SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - A local Navy wife is desperate to find her missing husband, who has post traumatic stress disorder and hasn't been seen in days.
"My whole world is collapsing because this is the guy I was going to spend the rest of my life with," says Amanda Hamilton.
She and Nicholas married four and a half years ago and have two sons together. As a couple they've faced deployments, but the most recent deployment on the USS Ronald Reagan to provide humanitarian relief to Tsunami victims in Japan proved to be a tipping point, according to Amanda.
"He had a really bad flashback episode while on the Reagan," she says. Adding that flashback dealt with a previous humanitarian effort to retrieve bodies from the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia.
"He took nearly 200 over the counter medications to try and end his life," she says.
That was March 25th of this year and Amanda says Nic was then flown to an Air Force Base in Japan for treatment and then sent back home to San Diego for further treatment on March 31st.
Since then he's regularly checked in twice a day to a Medical Hold unit at the Navy hospital, according to his wife, until May 1st when things unraveled.
"He started getting more and more agitated, more and more frustrated the longer he was home," she explains. Loud noises began to bother him and he became more annoyed.
Monday May 1st after phoning in his check-in he asked his wife to meet him outside the base on 32nd Street.
"All he wanted me to do, because he couldn't handle going home, he wanted me to take him to the Navy Lodge, the hotel on base, check him in,"she says. "[The next day] he'd walk to his psychiatrist in the morning because they were located on 32nd street.
That was the last time she saw Nicholas, who called into the Med Hold Unit on Tuesday, but no one has seen him since. A Public Affairs spokesperson for the Naval Hospital says it is routine to have sailors being treated on an out-patient basis to call in for their check-ins if they're on a medical appointment and can't make it in person. The same person couldn't speak specifically about Hamilton's case due to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) laws.
Amanda says she feels as though she's the only person looking for him and cares that he gets the proper treatment. She adds that her husband has given ten years of his life to the Navy and it's time the Navy help him.
"This isn't somebody that wanted to leave his family, wanted to leave the Navy, this is somebody whose mentally ill and needs to be seen, he needs treatment," insists Hamilton.
The hospital spokesperson said the health of sailors is a top priority and that they hope he [Nicholas] can be found so that he can get the treatment he needs.
31-year-old Nicholas Hamilton is 5'10", 195 lbs, with light brown hair, hazel eyes, and black-rimmed glasses.
He has several tattoos including two boys dressed as pirates on his right calf, a tribal band with a Piranha above it on his right arm, and a raven, turtle and a sunburst on his left arm.
His wife says he may be wearing dark brown pants and a light blue shirt, or his Navy camouflage uniform which is blue.
Nicholas Hamilton is listed as a missing person with the San Diego Police Department.
