72 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 09/10.19
to live or die—as his to make.
“I think I could be more useful alive,” he
wrote. But the matter was out of his hands.
Journal entry
November 15, 2018
The plan for tomorrow is to drop me at the
cache and then the boat will leave for the day,
returning at night. I’m at peace with that
plan because a) Pieter V. from South Africa
said the reason the Jarawa didn’t kill him was
that he got dropped with no boat nearby and
b) if it goes badly on foot, the fishermen won’t
have to bear witness to my death.
Alternative is to wait another time: go back
to Port Blair without any documents and stay
in the safehouse again and put all at risk (why
are we so afraid of death?) or get deported. If I
leave, I believe I’ll have failed the mission.
When I asked Daniel Everett to list traits
that are common among missionaries, he
mentioned one that generally doesn’t make
it into the books: personal catastrophe.
“I came from an alcoholic father, and my
mother died when I was young, and these
are the traumatic experiences that very
often lead people to religion,” he said. “If
you accept faith, and it does for you what
you hope it will do, you’re willing to give
everything to that faith.”
Scrolling through John’s Instagram, I real-
ized that he had lost his home in the months
before he set off for the Andamans. “Super
grieved by the devastation in Shasta County,”
he wrote on July 29. “83,800 acres burned,
526 structures destroyed. 5 lives lost. Oh,
Whiskeytown ... the park where I’ve worked
the past three seasons and lived alone in a
cabin.” Then, on August 9, India dropped
the requirement for most foreigners to have
permits to visit 30 of the 31 inhabited islands
in the Andamans and Nicobars, including
North Sentinel. (A ban on meeting the tribes
remained.) It wasn’t hard to imagine how
John would have interpreted his old life going
up in flames only for a new door to open.
Soon afterward, confirming details of
Patrick’s medical career, I found evidence
of more tumult in an online notice from
the DEA’s Diversion Control Division head-
lined “Patrick K. Chau, M.D.; Decision and
Order.” The document, dated June 15, 2012,
revoked Patrick’s certificate to prescribe
controlled drugs and preempted any pend-
ing applications to renew his doctor’s regis-
tration. As justification, the DEA stated that
on two separate occasions, February 20 and
March 27, 2009, Patrick prescribed Xanax
to two undercover agents “without a legiti-
mate medical purpose and outside the usual
course of professional practice.” Patrick
wasn’t dealing, exactly. But the two agents,
posing as patients, told Patrick that they had
previously obtained Xanax from friends and
on the street, and had no legitimate medical
complaints but wanted the drug because, as
one put it, it “makes me feel good.” The DEA
also noted that for many years, Patrick had
prescribed addictive opioids, including Oxy-
Contin, sometimes handing over enough for
three months. In addition, according to the
DEA, Patrick failed to recognize that the
doses he was prescribing were addictive and
failed to refer his patients to rehab.
When I asked Patrick about the DEA bust,
he was expansively candid. He said he had a
history of run-ins with state licensing boards
and medical authorities over unprofessional
conduct, and that he had been placed on
probation as a licensed doctor as far back as
November 2006. (His probation ended in
2017.) Patrick said he had switched from child
patients to more lucrative adult psychiatry
to help put his kids through college, but he
hadn’t realized that the treatments he pre-
scribed for adults were outdated and insuffi-
cient to guard against drug-seeking behavior.
Patrick was just as open about how badly
the episode had affected John. “My posi-
tive career modeling for Brian and Marilyn
... started a cliff-drop like deterioration,” he
wrote. His two elder children, he said, “are
a gang of two.” After they left for college,
“baby brother John was left to search and
form his own ... outlook on life.” That was
how it happened that John was the only one
at home “to fully witness my struggle.”
Comparing dates, I saw that the year Pat-
rick’s career collapsed was around the time
John had started escaping to the mountains.
When I reread Patrick’s essay, this also
looked like the precise moment when Pat-
rick said he began losing influence over his
son. Like Whiskeytown, John’s old plan, the
family business, had gone up in smoke. What
took its place was a brighter, better future
where he depended only on himself. “I was
like a drowning man, busy [with my own]
self-rescue,” Patrick wrote. “Unwittingly [I]
let John be sucked towards a whirlpool—the
radical to fanatic extreme Christian fac-
tion.” From that moment on, Patrick said,
his son’s path was “glamorized” exploration
and “reckless” and “suicidal heroism.”
This, finally, felt like the heart of John’s
story. “He never needed a single penny from
his parents for his adventuring project,” Pat-
rick wrote. “He was totally independent of
us.” Everywhere I followed John, from India
to Cape Town to Washington, people talked
about how easily he made friends. Now I
wondered whether it was easy because he
never really gave himself away. He didn’t tell
most of them about the mission he’d dedi-
cated his life to. He didn’t tell any of themabout his father’s disgrace. Mostly, day after
day, year after year, he took another selfie in
the wilderness or read another book in his
cabin or wrote a few more lines on Instagram
or in his journal in his endless retelling of
the fable of the solo adventurer. John was the
lone ship on the sea. There was no part in this
tale for a girlfriend or a best friend to confide
in. There was no room for a father, mother,
brother, or sister to call him back. He did get
lonely. He did miss friends and family at the
end. But God, the One, had reserved for John
the mission of reaching the loneliest people
on earth, and as he wrote in a goodbye note
to Alex on his last morning, it was always a
one-man, one-way trip. “I think I might
die—tomorrow even,” he wrote. “I wish I
could have had more time to express my
thanks to you.... I’ll see you again, bro—and
remember, the first one to heaven wins.”
John had been alone in the world. Now he
was alone at the end of the world. He knew
how the story ended. And on the morning of
November 16, after writing a few last words,
he stepped off.Letter
November 16, 2018
Brian and Marilyn and Mom and Dad,
You guys might think I’m crazy in all this
but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus
to these people. Please do not be angry at
them or God if I get killed—rather please
live your lives in obedience to whatever
He has called you to and I’ll see you again
when you pass through the veil. Don’t
retrieve my body. This is not a pointless
thing—the eternal lives of this tribe is at
hand and I can’t wait to see them around
the throne of God worshipping in their own
language as Revelations 7:9-10 states.
I love you all and I pray none of you love
anything in this world more than Jesus
Christ.
Soli Deo Gloria
John Chau
11/16/18
Written from the cove on the southwest-
ish (more like west) of North Sentinel Island.Journal entry
November 16, 2018
Woke up after a fairly restful sleep, head-
ing to island now. I hope this isn’t my last
note but if it is: to God be the glory—I’m
heading back to the hut I’ve been to. Pray-
ing it goes well. OALEX PERRY ( @PERRYALEXJ) IS THE
AUTHOR OF FIVE BOOKS, INCLUDING
THE GOOD MOTHERS: THE TRUE STORY
OF THE WOMEN WHO TOOK ON THE
WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL MAFIA.