GIRL REMEMBERED AS TENDERHEARTED SOUL

17-Year-Old Died, Apparently Of Heroin Abuse

Cedarburg - For more than four hours Monday, an unbroken chain of
mourners grieved the loss of a young woman whose death may have been
unlike any other in this city.

No one, it is believed, had ever died of heroin abuse in Cedarburg.
Seventeen-year-old Angela Raettig, it seems, was the first.

By 7 p.m., mourners filled the Mueller Funeral Home, then waited in
hushed silence until the service began.

Beforehand, family and friends had remembered Angela as a sprightly
dancer, a silly girl who effused fun, a tender heart who rescued hurt
bunnies - at least until about a year ago.

Her parents' pending divorce "broke her heart," but many other things
also must have gone wrong, said her cousin, 24-year-old Ami Nelson of
Beaver Dam.

By early November, "she didn't seem like she was there anymore,"
Nelson said. "She was lost, gone. You could see it in her eyes."

At the funeral, many wondered how heroin could have come into
Cedarburg, and how Angela chose the drug that apparently led to her
death. Her mother, Bonnie Raettig, found her dead in her bed
Wednesday morning, hours after she had taken heroin at a friend's
Cedarburg apartment. Autopsy results are pending.

If a journal written in drug rehabilitation can be believed, Angela
chose heroin.

She wrote that her early home life "was filled with good friends,
ballet, homework and fancy dresses. Everyone who surrounded me made
me feel like a princess."

But by eighth grade at St. Francis Borgia School, she wrote, her
grades had dropped and they stayed low. In April, the journal said,
she was put on probation for drug use, but she continued abusing
drugs, using cocaine, then trying LSD and finally, in June, heroin.

"Heroin is my drug of choice," she wrote. "I feel that I am an
interesting person and have the capabilities to be successful, but
just get caught up with the excitement of the drugs."

Angela's death is the most shocking event among a growing number of
heroin incidents in the area.

On Thursday, a day after her death, Benjamin R. Stibbe of Grafton
provided heroin to undercover officers in Milwaukee, according to a
criminal complaint filed Monday that charges him with two felony
counts of delivering heroin. An Ozaukee County prosecutor said
Stibbe, 23, could face more serious charges soon.

On Friday, Ryan Hinkle, 19, of Cedarburg was charged with felony bail
jumping after investigators allegedly found marijuana in his
apartment - the same one where he said he watched Angela take heroin
on the night before her death.

The bail jumping charge was filed against Hinkle because he was
already facing a felony heroin possession charge and was ordered not
to possess any illegal drugs. Cedarburg police said they had found
Hinkle and another 19-year-old Cedarburg resident with heroin in a
rest room outside of the Community Gym on Nov. 6.

Bonnie Raettig has said she does not blame Hinkle for her daughter's
death. And at the funeral, Angela's father, Mike Raettig, embraced
Hinkle's mother, Laura Hinkle.

The printed program included a poem Angela wrote about heroin.

"It was like the touch of a peaceful dove," she wrote.