Pubdate: Fri, 19 Sep 1997
Source: The Times, London
Contact: Milk bottles save runaway girl from heroin 

A TEENAGE  runaway was rescued from a life of heroin addiction on the
streets after her photograph was printed on 75,000 milk bottles. Several
shoppers telephoned police to say that they had seen Kirsty McFadden, thin,
bedraggled and ill, begging in Bristol. 

Begging had earned her up to #100 a day, but most was spent on heroin for
her and her boyfriend and her weight had fallen to 5 1/2 stone. Now, a year
after leaving home, the 16yearold has been reunited with her family and
is back home in Newton Abbot, Devon, recovering slowly from her addiction. 

Miss McFadden was the seventh missing person to be featured on milk bottles
sold by Iceland, and was the first of them to be found. 

Police and social services launched a wide hunt when she failed to return
from school to her foster parents, with whom she had been living after
running away from home on previous occasions. It was thought that she was
travelling the country with a circus or funfair, but the reality was
grimmer. She slid into drug addiction, begging and living in cardboard boxes. 

The National Missing Persons Helpline was contacted and Miss McFadden was
chosen for the Iceland scheme, which was launched in April. Her photograph
was printed on fourpint containers of milk. 

She was picked up by police after customers realised that the face on their
milk bottles was that of the bedraggled girl who begged in the Broadmead
shopping centre. 

Miss McFadden said: "I am very glad that I was found. I ran away because I
was fed up with the social workers, and at first it was all right. It was a
bit of an adventure. For the first two months I was living in a squat, but
after that I was living on the street. 

"It just dragged on and dragged on. I was too scared to go home because of
the people I was with. I was making about #100 a day begging in Broadmead,
but I was spending it all on heroin for myself and my boyfriend. 

"I don't know what would have happened to me if I had stayed on the
streets. I am very grateful to the people who put me on the milk bottles
and the people who called the police." 

She said that she had given up heroin and was regaining her health. "When
you have a heroin addiction you do not eat and, when I was picked up, I
weighed only 5 1/2 stone, but I am almost up to 7 stone now." She hopes to
make up for the schooling she missed by studying at a college in Torquay.

Her mother, Cheryl, 36, said that she and her husband, Cliff, had "tried
everything to find her and are so pleased that this milk bottle scheme has
worked. She had run away before and come home again, but after she had been
missing for a few weeks we really began to worry about her and it got worse
and worse the longer she was away. 

"Every night Cliff and I would lie awake in bed wondering where she was and
what she was doing and worrying that she might be dead in a ditch somewhere." 

Her parents were disappointed that Kirsty chose to stay in a children's
home when she was first found, but later she rang to say that she wished to
come home. "I was horrified when I saw her," Mrs McFadden said. "She was a
bag of bones and her skin looked as if it was stretched like clingfilm. Now
she is eating like a horse and putting on weight again." 

A spokesman for the National Missing Persons Helpline said: "Each picture
runs for three weeks and this is our first success. We had hoped the others
would have been found as well because we picked especially vulnerable
missing people for the scheme." 

Lorna Webster of Iceland said that the milk containers with Miss McFadden's
photograph had been sold throughout the country. She added: "We are
delighted at this success and thrilled that the family has been reunited.
We hope some of the other missing people we feature will also get in touch
with their parents."