ANTI-DRUG DRAMA ASKS: 'WHOSE KID WAS THAT?'

Skit Shocks Parents Out Of Complacency

It took Thomasina Piercy a year after her son died of a heroin overdose to
look at a photograph of him.

It was another year before she could pick out a frame to put his picture on
display.

Now, about 2 1/2 years after her son appeared in a dream with stirring
words, Piercy is finally able to wholeheartedly fulfill his final request.

"He spoke only nine words and they were the last nine words he spoke to
me," she recently told a room full of parents at Eldersburg Elementary's
back-to-school night. "He came to me in that dream and he said, 'It's not
what you say, it's what you do.'"

Piercy knew that with that age-old adage, her son was trying to tell her
that it was not enough for her to say she was against drugs.

She needed to do something about it.

This school year, Piercy, who is principal of Mount Airy Elementary School,
and a dedicated group of law enforcement officers, community leaders, high
school drama students and families personally affected by substance abuse
introduced a new drug-awareness program at all 36 of Carroll County's
back-to-school nights.

It's called "Not My Kid" - a reference to the natural complacency parents
feel in thinking that none of the substance abuse issues that have
propelled Carroll into the national spotlight with its fight against heroin
will ever afflict their child.

It's a sentiment with which Piercy is all too familiar.

In January 1999, her son Michael DePinto approached her with a concern.
Sitting at their kitchen table, the 19-year-old told Piercy that friends of
his were experimenting with heroin and that he didn't know what to do.

"Well, would you ever try anything like that, Michael?" she asked, and was
comforted when he told her that he was not that stupid.

Two months later, Piercy found him dead in their Westminster apartment from
a fatal dose of heroin. His friends told her that it probably was the first
time the 6-foot-6-inch Westminster High graduate and basketball player had
tried the drug.

Chipping at the value system

"It always comes as such a surprise when your child tells you, 'I know
someone using drugs,'" said Piercy. "And I was just not prepared. I truly
feel that with my not being as prepared as I could have been, I did not see
the red flags.

"I did not realize that when a child starts coming to you and saying some
of his friends are doing drugs, that's when they start chipping into the
core value system you raised them with and that core value system weakens
with each friend who tries drugs until it gets to the point that they could
say yes themselves."

Piercy is a gentle, soft-spoken woman who earnestly talks about all
students - from elementary to high school - as children. She grew up on a
farm near Westminster, went to Western Maryland College and settled in her
hometown, cognizant of its reputation as a good place to raise children.

Her wisp of a voice reminds you of the kindergarten teacher who would pick
you up and get you a bandage whenever you scraped your knee on the
playground. And when she talks about her eldest son, she tends to wring her
hands and her large, expressive eyes well up with tears.

Deciding to speak out

Before this fall, Piercy had spoken publicly three times - at the
Westminster Police Department's annual fifth-grade anti-drug assembly -
about her son's death.

But when the number of drug overdoses and heroin deaths among Carroll youth
continued to climb - at least 13 county residents have died of heroin
overdoses since January 2000 - she resolved to do something more.

"I knew I couldn't tolerate that anymore, knowing what I knew," Piercy said.

"I couldn't let more children die and let more families experience what we
had experienced. I thought more about what Michael had said to me and I
knew our county was in trouble," she said.

She went to see Charles I. Ecker, interim superintendent of Carroll
schools, who told her about a program started six years ago by the Howard
County state's attorney's office called "Not My Kid."

The more Piercy learned of it, the more she knew it was what she was
looking for.

"I thought, 'This is the message we need to get out because that is exactly
what I experienced with Michael,'" Piercy recalled of her initial meetings
with Howard State's Attorney Marna L. McLendon and former Howard school
board member Stephen C. Bounds.

'Brings parents to reality'

Ecker agreed: "It talks to the parents and it brings parents to reality. A
lot of us parents say, 'It's not my kid, it's yours,' when in fact, it is
my kid. The Not My Kid program brings that home to parents and we're going
to need parental help if we're going to solve this substance abuse problem.

"I saw in Thommie [Piercy] a passion to do something," Ecker added. "She
picked up this Not My Kid ball and ran with it - she set a world's record
running with it."

Piercy and her group of volunteers began meeting in February to reshape and
expand Howard County's program.

They decided right away to take their presentation to all 36 of Carroll's
elementary, middle and high schools as opposed to starting only with middle
and high schools, as Howard had done.

They prepared material for each of the 36 schools' monthly newsletters.

Dramatic impact

To the recitation of alarming statistics on Carroll students' use of drugs,
they added a skit, calling in theater students and uniformed officers to
act out a drug deal and arrest.

After the belligerent teen-ager is taken from the stage in handcuffs, a
planted audience member hollers: "Whose kid was that?"

"Not my kid," responds a parent who is in on the act.

"Not my kid," chimes a second.

That's when Piercy, or a parent whose family has been affected by drug
abuse, steps to the microphone.

When she did so at Eldersburg Elementary, the audience in the cafetorium
was so hushed that the only noticeable sound was the click of Piercy's
heels on the polished floor.

"That was my kid," she said quietly. "Some things are so personal that I
don't usually even share them with my best friend or my husband. But I
think it's time to start sharing."

With that, she told them about Michael.