Mark Rippee

04/17/1963 - 11/29/2022

As a result of untreated, severe mental illness, traumatic brain injury and homelessness, James Mark Rippee died on November 29, 2022, surrounded by family, including his mother, two sisters and a niece. He was 59 years old. The cause of death was pneumonia and sepsis, leading to multiple organ failure. However, his untimely death was a direct result of his deteriorating mental and physical health that could no longer be sustained living on the streets without medical care, treatment or housing that heals.Surviving family: Lou Malinda Rippee, Mother, Catherine J Rippee-Hanson, Linda C (Rippee) Privatte, and Robin Lorraine Starnes, Sisters. He is also survived by nieces, Desiree Hanson, Kimber Starnes, Rachel Eichler, Sarah Privatte, Natalie Downing, Katie Rae Watts, and nephew, Gregory Palomo, as well as 9 great-nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by James Thomas Rippee, Father.'Mark' was born in Walnut Creek, CA and lived in Vacaville, CA for 55 years. He attended Vacaville High School and was a member of the Vacaville Moose Lodge. He loved camping, boating and fishing. At 24, his motorcycle crashed into a grain harvester. He lost both eyes and a third of his frontal lobes that regulate impulse control, reactions and emotions. Later on, he would suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, psychosis, and anosognosia, a condition that prevents him from understanding that he has mental illness.Since our laws allow for a more fundamental right to die than a right to treatment or housing that heals, he died without his civil liberties being violated. Not all civil rights are civil or right. He will no longer suffer in a world that could not accommodate him. His joking nature and the smile on his face through it all will be missed. The burdens he carried... fear, anxiety, and depression are gone... as well as the voices. Never again will he shiver in the cold or fade in the heat on a sidewalk. Those who loved him will always carry his memory in their hearts.A Candlelight Vigil for James Mark Rippee will be held Friday, December 16, 2022, at 4:30 p.m., at the William J Carroll Government Center, 1119 East Monte Vista Avenue, Vacaville, California, 95688A memorial service will be held at the Vacaville Moose Lodge, 6585 Gibson Canyon Road, Vacaville, CA 95688, on Friday, January 13, 2023, at 1 p.m.In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) 200 North Glebe Road, Suite 801 Arlington, VA 22203 (https:///www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org) OR to 'No One Cares About Crazy People', a film documentary in production that includes Mark's story, at Sustainable Markets Foundation, ATT: No One Cares, 45 West 36th St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10018-7635 (https://noonecares.com/donate)
W00170100-image-1.jpg