The new heroin
Overdoses mean tragedy for families

Milan Malina, 20, overdosed on heroin surrounded by friends who watched
him die. He languished for hours, semiconscious, vomiting, feverish,
lungs filling with fluid. His companions finally took him to a Plano
hospital after he stopped breathing.

Doctors could do nothing.

Milan had been motionless so long, lying on one side, that his blood had
pooled on that side of his body, said his father, George Malina.

"When we got there, he was blue on one side and blue in the face," Mr.
Malina said.

The Malina's grief for their son washes over them in waves. His friends'
lack of action disturbs them almost as much as his death.

"It scares us," Mr. Malina said. "The shock was that your friends could
be around you and let you die and not get you any help."

As they cope with their sorrow, the Malinas want to warn other families
about heroin: it can strike anywhere. Even the security gates around
their Bent Tree condominium couldn't keep them safe. Parents, schools,
police, churches and other community institutions in wealthy areas often
don't know or deny widespread drug use among their children. They can no
longer afford to think of heroin as a vice of the inner cities, of
minorities, of the poor.

It isn't.

"Part of the problem is this total denial with families," said Linda
Sharp, whose 17yearold daughter fatally overdosed on heroin in March.
"It was given to my daughter. It's cheap, it's readily available, and
it's deadly. Everybody knows about it except the parents."

Milan Malina died June 8, becoming the fourth fatal heroin overdose in
Plano since New Year's Eve. He was the youngest of three sons, with a
stocky build and dark brown eyes. His father, a business consultant,
frequently traveled internationally. Mr. and Mrs. Malina have been
married almost 30 years.

Milan was a sweet boy who mediated quarrels among friends. "Milan loved
Luciano Pavarotti," said his mother, Joann Malina. She wears her son's
photograph in a heavy silver locket around her neck. "I used to play
that in his crib to lull him to sleep."

He apparently began using drugs in his midteens. He withdrew from his
family, dropped out of school, lost all ambition. Not every drug user
shows such obvious symptoms, his mother noted. Many of his drugusing
friends stayed in school and made good grades.

"They could function," Mrs. Malina said. "Milan couldn't."

He finally went straight a couple months ago, after being arrested in
California. He quit drugs, lived with his brother, attended Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings, began seeing a counselor. His family said he hugged
them when he came into the house. He worked out with his mother, went to
Mass and vowed to make A's when he reenrolled in college.

"God had blessed us, in retrospect, with two months of absolute
pleasure," Mr. Malina said. "He was clean and happy."

But at the same time, Mr. Malina said, Milan fretted to a friend in
California that his buddies in Texas didn't like him now that he was
sober. He apparently couldn't resist the pull.

Driven by their losses, both the Malinas and Ms. Sharp have begun
exploring the young, affluent subculture in which their children lived.

They've jettisoned the stereotype of heroin addicts as emaciated,
shuffling junkies in the inner cities. Drug dealers now find an almost
perfect market in uppermiddle class neighborhoods. The young people
have money to buy drugs; they have cars; they're sophisticated and
blase; and the social pressure to use drugs is enormous. They aren't
arrested because they don't buy or do drugs out on the street, where
police could easily spot them. A call to a beeper brings a delivery.

Mr. Malina and Ms. Sharp said they're shocked at the drug use among
their children's friends, many of whom attended a Christian academy,
where teenagers are supposed to be insulated from such things. And
they're horrified by the young people's unwillingness to call for help
when someone overdoses.

Ms. Sharp's daughter, Cathy, didn't overdose alone. Cathy had just
finished drug treatment in Austin when she went with two friends to buy
heroin. Cathy was reluctant to use a needle, so one of her companions
offered to inject it in her, said Williamson County Prosecutor John
Bradley. She reacted badly, stopped breathing, and her companions
revived her. She begged them not to take her to a hospital because her
parents would be angry. Her friends took her to her father's house in
Austin. Her father found her dead on her bed the next morning, Mr.
Bradley said.

"This code of silence the kids have you don't narc on friends, you
don't rat on friends," Ms. Sharp said. "So great, you let your friends
die? They're afraid of ruining friendships."

In an unusual move, the prosecutor was able to charge one of her
companions with criminally negligent homicide for helping her inject
drugs. The young man pleaded guilty to the charge and awaits sentencing.

Collin County Medical Examiner William Rohr said the heroin deaths have
established a troubling pattern.

"We didn't have our first death in Plano until New Year's Eve 1996," Dr.
Rohr said. "Then all of the sudden, in five and a half months, there are
four."

The dead were 19, 20, 21 and 36. In three of four cases, the victims'
lungs showed signs of bronchopneumonia, which develops after some sort
of insult to the lungs such as aspirating vomit. The condition usually
takes at least four hours to develop, Dr. Rohr said.

"They lingered for a while," he said.

Long enough for their companions to have called for help.

After their son's death, Mr. and Mrs. Malina began challenging the
status quo. The Malinas want hospitals to provide better written
observations and evidence collection in suspected overdose deaths. They
want parents to wake up and watch out.

The Malinas have started a nonprofit group, called the American Way of
Life Foundation, that they hope will be as ubiquitous as Mothers Against
Drunk Driving. They want to send volunteers to be with families at the
hospital when a child overdoses. They want to convince kids to call for
help when there's an overdose and they want young, former users to talk
to other youths about the dangers of drugs. They want police and
prosecutors to pursue charges against those who help overdose victims
obtain drugs. They want to give meaning to their son's death.

The human losses from heroin are real and climbing. Parents need to know
there is a heroin trend, and that the users may be just across the
breakfast table or down the block in the $500,000 house.

For information about the American Way of Life Foundation, call (972)
2486454. For drug treatment information, call the Greater Dallas
Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse at (214) 5224999.

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