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."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom