Pubdate: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Author: Annie Gowen, Washington Post Staff Writer

HEROIN TAKES DEADLY HOLD ON MD. COUNTY

Today, Kristi Ziemski will not speak of the time between March 15 and April 
9 of last year. The feelings she has - about killing her mother, about the 
days afterward spent in a drugged haze, about stepping over the corpse as 
she went in and out of the house - are "unexplainable in words," she said 
softly.

But she will speak of heroin, the drug she believes imprisoned her at the 
Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. Now 20, Ziemski 
looked pale and drawn as she sat in the visitor's room in a baggy sweater, 
a far remove from the pampered teenager she was, a Sunday school aide with 
the "face of an angel" as her father puts it.

"Heroin ruined my life," she said. "It has ruined my family's life. It took 
me away from me. It took my mother away from me."

Doris Ziemski was killed with a butcher knife and left sprawled for days in 
her foyer in what Kristi's prosecutor calls a heroin-related slaying. But 
her mother's life is hardly the sole one to be taken by the drug in Carroll 
County, Md., an otherwise tranquil place of farms and subdivisions 50 miles 
north of Washington.

Seven of its young people have died of overdoses in the last four years. 
Dozens of other residents in heroin's vise have turned up in emergency 
rooms. The county of 152,000 people has Maryland's first and only probation 
officer devoted solely to helping heroin-addicted youths, and bright 
yellow-and-black "Heroin Kills" billboards and bumper stickers have become 
common as residents fight back.

"It's a plague that has come upon Carroll County," said local state Del. 
Carmen Amedori (R). "It has really, really taken its toll."

Carroll has sorrowful company, in Maryland and beyond, as heroin has 
migrated from its traditional enclaves in city neighborhoods to scattered 
suburbs and towns nationwide. Four other counties that orbit Baltimore - 
Anne Arundel, Cecil, Harford and Howard - have suffered double-or even 
triple-digit percentage increases in treatment cases, although the absolute 
number of addicts remains low. And nationally, opiates - overwhelmingly 
heroin - account for more new cases now than marijuana or cocaine.

Long stigmatized as a dirty drug because it had to be injected to produce a 
swift and blissful high, heroin from South America is now so potent that 
inhaling the powder works just as well, making it easier to use and 
enhancing its appeal among young people looking for a thrill, experts say. 
On average, users are less than 18 years old when they first try it, nine 
years younger than in 1988, according to the National Household Survey on 
Drug Abuse.

Kristi Ziemski was 14, and not even a high school freshman.

She didn't know it was heroin that older boys were offering in the back 
seat of a car on a trip to Baltimore's gritty Park Heights neighborhood. 
They simply called it "raw." Whatever it was, Kristi knew she wanted a high 
that would obliterate her typical teenage worries. Using a straw, she 
snorted the powder from a dollar bill.

"When I found out that it was heroin, I was shocked," she said. "I was 
like, 'Oh my gosh.' I thought heroin was bad. For junkies using needles."

The realization didn't deter. "I don't want to glamorize it," she said, but 
heroin made her feel great. Warm and hazy and contented. So there came 
another time, and another, and soon she was expelled from Westminster High 
School for truancy.

"The stereotype has been this down-and-out person with open, running sores 
and track marks," said Lt. Terry Katz, the Maryland State Police commander 
in Carroll County. "That's not what it is anymore. The face of heroin right 
now is a middle-class kid, race irrelevant. It's the all-American kid, 
except they've now done the dance with death."

Said H. Westley Clark, the director of the federal Center for Substance 
Abuse Treatment in Kensington: "Heroin is being embraced by white suburban 
kids, as well as Hispanic and African American kids. That's the key message."

The scope of that embrace is elusive, because studies that seek to capture 
heroin trends often conflict. But Clark and other experts said that 
although the drug is still not nearly as prevalent as marijuana or alcohol, 
the number of heroin addicts has risen nationwide. In testimony at a Senate 
hearing last month, officials of the Office of National Drug Control Policy 
put the total at 980,000, up from 630,000 eight years ago.

Surges, however, have not been universal. Heroin admissions and overdoses 
have dropped in Virginia. Prince George's and Montgomery counties have not 
experienced what Baltimore area counties have, officials say, and treatment 
admissions are down in Maryland outside the Baltimore area, according to a 
January report by the University of Maryland's Center for Substance Abuse 
Research.

"No, there is not a statewide heroin epidemic," said Erin Artigiani, 
coordinator of the substance abuse center's Drug Early Warning System.

But here and there, in Maryland and elsewhere, problems mount. In Plano, 
Tex., police say that since 1997, 17 teenagers have died of heroin 
overdoses either at home in Plano, partying in nearby Dallas or while away 
at college. About 15 Fairfax County teenagers a year seek treatment for 
heroin addiction from the county's Community Services Board, whereas "five 
years ago, we didn't see any," said Patrick McConnell, director of youth 
services for alcohol and drug abuse.

Heroin remains the "drug of choice" in Baltimore, and its use is rising in 
the District, particularly among the young, said Larry Siegel, the city's 
senior deputy director for substance abuse services.

When a suburb falls victim, the cause seems as simple as bad luck and 
proximity to a city with a heroin problem. One, two or a handful of people 
import heroin into a community, and use spreads like a virus. Recovering 
addicts trace Carroll County's outbreak to an addicted teenager from 
Baltimore who introduced heroin to a circle of Westminster High School 
seniors in 1994.

A recovering addict, now 21, said two Westminster seniors approached him on 
Halloween night when he was 14. Soon he and a friend, Scott Payne, also 14, 
were using daily and trying to enlist friends old enough to drive into 
Baltimore to buy.

"I'd be like, 'Want to make money real quick? I'll give you $15 to take me 
into town,' " said the addict, who agreed to be interviewed only on 
condition he not be identified "I'd peer-pressure 'em into going, because 
we needed a ride." Eventually, he said, the drivers would end up hooked, too.

"We're a very rural area, and you have kids who don't have a lot to do," 
said Linda Auerback, founder of Carroll County's anti-heroin group, 
Residents Attacking Drugs, whose Web site (www.heroinkills.com) and video 
are now used nationally. "It's such a trusting community and still kind of 
quaint in a lot of ways. . .‚. We had no public awareness of heroin at the 
time. Heroin was introduced, and you had kids who had money and had cars 
and were looking for something to do. These are the kids who are easily 
infiltrated by anything."

Another recovering addict and former student at the county's Liberty High 
School said she had barely even tried beer when a boyfriend gave her heroin 
two years ago. Like Kristi Ziemski, the girl did not know what the drug was.

Despite warnings from other high school-age junkies, she became an addict 
in three weeks, driving to Baltimore before school to buy. She would return 
to school, but only for weight training and lunch, and then leave to do 
more drugs. "I didn't care about anything," said the addict, who also 
agreed to be interviewed only on condition she not be identified. "All I 
cared about was heroin."

"When you first start out," Kristi Ziemski said, "you think you're going to 
have fun and like the feeling, but it takes you over, it's so powerful. 
I've been in rehab after rehab and detox after detox, and I always went 
back to it."

As Ziemski's addiction deepened, she became pathetically skinny. Black 
circles as big as 50-cent pieces underscored her eyes. She slept until 3 
p.m. nearly every day at the family home in Finksburg, came and went as she 
pleased, and took to scribbling her dealer's phone numbers on her bedroom wall.

Her parents, Lee and Doris, knew the cause was drugs but never suspected 
heroin, Lee said. They didn't learn the truth until Doris found a note her 
daughter had written but had thrown in the trash. "Mom," it said, "I'm on 
heroin. I need help." The parents fought. Doris wanted to be lenient; Lee 
didn't. Eventually, he moved out and they divorced.

Then Scott Payne died in his sleep on June 5, 1996, just a day after giving 
his mother a urine sample and saying, "Now do you love me?" His mother, 
Shirley Andrews, a nurse, said Carroll County considered his death a fluke, 
not evidence of a county problem. But it hit Kristi hard, because Scott was 
a friend with whom she had used heroin.

Clutching his photograph, she entered her first rehab program. The photo 
didn't help: She relapsed within days of leaving. There was another rehab 
effort, and another. None worked. Such failure is common among heroin 
addicts, officials say, because most programs are not long enough or 
intense enough.

Finally, Kristi entered a facility in 1997, emerged clean 30 days later and 
did not relapse, at least not immediately. "By then," she said, "I had had 
a whole lot more bad experiences. I'd gotten raped, and gang-raped. I had 
done prostitution. Just terrible, bad things. I was really tired of the 
lifestyle."

She moved in with a sympathetic cousin in Dundalk, Md. She got a job as a 
waitress. She met a guy and fell in love. They got an apartment. The future 
looked better.

Beyond her world, Carroll County was finally awakening to heroin's pull. In 
January 1998, Liam O'Hara, 15, a Westminster sophomore and soccer player, 
died in his sleep, having bought heroin at a Burger King where he worked.

Cory O'Hara, a Westminster graduate who is now 21, later told lawmakers 
that until his brother died, he did not even known heroin was available in 
Carroll County. "I was later to learn that someone from my homeroom had 
died of a heroin overdose," Cory told a state hearing, "that one of my 
soccer teammates was struggling with a heroin addiction and that another 
classmate and neighbor had overdosed."

After Liam O'Hara's death, county prosecutor Jerry F. Barnes, using $4,000 
of his own money, launched the "Heroin Kills" publicity campaign, and 
Auerback and other parents formed Residents Attacking Drugs, or RAD. Lt. 
Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) came to the county to announce a plan to 
combat the epidemic in a variety of ways, including funding the position 
for the probation officer.

Lee Ziemski began helping RAD make a video, "Heroin Kills," a tale of a 
fictional youngster who dies after snorting heroin. He recalled thinking 
that the video might help his daughter. He imagined her pitching in to make 
it. What he didn't know was that, by then, Kristi had relapsed.

She and her boyfriend had stopped at a friend's house one day in February 
1998. He was sitting on a couch with 10 clear capsules of heroin on a 
coffee table. In the kitchen, Kristi saw another capsule. She went home 
with one. She snorted the powder. And the spiral began again.

She lost the boyfriend, then the apartment, and began living on the street. 
To support her $100-a-day habit, she stole money from the restaurant where 
she worked. Now injecting the heroin, she used veins in her feet, where no 
one would see marks. In November, she slashed her wrists.

"I didn't know any other way out," she said. "I was totally out of it at 
that point. I totally lost my whole world. I didn't care about anything 
anymore."

She was arrested for prostitution on March 15, 1999, and it was her mother, 
now 52 and deeply involved in a religious group, who came to get her out of 
jail. Now living in Hampstead, Md., after her divorce, Doris Ziemski was 
"overboard with religion," Kristi later told Maryland State Police 
investigators.

At her town house, Doris began reading the Bible to Kristi, interrupted 
only by trips to church and visits from Doris's prayer group, who "laid 
hands" on the girl and prayed in tongues. Kristi's father recalled that in 
a telephone conversation, Doris told a relative that she had finally saved 
Kristi. "She's a different person," Doris reportedly said. "You'll see her. 
Maybe on Easter."

On Palm Sunday, March 28, Kristi and Doris began arguing about religion. 
The mother said the daughter would have to move out if she did not read the 
Bible and accept religion, according to a police report. Kristi said she 
was sick of religion. They pushed, shoved. Kristi picked up an Army bayonet 
- - a souvenir from her father's military days - and brandished it. Doris 
fled downstairs.

Eventually, Kristi grabbed a butcher knife and stabbed her mother in the 
chest as Doris "continued to scream that K. Ziemski was the devil," 
according to the police report. Doris tried to flee, but Kristi followed, 
knocked her mother to the floor and stabbed her five more times.

Kristi later told police she was high on heroin, having bought earlier that 
day from a friend. Barnes, who prosecuted the case, said he does not think 
she was. "There was no indication she didn't possess the requisite criminal 
intent," he said. But Barnes does believe the killing was drug-related, 
because Kristi was suffering "severe heroin withdrawal" that produced 
physical sickness and edginess.

Kristi washed off her mother's blood. She stole her mother's purse and 
drove off in her mother's car. A few streets away, she stopped, because she 
was crying too hard. She sat for a long time, then drove to Park Heights to 
buy heroin. She remembers little about the next 12 days, she said. She 
stayed in motels in Baltimore, doing heroin she bought with money from her 
mother's bank account and returning to her house a couple of times.

The week after the killing, Lee Ziemski had trouble reaching his daughter 
and ex-wife by phone. He went to the town house to check. Through a back 
door, he could see a body on the floor in the front hall. It appeared to 
have Doris's fluffy blond hair.

Maryland State Police detectives caught up with Kristi the next day, April 
9, at a seedy motel in Baltimore. She told them she had no idea why they 
were there. Next, she found herself in a bare room in the Carroll County 
Detention Center. She had a paper gown; a cot; a mattress with no sheets or 
blankets; a Bible; and overwhelming guilt. When she next saw her family, in 
a courtroom, "hate was all I could see," she said.

Doris's service was held at the Pritts Funeral Home in Westminster. Lee had 
been there just three months earlier, filming the climactic scene of RAD's 
anti-heroin video, the funeral for the dead addict.

There are signs the county has checked its heroin wave: Hospital overdose 
admissions held steady last year. But problems keep coming: The seventh 
death was April 3, and the son of a Maryland state senator overdosed on 
March 15, but lived.

In November, Kristi pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in 
prison. She spends her days in the prison sewing shop, learning how to make 
Maryland state flags.

She dreams about her mother. In the dreams, Doris is alive. "She's just 
normal. She's my mom," Kristi said. The daughter was weeping quietly as she 
spoke, wiping her eyes with both hands. "I really, really believe she 
forgives me."

She added: "I feel terrible about myself. I feel so much guilt and shame. I 
wish I could go back and change things, but I can't. I think about it all 
the time. If I wouldn't have been high, would it have happened? I just know 
that heroin turned me into a different person."
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