Pubdate: Thu, 13 Jan 2005
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2005 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Kathy McCabe

SIFTING THE ASHES OF GRIEF

Daughter's Death From Heroin Spurs Firefighter's New Battle

When heroin calls come in, Tim Lawrence doesn't hesitate. The Lynn 
firefighter rushes to the scene, gives oxygen to overdose victims gasping 
for breath, and helps stabilize them before an ambulance arrives. And more 
than once, he's looked them in the eye and offered hope. "I say to them, 'I 
know what you're going through,' " Lawrence said. "'My daughter died from 
this.' I get right close to them and I say, 'Look, you need to get help.' "

A firefighter for 17 years, Lawrence is used to answering calls for help. 
He's battled blazes long into the night.

He saved a police officer's life in the late 1980s -- for which his union 
named him Firefighter of the Year.

Now he's on a new rescue mission. After his only daughter, Kathleen, 21, 
died 14 months ago from a heroin overdose, Lawrence is helping to sound the 
alarm about the deadly drug that is hooking young adults across Essex 
County. He's speaking out, hoping to save other addicts -- and their 
families -- from the heartache of heroin.

"I don't have any magic words," said Lawrence, 49. "It's easy to be angry 
at everybody. . . . But the truth of the matter is, if anything good is to 
come from this, I can't be angry. . . . We have to look at this situation 
and say 'What can a community do?' "

When Lawrence speaks today at an antiheroin conference at Merrimack College 
in North Andover, he has a simple message: drugs can take anyone prisoner. 
"The plain truth of the matter is, addiction doesn't discriminate," 
Lawrence said last week at fire headquarters. "It doesn't matter if you 
come from a rich  family, a poor family. It really doesn't matter if you 
come from a family that  loves you, or that you go to church every week. It 
does not discriminate."

In Lynn, Lawrence is taking part in Communities That Care, a new initiative 
to promote healthy living among youth. There is a lot of work to do. In 
2004, there were 39 deaths from heroin and other opiate overdoses in Essex 
County. Another 27 deaths, many of which are still awaiting toxicology 
reports,  are thought to be opiate-related, according to data tracked by 
the State Police  unit assigned to the district attorney's office. The 
number of deaths could be higher, however, since emergency rooms are not 
required to report drug overdoses to authorities. Essex District Attorney 
Jonathan W. Blodgett hopes to have a bill filed in the Legislature to 
require that. In 2003, Kathleen Lawrence was among the 54 opiate-related 
deaths in Essex County. She died Nov. 1, 2003. In addition to her father, 
she left behind her mother, Joan Lawrence, and three brothers, John, 26, 
Michael, 19, and Timothy, 16. Her addiction began with sneaking beers with 
friends. She moved onto pot and heavy use of OxyContin. When the little 
blue OxyContin pills got too expensive,  at about $80 a pop, Lawrence 
turned to heroin, which police say now costs just  $4 a bag.

To encourage others to face their addiction, the Lawrence family revealed 
Kathleen's struggle in her obituary. A scholarship in her name was set up 
at Teen Challenge, one of the many drug rehabilitation programs Kathleen 
attended over the last four years of her life.

Since his daughter's death, Tim Lawrence has quietly reached out to others 
struggling with addiction. Police, probation officers, and others regularly 
ask for his help in placing addicts in treatment. And there is the 
challenge of work, facing the threat of heroin overdoses every time he 
reports for duty. Despite his grief, Lawrence never stays behind in the 
station. "I can't ask people to be brave and face up to this problem and 
then go hide," he said. "What we need to do as a community, and not just in 
Lynn, is get people to understand how dangerous heroin is."

Blodgett said that today's conference, which is expected to draw up to 200 
people, is the first step of a strategy to educate people about heroin 
abuse in Essex County.

"This is not just a law enforcement problem," Blodgett said. "This has to 
reach a level of awareness that it stays with everyone. I don't have the 
answers. What I do know is if we don't do a better job educating kids 
and  families that this [heroin] is so deadly and potent, then we'll 
continue to have  these senseless tragedies."

Tim Lawrence remembers his daughter as "absolutely the most beautiful 
girl," whose birth on Feb. 6, 1982, helped ease the pain of another family 
tragedy. Two  years before, the Lawrences had buried their 6-month-old 
daughter, Elizabeth,  who died due to complications from heart surgery. 
"When Kathleen was born, my family really believed she was a miracle baby," 
Lawrence said slowly.

Shy as a little girl, Kathleen grew up to be the heart of her family. At 
home, she often looked after her three brothers. She visited her 
grandparents next door every day. She played youth soccer, softball, and 
shared a love of running with her father. The two grew close on long runs 
through Lynn Woods. "I still can't talk to my boys the way I could talk to 
Kathleen," her father said. "I just think that everything we went through 
together made us closer." At Classical High School, Kathleen had a lot of 
friends, played sports, and earned decent grades. However, by her senior 
year, she was hooked on OxyContin,  a drug her parents then knew little 
about. Lawrence isn't sure what, or who, turned his daughter on to drugs. 
It probably was a mix of teenage rebellion and insecurity, he said. "She 
was kind-hearted and smart," Lawrence said. "When she got serious about her 
school work, she would definitely surprise herself. But her problem was 
her  self-esteem. Everybody would always say what a beautiful girl she was. 
But she  never saw herself that way."

In the last four years of her life, she enrolled in several rehabilitation 
programs, at one point even moving out of state for treatment. She attended 
meetings of 12-step recovery programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. 
Sometimes she lived at home, attending outpatient programs. Other times she 
lived in halfway homes. For a year, she worked, waitressing at Puleo's 
Dairy Bar in Salem. She planned for a life beyond drugs, taking courses at 
North Shore Community College in hopes of becoming a substance abuse 
counselor. "She would say to me, 'Dad, who better to understand these 
people than me?' My daughter tried program after program to try and get 
better. It's not like she  just gave up," Lawrence said.

Yet for every stint in rehab, a relapse was never far behind. On the job, 
Tim Lawrence's biggest fear was that he would respond to a heroin call and 
find his  daughter at the scene.

In the end, he was off duty when he got the call in November 2003 about 
Kathleen's death. (The family has declined to discuss the details). 
Kathleen's addiction took a financial and emotional toll on her family. "It 
takes many, many tries to succeed in rehab," Lawrence said. "People have to 
get  up and try again. In the end, she just wasn't able to try that one 
last time." And so now her father is trying for her. He hopes parents start 
to talk with their kids about heroin, and that communities work on 
prevention strategies. "This problem was not unique to the Lawrence 
family," he said. "People are out there whispering about it among family 
members, but nobody seems to say what  needs to be said, that heroin is a 
major threat." It isn't easy for Lawrence, a soft-spoken man, to talk about 
Kathleen. As he did while she was alive, Lawrence has sought the comfort of 
faith and the compassion of friends. He visits her grave every day and 
carries her picture everywhere he goes. Through grief counseling, the 
Lawrences have befriended other couples who have lost children to heroin 
addiction. He also finds strength in reading books on grief and loss. And 
very often, he turns to his daughter's own words, written while in recovery 
just a year before she died.

"You just never know," she wrote, "when God is going to take someone from 
here and make them an angel."
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