Ayers was attending New York's famed Juilliard School on a music scholarship when he suffered a mental breakdown at age 20. A schizophrenic, he lived on the streets of Cleveland and Los Angeles for 35 years until Lopez saw him playing the violin one day near a statute of his musical idol, Ludwig van Beethoven.
Lopez did a series of columns on Ayers, and readers immediately responded, giving him musical instruments and inviting him to the Walt Disney Concert Hall to see the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
