Pubdate: Mon, 13 May 2013
Source: Record, The (Kitchener, CN ON)
Copyright: 2013 Metroland Media Group Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.therecord.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/225
Author: Dianne Wood

SON'S DRUG OVERDOSE DEATH A WAKE-UP CALL, PARENTS SAY

Teens need to realize dangers

HEIDELBERG - Christine and Klaus Padaric don't care who knows their
17-year-old son, Austin, died of a drug overdose during a party at an
Elmira apartment last month.

They want people to know. Especially teenagers like their
son.

For them, Christine has a message: "Kids, this is real. This happens.
It's now happened to one of yours.''

Austin's death, from an accidental overdose of hydromorphone pills,
has been a real wake-up call for many of her son's friends, she said
during a recent conversation with her husband, Klaus, at the dining
room table of their comfortable Heidelberg home.

"It's painful every day to think of why did it have to be my son,''
she said.

 From what the family has been able to piece together, Austin went to a
party with friends at an Elmira apartment the night of Friday, April
5.

His mother says there were about six people there. One was a friend
Austin worked with at the Black Forest Inn in Conestogo where he had
just landed a new job.

Austin had been hanging out with this friend for about a month. His
usual school friends and skateboarding friends hadn't been seeing as
much of him, his mother said.

The new friend had been taking him to his Flamingo Drive apartment
where he lived with two other people.

Police charged one of those two people - a 20-year-old male - with
drug production and trafficking after Austin's death.

They found marijuana plants and 83 suspected hydromorphone pills in
the apartment. Hydromorphone is a narcotic pain reliever. A female
also faces drug charges.

Austin had told his parents he was going to the Elmira Maple Syrup
Festival Saturday and would be staying overnight with friends Friday.

That night, the teens crushed hydromorphone pills and snorted them,
the Padarics said. Around 3 a.m., their son was in distress and vomiting.

He was placed in a cold bathtub. The other people at the party thought
he would sleep it off and everyone went to bed, Christine Padaric said.

It wasn't until around 10:30 a.m. that someone called 911 and an
ambulance was sent.

Although the lanky teen wouldn't officially be pronounced dead for
almost another week, an MRI later showed that "A large amount of his
brain had basically died," his father said.

Paramedics managed to restart his heart at the apartment, but he
wasn't getting enough oxygen to his brain and never regained
consciousness.

His parents invited his numerous friends into his intensive care room
at McMaster Hospital in Hamilton. Close to 20 teens came to stand
sombrely by his bedside.

Austin lay sprawled on his back in a green hospital gown - arms out at
his sides, his knees and legs exposed. His six-foot-four-inch frame
barely fit on the bed. There were tubes everywhere.

His mother took jarring photos of those moments.

"We wanted his friends to see what drugs looked like," she
said.

She gave his buddies time alone with him in case they had anything to
say.

After the Padarics discovered the extent of his brain damage, they
removed their son from life support.

They decided to donate his organs. Amazingly, tests showed all his
organs were suitable for harvesting.

"It was as though in that short week, he'd been able to repair his
body, even though his brain was irreparable," Klaus Padaric said.

His heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas and liver were given to five
adults.

Although that provided them with some comfort, "The amount of good
that came out of it is very small compared to Austin's death," Klaus
Padaric said. "It's not even close to a fair trade."

Austin's parents knew their son smoked marijuana on weekends and drank
with his friends. They didn't like it. They'd told him he couldn't
bring marijuana home.

"Austin was going to do what he was going to do," his mother
said.

They'd had the drug talk with him. He knew the dangers of
opioids.

They believe this was the first time he'd taken a narcotic and that
someone in the apartment gave him the pills.

Ironically, Austin had experienced what his mother calls "an epiphany"
about a month earlier. He came to realize that, "Anything good or bad
in his life was a result of himself - no one else," his mother said.
"He was in full control of his actions."

He'd even put up a list on his bedroom wall of the things he needed to
change. His father said he was "stepping into manhood."

Austin knew, for example, that he had to return to school to get
better marks in order to go on to college.

It appeared he was on his way. That's why his parents don't get it.
Why did he try hydromorphone?

They say their son was a polite kid who loved skateboarding, hockey
and snowboarding. Most of all, he liked hanging out with his friends.

He wasn't loud or a troublemaker, they said. He had a picture of
daisies on his screensaver.

His mother believes there's something she can do to prevent his from
happening again. She wants to help create "safe constructive
activities for kids in smaller towns."

"Had there been something better to do, Austin would have been doing
it," she said.

"There's no shortage of camps for little kids and after-school
programs. You become a teenager, what do you have to do here?"

Her son loved going to the Wellesley Skate Park, even though it wasn't
a proper park, just a multi-sports pad inside the community arena.

A plan to create a new dedicated park is underway. Austin's friends
have started a petition to have township council name it after him.

Austin would have loved that, his parents say.

"He always used to say if he won the lottery, he'd build a skateboard
park," his father said.

Michael Parkinson, community engagement co-ordinator of the Waterloo
Region Crime Prevention Council, agrees youth need improved recreation
activities - "the kind of activities they want to do, at times that
suit them and at no cost," he said.

If a drug overdose is suspected, someone should perform mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation as well as chest compressions, Parkinson said.

"An opioid overdose is respiratory failure," he said.

James Quin Kurtz, 20, is charged with marijuana production, possession
of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, trafficking in
hydromorphone and possession of hydromorphone for the purpose of
trafficking, possession of psilocybin and breach of probation.

Lydia Devlin, 19, also faces a number of charges.

"The circumstances surrounding the activities that occurred that night
are still under investigation by police," Olaf Heinzel, a Waterloo
Regional Police spokesperson said Thursday.
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MAP posted-by: Matt