After nearly thirty years of not knowing what happened to their brother, Brent Beauchamp's siblings finally got some closure when a phone call from a Las Vegas hospital helped them solve the decades-long mystery.
It all began when the youngest Beauchamp Aaron, 52, said his wife got a call from an unknown number six weeks ago.
“The lady on the other end goes ‘this may sound like a weird question,” he recalled, “and she goes ‘Do you know a Joseph Drake?”
Joseph Drake was actually Brent using an old family name as an alias. The birthmark on Brent’s forehead let Aaron and his other siblings, Kelly Lee, 57, and Stephen Beauchamp, 53, know they had made the right connection.
“Time had just stopped right there for me,” Stephen recalled.
Less than a week after they got the call, they drove to Nevada to reunite with their brother.
“When I first walked into the room, it was joyous,” Kelly said. “I just couldn’t believe that we’d found him after this long.”
“He smiled when he saw us,” she added. “The nurse said that’s the most emotion that he showed since he was at the hospital.”
The trio told TMJ4’s Tahleel Mohieldin that after a Schizophrenia diagnosis in his 20s Brent, now 59, struggled with his medications.
Watch: 'Got his final wish': Missing man found, siblings find closure after decades
Then in the late 1990s, when visiting their grandmother in Mississippi, Brent left for a walk but never returned. At the time, as a result of his diagnosis, Brent struggled with paranoia and delusions.
The siblings later learned Brent, nicknamed Kip, had spent much of those lost years wandering the West Coast on foot from city to city, while also battling homelessness.
“The paranoid Kippy that we knew the last time we [saw] him was gone, and we got our brother back,” Stephen said of their reunion. “I said ‘Well, why now?’ he goes ‘I’m tired of living in the wild."
Brent was finally ready to come home.
However, the full joy of the Beauchamp’s reunion was short-lived when Brent’s siblings learned of yet another tough diagnosis, Brent had terminal cancer.
“It was heartbreaking because then they tell you, your brother’s only got 2-3 months to live,” Aaron explained.
Brent’s siblings moved quickly to prepare for his move back to Wisconsin. Without a proper ID Brent, who’d been living under the radar for years, couldn’t fly and with a tracheostomy tube, among other issues, needed 24/7 care.
“I didn’t want to leave him there,” Kelly said through tears. “I wanted to bring him home right then but we weren’t prepared.”
After three weeks, however, they returned.
To bring him home as quickly as possible, they drove from Las Vegas straight to a Kenosha hospital in just one day.
A week later Brent passed in hospice surrounded by family.
“Aaron said, ‘It’s ok Kippy you can go’ and we’re like ‘You can go be with Mama now “Kelly remembered. “He gained his wings, he took his final breath.”
Though his siblings wished they had more time; they were thankful they found each other again before it was too late.
“When we made it to Wisconsin, he was happy, very happy and he said ‘Thank you,” Stephen said. “He got his final wish.”
The Beauchamps are now asking for the community’s help in laying their brother to rest.
If you want to support them you can donate to their GoFundMe.
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