How a family rallied to help millions afflicted with schizophrenia.

In the summer of 1990, Brandon Staglin, 18, had just finished his freshman year at Dartmouth College. But what should have been a carefree few months under the California sun weren't. A romance had just ended. At night, anxieties plagued him.

Then, one night, Brandon walked out of his family's Napa Valley house and wandered the streets for four sleepless days. When he finally showed up on a friend's doorstep, he was immediately checked into a hospital. Soon after, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental disorder characterized by disorganized thinking, auditory hallucinations and delusions that afflicts an estimated 1 percent of the world's population.

"The stigma associated with mental illness leads you to believe it could never happen to you," says Garen Staglin, Brandon's father. As owner of the top-shelf Staglin Family vineyard in Napa, the elder Staglin used his extensive contacts in the community to get his son the care he needed. He and his family then quickly began educating themselves to demystify schizophrenia. What they learned was sobering: There is no predictive test for schizophrenia, which is believed to be largely genetic. There is no cure. Despite the affliction's prevalence, schizophrenia research remains vastly underfunded -- a fact Staglin was determined to change.

"We had a friend who was a conductor," he explains. "He suggested we host a music festival on our property." So in 1995, Staglin hosted his inaugural event, the Music Festival for Mental Health, raising $65,000. Last year, 500 people attended the event, headlined by Gladys Knight, raising $4.2 million. To date, the annual gathering, which is underwritten by the Staglins, has raised $53 million for the cause.

Today Brandon, 36, Staglin's marketing director, is again basking in the sun as he prepares for his upcoming nuptials. Says his father, "Once we got Brandon on track, we had to decide whether we were going to run away from this problem or run toward it. We chose the latter."

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