Pubdate: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR) Copyright: 2013 The Oregonian Contact: http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324 Author: Les Zaitz Series: Under the curse of cartels - An Oregonian Special Report LOSING A SON TO HEROIN Jedidiah Elliott came home late on a January afternoon in 2011, his heroin dealer at the wheel. Jed's mom and sister were outside, keeping his dad company as he fixed a car. They watched the pickup pull into the driveway of their home on the south end of Bend. Jed, blue in the face, got out of the pickup, took a few steps and collapsed on the lawn. His parents, Chad and Lois Elliott, rushed to his side as his sister, Amber Elliott, called 911. "Oh my God!" Amber cries to a dispatcher in a tape of the call. "My brother's dying! I don't know what's wrong!" Her mother screams in the background as the dispatcher tells Amber he'll get help on the way. Amber, 18 at the time, shouts to the others: "Do a CPR! Do a CPR!" The dealer, Brian G. Sinclair, is heard yelling, "Breathe, damn it, breathe!" Medics arrived and spent 20 minutes working on Jed, a 21-year-old musician, before rushing him to St. Charles Medical Center. In following days, Deschutes County sheriff's detectives began tracing the heroin in Jed's veins. The trail took them from Sinclair to a second dealer, then to a third. Police believe that last dealer's source was a Mexican drug cartel. Heroin killed 143 Oregonians in 2011, 147 in 2012. Meth and cocaine claimed dozens more. Together, the victims left years of unfulfilled potential and thousands of bereft friends and relatives. They and their dealers, from street hustlers to kingpins, also undercut any notion that cartels and their ugly machinery are a problem only in Mexico. "Drugs here universally come from bloody hands," said Dwight Holton, Oregon's interim U.S. attorney in 2010-11, "whether it's here or abroad." "Bad choices" Jed was the family prankster, a kid who bummed money from his parents by asking, "Can you help out a poor fellow American?" He helped in his parents' concrete masonry business, the three of them often working together on job sites. But his passion was music. He started a hip-hop band, Jedidiah Bullfrog, as a teen and was starting to get noticed. Local radio stations played his songs, and Jed had a contract with a record company to produce an album. The band's MySpace page attracted more than 4,000 friends. Sepia-toned photos of Jed -- one shows him smiling, a straight-brimmed cap cocked on his head -- carry dozens of comments from admiring young women. One says: "nice picture! Cute Smile!" Another: "marry me." "He was a charmer," his dad said. Jed's problems began with surgery to remove his tonsils when he was 17. He discovered, he told his parents later, that painkillers erased his sometimes crushing anxiety. Without his parents' knowledge, he found doctors to keep prescribing the pills. He dropped out of high school but later earned a GED. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to four counts of criminal mischief after he and two friends spray-painted his band's initials all over Bend. He landed in jail for 28 days. "The bad choices that I've made had nothing to do with you guys. It was just me being stupid," he wrote in a remorseful letter home. "I think you are the best parents in the whole wide world. ... All I want is just to come home and be with my family and work with Dad and stay outta trouble." Sometime after his release, he switched from pills to heroin. His dad now figures that heroin, running as little as $10 a dose, was cheaper. Jed quit hanging out with friends. "He wasn't as happy anymore," Chad Elliott said. "He got to be a loner." In May 2009, Lois Elliott reached up to dust the top of a medicine cabinet and found a syringe and spoon. She showed them to her dumbfounded husband. "You mean my son is a (expletive) junkie?" he said. Only later did they realize why spoons had been disappearing. When they talked to Jed, he told them in tears that he never wanted them to find out. He said he needed help. Lois took him to St. Charles for a referral and helped him enroll at BestCare Treatment Services, a nonprofit addiction and rehabilitation center based in Redmond. He told counselors there he had been using heroin for six weeks. "He wasn't the classic strung-out heroin addict," BestCare Executive Director Rick Treleaven said after reviewing Jed's records. But Jed checked out after spending one night in a 14-day program and relapsed. By late 2010, heroin's hooks were in deep. Still, he gave his mom his cellphone, loaded with numbers for drug contacts, hoping to cut off his supply. Soon after, Lois took him to St. Charles for another assessment. "He wanted to be his old self again," she said. As they were going in, she noticed he had a dealer's number written on his palm. "Mom, if they don't help me, I need something," he said. At St. Charles, a doctor urged him to return to BestCare. Jed called but was put on a waiting list for those with no money to pay. "He hugged me," Lois said. "He said, 'I love you, Mom. Thanks for helping me.'" He also washed off the phone number. A troubling trend Jed wasn't unusual, Treleaven said. The BestCare director started noticing an uptick in middle-class young people -- "kids that should be going to college" -- popping pills at parties in 2008. Some became addicted to powerful opiates such as oxycodone. Some tried heroin after pills became too expensive or tough to get. "They start smoking. A few months later, they begin shooting up, and pretty soon they are hooked," Treleaven said. "It's a huge tragedy." Many overdose by accident, he said, "because they are clueless about being a junkie." Authorities estimate 100,000 Oregonians abuse heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other hard drugs. Police and public health officials report a particularly alarming increase in heroin use and deaths. The death tolls in 2011 and '12 were the highest in more than a decade. But hospitals and treatment clinics don't have near enough beds for those seeking help. "We have to stop talking about the problem. We have to stop doing another study. We have to stop appointing another group," said U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall, the state's top federal prosecutor. "We need inpatient drug treatment. We don't have it." For Jed, life took a nose dive in early 2011. On Jan. 16, 2011, Lois took Jed back to St. Charles. Jed was given paperwork on how to manage a narcotic withdrawal. "Call BestCare tomorrow as discussed," the orders said. Again, he was put on BestCare's waiting list. Four days later, a passer-by found him unconscious in his sister's car, which had run off the road. The family brought him home and kept him under close watch. "He said, 'You'd be better off without me.' He hated himself," Lois said. On the afternoon of Jan. 24, the Elliotts went to fetch a radiator to repair Amber's car. Jed was in a deep sleep in his room, and the Elliotts didn't expect to be gone long. But Jed had already texted Sinclair just after noon to say he had a gun to trade for heroin, according to phone records obtained from the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office. He signaled that he was in withdrawal: "I cant stop throwing up." Just before 3, Jed was awake again and impatient. "Hey its jed," he texted. Sinclair replied, "im on my way call u in a min." Sinclair picked up Jed and took him to his house. Jed shot up in the bathroom. The Elliotts returned home to find Jed gone. Amber told them she suspected he had headed off with Sinclair. Chad Elliott went to the driveway to begin installing the radiator. Lois started calling Jed's cellphone again and again. She also went to the computer to look up how heroin affects someone with asthma, like Jed. She printed out a story headlined "Drug addict died from asthma attack after taking heroin" at 4:24 p.m. Barely a half-hour later, Jed arrived home and collapsed on the lawn. At St. Charles, the family kept vigil at Jed's bedside. "I (saw) all the needle marks on his arms and wondered how did my precious baby boy get like this," Lois wrote later in a letter for court. "We were good parents. We tried to guide him in the right direction. We helped him with his music contract and taught him a good trade in masonry." Doctors told them Jed had suffered severe brain damage and would never recover. The Elliotts agreed to withdraw life support. His dad signed the form. Jed's strong young heart beat another 18 hours. He died Jan. 27, 2011. Following the trail Detectives, tracing the source of Jed's heroin, followed Sinclair, 29, and his girlfriend, 27-year-old Amber R. Frank, on runs to Portland to buy the drug. The couple typically went three times a week and bought 3 ounces, enough for about 165 doses. They later told police they were dealing to support their own addictions while waiting to get into a treatment program in Portland. Portland police joined the case and identified Zachary A. Wilson, 27, as the next link in Jed's supply chain. He was arrested April 6, 2011. He, Sinclair and Frank eventually each pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge. From Wilson, police traced the drug to Joaquin Segura-Cordero, 28. Portland police arrested him April 12, 2011, with a half-pound of heroin, enough for 440 doses. Police said the amount alone indicates Segura-Cordero was supplied by a cartel or cartel-connected group. A parallel investigation in Clackamas County linked Segura-Cordero to the April 3, 2011, death of a 17-year-old Milwaukie High School student, Toviy Sinyayev. Federal prosecutors in Portland indicted Segura-Cordero in both deaths under a "Len Bias" law -- named for the basketball star who died of a cocaine overdose in 1986 -- that carries a 20-year penalty for contributing to a drug death. Segura-Cordero pleaded guilty last October and awaits sentencing. Lois and Amber Elliott wrote letters to the judge sentencing Sinclair. "Losing Jedidiah means that we lost a beautiful smile, a crazy laugh and most importantly a man with a heart of gold," Amber, now 20, wrote about her brother. Lois wrote how, after Jed's death, her husband developed esophageal cancer and they had to shut down their business. A bank has foreclosed on their home, Jed's home. Mostly, she wrote of the ache of losing her son to heroin. "This drug ruined a good family forever," she said. At their home, where walls are covered with family photos, Lois and Chad Elliott talked about their son and why he died. At first, they wanted to keep their grief private. Later they decided to share their story so other parents and Oregonians understand the pain drugs inflict on families. Lois wondered aloud whether dealers think about the people their drugs will kill. She said they work for Satan. "They work for the Mexican cartel," Chad interjected. "And they don't care." Jedidiah Chad Elliott is buried near relatives at Miller Cemetery in Scio under a gravestone etched with his photo. It shows him in the same hat from his MySpace page. A ceramic bullfrog wearing a crown is among decorations on his grave. After night fell on the day Jed died, his cellphone buzzed to life in his mom's hand. A drug friend was texting. "Hay can you find anything," the message said. "Jed died this morning because of this drug he wanted to be clean so bad," Lois replied, "whoever you are I lost my baby for good." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom