Ex-Patient Wins His Liberation : Release: A joyous Alberto Valdez was freed after a 30-year stretch in mental institutions where he did not belong. The deaf man’s freedom ends a long battle by his family.

SANTA ANA —  After 30 years locked away in state psychiatric institutions where he did not belong, Alberto Valdez is finally going home.

Valdez, 38, a deaf man who never learned to speak, broke into a wide grin and nodded enthusiastically Wednesday as a judge liberated him from Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk and sent him home to live with his parents in Santa Ana. Behind him in the courtroom, his mother and sister wept and his brother fought back tears. Their 12-year battle was over.

Valdez, who uses a few basic hand gestures and facial expressions to communicate, said through an interpreter that he was “very happy.” The bespectacled man overflowed with joy, beaming and hugging friends and relatives in the courthouse hallway. He said the first thing he would do when he got home was take a nap, then watch television.

Valdez’s sister, Lupe, began the fight to bring him home in 1977 when she sued the state, contending that her brother had mistakenly been thought to be mentally retarded and unnecessarily held in institutions, where he could not receive proper care. To settle the lawsuit in May, 1988, the state agreed to buy an annuity that will support Valdez until his death.

“I can’t believe it. We’re finally all back together again,” said a weeping Lupe Valdez, 38. Now that Alberto Valdez is home, she said, she wants to “keep him busy and open a lot of doors for him that didn’t used to be open.”

Barbara G. McDonald, a Carlsbad lawyer who helped negotiate the settlement and assisted in forming the plan for Valdez’s release from Norwalk, also shed a few tears.

“It feels wonderful,” she said. “I didn’t know if we’d ever see this day.”

In approving Valdez’s release, Superior Court Judge Manuel A. Ramirez said he hopes that Valdez will get “the kind of care you should have been receiving in the past.” The judge, whose remarks were conveyed to Valdez through a sign-language interpreter, wished Valdez luck.

“For all the parties who have participated, I know this has been a very, very difficult experience,” Ramirez said. “I don’t know that I can offer words of consolation or support to Mr. Valdez . . . but all the parties share the same concern, and that is doing what is best for his needs.”

Valdez smiled and nodded vigorously as the judge outlined the terms of his release: Valdez will live with his parents and receive intensive tutoring in sign language and independent-living skills. Goodwill Industries has agreed to put him through its vocational training for disabled people and to give him a job.

The money from his annuity--$60,000 for each of the first two years, $50,000 a year for the following three years and $30,000 a year after that--will be managed by two private conservators and all the details of his personal life will be supervised by another conservator who is a longtime friend and tutor.

Ramirez asked everyone to return for another hearing Dec. 13 to update him on Valdez’s progress.

Lupe Valdez said her brother had been “out of control” with excitement all day at the prospect of coming home. All afternoon, as Valdez waited for the hearing to begin, his hands were a flurry of motions as he told Lupe how he wanted to garden in the yard at home, to clean house and learn to drive a car. When she asked him what he was most excited about, he spelled out: L-O-V-E , and pointed to her, smiling.

Experts could never agree whether Valdez was born deaf or whether a high fever at 18 months cost him his hearing. He was first institutionalized at age 8, when a test showed him to have low intelligence. Other tests since then have produced conflicting results. Some show average or superior intelligence. Others conclude he is mentally retarded, environmentally deprived or schizophrenic.

The state identified him as a problem, citing angry outbursts against other patients when he is in mental hospitals and against friends and relatives on the few times he was released to go home.

But his advocates say he was not deeply disturbed, only frustrated that he could not communicate. McDonald blames the state for an “unbelievable level of inertia” that left Valdez in institutions where he had little opportunity to learn or practice sign language.

Ken Johns, who has acted as Valdez’s public guardian until being relieved of that role Wednesday, has said in the past that the state “bent over backwards” to find an appropriate placement for Valdez, but his unique combination of needs made that impossible.

All those years, Lupe Valdez said, Valdez’s Mexican immigrant parents were led to believe that their son was getting a solid education suited to his needs. She says she is bitter that the state did so little to help him, but now she just wants to welcome her brother back.

“I’m just glad we’re all together again,” she said.