CHILDREN REMOVED FROM HOME TEST POSITIVE FOR DRUGS

Daughter Says Mother Left Crack Cocaine In The Kitchen

The smell of the drug she smoked was always around her and her
children, ages 4, 6, 10, 16 and 17, her oldest child said.

They saw her and her friends smoke crack cocaine regularly, according
to police reports.

The 34-year-old mother of five had stopped smoking crack cocaine
once, but her mother's death drove her back to it, her 17-year-old
daughter said Monday. And sometimes she would leave the crack cocaine
in the kitchen and in her bedroom.

"It was harder for me because the kids really don't know what's going
on," the 17-year-old Carroll High School student said.

"I didn't like it. She knows I didn't like it. I told her, 'Look what
it's doing to us and to you.'

"I had been telling her, one day the people are going to come and
take the kids away."

True to her warnings, last week, the people of Child Protective
Services took her and her three youngest siblings from their mother's
home after receiving reports of drug use by the mother and children.
The four children tested positive for cocaine. The 17-year-old with
the long brown hair and the 10-year-old boy with the large eyes and
curly eyelashes also tested positive for marijuana.

The children are now in foster care, living in a comfortable, two-
story brick home in South Corpus Christi. The woman's 16-year-old
daughter is listed as a runaway in a police report.

Their mother is at the Nueces County Jail charged with one count of
child endangerment. Her bond was set at $50,000.

"We're doing fine," the 17-year-old said. "I'm not mad at her. She
just needed some help and she didn't get help in time."

Child Protective Services Public Information Officer Marina Yzaguirre
said it's not often that children test positive for drugs. Earlier
this year, though, Child Protective Services did remove 22 children
from area homes suspected of dealing drugs during a sweeping August
drug raid. Many of them tested positive for drugs.

"It's not very common, but we are starting to see it more and more,"
Yzaguirre said.

The younger children miss their mother, especially the 4-year-old boy
who asks his older sister when he'll get to see his mother.

"I tell them I'm going to be mom for a while," she said. It's a role
she said she's familiar with.

When money for food was scarce, it was up to the 17-year-old girl to
find a way to feed her four younger siblings. It also was her
responsibility to make sure they had clean clothes and went to
school. Their mother was too strung out on drugs to look after them
properly, the girl said.

"It was real hard," the 17-year-old said. "For me, (taking care of
four children) is too much."

Occasionally, she said, her mother would give her $10 or $15 that she
would use to feed or clothe the children. Her mother didn't work, but
the daughter wouldn't question where the money came from.

"I knew it was dirty," the 17-year-old said. "But it was all we had."

The 17-year-old said she doesn't know how the drugs entered their
bodies. She was told the younger children had higher concentrations
in their systems than she did. Too high, she was told, for it be from
second-hand smoke.

"Maybe they could have seen it and picked it up," she said.

Walter Roberts, senior staff member at the Palmer Drug Abuse Program,
said inhaling second-hand smoke usually doesn't show up in a drug
screening.

"(The mother) would have to be smoking an awful lot to make that
detectable in the test," Roberts said. "That's really highly, highly
unlikely, though if it's for a long enough period of time, it's
possible."