To me, it is simply paradise. And, before I go any further, you must know that my impression of Lake Michigan’s eastern shore is colored by the many wonderful summers I spent there as a child. So if I say it outshines the Caribbean, well, consider the source.

I was lucky; my father’s job took him regularly to Manistee, an old lumber town of about 8,000 that bills itself as “The Victorian Port City.” Our family could stay in the area from mid-June until shortly after the Back-to-School Sale signs began appearing in the windows of J. C. Penny’s. We still vacation there every summer, and I -- Michigan booster that I am -- try to instill that same sense of magic in my two young daughters.

There’s another Michigan that is decidedly less magical -- the one that’s bleeding jobs from the troubled auto industry. And far from Detroit, in the very shadow of Michigan’s beautiful Gold Coast, lies the small industrial city of Muskegon, where nearly 30 percent of the children under age 18 live in poverty.

Lynn Moore of the Muskegon Chronicle wrote about one of those children recently in a remarkably sad story called “No Way to Live, No Way To Die.” It’s about a homeless teen named Rob Smith who gradually lost everyone close to him -- his father, his mother, his brother, and nephew -- and ended up crawling into a recycling bin one cold night on the campus of Muskegon High School, where he once attended, and was crushed to death when its contents were dumped into a trash compactor.

It’s not just his horrifying death but the descent of what Moore described as a sweet, funny, and slightly chubby kid into obvious depression that makes this story so disturbing. It’s not like he didn’t get help. People cared -- his school counselors, a teacher, and friends -- but ultimately it wasn’t enough.

“What you have is an American tragedy,” psychologist David Leonard told the Chronicle. “You’re looking at an abandoned human being.”

Schools can’t bear all the responsibility for saving children like Rob Smith, but they can be part of the search for solutions. In this month’s ASBJ, I write about districts that are collaborating with community agencies in setting up comprehensive mental health programs. A good place to start looking for information is UCLA’s Center for Mental Health in Schools.

I just couldn’t read this troubling story from a place that has been so good to me -- a place I’ve call paradise -- without mentioning it to you.

What’s that that Linda Loman says in Death of a Salesman, when her husband sinks inexorably into depression and despair? “Attention must be paid.”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor