Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jun 2006
Source: Times, The  (Munster IN)
Copyright: 2006 The Munster Times
Contact:  http://www.nwitimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/832
Author: Ken Kosky
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

MANY DISAGREE HOW PORTER COUNTY'S DECADES-OLD HEROIN EPIDEMIC BEGAN 
TO GET OUT OF HAND IN 1995

Something strange started happening in Porter County in 1995. The 
undercover officers whose job it is to keep drugs out of the county 
began seeing a drug they hadn't seen in years - heroin.

Its scourge spread like lightning. Within a few years, hundreds of 
people - most in their late teens and early 20s - were hooked on the 
highly addictive drug, and many were overdosing and dying each year.

Authorities said they traced the start of heroin's surge in Porter 
County back to Sandra Stephens' home in the Mink Lake area of 
Valparaiso. They labeled Stephens the root of the county's heroin 
problem - the woman who got numerous kids hooked. She ended up going 
to prison for more than six years.

But Stephens said the county's heroin epidemic was well under way 
before her involvement, and obviously grew while she was locked up 
far away from Porter County.

Stephens is speaking out for the first time - for many reasons:

To make it clear she wasn't the Pied Piper that led young people to drugs.

To acknowledge she was an addict back then and made things worse by 
letting young addicts live and party in her home.

To let people know she's been clean for nearly a decade and to 
discourage young people from getting messed up with heroin.

"To rehash it has been hard for me, but I'm doing it in hopes it 
might give the community information," Stephens said.

"I'd like to be part of the solution now ... because I feel like I 
did take something from the community."

Stephens, 46, who still lives near Mink Lake Golf Course, did some 
drugs, but never heroin, when she was younger, but gave it up in the 
mid-1980s while she was pregnant and nursing her children.

In the early 1990s, she got divorced and opened a business - 
Mancino's Pizza & Grinders on Lincolnway in Valparaiso. She said she 
made the mistake of letting one of her young employees live in her 
basement, and he soon brought over his drug-using friends to party. 
At the peak, dozens of people young enough to be Stephens' children 
came and went from her home.

One of the juveniles who partied at her home said Stephens was lonely 
and wanted to party. The juvenile, "Rachel," who asked that her real 
name not be used because she's now a college student and a mother, 
confirmed Stephens' account that she wasn't the one who brought 
heroin to Porter County.

Rachel confirmed other circles of heroin users already had been 
established, and she said it actually was the guys who hung out at 
Stephens' house that brought heroin there. But Stephens used her 
family's trust money and bought and shared heroin, Rachel said.

"I'd say Sandy's house is where a lot of the addicts congregated, not 
necessarily where it started," Rachel said.

Another young girl, who also asked not to be identified, said 
Stephens was wrong, because she was an adult who failed to stop the 
kids' behavior. But the girl said in many ways Stephens was 
manipulated by young people who wanted to use her home.

That girl believes Stephens' house was a place where heroin use 
spread, but heroin-using groups also were active in Hobart and 
Portage, and other heroin use was going on in Valparaiso.

The girl said at one point, she felt she knew all of the area's 
heroin users, but it spread fast and began involving others outside her circle.

Stephens said her problem was that she was a pushover. One day, the 
young drug users at her home talked her into doing cocaine, then 
talked her into trying heroin for the first time.

"I'd read an article in Rolling Stone magazine about the emergence of 
heroin. For some reason, it piqued my curiosity," she said.

"I wasn't thinking clearly, because I'd been doing some coke."

Her own heroin use, which started in November 1995, turned into a 
full-blown addiction by April 1996. Soon she was spending big money on heroin.

She would go on drug runs so the others wouldn't steal her money or 
drugs. Then they would share their heroin and inject it into each 
other. By law, that made her a drug dealer, but she is adamant in 
maintaining that she wasn't pushing drugs on anyone.

"I'm not trying to shirk my responsibilities," Stephens said.

"I'm fully aware of my contributions, negatively, and I feel horrible."

Still, she believed she was painted as the root of evil, so 
authorities could say they eradicated the cause of the problem.

Stephens said drugs led her to use up family money and write some bad 
checks. But because her period of addiction was so short, she said 
she never turned to prostitution or stealing or many of the things 
other addicts turn to.

Still, the clouded thinking that accompanies drug addiction led to 
events that likely never would have happened if she were clean. One 
time, a young person partying at her home held her then-8-year-old 
son over a balcony to get him to stop "being a brat," and it seemed 
funny at the time.

"Now, I'm appalled," she said.

Stephens remembers that right before she was arrested, she prayed, 
"Please let me be normal again."

After about nine months of heroin use, Stephens was arrested Aug. 22, 
1996, on charges of purchasing and distributing heroin, and 
maintaining a common nuisance.

Stephens pleaded guilty and one of the people who testified against 
her at her sentencing was Rachel, who was 16 when she began hanging 
out at her home.

"She put the needle in my vein and injected it for me," Rachel testified.

Then-Deputy Prosecutor Todd Shellenbarger called Stephens "the root 
of a poisonous tree" and said she hooked numerous kids on drugs. But 
Stephens' attorney, Larry Rogers, said Stephens was doing fine until 
she allowed her employees to live at her home. Rogers said the young 
people provided drugs, and she immediately spiraled out of control.

The judge said that even though Stephens wasn't 100 percent 
responsible for what happened to the teens, she was wrong for sharing 
drugs with them and doing things like pretending to be a parent to 
get them excused from school.

Stephens was sentenced to 20 years in prison. With credit for good 
behavior and taking part in prison education, she was released June 2, 2003.

Robert Taylor, Porter County drug unit coordinator, said authorities 
underestimated heroin's scope and power, and they wrongly thought the 
end of a party house spelled the end of heroin. But while Stephens 
was locked up, young users who once partied at her home spread heroin 
to others, and Stephens said groups not affiliated with her also 
fueled the epidemic.

"It spread like wildfire. There ended up being several groups of them 
who were into it," Taylor said.

One of the people who once hung out at Stephens' home, Nate Bauer, 
eventually died because of heroin. Others landed behind bars or began 
taking methadone, a heroin-replacement drug. By 1999, Taylor had a 
list of 250 heroin users in Porter County. Now the estimate is more than 1,000.

During the time Stephens was locked up in Porter County Jail and in 
Rockville Correctional Facility in central Indiana, her ex-husband 
took custody of their children - Josalynn, now 20, and Ross, now 17.

She got out of prison the day before her daughter graduated from high 
school, but "nobody would pick me up, so I missed it."

Josalynn since has moved back with her, while Ross remains with his father.

"Both of my kids are great. Some people whose kids have done heroin 
might resent it," Stephens said.

But she said drugs cost her so much.

"The humiliation of prison, being away from my family, loss of money 
and self-esteem ...," she said.

"When I got out of prison, I wasn't going to go down that road ... I 
don't have any cravings for it."

Stephens said anyone thinking of using drugs should keep in mind they 
could become addicted. They should "play the tape to the end" - in 
other words, think about what the end result of drug use will be - 
not just the temporary fun.

"Don't do it," she said

"It's stupid. It's not going to bring you anything you hope. It might 
bring you temporary relief, temporary fun. The problem with drugs is 
. what it can bring you at the end."

Heroin keeps growing, she says, because police have been unsuccessful 
in infiltrating heroin circles, and because kids are bored, have too 
much money and aren't being monitored closely by their parents.

"You go to parties and it's there and you say you're never going to 
do it, but you do," she said.

Stephens doesn't think heroin will ever go away here. But for her, 
she's focusing on her family, her dogs, her job managing a pizza 
parlor in Porter County, her role in community activities and her 
goal of owning her own business again.

"I have a million and one things I want to do," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman