Heartbreaking downfall of brilliant lawyer, 44, who walked out on his career and family after being engulfed by mental illness during COVID and who now lives on streets of LA as panhandler

The relatives of a brilliant lawyer who left his family and career amid a mental health spiral during Covid have spoken of their devastation after he ended up on the streets of LA.

Two years ago, Rob Dart, 44, was an award-winning attorney and loving father living in a $2 million South Pasadena home.

Ten years earlier, he had overcome a previous mental health crisis, following the end of his marriage, during which he was plagued by voices in his head.

At the time, Dart still had the means to turn to his family for support and managed to recover at home in his childhood bedroom before moving out and reinventing himself as a high-flying lawyer.

But in 2022, his life began to unravel again with the arrival of the pandemic, which left him working from home for long hours.

Dart stopped taking therapy and his medications and quickly lost contact with his family and his job.

He missed the rent, his car was impounded and shortly afterwards his phone was disconnected.

“I got on a plane,” his mother Sherry Dart told the newspaper Wall Street Journal. “I thought I was going to find a body.”

When she finally caught up with her son, he was almost unrecognizable and furious.

Dart let his mother greet her grandson for a moment before taking him away. He then ignored his mother’s repeated calls over the next few days.

It was a similar story for Dart’s sister Jennifer when she tried to visit him in July, weeks after he was deported.

Jennifer scoured the area before finding her once neatly cut brother with dull hair and completely disorganized at a Starbucks.

“The only thing I could recognize were his eyes,” she said, describing a similar hostile reaction.

Dart was one of millions of Americans whose mental health problems were exacerbated by the pandemic due to interruptions in treatment, routine or for other reasons.

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by as much as 25 percent, according to a scientific report from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Dart’s family had hoped that California’s stricter laws on detaining people with serious psychotic disorders would provide the safety net he so desperately needed.

In 2022, the CARE Court laws introduced powers for judges to commit mentally ill people to institutions if family members apply to the court.

In most states, there is little loved ones can do to access treatment on behalf of patients without their consent.

However, Dart’s bright moments and his legal background meant that he was often able to find a way out of his obligation with arguments.

One of these occasions occurred after he was persuaded to be admitted to hospital in December 2022 after neighbors called his mother to report that he had become hysterical.

A panicked Sherry immediately called the police, who sent mental health specialists who were able to talk him into treatment.

Sherry flew to California the next day and was devastated by what she found in her son’s apartment.

When she opened the door, she was hit by a rancid smell and the sight of crazy etchings in notebooks describing how Dart had heard Satan’s voice.

His paranoid rants include saying that he, John Lennon, wrote “St. Nicholas Cage’, ‘the invisible Obama’ and that people tried to steal from him.

Dart left the hospital and appeared on his ex-wife’s porch on December 28 in an erratic condition.

His condition alarmed her and she refused to allow him access to his son, prompting Dart to file a motion in court accusing her of violating the custody arrangement.

The judge was convinced by his eloquent arguments and agreed to a hearing. However, when the full extent of his breakdown became known, the court granted her a protective order.

Over the next few months, Dart’s family tried desperately to reach him, invariably with little success.

In September 2023, things got even scarier when he was shot in the leg on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Dart had been trying to ‘meditate’ on the play when he was struck by an errant bullet.

He initially refused hospital treatment but was later tricked into attending by a friend.

Once there, a psychiatrist tried to have him committed. However, Rob used his legal training and flashes of clarity to successfully fight his way back out.

The following weeks were marked by trips to and from area hospitals, but never for long.

His family continued to try to support him, financing Airbnbs, hotel rooms and the occasional meal on DoorDash. Sherry has spent her savings protecting her son.

On December 27, Dart posted on Facebook looking for a place to stay.

“Hey guys, I’m looking for a place to crash in Los Angeles. That’s because I’m homeless. If anyone has space in their apartment or something like that, please DM me. Thank you,” he said.

At that point, Dart had become one of the 46,000 homeless people on the streets of LA.

The next time his family heard from him was three months later, when he petitioned, they left him alone.

For his part, Dart claims he is not sick and that coming off his medications has improved his life.

“I wanted to leave the hospital and I didn’t want to take the medication,” Dart said Wall Street Journal.

‘It made me more scared, less assertive, less confident. Who wants to feel like this? You realize you’re kind of the same person,” Dart said. “You just know more about yourself.”

But it already feels too late for his family, because all they have is the memory of who he was.