On a cold December night, Tammy Lacher Scully of Belfast watched the entrance of a Portland homeless shelter waiting for her missing son to arrive after receiving tips from staff and residents that he was staying there. After several hours, she saw someone who walked exactly like her son lumber toward the door.
“Graham,” she called to the man, who turned around at the sound of her voice. But as Tammy got closer, she saw a face she did not recognize, and her heart sank.
Tammy has felt this swell of hope and crush of disappointment countless times over the two years her 39-year-old son, Graham Lacher, has been missing since he fled from Bangor’s Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center on June 6, 2022.
He was last seen running into the woods that border the hospital campus while on a supervised walk with hospital staff. He has schizophrenia and is on the autism spectrum, meaning he’s considered a vulnerable adult, Tammy said.
From that day, Tammy has led a tireless search for her son, spending thousands of dollars and traveling hundreds of miles throughout New England and Canada spreading word of his disappearance. She has kept her son’s face and story in the public eye for two years using everything from social media to fliers and car magnets.
While the names and faces of missing Mainers often fade from public view over time, Graham’s case shows the grip a mother’s love and drive to find her son has had on Greater Bangor. The public outpouring of support through time spent searching, monetary donations and tips reveal how the desire to help a missing vulnerable person can unite a community.
Though he’s still missing, Graham’s face and story remain present through car magnets, yard signs and missing posters displayed in hundreds of businesses throughout Maine. A Facebook page dedicated to the search for him boasts more than 7,000 followers from across the country, many of whom send tips when they see someone who resembles Graham.
To date, Tammy has received 393 tips of possible sightings from across the country, but none of them have been verified.
In the first few months after Graham’s disappearance, Tammy dropped everything to chase every possible sighting. Today, she has to be selective about which tips she chases, and will go if there’s a compelling photo or video of someone resembling her son.
“Every time we get a potential sighting, our hopes are raised and we, every single time, think, ‘This could be it. This could be the time we find him,’” Tammy said. “When it isn’t him, there’s some disappointment, but we’re mostly just glad to know that people are still looking and they haven’t forgotten about him.”
Tammy has also befriended people through the state who help her check potential sightings in their area, one of whom is Brandy St. Louis of Veazie.
St. Louis was captivated by Tammy’s commitment to finding Graham after she read his story on Facebook. She was unemployed when he went missing and took on searching for him as a full-time job despite not knowing Graham or his family.
“Tammy is an inspiration,” St. Louis said. “The love and hope she carries that her son is alive radiates and is contagious.”
For months, she hiked miles of trails near her home that stretch into Orono and through the woods around Dorothea Dix where Graham disappeared, searching for any sign of him.
On Aug. 8, 2022, St. Louis found an orange hat with Graham’s name on it in the woods near Sylvan Road in Bangor. The hat is the last physical evidence of Graham’s location.
Her searches have become less frequent since she was hired for her job in February 2023, but St. Louis hasn’t given up or lost hope that Graham will be found.
“Giving up would be like giving up on a family member,” St. Louis said. “I can’t do that.”
Graham’s story struck a chord with Aspen Smith of Winslow, as they’re on the autism spectrum and knows how it feels to need support from loved ones.
“I also like to help people, but I don’t often get the opportunity to do that in a way that’s accessible to me,” Smith said.
Though they’re legally blind, Smith has sent photos of people who look like Graham to Tammy for months. Smith can’t see fine details, so they have to get close to a person to verify whether they could be Graham, meaning they send some of the clearest photos for Tammy to check.
“I also hung a missing poster on my bike trailer, so I’m basically a traveling ad for Graham everywhere I go,” Smith said.
Smith believes Graham’s story remains pervasive because most people either know what autism is or know someone with autism, so they connect to Graham’s story. People are also “shocked,” Smith said, that he hasn’t been found.
In the last three months alone, Tammy drove 4,000 miles to ask nearly 300 businesses to display flyers about her son. She also visited hospital emergency rooms in Maine, New Hampshire and New Brunswick with paperwork proving she’s Graham’s legal guardian, urging them to contact her if someone comes in matching his description.
Other places she has canvassed include homeless shelters, police departments and libraries statewide, as Graham loves to read and may seek solace in the quiet anonymity of a library.
Graham is on Bangor’s database of missing people and his silver alert is available on the Maine State Police website. He’s not, however, on the Maine Missings Persons list because his disappearance isn’t considered suspicious.
Bangor police decided to take a more “passive role” in the search for Graham on July 6, 2022, Tammy said, but a detective assigned to Graham’s case will check credible potential sightings when necessary.
In each new place she goes, Tammy finds people who don’t know about his case, which gives her hope that her son is still alive but simply hasn’t been recognized as a missing man.
While there has never been a confirmed sighting of Graham, Tammy remains hopeful that she’ll find him because she has heard stories of other vulnerable adults who have been found alive after going missing, sometimes years later. Those people were in communities, crossing paths with people who didn’t realize they were a missing person.
“Their stories give us hope that, because his experience is not widely known, he could be in plain sight and not be recognized as a missing vulnerable adult who has a loving family who wants to know where he is and help him,” Tammy said.
While Tammy isn’t deterred by false alarms, she’s disheartened by people who believe she should “leave him alone or let him be free.” Those comments, she said, come from a lack of understanding of how mental health disorders can lead people to make decisions that put them in danger.
“I’m his full legal guardian,” she said. “I’m ordered by a court of law to be his protector, to be his advocate and to make sure he’s in a situation that isn’t unhealthy, harmful or dangerous. I’m also his mother and I want that for him.”
