loss of that dream. It took years for me to find another career path, to find another passion. It made me incredibly depressed. I didn't turn to drug addiction but DID turn to other unhealthy behaviors (mostly in terms of personal relationships).

My point is, I can totally see how Rico might have been trying to deal with the fallout of his once-bright basketball future, even if the loss of that dream was realized years earlier.
 
I watched the show and unfortuately I think something bad happened to him near his car. There is no way to know if the backpack was indeed exactly where the elderly couple said, they could have been off by miles or he could have been trying to flag down a car to jump him since they said his car was out of gas and battery was dead. He could have been walking to get gas too and something happened. Regardless, there has been no sightings of him in over a year, the sole to a shoe his size was found by the river, and the footprints a week later could have been from days before. Very sad case.
 
I watched the episode as well. The backpack obviously held important contents and I find it odd that it would get left on the side of the road (we all love and NEED our cell phones). Wonder if he wanted to disappear as size and athletic ability wouldn't exactly make him an easy target. I feel for his family. Hope he shows up soon.


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Count me in on the amphetamines theory as well. I think maybe the bindle had pills (Adderall), or meth. Either way, a single bindle could contain enough to keep going for days, and pills especially would leave little residue behind. I wonder if they tested it for the presence of drugs?

I think most likely he ended up in an amphetamine (and sleep deprivation) induced psychosis and he wandered off into the wilderness not being in a clear frame of mind. Sadly, I would not be surprised if his remains are somewhere in the mountainous area either near his car or along the road where his backpack was found. I don't believe it was foul play.
 
I watched the Disappeared episode last night on demand. I missed about 5-10 minutes of it, about 3/4 of the way through, fell asleep and then woke back up at the end.
So if I missed this, let me know- but did they use search dogs to "track" where Rico might have gone? What did the dogs indicate? I kept focussing on the sole of the shoe found at the edge of the water.
Did anyone else think he either voluntarily or accidentally went for a swim in that river? Does anyone know if Rico knew how to swim? I know the temperature was probably pretty cold (of the water and or the air) but if he was manic at the time or high, maybe he (erroneously) thought going for a swim was a good idea. Still surprised he has not been found as yet. Did the witnesses who saw him walking along the road say he had shoes on? Did he appear wet as if having gone for a swim? The backpack- was it found as shown on the episode, sitting upright, as if he left it there and intended to return, or was it on its side as if tossed out of a car? I would think if someone else was tossing it they would not place it sitting upright like that, and could have easily thrown it over a cliff or into a dumpster elsewhere to prevent it from being found- leads me to believe it was found upright because Rico left it there, intending to come back for it. Was the sole of the shoe found near the backpack? Or was the sole of the shoe found closer to where the car was found? Those were the questions I was left with..... One more question too- they mentioned a video Rico made with his cell phone- did they have a time/date stamp on that, to show what time it was recorded?
 

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