From The Oregonian, March 29, 1988 – not elsewhere online

A 26-year-old Portland mother who drowned her infant daughter “so she could get to heaven” was found guilty Monday of murder except for insanity.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Phillip J. Roth made the finding after the prosecution and the defense stipulated that Gloria Chames was unable to appreciate the criminality of her conduct when she drowned her 1-year-old daughter Aug. 12 at the family residence at 3335 S.E. 124th Ave.

Roth concluded that Chames poses a substantial threat to the safety of others and committed her to the custody of the state Psychiatric Security Review Board for the rest of her life.

Roth signed an order calling for immediate transfer of Chames to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, where she will remain in custody pending further evaluations of her mental condition by the review board.

The board supervises the treatment and custody of criminal defendants in Oregon who are found to be guilty except for insanity.

According to police reports that the state and defense submitted to Roth as evidence, Chames told detectives that she drowned her daughter, Jamie Marie Chames, in the bathtub at the family’s apartment.

“I killed her so she could go to heaven,” Chames told detectives.

Chames told police that she tried three or four times to drown the child and that she also had tried to choke her. “I saw a little animal — she was without a soul,” she told police.

Dr. Edward Colbach, a Portland psychiatrist hired by the defense, concluded that the mother suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia.

Defense lawyer Forrest N. Rieke said Chames “seems to understand very well what’s happening” while she is taking medication.

Deputy District Attorney John C. Bradley said the state agreed that Chames was legally insane at the time of the homicide.

Rieke said Chames had been taking medication for several months. A temporary judge, Tom Price, had concluded Feb. 12 that Chames was mentally competent to aid and assist in her own defense.

Chames did not speak in court Monday other than to waive a jury trial.

From The Oregonian – March 14, 1988

Dennis clenched his hands into tight fists. His faced reddened as he spoke. “I can’t remember! I can’t remember anything!”

With the help of two people, he was standing now. He had been lying on the floor inside the Burnside Projects shelter in Old Town when the call came in to the Hooper Center, and CHIERS had responded.

CHIERS is a name well known on the streets of downtown and Old Town and on the inner East Side. People who live there, some of them alcoholics, see its white van daily, sometimes flagging it down for a ride to the Hooper Center, more commonly known as detox .

Susan Hassing, a CHIERS staff member, awakened Dennis with some difficulty and she and her ride-along partner for the evening hoisted him to his feet. He complained of arthritis in his right knee and winced at the pain.

Since Hassing has not been deputized, she could not force Dennis to go to detox, but she could persuade him. And Hassing, who speaks softly and smiles generously, creates a sense of trust. She promised Dennis, who was afraid of going to jail, that Hooper was not a jail, that his admittance there would be confidential, that he could get something to eat and that he could sleep.

“It’s a safe place to be,” she told him.

Dennis agreed, but not without serious doubt. “I’m not going to jail!” he said, still fearful. In a few moments the emotional crisis had subsided, and Dennis climbed into the van.

CHIERS is an ironic acronym. It brings to mind a brief toast and the name of the bar in a popular television show. In fact, the C stands for Central City Concern, a social service agency serving the Burnside area. The H stands for Hooper Center for Alcohol and Drug Intervention, which is operated by Central City Concern. The rest of the letters represent Inebriate Emergency Response Service. CHIERS is one of the programs run out of Hooper, located at 20 N.E. Union Ave.

All this matters little to the people on the street who are drunk and need help. What counts for them is people like Hassing, who offer a kind word, a supportive arm and a ride to Hooper , where they can spend a few hours sobering up.

Shortly after putting Dennis into the van, Hassing stopped to help John, lying on his back on a sidewalk, a bottle of cheap wine near by. Like the other CHIERS staff members, Hassing knows many of her clients and they know her. John, she said, was a gentle man who would cause no problems. She was right. Once awakened, John recognized Hassing and climbed willingly into the van, where he tried to calm Dennis, who was hallucinating and thought he was on board a fishing boat.

In the course of the next few hours, Hassing would transport another half-dozen men to Hooper, where she would also help do the paperwork and medical checks — blood pressure, pulse, questions about health problems.

Hassing, 43, is a nun with the Holy Names order who became interested in alcoholism because a close friend is an alcoholic. She joined Al-Anon, an organization for relatives and friends of alcoholics, and “started learning a lot about the disease, how incapacitating it is, how unfreeing it is.”

Her concern led her from teaching and her position as principal at the former St. Francis parish elementary school to her job at Hooper, where she has worked for about 18 months.

The job has its drawbacks. “Seeing them rotate through,” sometimes on a daily basis, can be discouraging, she said. “It’s hard to see that.”

But other times they ask to enter Hooper’s five-day detoxification program, a step toward potentially permanent change in their lives. Those decisions keep her going.

Not everyone is ready for that step, or even to spend a few hours at Hooper. Hassing stopped the van to talk to a tall man standing in the chilling wind in Old Town. He approached and put his hands on hers. She was wearing surgical gloves.

“I’m frozen,” he said. He had been drinking.

“Do you want to come to Hooper?” she asked. “Get some juice and soup?”

The man said he did not, but kept his hands on hers. “Boy, your hands are warm.”

Hassing asked again. “It’s a safe place to be,” she said. But the man declined, choosing to stay on the streets, possibly to get a ride later in the evening, when he had had more to drink.