Ryan King is 33. He has been working at a Safeway in Washington for 15 years. He pays his bills on time, budgets saving and spending money every month, uses exact change for his ride to and from work each day, makes a mean shrimp scampi, and has never been charged with a crime.
Yet, in the eyes of the courts, he has fewer rights than most convicted felons. Legally, Ryan cannot decide where to live, where to work, where to spend his free time, what medicine to take or with whom to talk.
Why? He has intellectual and developmental disabilities as well as sickle cell disease. And, as with many people like him, he is trapped in a legal guardianship that he’s longed to end for nearly a decade...
