David Eugene Brewer was on his way to Hawaii to rebuild his life when he disappeared on Halloween in plain sight at Mineta San Jose International Airport.
At the airport, Brewer encountered two polite strangers who let him use their cell phones to call his mother in Kauai, according to San Jose police. He also talked to her on an airport courtesy phone.
And then he vanished.
His luggage was found at the curb of Terminal A. Inside the bags were his laptop, wallet and clothes. Airport surveillance cameras failed to catch any images of him leaving the airport. Brewer, who was close to his relatives, has not contacted them since that October day.
Police and his worried family can only guess what happened to the 31-year-old San Jose man.
``Somebody picked him up, but we don't know who picked him up. God knows where he's at,'' said Tony Vera, a detective with San Jose police's missing persons unit.
Brewer's mother, Rosie Carrillo, hopes her son simply had a change of heart and decided not to go to Hawaii. But with anxiety filling her voice, she said, ``I don't understand why he'd leave his things, and I don't understand why he didn't call us . . . It's not David's pattern to not call me or his grandmother or aunt or his friends.''
When Brewer disappeared, he was seeking a new start in life after coming to grips with a drug and alcohol abuse problem in the summer. He had gone through a rehab program and graduated to an outpatient residential treatment program. In the fall, he moved into his aunt and grandmother's San Jose home, Carrillo said.
East Side Union High School District records show that he worked at Santa Teresa High School from Nov. 1, 2001, until Nov. 30, 2004, as an instructional aide and then as a job-training technician with special-education students. Brewer also had worked at several department stores, Vera said. Most recently, he had been unemployed.
Brewer decided to go to Hawaii to get a fresh start after talking with his mother, who purchased a ticket for him for a 9 a.m. flight Oct. 31, Vera said.
Brewer packed his belongings into a duffel bag and two suitcases. He began saying goodbye to his friends, including a woman to whom he promised to mail a postcard once he was in Hawaii.
Brewer spent the night before his flight with an acquaintance in the Daly City area. He apparently took BART to the Fremont station. Vera isn't sure how he got from there to the airport.
Brewer was late and missed the flight. He wanted to warn his mother, who would have been waiting for him. But his cell phone had been broken during an altercation about 10 days earlier that also had left him with a few stitches on his head, Carrillo said.
So Brewer asked two people at the airport if he could place a call on their phones, Vera said. On each of the two calls, he reached Carrillo, who told him she was trying to book another flight.
Both of those strangers have been contacted by investigators, who have determined that their only contact with Brewer was by chance.
Her son's voice sounded tired, Carrillo said. She talked to him a third time, by calling the airport and having him pick up a white courtesy phone. She told him that he would have to take a flight the following day, and that she would reserve a room for him at a hotel near the airport. It was understood that he would stay at the airport until she called for him again. It was the last known conversation Brewer had, police said.
Carrillo called the airport again and had her son paged, but he never answered it. She phoned her sister's home in San Jose, but people there had not heard from Brewer either.
Meanwhile, his bags sat on the airport curb. By calling a number listed in Brewer's broken cell phone, airport authorities were able to contact Brewer's aunt. She, in turn, called police -- and suddenly the mystery over Brewer's disappearance began.
Vera said Brewer may be the victim of foul play. Meanwhile, he has distributed fliers about Brewer at gay bars from the South Bay to San Francisco.
``Either he walked away from us, his family, for a very sad reason -- that would be painful to me -- or something bad happened, and that is very bad to me,'' Carrillo said. ``I just want to know, whatever it is . . . I loved him.''
On Nov. 5, the friend Brewer had promised to send a postcard to looked in her mailbox. There was a postcard with a Hawaii postmark. It had no message or signature.
Police were unable to lift any prints off of it, and a handwriting analysis could provide no match, Vera said.
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