LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio (SCPR), a member-supported public media network. Hear our news on-air at our partner site:
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
The commencement of the school year typically generates all types of education-related news and anecdotes. This year they sadly range from the tragic to the bizarre. NYU was shocked by the suicide of 23-year-old grad student Joanne M. Leavy, the second Tisch School of the Arts student to die within a week and the seventh death of an NYU student in a year.
Fortunately, however, a local recent case involving a missing UCLA undergrad has had a relatively happy and highly unpredictable ending.
Ahmad Yaseen Arain mysteriously disappeared in July, and turned up this week, of all places, in Tijuana. Reports explain that a “mental breakdown,” including amnesia symptoms, catalyzed the 20-year-old honor student’s disappearance.
This was not the outcome predicted by his mother, who in August claimed that "deep down in my heart, I believe that he's alive somewhere [and] held against his will." The Los Angeles Times notes that Arain allegedly spent “six weeks disoriented and penniless” and was eventually taken in by a local family—hardly the typical college-student-lost-in-TJ tale.