Sarah Stellner, 20, who died of a
heroin overdose last month.
Posted on 06/12/2005 9:54:22 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
BELL CENTER, WI - Sarah Stellner was the quintessential small-town girl, moving last August to Madison for the excitement of better job opportunities in a vibrant college town.
She came from this hamlet of about 20 houses clustered in a hollow in the rolling hills of bucolic Crawford County, with the nearest town Gays Mills, population 630.
"I don't know what we could have done different. We gave her a good upbringing," Sarah's grieving mother, Cindy Stellner, said last week at her home 110 miles west of Madison, where she raised Sarah and four brothers. "I probably will never understand it. I probably will never know why."
Sarah, 20, was found dead in her Langdon Street apartment the morning of April 26. Although police are still waiting for the results of toxicology tests to pinpoint the cause of death, Sarah's roommate, Morgan Fenick, 17, admitted that she had injected Sarah with heroin. Drug paraphernalia was found in the apartment.
A more lethal form
Sarah's death is a reminder that heroin is staging a resurgence in Madison and Dane County, police said. Area law enforcement officials say that an increase in heroin use has been on their radar for the past five years, and a purer, more deadly form of heroin is hitting the streets.
Heroin treatment admissions to publicly supported drug treatment centers in Wisconsin increased 34 percent, from 823 in 2001 to 1,103 in 2003, the most recent year available, said Michael Quirke of the state Bureau of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
"What we are seeing is the distribution and sale of heroin is increasing," Sgt. Gordon Disch of the Dane County Narcotics and Gang Task Force said. "It took a downward trend after the popularity days of the '70s and early '80s and it was rather a rare thing to encounter in the late '80s and '90s. Now it seems to be on the increase. And the information we are getting from the crime lab is that it is in purer form."
A joyful beauty Sarah's father, Duane Stellner, maintains saws for saw mills. Cindy Stellner is a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home. Sarah was a middle child, between older brothers Shannon, 32, and Shawn, 29; and younger brothers Nathan, 12, and Ryan, 9. She attended North Crawford High School, graduating early in January 2003.
With her long, blond hair and smiling eyes, Sarah was a joyful beauty with many friends, her mother said. She was working at the time at Cookies by Design on Mineral Point Road.
"She liked camping, the outdoors and swimming. She used to pick wildflowers. . . . She liked plants and had a lot of plants in her apartment," she said. "She always wanted to go on in school, to go into interior design. She also had mentioned to me that she might be interested in elementary education. She liked the idea of having her summers off. She wanted to take trips."
Drug education failed
It isn't as if Duane and Cindy Stellner hadn't talked with Sarah about the dangers of drugs. They did, and she had drug awareness education in school. It's bewildering, Sarah's mother said.
"I'm so much against drugs and have always hated drugs all my life," Cindy Stellner said. "She knew how bad they were. . . . That's why I just don't know what makes them fascinated with it. I just don't get it. I don't know what makes them want to try it, what makes it so attractive."
The Stellners are still shocked by the nature of their daughter's death and struggle to get through each day.
Cindy Stellner said she doesn't understand "what went wrong" when Sarah got to Madison, but she must have gotten "caught up in the party thing."
Madison police are trying to trace the source of the heroin. "This is an ongoing drug investigation," said police spokesman Mike Hanson.
An earlier overdose
An additional cause of grief, even anger, for Cindy and Duane Stellner is that Sarah accidentally overdosed on heroin once before her death, but they were never told of the close call.
"This happened on March 5. She had a bad reaction to drugs and they called 911 and she went to the hospital, but the hospital can't notify you because she was of age, and I think that's awful," Sarah's mother said.
"Had we known, we probably could have saved her, gotten help. Like my husband said, we would just go down and pick her up and bring her home. I only think this had been going on for the last couple of months. We knew they were having parties at the apartment," she said. "It's so hard to get them to open up at that age. So it's really hard for parents to do anything."
Sarah was rushed to UW Hospital for treatment of the heroin overdose, but the hospital could not call her parents because of state and federal privacy laws.
Lisa Brunette, UW Health spokeswoman, said the hospital emergency room offers a variety of interventions to people who overdose, but cannot compel a patient to receive treatment for alcohol or drug addiction.
"I think the (privacy) law should be revised so they can call the parents," Cindy Stellner said. "One phone call. It doesn't matter what age they are. I'm sure most parents would agree with me on that. I think emergency situations should be reported to parents, because parents have rights, too."
The allure of heroin
It's no secret that heroin is gaining in popularity, particularly with people in Sarah's age group and even younger, said Michael Waupoose, program manager at UW Health's Gateway Recovery clinic for substance abusers.
"Over the past two years, we've seen an increase in the number of clients reporting heroin as the drug of choice," Waupoose said. "We're seeing an increase in late teens and early college students. . . . I'm not sure why that is. It may be that it's more available and now we're seeing it be used by a younger crowd. For us, it's particularly alarming when we see it being used by teenagers."
The problem, Waupoose said, "is it's such a powerful, potent drug. It's very alarming that there's 16-, 17-year-old kids shooting up heroin. It really speaks to the need of parents to stay on top of what's happening with their kids."
Waupoose added, "People don't have to keep on dying."
Heroin is cheap here
It is believed that most of the heroin on Madison's streets arrives via Chicago, said Christopher Hoyt, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's Chicago region. The opiate sells for about $100 to $125 a gram, which is enough for about 10 "hits" or doses, Hoyt said.
Once someone is addicted, it's not unusual for them to have a $150-a-day, or even $200-a-day heroin habit just to avoid becoming ill from withdrawal symptoms, said Dr. Randy Kieser, medical director of Madison Health Services methadone clinic. The clinic is the only one of its kind in the city. It had 250 patients in 2000 but now has 380 patients and a waiting list of 30.
Methadone is a synthetic narcotic that eases heroin withdrawal and does not produce a high. A methadone dose lasts 24 hours and costs about $14, including therapy and medical supervision.
The heroin addicts treated at the clinic, 3113 E. Washington Ave., "are tired of being on this constant squirrel cage of trying to keep their body from getting sick," Kieser said. "They'll hear about the clinic and call us."
Kieser added, "Right now we're going through a cycle where heroin is available, it's not very expensive and young people are finding it makes them feel different. It's a warm feeling, a relaxed feeling of comfort. The problem is, they don't know how potent it is and it may start affecting them physically. That's where the kids get into trouble.
"It affects their heart rate. Blood pressure and breathing slow down. A person will actually stop breathing. They can suffer brain damage, heart attack, stroke, seizures or even death."
Parents await answers
Sarah's parents hope police arrest the heroin dealer or dealers. "Probably the worst is still ahead for us, with things in the courts that will be coming up," Cindy Stellner said. "We don't have the answers we need yet."
They hope most of all that publicity about Sarah's death will deter young people from experimenting with the addictive opiate. "Hopefully, something good will come of it. That's what I pray for. I hope people will wake up and think twice before they do anything like that."
Yes, we need safer smack and we need it now!
Naw "Smack is Wack"
"She used to pick wildflowers. . . . She liked plants and had a lot of plants in her apartment," she said. "She always wanted to go on in school, to go into interior design.....
There are some girls who are like this, sensitive, arty....and with a fatal attraction to drugs and death. I have known one or two. It usually ends badly. Some become famous artists or photographers for a while, but not for long.
"They" can't beat us militarily so they will let us beat ourselves by making stronger recreational drugs more and more accessible.
As parents, we can only do so much. At the end of the day, it's all about the choices our kids make for themselves. We can give them the tools - ultimately it's up to them to pick them up and use them well.
That is crazy. The damn War on Drugs is more to blame than some dirt farmer in Afghanistan.
Doctors used to be the ones in charge of the pharma industry in America, now it is some mid-level bureaucrat who studies spreadsheets looking for anomalies in doctors prescription records so they can have the doctor arrested. Deeper pockets to thieve from than anyone else.
I was in high school in the early '70's when the piece (sic on purpose) & love scene was going on full bore. There were drugs around. There were no meth labs or a fraction of the drug issues we have today.
The DEA and the reforms of 1973 has created this problem and until we get the COURAGE to admit we've taken the wrong track politically expect more deaths like this kid and more loss of civil liberties.
A 17 year old roomie helped her shoot up. The mother is probably right in that her daughter hadn't been doing heroin for for much more than a couple of months. Her family would have surely noticed something during the last Christmas holidays, for instance. But she must have gotten in with some real losers including that young 17 year old.
It's ironic that if the 17 year old had gone to hospital with a overdose, her parents would have been notified, and if they were anything like the 20 year old's parents, she would have gotten help. But Sarah, at 20, was too old for that.
Too bad there wasn't a Deep Throat at the hospital.
Well, this is how it should be. Sarah Stellner will be an example of what not to do. I really don't see why I should waste even a moment feeling sorry for her. So long as I don't have to pay for their treatment or healthcare, I don't particularly care if losers from Madison want to ruin their lives by using heroin.
Longbow
Sad story, but who in this day and age doesn't know that taking drugs like cocaine and heroin is dangerous?
This is has been going on since the 1960's.
Looks a bit like Laura Palmer.
Sounds like quintessential secular "morality": be a nice person, love the arts, love nature, want to help "the children". No mention of whether there was any religious foundation to any of these admirable "values" the parents instilled in this poor child. In my experience, Mad City was and is a place where the entire culture is dedicated to destroying whatever values you brought with you. Unless you have a rock-solid foundation for your beliefs, it will chew you up and spit you out as crazy, hopelessly liberal, or dead. Such a beautiful, empty place. Great hockey town, though...
Either way, scary stuff for any parent to read.
Yup! He was the Serpent in a Garden of Eden. That's usually the way. Someone using offers the innocent and naive a bite off the drug apple. The results are always Biblical.
I've never understood why people with any intelligence or future would get involved with heroin. During my college years I was a mess. I drank heavily, smoked heavily and did many kinds of drugs as they came available from LSD to nitrous oxide. I was offered heroin on many occasions, (I lived in Seattle during the grunge era), and even then I knew that it was just bad news and definately not something I wanted to try. All you need to understand this is to see a couple of junkies. You'd think people would figure out the same thing about meth too. "Uh, gee, these guys are immaciated, irrational, and have no teeth, that must be a great drug." I suppose it's just evolution in action.
My theory is that these girls experience reality so intensely that they can't stand it after a while. The same sensitivity that makes them artists causes them to want to seek refuge from reality in drinking and drugs.
Male artists are sometimes the same way, but they have such big egos they can take it.
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