by Arlene Notoro Morgan*

It's not every day that actor Robert Downey Jr. takes on the character of someone I've known and worked with for 20 years. Soon "The Soloist" will be released featuring Downey as Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez.

The film is based on columns and a book, The Soloist, that Lopez wrote about a Julliard-trained musician who was using the streets as his concert hall. Walking the streets of LA's Skid Row in search for a column, Lopez heard music which sounded pretty good, took a closer look, and saw Mr. Nathaniel Ayers playing a two-string violin.

It took some work and time but eventually Lopez wrote about the "Violin Man," a homeless man suffering from schizophrenia. He thought that column would be the end of it, but it turned out to be the beginning of an unusual journey that proves once again the power of a good story. For journalists, who struggle with depicting an authentic, rather than the sensational consequences of schizophrenia, The Soloist reaches a goal that journalists dream about but rarely attain. Steve Lopez made a difference.

The movie, with Jamie Foxx playing the role of the real life Nathaniel Ayers, is expected to be an Oscar contender. But most viewers will probably see the movie as just another in a line of stories about the tragedy of mental illness.

"The Soloist" is a story I never expected Steve Lopez to embrace. Steve was the metro columnist and I was an assistant managing editor when we worked together for Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Inquirer during the 80s, heady days when people talked about his columns around the water cooler. Lopez is one of those writers who made people laugh aloud, recounting the absurdities of living in the city that featured two city council women he nicknamed the "boom boom" sisters. If you read his LA Times columns, you'll see that he has lost none of this irreverence or the penchant for walking the streets in search of a good story - a great feat in these days of the vanishing street reporter.

I grew up as the daughter of a father who suffered from schizophrenia during a period - the 1950s and 60s - when most people would never acknowledge that they had a family member who was in and out of facilities like Byberry State Hospital in Philadelphia - a human warehouse more than a hospital.

Fortunately, I had a mother who faced this horrendous illness with courage, understanding and more love that I have ever witnessed in a human. When people would call my father "crazy," my mother took me aside to explain that like some cancers or heart disease, my father had an incurable disease that needed constant care. When friends would tell her to ditch my father and find another man, my mother inevitably ditched the "friend."

Steve Lopez never met my mother but somehow he captured her strength and determination to help a man with this disease. To the day my father died, (I was 23 and he was 54), my mother never gave up hope that a cure would be found. My mother, who died two years ago at the age of 93, would have loved "The Soloist," and doubtless she would love the movie.

But never once during the time that I knew Steve during our time at The Philadelphia Inquirer did we discuss mental illness. Until recently, Lopez did not know about my lifelong advocacy for the rights of those challenged by this most horrible brain disease. In the newsroom, I kept that area of my life private, fearful that my advocacy would taint my objectivity as a reporter and editor.

In fact, I was one of the few people in the newsroom who was allowed to play an active role in a community organization, which was Friends Hospital. Like most newsrooms, we lived by conflict-of-interest standards that banned civic involvement. But my boss, managing editor Gene Foreman, relaxed the rule in my case because he understood that I needed to give back to this hospital because of my belief in its mission to uphold the human dignity of patients, no matter how sick. Founded by the Society of Friends (Quakers) in 1812, the hospital was an oasis of compassion and sanity in a state mental health system that treated patients more like prisoners. Despite my first-hand knowledge about treating the mentally ill, my activism meant that I had to recuse myself from any story dealing with behavioral health problems

To the public's lasting regret, Lopez left the paper in the mid-90s to join Time Magazine. No columnist since has had his clout or fan club, a fact that was evident by the hundreds of Philadelphians came out to welcome him home during a lecture about "The Soloist" at the main Philadelphia Library.

The event celebrated the book's selection as the main theme of the library's "One Book One Philadelphia" campaign for the year.

I was invited to a pre-lecture dinner not because of my friendship with Lopez but because I was now a board member of one of the dinner's sponsors, the Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation that grew out of the sale of the Friends Hospital. Scattergood is one of the few Philadelphia foundations devoted solely to advancing mental health programs and erasing the stigma surrounding mental illness. As part of its commitment to the community, Scattergood has funded a new behavioral health reporting slot at WHYY, the public television and radio station in Philadelphia which recently started a new health and science desk

Lopez's talk was a mixture of Philadelphia memories intermixed with the serious work he hopes "The Soloist" and the library's focus will accomplish to de-stigmatize mental illness.

Lopez talked about how he found Mr. Ayers, and the surprising impact his "Violin Man" column generated in the outpouring of musical instruments and other gifts. Ultimately, finding Nathaniel Ayers and the columns he inspired changed the writer's life as much as it changed Nathaniel's.

When most journalists would probably have written off Nathaniel's plight as just another story, Lopez used it as personal journey to help the millions who suffer from this severe brain disease and are often socially ostracized by a society that writes them off as "crazy" or hopeless.

Lopez told his story before a rapt audience as naturally as if he were sitting in someone's living room. But what came through most passionately is the deep hurt Lopez feels for this segment of the population that had neither the political clout or fund-raising cache attached to a disease like breast cancer.

Obviously, the overwhelming response to the Nathaniel Ayers-Steve Lopez journey is helping to erase the long-held stereotypes of the mentally ill. Clearly, Nathaniel Ayers has benefited from all the attention. He's playing his music, thanks to generous gifts from the public and from members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and he's reconnected with his sister who created the Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Foundation, a nonprofit grant provider to help organizations serve the artistically mentally ill. He has also found a home through the Los Angeles Skid Row-based Lamp Community. Lopez has given these organizations all a portion of the money he's earned through the book and the movie. Above all, Nathaniel Ayers, for the first time in decades, has friends he can count on and who accept him for who he is.

Just as my mother immersed herself in my father's world and worked tirelessly for his recovery, Steve Lopez took a risk journalistically to get inside Nathaniel Ayers' world. Some traditionalists would say that's not a journalist's job. But Steve Lopez didn't listen to the naysayers. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, he used his curiosity and considerable talents to help change someone's life. And in doing that, he's showed the power of journalism to make a difference.

My father died 41 years ago and, sadly, we are still searching; still hopeful that science will unlock the mysteries that create such a bizarre world for Nathaniel Ayers.

*Arlene Notoro Morgan is a dean at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and on the Advisory Board of MIWatch.