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."
Heat destroys LSD. Smoking it doesn't work.
Yeah right. Sarah's last words were, "Shoot me up with heroin because of that damn War on Drugs". Just a WAG, but I'd say the drug users themselves are to blame.
Even IF heroin were legal, how would that have changed anything -- Sarah was only 20, her roommate 17. Certainly heroin would still be illegal for them.
No?
It sounds like PCP also known as angel dust or sherm.
I agree. I was a bit of a party girl when young, but I stayed away from all of the hard stuff. We've known about this for so many years.... it must be a passive way of committing suicide.
I'll cede the point that Wright was first in modern history to derive heroin from opium, I cede that Bayer was first to market it.
However since it is a relatively simple process using acetic anhydride to create heroin, can you prove that it was never created before a patent was obtained.
The earliest patent on Cement that I can find on Cement is 1757 but we know the Romans built with some variation of it.
The earliest patent on a Steam engine is 1698 but we know the Greeks made extensive use of steam in mechanical devices.
The knowledge of both was lost for generations.
Being the first to profit from something is not the same as being the first to create.
Since we are both professional hair splitters we just better agree to disagree.
I will cede that as a modern scourge Heroin did not come into being until the late 1900's.
The mother of the victim was told by the hospital in which the girl was stored for months that the cigarette was laced with PCP and LSD. Why would he tell her that if LSD doesn't "work" when smoked?
Heroine is super addictive. If you are weak willed to begin with, ONE dose and your hooked. Yet people want drugs legalized. They wouldn't say that if they saw what this stuff does to a life in as little as one month.
That's why you have to be careful with legal opiates, such as oxycodone. People take it for the wrong reasons, such as mild pain for a sprained wrist. It's too much drug for minor pain like that.
What utter crap. Sure, make it legal and even more accesable, that will fix the problem. NOT! That's the same as saying if we stop charging car theives with car theft, your car won't get stolen. The fact is, it IS a stratagy of our enemies to supply our population with addictive drugs. Not only does it supply them with losts of money for weapons and fowarding their "cause' it makes our children weak and useless, destrying us economiclly and morally.
"Rumors of Hashish or marijuana being laced with LSD should be regarded as false. LSD is broken down and destroyed at 250 degrees farenheit. Seeing as how a flame ranges in the thousands of degrees, it is obvious that the comparitively fragile LSD would be rendered useless in a smoking blend."
-- explore-drugs.com/drugs/H/Hashish.html
Well at least they were only doing heroin; thank God that they had seen the tv ads about that evil marijuana!
/s
Why do you think that was? Could it not have been because kids in those days were still more morally intact, listened to their parents, their parents themselves more strict about their child and his/her activities? BTW, I was just a year or so too young for the Woodstock scene, but my brother wasn't.
The only reason there were no meth labs around in those days is because nobody thought of it at the time. They were cooking up other stuff though. All the same issues were around then as now, except on a smaller scale some of the reasons are as I mentioned above, another is because we now have a much larger population, our morality has slid even further.
Blaming it on the DEA is rediculous, they make LESS drugs available on the street, not more. Legalizing drugs will not make the problem go away, it will make it WORSE! You just won't be happy until we end up like Holland where half the people are too stoned to work and live on the backs of those that do.
"Hey kid, wanna buy some drugs? It's LEGAL! so you know it's safe! The government wouldn't make it legal if they weren't would they?"
That's what you are pushing.
The LSD soaked in the paper of the joint works BEFORE the fire burns it. It is a contact drug, putting LSD soaked paper in your mouth is how you injest it.
Works for me!
You seem to have a better grip on this that the guy who blames the DEA for Sarah shooting up.
Are legal drugs any less potent than illegal drugs? As we know, Sarah was using fairly pure stuff, which means the quality of illegal drugs is up there. What would be the purpose of making drugs legal? Wouldn't that make them even more pure?
Would legal drugs loose their appeal, ie: "awww,I don't want those drugs, they are legal so I can't make a rebelious statement against my parents, so no thanks"
I fail to see how legalizing drugs would reduce their usage, destroy less lives. I can only see it amplifying the problem 100 times more.
" The usual way was through ingestion of the drug on a medium like blotter paper..."
Or cigarette paper. Burning destroys the drug, sucking on the paper before it is burned allows it to be injested.
Why would anyone do that? Seems extremely wasteful.
I have never heard of smoking LSD in any form. I'm not saying it's impossible but just unheard of mostly.
PCP or Angel Dust is easily smoked.
You can't SMOKE LSD, you can lace the papers of a joint or cigarette with it though and injest it from the paper.
Thank you, narses! I was wondering if what we'd been told about her was flawed!
In whatever way it was done, the girl was "murdered" by some teens who moved on with their lives never considering that they are murderers.
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