Your Child...Your Responsibility!

Stop, Talk & Listen is a public awareness campaign developed by Putting Youth First, an education subcommittee of the Centralia Area Drug Task Force in Centralia, IL.
 
Stop Talk & Listen is to raise the awareness of 6th, 7th & 8th grade parents about the harmful effects of underage drinking.

I have so many emotions.
The pain is constant.

My baby girl is gone due to a heroin overdose which I believe could have been prevented.
 There is not a moment goes by that I stop thinking . . . hurting . . . wondering why.

  Jessica was such an outgoing, wonderful person. She was my world! I learned of her use of heroin May 25, 2007, the day after her high school graduation. What was one of the proudest days of my life, soon turned into terror. I don’t understand when a parent is desperately reaching out for help, why we didn’t receive it.
  There were several occasions I had contacted law enforcement, by phone and in person, begging them to please help me help my daughter. The responses I receive were unfair and wrong! I was told she is 18 years of age. There is nothing we can do to help. How can it be that my daughter at 18 can get an illegal consumption by a minor but still be classified as an adult when myself as a parent was desperately pleading for them to please help us?! She was pronounced dead two days after that court appearance.
  I felt so helpless. I recall driving through areas I thought she might be. Areas that an officer told me we might find her. On that rainy day, as I was frantically searching, an officer pulled up beside me and asked, “Have you found you’re daughter yet?” I was willing to go to any length to find her; reporting her car stolen, thinking since it was titled in my name; just maybe I could get help. I explained to the officer she was using heroin. Letting them know that if they had pulled her over she would have been under the influence of that drug. She would have been safer in jail than in our community.
  The morning of her death (September 20, 2007), I had talked to Jess around 3:00 a.m. In her voice I could tell she was under the influence of something – hoping and praying it was not heroin. After being told time after time there was nothing we can do to help, all there was for me to do was pray. Something told me that evening before her death that it was the last time I would get to hear her say, in her sweet cheerful voice, “Love you Mom.” My last hug; my last kiss; the last time I would see her alive.
  The morning the 911 call had been received, it was too late to save her. She had been injected with heroin, taken upstairs to an unfamiliar place, and left to die alone. Her perpetrator did nothing for her even knowing she was overdosing. (He had taken others to the hospital in the past with the same symptoms.) He is now in prison charged with drug induced homicide, obstructing justice, trying to destroy evidence, and possession of a controlled substance. His projected parole date is 9/21/2014. He still has his whole life ahead of him while my little girl doesn’t.
  At approximately 3:00 p.m., I heard a knock on my door. It was an officer standing here with another man. I didn’t realize the man next to him was the coroner. When the officer asked it I was Jessica’s mother, my first question was, “Is she in trouble?” My next question was “is she OK.” When they stood there in silence my heart broke into a million pieces – as it does everyday! All hope was gone. Jessica had a future. She was registered in college. She had already become a CAN. She loved her job of taking care of the elderly, which she referred to as “her people.” Jess was one of the most caring people in the world and loved dearly by many.
  This avoidable tragedy has taken not only Jessica’s life; it has taken mine as well. I can’t explain the pain, the anger, the frustration I feel. All I know is these emotions will never fade. We, as parents, should have the right to make decisions for our children, no matter what age they are, if we suspect they are in harm’s way.
  I couldn’t save my child. I can only hope to help save other families from the pain and torture that myself and so many others feel. Jessica didn’t want to die. She wanted to be saved from that horrible drug. Had I received the help I was asking for, maybe she would still be here.