CHILDREN: LOST AND FOUND

Kids In Maryland Suburb Getting Addicted To Heroin

Cynthia McFadden, anchor: We begin in a Maryland suburb. A place where
parents thought they could give their kids perfect lives and protect them
from harm. But in this small town, evil crept in anyway. When we come
back, Connie Chung with a chilling warning for parents everywhere.

(Commercial break)

Announcer: Downtown's hour on Children: Lost And Found begins. And now
Connie Chung.

Connie Chung reporting: Our son is only six and already I'm worrying about
his teen years. I know it's early, I know, I do, but how can we prevent
him from becoming just another kid who gets mixed up in drugs. I mean,
you're an ordinary parent, you're doing all the right things. How does it
happen? That's exactly what I thought when I met some parents here in
Westminster, Maryland, about three years ago. They are fighting a heroine
crisis. Heroine that was brought in by their own children. They are normal
middle-class folks. Listen to their story, it could be yours.

(VO) Westminster is one of those ideal small towns. For years it was a
place where parents believed their kids were insulated from big-city drug
problems. Not any more. Take Charity McIver. She was an ordinary kid, a
girl scout, an honor student. The kind of kid you'd never suspect.

(OC) Why did you do drugs when you were only 13?

Ms. Charity McIver: A lot of it was just pure boredom. I just felt like
life is--there's just nothing to offer me.

Chung: (VO) Adults in Westminster thought they had created the perfect
community. Strict laws for kids so they couldn't get into trouble. No
loitering allowed.

Ms. McIver: We weren't allowed to do much around here. We can't do this;
we can't do that. We weren't even allowed to be at the mall.

Chung: (VO) Charity started smoking pot at 13. Experimented with LSD, and
cocaine, and then at 16 she snorted heroine the first time with her cousin.

Ms. McIver: I remember, I was like, 'Oh, give me some, give me some.'

Chung: (VO) The next time she says she did it a lot more.

Ms. McIver: It was great, great. It's just the most wonderful feeling. It
really is. It's just--there's nothing like it. It took me about three
months, and I was doing it every day.

Chung: (VO) As a young girl, Charity wanted to be a nurse but says she was
too scared of needles. By the time she was a teen-ager she was shooting
heroin. Did you have enough money to do heroin every day?

Ms. McIver: No, I didn't, I-- basically--my parents--I would take money
from them.

Chung: Stealing?

Ms. McIver: Yeah. Write checks out to myself and cash them.

Chung: What did you steal from them besides money?

Ms. McIver: Jewelry.

Chung: Precious jewelry that meant something to your mother?

Ms. McIver: Mmm-hmm. Yeah. A ring her grandmother had given her.

Chung: (VO) And then there's the story of her older brother Peter. He was
always very popular, smart. He liked to ride dirt bikes, but that was
before I met Peter two years ago. He was in the county jail for assault.

(OC) Why did you start doing drugs and heroin in particular?

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: Bored.

Chung: Bored?

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: Yeah, when we were kids, you couldn't do anything.
You know. You couldn't ride skateboards on the sidewalk, ride your bicycle.

Chung: Why didn't you go to the movies? Or, I don't know, go play baseball?

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: Because there wasn't enough excitement in it. I
don't know.

Chung: (Vo) At 13 Peter already was experimenting with drugs. A couple of
years later he unwittingly started using heroin.

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: We went down to buy some coke, and they ripped us off
and sold us heroin.

Chung: (VO) Peter and his friends were one of the first to bring heroin
home to Westminster where it spread across the county. Before adults
realized it, hundreds of suburban kids would be introduced to what once was
an inner-city problem. Many became addicted, others like Monica, a member
of the National Honors Society, or Mike a varsity basketball player or
Breanna a high school cheerleader, overdosed and died. Even Peter's
younger sister, Charity, says he helped pull her in as well.

Ms. McIver: Because he did it, you know, I wanted to do it, you know. There
was no part of me thought that it was really wrong or bad.

Chung: How many would you say of your friends or people you knew were doing
heroin? 30? 40? 50?

Ms. McIver: Oh, yeah.

Chung: 50 kids?

Ms. McIver: Oh yeah, yeah.

Chung: (VO) We were skeptical of Charity's estimate until we went out and
started checking with the kids themselves, their parents and the
police. We built a database of more than 200 young people in this small
community who had all used heroin.

Ms. McIver: God, there's so many.

Chung: And there are so many. One reason, a new more powerful version of
the drug hit the streets. Heroin could be snorted. For new users that
meant that needles weren't necessary. And for as little as 10 bucks kids
could get high. But what the kids didn't know was just how quickly they
would become addicted and that meant that their habit would drive them to
shooting up.

(VO) Like many Carroll County teen-agers Peter and Charity would make the
20-minute drive to downtown Baltimore.

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: As soon as we pulled off of the strip and hit the
first red light, I'd be doing it at the red light.

Chung: (VO) Peter sometimes made two or three trips a day. Occasionally
even making his little brother, Willy, who wasn't using heroin, drive him.

Mr. W. McIver: We would end up going down there and I would have no idea
where I am and like we'd pull up to the street, and be like, you know,
start getting stuff, and I'd be like, you know, 'What are you doing?'

Chung: (VO) Kids from Westminster were easy targets for dealers. Once,
Peter was robbed at gun point.

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: They stuck a gun in the window, the passenger side. I
was driving and he said, 'Kick out all the money.'

Chung: Did you give it up?

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: I didn't have the money, my friend did, but yeah, he
gave it up.

Chung: (VO) I couldn't believe what Peter did next.

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: A couple hours later, yeah, we went back down, but
not to the exact same spot, but right up the street.

Chung: Were you crazy?

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: I don't know, I guess.

McFadden: Peter and his friends were in heroin's grip. What started out as
thrill-seeking was destroying their lives. When we come back, Peter's
younger sister goes to the brink.

Ms. Hinebaugh: I called 911 and said, 'My daughter is dead.'

(Commercial break)

Announcer: Children: Lost And Found continues. Once again, Cynthia McFadden.

McFadden: The parents of quiet Westminster, Maryland, thought they were
providing good homes and raising good kids. They were shocked to discover
a sudden hidden epidemic of heroin use. Among the teen-agers using heroin
were Peter and Charity McIver. Siblings who became addicts without their
parents ever suspecting a thing.

Chung: (VO) And what about their parents? Leslie Hinebaugh and Peter
McIver loved their children. Believed they had provided a good home for
them. They told us more than two years would go by before they had any
idea their kids were doing heroin.

(OC) Were you involved in your children's' lives?

Ms. Leslie Hinebaugh: Absolutely. I was a stay-at-home mom. Volunteered in
the schools, volunteered in the community. Den mother, Brownie leader. He
helped with Little League.

Chung: The works?

Ms. Hinebaugh: The works. The typical middle-class family.

Ms. McIver: They did everything they could for me. Gave me
whatever--whatever we wanted. I think they spoiled all of us. But I think
they're good parents. Very good parents.

Chung: (VO) The McIvers did talk about the dangers of drugs.

Ms. Hinebaugh: I said, 'Don't fool yourself, you'll never be able to fool
me. I grew up in the '60s. I was part of the drug culture at that time,
and I said, 'You'll never be able to come home high, and I will know it.'
But I didn't.

Chung: (VO) But she didn't. She chalked up a lot of their kids' symptoms
to just being teen-agers.

Ms. Hinebaugh: Getting moody, angry. I mean, all teen-agers go through
those phases.

Chung: (VO) By her senior year, Charity would drop out. Yet despite her
addiction, she was still able to pass a high school equivalency test. And
even started college.

(OC) Do you think you should have been tougher on them?

Ms. Hinebaugh: No, we have the most stubborn children God ever put on this
earth.

Mr. Peter McIver Sr.: Oh, I agree with that.

Ms. Hinebaugh: No, I don't think we could have done anything differently.

Chung: (VO) Peter's drug use was taking over his life.

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: I spent like 13, 14 thousand dollars in three months
in '98.

Chung: (VO) And like his sister he was stealing from his parents.

Mr. Peter McIver Sr.: I think every TV in the house has been stolen three
or four times.

Chung: One time you left the pawn slip out after you took their TV.

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: I wanted her to get it back. You know, but I wanted
that 200 bucks too. Yeah.

Chung: Was that a cry for help?

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: No. I just wanted her to get her TV back.

Chung: When did you first suspect Peter and Charity were doing drugs?

Ms. Hinebaugh: Charity came to me a week before her freshman year in
college, and she said, 'I'm a heroin addict.' I mean, you could have
knocked me on the floor. I was stunned. And I was so naive, I said,
'Well, I'll just take a week off of work, and you can detox at home, and
you'll be okay.'

Chung: (VO) It didn't work. Over the next several years both Peter and
Charity went through rehab several times. But each time within months,
sometimes days, both were back on heroin. We caught up with Peter almost a
year after we met him. He was making his third trip to rehab.

(OC) When I last saw you at the detention center, you said you did want to
get clean.

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: Yeah, I wanted to get out of jail. I didn't want to
stay clean last time, it was just a front.

Chung: So you didn't mean it?

Mr. Peter McIver Jr.: No.

Chung: How many times have you been in and out of rehab?

Ms. McIver: Six times.

Chung: (VO) Charity and Peter's heroin addiction was ravaging the entire
family. A pattern being repeated throughout Carroll County, where heroin
use jumped to three times higher than anywhere else in Maryland. At its
peak, there were more than three overdoses a week and 20 young people have
died from heroin in the past five years.

Ms. Shirley Andrews: I still bake a cake for his birthday.

Chung: Shirley Andrews mom was trying to deal with her son Scott's use of
heroin, but says she had no idea he was so addicted. She found out when
she tried to wake him one morning. Her 16-year-old son was already dead.

Ms. Andrews: I knew from the minute that I saw Scott that it was too late.

Chung: And Michael Herra says he thought his son was smoking a little pot
but he never would have suspected his 15-year-old was on heroin.

Mr. Michael Herra: I told him I loved him and he says, 'I love you too,
good night.' And, you know, you go to bed and the next thing you're dealing
with is a--a dead child. It is incredible.

Chung: (VO) For the McIvers the situation was getting worse. So bad, in
fact, they even had to call the cops and ask them to arrest their own children.

Ms. Hinebaugh: We pressed charges. That was the only way we thought we
could convince them they had a problem.

Mr. Peter McIver Sr.: Charity probably--we've probably filed seven, eight,
nine charges against her at different times.

Ms. Hinebaugh: Mmm-hmm.

Chung: (VO) Looking back, Charity now says she was not ready to kick the habit.

Ms. McIver: I just knew, you know, that once I got out there on the street,
I just knew it was going to get me.

Chung: Did you ever come close to ODing?

Ms. McIver: I OD'd four times.

Chung: (VO) Another time her parents physically blocked her friend's car to
stop Charity from going to get a fix. What did Charity do? She tried to
kill herself.

Ms. McIver: I sat there in front of my mother and took like a bottle of
Tylenol and a bottle of my antidepressants and a bottle of something else
right in front of her and of course she called 911 immediately.

Chung: (VO) Charity recovered, but then one morning her dad went in to
check on her. She had just been released from jail about 12 hours earlier.

Mr. Peter McIver Sr: I went in and looked in, and she was basically laying
back on the bed, and it was like, at first I thought she was dead and then
went over and started shaking her.

Ms. McIver: He found me dead basically. I was lying like this.

Ms. Hinebaugh: She had no pulse, no respiration, and I had to do CPR. I
called 911 and said my daughter's dead.

Chung: (VO) And then Charity's mother told me something that seemed
unthinkable but it was somehow understandable.

Ms. Hinebaugh: For a brief millisecond you just--there's almost a relief
factor. Not that she's dead but that you don't have to deal with it any
more. You get so tired of watching it. I'm sorry.

Chung: That's all right. Watching what?

Ms. Hinebaugh: Daily death.

Unidentified Man #1: How do you know it's not some type of poison?

Chung: (VO) Despite all the pain in Carroll County there is some good news
here. The community is fighting back. Linda Auerback and other parents
created residents attacking drugs.

Ms. Linda Auerback: It was happening to good families and these kids you
know were soccer players, cheerleaders, on the honor roll. They weren't
problem children that you would expect to be involved.

Chung: (VO) Parents even produced their own video called heroin kills.

Unidentified Man #2: (From video) Oh, my God Jonathan. Jonathan please talk
to me. Jonathan...

Chung: (VO) And they began to hear from other towns that were facing
exactly the same crisis.

(OC) Have you been able to figure out why? Why is Carroll County in the
state that it's in?

Ms. Auerback: I don't think anybody will ever know why it was here before
anybody realized it was other than the kids.

Chung: (VO) For Leslie and Peter McIver there is also some good news. The
heroin epidemic apparently missed their youngest son, Willy.

(OC) Why haven't you experimented with heroin?

Mr. Willy McIver: Because I lost my brother and sister. It's just really
messed them up. Somebody would have to put a gun to my head to make me do it.

Chung: (VO) As for Peter, his third attempt at rehab seems to be working.
After spending nearly six months in jail, he's trying to get his life back
together. He has a new job. Every day for nearly a year Charity has taken
a liquid dose of methadone to eliminate her craving for heroin.

Ms. Hinebaugh: Charity will never be the Charity she was before heroin, and
we'll never have the old Peter back. They've been changed for life.

Chung: (VO) Think of it more like a truce and a forever fragile one at that.

Ms. McIver: Sometimes I remember like the good parts of getting high and
the feeling. Yeah, and I'm just like--like I said it--there is nothing
like it you know. It's just an amazing feeling.

Chung: (VO) But after being off heroin for more than a year, Charity
started using again and last month she once again checked into rehab. It's
Charity's seventh time. The nightmare never seems to end.

Ms. McIver: You know, I was born in a good family, and you know, I could
have had--I mean I had everything just given to me, and I threw it all away
in order to get high.

McFadden: Charity's mother Leslie is now president of the Heroin Action
Coalition reaching out to help other parents in her situation. What would
you do? Take our interactive survey. If you discovered your children were
using heroin would you report them to the authorities? Send them to
rehab? Or love them, support them and hope for the best? Log on to
abcnews.com, and we'll have the results later in our program.

(VO) But, when we come back another teen in trouble. He was handsome,
gifted, headed for a bright future. Instead this teen-ager is behind bars.
What could make him kill his own father?

Mr. Eddie Hartley: I was out of my mind. I couldn't--it just happened.

(Commercial break)

Announcer: Why would a teen-age overachiever fire 17 shots at his own father?

Mr. Hartley: I just kept saying, 'Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'

Announcer: Then, she can't swim, can't go to sleep. Can't even eat popcorn
without being overcome by terror. When Downtown Children Lost And Found
continues after this from our ABC stations.

(Commercial break)