Dan's Papers - May 9, 2008 - Lemonade Catastrophe

When Mike's Hard Lemonade first came out, it quickly became my favorite drink, at least for a while. There were lots of new soft drinks coming out back then - fruit drinks, power drinks, energy drinks, herbal drinks. And then there was this new lemonade. Cute.

"Ask Mike what he puts into his hard lemonade and all you'll get is this: ten lemons go into a room, only three come out," is what it said on the label.

I really did like it. It seemed tough and sour and fermented, just like it said. I sometimes imagined the seven lemons that didn't make it.

I had no idea it had alcohol in it. Others pointed it out to me. Two Mike's in an hour had put me in a jolly mood. And they agreed. I told them it was "lemonade," so how could it be alcoholic? And I had bought it in a convenience store. They directed me to the tiny print on the back that said there was alcohol in it.

I stopped drinking it after that. I do like alcoholic drinks, but I don't trust them. I only have an alcoholic drink maybe once every other day.

Having said all this, I would like to report to you the following item in the news.

Last Saturday, Chris Ratte, 47, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, took his seven-year-old son, Leo, to a Detroit Tiger baseball game. In the fifth inning, they went to a concession stand and Chris asked for a lemonade for his boy. The counterman sold him Mike's Hard Lemonade. Chris gave it to Leo, and they returned to their seats, which were in the 2110 section.

In the seventh inning, a security guard noted that a boy was drinking hard liquor and went over to ask his father about it.

"That's lemonade," Chris said. When the guard said it wasn't, Chris asked his son to hand it to him so he could see it. As the son went to do so, the guard took it first. This was evidence.

The guard escorted Chris and Leo up to the promenade in the back of the stands and talked to them about the situation. Chris said he had no idea this drink was alcoholic. "I never drank it, never purchased it, never heard of it. I asked for lemonade."

The guard escorted them down to ground level, where some authorities at Comerica Park decided that, just as a precaution, they should have Leo checked out. Leo, with Chris in attendance, was hurried off by ambulance to a nearby hospital where doctors examined him, took his blood, determined that there was no alcoholic content in it, and said they could go home.

Leo, however, said he felt queasy with all that had been going on. So the doctors brought him into the emergency room where it was decided that, just as a precaution, Child Protective Services should be brought in to the situation.

A man from CPS appeared, and interviewed Chris.

"I'm a tenured professor of classical archeology at the University of Michigan," Chris told him. "I never heard of Mike's Hard Lemonade."

The man signed an order to have Leo taken into custody. He said he would take Leo with him to protective services where he would spend the night in a bed in the protective services building, without his parents. The next step would be a foster home.

Chris called his wife, Claire, who is also a professor at the University of Michigan as a professor of architecture. She came to the hospital right away. Chris told the man that one of his sisters, Felicity Ratte, was a foster parent. She lived in Massachusetts. The man said she should come to pick up Leo. So Chris called. And Felicity, realizing how this situation was spinning out of control, said that she would drive from Massachusetts to Michigan right away, and would get there by morning. She would come with Catherine Miller, another of Chris's sisters, so they could share the driving.

The man then took Leo off to spend the night at Protective Services.

Sunday morning, Chris, Claire, Felicity and Catherine went to Protective Services where they were told that Felicity would not be eligible to be allowed to take Leo until she had gotten a hotel room. So Felicity and Claire drove off and did that.

When they returned an hour later, however, they found out that Leo had already been placed with another foster family - they couldn't keep him there any longer - and in fact, had driven him there. That night and the next day, the family had no idea where Leo was.

On Monday morning, the group went to a meeting with Latricia Jones, the assistant child care director, who said she was taking over the case and that what would happen to Leo would not be determined until she had made a full investigation, which would take several days.

Later that day, at the family's urging, the Assistant Attorney General representing Child Protective Services was persuaded to look into the situation. He saw this whole thing for what it was, but could only add one piece of new information, which was that the State was not interested in pursuing this case aggressively. With that, Jones called off her investigation.

On Tuesday morning, the family appeared before a juvenile referee in the building, Leslie Graves, who ruled that Leo could go home to his mother, but only on the condition that Chris leave the house and stay in a hotel for a week. So Leo went home under those conditions.

Three days later, on Friday, after urging from the family, Leslie Graves held another hearing and said that since Chris had stayed away from his son for three days and everything remained okay, she was commuting the remainder of her order and he could come home. She then dismissed the case.

And so, it was over. Reporters now were invited in. Among those they interviewed was a lawyer hired by the Rattes who was familiar with Child Protective Services. He said that given what he knows about CPS in Michigan, the Rattes were lucky to get Leo back so soon. He also said that CPS is jammed with kids and in need of many more employees and offices. Apparently there are many other families in Michigan that have done what Chris did to Leo and are in need of Child Protective Services.

Leo, of course, is getting visits from a state psychologist, who is an expert in trauma counseling.