Growing Pains actor goes missing in Vancouver
By Alexandra Heilbron on February 22, 2010 | 20 Comments
Actor Andrew Koenig, 41, who played Richard “Boner” Stabone on Growing Pains, has gone missing in Vancouver. His father is Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original Star Trek. He says he received a letter from his son that was postmarked February 15. His mother, Judy, said, “We last spoke to him on Feb. 8 or 9th. I had some surgery and he phoned from Toronto to see how I was doing, but he sounded a little distant.” Walter added, “He was not in a good frame of mind when he called us. He was depressed.” Vancouver police say the last activity on his cellphone was on Feb. 16 from the Stanley Park area, which was apparently a special place for the actor, who lived in Vancouver from 1989 to 1992. Vancouver Police Constable Tim Fanning told the Vancouver Sun, “It’s an active missing persons investigation right now.” Walter has posted the following on his official site: “Andrew Koenig was last seen on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2010, in Vancover, British Columbia. Andrew Koenig never boarded his flight back to the US, on 2/16 and he hasn’t been heard from since. Andrew was last seen at a bakery in the Stanley Park area of Vancouver. If you’ve seen Andrew since February 14th, PLEASE contact Detective Raymond Payette of the Vancouver PD at 604-717-2534.”
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I don’t understand why the police wait so long,to tell the public? I Hope he’s OK!
🙁 i hope hes ok too. i hate how many people go missing and are murdered/raped/tortured. it breaks my heart. no ones safe.
Does it say on here when the family contacted the police?
This does not sound good.
Boner!
Can’t daddy, the science officer ‘Chekov’ take the helm, get a transporter lock on his co-ordinates and beam him back? 🙂
Tributegirl, you are right, this does not look good. Mandee, in this case it is very unlikely he was murdered/raped/tortured. Almost certainly whatever has happened is of his own doing. According to his landlord in California, he had a garage sale of all his possessions, and gave away what didn’t sell. According to his sister and father, he has battled depression, but has never disappeared before. According to a friend, he visited friends in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, but didn’t tell he was coming. The pattern points to a very, very sad ending.
thats true, but you can never be sure that something else didnt happen to him. too many people are going missing these days. maybe someone was threatening him and that was what caused his depression. i wonder where someone could go (if they did decide to kill themselves) that they wouldnt have been found yet? seems strange that hes still missing. 🙁
Mandee, it is true that almost anything is possible, but realistically one should look at what is probable. He suffered from depression all his life, so it wasn’t caused by someone threatening him. And it is highly unlikely if someone was threatening him that he would be followed across the continent to be murdered. Life isn’t Law and Order and CSI. The occurrence of premeditated murder on strangers is extremely low. As for a body not yet being found if he did kill himself, he apparently was last thought to be in downtown Vancouver, which is right on the ocean with strong tides and currents. Also, it is near Stanley Park which has huge forested areas that are not regularly travelled.
I hope that he is just “hiding”, but unfortunately, and sadly, it is less likely.
i dont watch law and order or csi, i actually rarely watch tv so theres not really much point is referencing them while speaking to me. it seems as if you are under the impression i get my ideas and opinions based on what i watch, well youre wrong because i do not watch really anything other than house and family guy.
They have found a body,yesterday.They think it is him!
my mom says the news today said they found him today in a park, he was not alive.
if you click my name you can read what was said about him being found. RIP.
He was off his meds cos they weren’t helping, and he probably couldn’t get the drugs he really needed.
Mandee, thanks for the link to the story. It is truly a sad story, but not because of his and his father’s fame. There are many stories every day like this, that we don’t hear about. It sounds trite, but hopefully some good comes out of the story by educating people.
By the way Mandee, not that it is important in the scheme of the story, but my comment about CSI and Law and Order wasn’t directly to you, it was a general comment on how our view of reality is skewed by the fiction of entertainment.
And demigod, contrary to popular belief, a large proportion of depression is not “cured” with drugs, especially when used alone. I think your comment is a little simplistic and misleading.
i agree silver. this is terrible news. i feel really bad for his family, and i feel bad for him. most of my family suffers from depression (i believe i do as well) and it would kill me if anyone in my family did such a thing. 🙁 RIP.
Silver,’educating people’ is simplistic. As is ‘extending a hand’. You think anyone can manage someone else’s head? You don’t think his friends, family,acquaintances, doctors have tried? What’s to learn?
I don’t think anyone believes drugs are a cure-all, but there are cases where certain drugs can prevent suicides and improve outlook, which docs are reluctant to prescribe. I don’t presume to know what he was on,or what psychological pain he’s endured, but low levels of serotonin, dopamine are often the culprit.
Demigod, my comment was intended to make the point that studies have shown that a mixture of drugs and psychotherapy have the best success in treatment of depression. Your comment made it sound like all he needed was a pill to make him better — that is what I thought was simplistic. Sorry if I misunderstood your point.
I’m a little surprised by your comment that doctors are reluctant to prescribe anti-depression medication. Usually it is thought that doctors over prescribe medication, rather than look for underlying causes and other factors. When Prozac first came out, wasn’t there a huge outcry that it was being overused by doctors?
I guess my point is that there sometimes isn’t a single magic solution, and that a combination is required. Including extending a hand. It looks like we agree on that.
What’s to learn? Even though people may be aware someone they know is depressed, they often don’t want to consider how far the consequences might go. This is a reminder of that.
Prozac and other antidepressants are weak and proven useless. I’m talking about prescribing psychostimulants or ‘uppers’.
One should know that it’s impossible to control someone else’s state of mind.
demigod, can you give me some of the drug names you are referring to. I’d like to do some research on them. From what (little) I know, the 2 or 3 classes of the more popular drugs, including SSRI’s, are used first because of generally good efficacy and minimal side effects. If these don’t work, they move on to the older drugs, which also work, but have much worse side effects. I didn’t know there were other classes of drugs considered for depression. I thought most stimulants were used for short term treatment only.
And there’s always shock therapy, which apparently works quite well also, but has a huge unwarranted stigma attached to it.
Look up methylphenidate. Has no more sides than any SSRI’s, and it’s not considered short-term treatment.