The Curious Case of...

We're gonna turn now to that

medical mystery in upstate New York.

Hmm, ha!

Two more girls are now reporting symptoms of

an illness that has stricken more than a dozen students.

The first time that it happened to me, it was

terrifying because I didn't understand why I couldn't

control a certain part of my body.

Prior to the outbreak, I think I was living in a good place.

It definitely felt like something that was

happening overnight.

Like, I just woke up one day

and all these girls had the tics,

and then a couple months later, "Oh wait, so do I."

The onset was fast.

I would hear a

and it was usually accompanied with a head jerk.

For months, doctors in LeRoy, New York,

have been trying to figure out what caused

12 girls to have severe tics.

It's very odd to have the exact same type of tic.

There was just a lot of like, grasping at straws kind of

theories going around.

People were, like, desperate to solve it.

Everything got so much worse after the news attention came.

That's when there was like a whole bunch of more people

that were coming out with it.

I'm at school and there's four news vans there,

or there's five news vans there.

Oh, there's Telemundo.

People started to talk about this derailment that had

occurred 41 years earlier.

People were reaching out to Erin Brockovich.

It was one of those types of things like in Jurassic Park

where I just sort of pulled back the bushes.

I was flabbergasted.

What a bunch of , man.

And the more attention people gave them,

the more that snowballed.

We're gonna turn now to that medical mystery in upstate New York,

two more girls are now reporting symptoms of

an illness that has stricken more than a dozen students.

They've developed uncontrollable tics like

somebody would with Tourette.

My name is Rose Ortiz,

and in 2011, I was in eighth grade

at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School.

And it was a time.

I didn't have what I view as the normal childhood experience

for a lot of reasons.

Football games were not a thing I attended unless I was,

like, marching in them. Like, there wasn't a lot to do.

There was, like, some waterfalls that we used to

go jump off a lot, and that was really about it,

because LeRoy's kind of boring.

Growing up in LeRoy was pretty normal.

My parents, I just had to be home by dark.

I could go play down the street at the park

with all my friends. It was a really safe community.

Very wholesome childhood.

LeRoy is definitely one of those small towns where

everybody knows everybody

and everybody's in everybody's business,

but everyone's super friendly too.

LeRoy is a beautiful town.

When I first started working there,

I felt like I struck the gold mine.

Not so much salary-wise, but, um-- .

in terms of satisfaction.

A lot of tight-knit families.

Most of the shops are locally owned.

I will be honest, I do not know a lot about the Jell-O Museum.

I just know that that is something that

LeRoyans are proud of. It's the birthplace of Jell-O.

We have the Jell-O Museum.

The McDonald's used to have, like, all these Jell-O facts.

Like, I can remember going on school field trips

to the Jell-O Museum, like I--

I guess all we got are Jell-O and weird tics,

and so that's what we are.

I come from a small town,

so I know what small towns are like.

There's just something "Norman Rockwell-ish"

about growing up in a small town.

But it can have its drawbacks as well,

because if people turn on you,

and then cliques will develop, that's human nature,

they can, you know, be ostracizing.

It can be really hard when you're-- if you're in a small town.

The first thing we noticed as a tic, like my mom and I,

it was like a facial twitch, and we were like,

"Something's up there." And so it was, you know,

we had to go to the pediatrician.

She's like, "Hey, why are you doing that?"

She's like, "Oh, that's Tourette's, hands down."

And that was when I was about seven.

That was like third grade or so.

As I got older and as time progressed,

I got more vocal tics.

I got a lot louder, a lot more noticeable.

Like I've had a bajillion million different tics.

Some of them have been swear words or animal noises.

I've had tics where I hurt myself.

I used to have a tic where I would literally

punch myself in the face.

Oh, I have-- have you not heard the swear words that I've been

yelling this entire time?

Cause I've said bitch at least eight times.

Yeah, bitch-- .

Like, it's hard to tell when you don't know what

you're listening for, and it just,

like, all sounds mushed together.

I remember the first day this happened, and I had known

nothing about any of this yet.

I hadn't heard anybody in the hallway.

I hadn't heard whisperings about things,

but I remember I was sitting in class,

and one of the girls I'm in class with looks over and goes,

"Oh, my god," like, "Rose, did you see what happened?"

And I'm like, "What do you mean?" And she's like,

"There's this girl saying that she caught Tourette's,

and what's going on?" And I'm like,

"What are you talking about?" She pulls up this video,

and I watch it, and it's this girl that, like,

I think she was a senior at the time,

and she's literally like, talking about how she just

woke up from a nap with tics,

and it was this crazy thing.

And I was like, "Dude, I'm freaking out, like,

are they gonna like come for my head on this one?"

Like, I remember in that moment being like, "I'm not contagious,

but are people gonna think I am?"

Now, there was all these noises in the hallway and all these

things going on, and all of these people, like, pouring out

support to try and help these other people who were doing

what I'd been doing for years by that point and, like,

struggling to gain support for.

Tourette's is not contagious, and it's very rare.

Fewer than 1% of the population have it.

So what was causing it?

I mean, not exhibiting any of these signs before that,

and all of a sudden, in 2011, in the fall, you know,

this is happening. Like, why?

What caused it in the first place?

It was such a mystery.

So this is...

my puppet Oscar that I got from Burger Fest here in Hamburg.

More people are drawn to Oscar than the trombone, so kids

won't pick up my trombone and break them.

Nobody likes to be harped on.

So when you're trying to fix posture or something,

Oscar does a better job of being a little kinder about it

than-- than your teacher.

My name's Bradley Meholick.

I was the high school band director

and marching band director for the LeRoy Central School District

from 2001 to 2018.

2011, from my perspective, the band was at a high point.

We had had a lot of success at the state level with

the marching band, which was my big baby.

Prior to the outbreak,

I think I was living in a good place

and thought things were going,

um, things were going really well.

The onset was fast.

I would hear a

or almost like a quick yip, and it was usually accompanied

with a head jerk, a tilt, or an arm jerk.

Within a matter of weeks,

I had...

two in one section, one up a little bit closer to me.

So something was definitely going on.

It was like, what, '10, '11, '12?

What year was it, 2011, you said?

This was 14 years ago? Oh my gosh.

I'm Traci, and I'm here to talk about the tic incident that

happened at the LeRoy Junior-Senior High School.

Can I stop bouncing now?

If I show you pictures of me back then,

I was like an emo kid,

and I had the slick hair, and the dark black makeup,

and I was super just like,

like I said, I didn't try to make a lot of friends.

I did marching band, and I was in, like, choirs.

My first encounter with the tics was in the lunchroom.

I don't recall which girl that it was, but I remember she had

a vocal outburst.

It, like, freaked me out, because she, like, screamed.

She, like, made a high-pitched noise.

Some of the kids were like, "What the is wrong with her?"

"Look at this stupid bitch."

Like, really mean. Like, teenagers are mean.

I don't even think I knew what Tourette's was,

let alone tics or anything like that.

I wouldn't say I had any close friends that came down

with any of the tics.

There was a girl I was in marching band together with.

We were friendly with one another.

It's not like when it started, it was all of us at once.

It was like one or two girls,