‘I can’t quite get him to settle down. He’ll be my boy, wherever he is.’

Mellie Thompson last saw her “adopted son” about a month ago. Juan Tovar Bohlete dropped in unexpectedly, spent a few days in the room that contains his baseball caps and stuffed toys, enjoyed some of his favorite meals, such as tacos and hot dogs, and then disappeared just as he always does.

“I can tell when he’s getting ready to leave because he always gives me a big hug,” Thompson said of the young man she took in five years ago. “I guess he likes to wander.”

Bohlete, thought to be 22 or 23, has been wandering for as long as anyone can remember. When Thompson and other workers at Los Angeles International Airport first discovered the mostly mute waif scavenging for quarters and sleeping on airport benches eight years ago, they assumed that Bohlete was a lost child since he was so small and helpless looking.

A heart-tugging search for his family members ensued, and the plight of Bohlete, who was identifiable only by a scrawled note found in his pocket, eventually became something of a local media campaign. But few additional details surfaced, other than the fact that the frail young man was actually in his late teens and had some connection to Bogota, Colombia.

Thompson, who was working as an airport custodian at the time, befriended Bohlete during the nights she spent scrubbing floors and agreed to take him into her home in 1983. She said that their relationship has gradually blossomed but that Bohlete’s habits have not changed.

Penchant for Airports

He still has a penchant for airports and has also been known to hop buses to places like New York and Florida when the spirit moves him.

“He has also been to Peoria, Ill., Chicago and Bakersfield,” Thompson said. “He keeps my name, address and phone number in his wallet at all times so when he gets in trouble, someone usually calls me.”

Thompson, a 51-year-old mother of four, provides Bohlete with pocket change, but he apparently makes most of his money at LAX and other airports where he continues to collect quarters by returning luggage carts to their stations. Virginia Black, an airport spokeswoman, said several people have seen Bohlete working and sleeping on benches at the terminal.

“He’s very friendly and even waves to everybody,” Black said. “He is no burden at all.”

Thompson, for her part, seems willing to accept her unorthodox arrangement with Bohlete. She said he is genuinely affectionate toward her, even though they are still barely able to communicate, and is obviously pleased to have a place to call home when he needs one.

“I can’t quite get him to settle down,” Thompson said. “We’re not that close. But as long as he’s alive we’ll still be friends. . . . He’ll be my boy, wherever he is.”