Pubdate: Sun, 11 Sep 2005
Source: Daily News, The (Longview, WA)
Copyright: 2005 The Daily News
Contact: http://www.tdn.com/forms/letters.php
Website: http://www.tdn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2621
Author: Courtney Sherwood
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

PROMISING LIFE DONE IN BY DRUG

In her 32 years, Tara Nicole Lian found time to lead two lives.

She was wife, daughter and mother, a woman who loved music and nature and 
tried to treat everyone with compassion.

And she was a heroin addict. In search of her next fix, she hurt the people 
who loved her most.

Just before she took her own life in August, family members say the Tara 
they loved had triumphed, but she couldn't handle the despair she felt at 
what she had done.

As a child, Tara Nicole Lian lived her life with a smile on her face. She 
was born June 21, 1973, in Longview.

"She was the pride of my life," said Tara's grandfather, George Charette. 
"She was a good kid."

Tara loved camping, swimming, anything outdoors, said her mother, Carol 
Charette.

In grade school, she picked up the violin and fell in love. By the time she 
reached junior high, she was playing with the high school orchestra, Carol 
Charette said.

She continued to play as a student with Kelso High School's class of 1991. 
When she wasn't making music, camping, or creating art, Tara liked to hang 
out at Skateworld with her friends.

It was there that she met Jay Lian in 1989.

"She was just fun to be around," Jay said. "We went to Skateworld, we went 
to several dances at school, we went shopping at Portland, we went to the 
beach."

When Jay and Tara learned they would be having a baby, they decided to get 
married. Jay, already out of high school, took a job at Weyerhaeuser to 
support the family.

"Tara had the baby in April and graduated in June," Carol Charette said.

"It was hard to get pregnant and marry that early, but things were good," 
said Carol, who stayed close to the young couple as they raised her 
granddaughter. "Tara and Jay were in love, and they were good buddies."

Three years later, Jay and Tara had a son. Not long after he was born, Tara 
started hanging out with a new group of friends.

"When she tried heroin, I'm not even sure she knew what it was," Carol 
Charette said. "Then she tried it again, and pretty soon she was hooked."

"The drug just totally consumed her," Carol said. "Life didn't have much 
meaning to her after that."

The downward spiral was at its worst in 2001 and 2002, when Tara seemed to 
care about nothing more than heroin. Even so, she went to treatment centers 
several times. Although she didn't stay clean, Jay remembers good moments.

"There were a couple days here, a couple days there, where things would be 
better," he said. "We would go out to dinner together. I would remember 
that she was somebody down deep. She wasn't just a druggie. She loved her 
kids and family very much, no matter what."

Other times, when Tara was desperate, "the draw of the junk was too much 
for her to pull out," said Jay, who has raised the children for a decade 
with the help of Tara's mother and grandfather.

She was in and out of jail on drug-related charges, and when Jay and Tara's 
youngest daughter was born 21 months ago, the baby spent time in a detox 
hospital for infants before coming home.

This June, Tara was arrested for drug possession and shoplifting.

"She was hungry, and she was probably loaded on drugs," Carol Charette 
said. "She took some food, and she got caught."

In jail, Tara got clean. The wife, daughter and mother who loved her family 
began to return, loved ones said.

"I had always hoped that something was going to change," said Jay Lian, who 
loved his wife through their 16 year marriage. "She was a very, very 
intelligent person. She had a lot of talent. She was an excellent cook. She 
was a very good artist. She played the violin. I knew that deep down inside 
there was a lot more than what I was seeing. I had seen it before."

On Aug. 18, she'd been off the drugs for two months when a judge told Tara 
she would serve up to five years in jail on charges of shoplifting and 
possession with intent to distribute.

"She couldn't handle the pain of what she had done to her family, what she 
had done to her kids, while on the drugs," Jay Lian said.

"She felt as though she didn't have much future," said Tara's grandfather, 
George Charette.

A cell mate found her with a bedsheet around her neck at around 5:20 p.m. 
that night, dead.
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