PARENTS GRAPPLE WITH TEEN DAUGHTER'S HEROIN DEATH

A deadly form of heroin continues to destroy lives across Long
Island, trampling across age groups and economic lines.

Amanda Singer, a teenager from Sayville, is still escaping a scene
known well to girls such as Natalie Ciappa, a Massapequa teenager
whose death from an apparent opiate overdose last month underscored
what police say is a rise in heroin use among young people. Shaun
Collins, a former military medic, looks back on the 20 years he's
given to the drug life. For the parents of 17-year-old Michelle
"Misha" Nardone, the lessons have come too late. They are three faces
of heroin addiction on Long Island, right now. One could not tell her
story. Two others are now clean, and fighting to stay that way.

Michelle Nardone embraced her work as a slaughterhouse victim at a
Halloween haunted house in Wading River, where every fall her
bloodcurdling scream echoed through the dark fantasy.

The job suited the teenager from Rocky Point, who preferred her
nickname, Misha. Her propensity for the edgy is displayed on her
bedroom walls, where intricately drawn butterflies float among
scrawled slogans and song lyrics, some whimsical, some profane.
Mounted near the bed is a cross made of two hacksaws.

Since their daughter's death in May from an apparent heroin overdose,
Misha Nardone's parents have labored to understand what happened. They
feel Misha's death might have been prevented if those who knew her -
friends, parents, counselors - had somehow shared information. The
couple avoids looking through an album of photos collected after her
death. In image after image, Misha's green eyes look out in an intense
but remote stare.

"That's exactly the look she would always give us," said her mother,
Lauren, holding a portrait drawn of her 17-year-old daughter. "You
could never tell what she was thinking."

The eyes hid a lot. After the family moved from Selden to Rocky Point
when she was 13, she became moody and erratic, her parents say. She
began cutting her skin, hiding the scars with clothing or armbands.
More than once, Misha punched a hole in the wall. There were explosive
fights with her parents, visits by police, and an attempt to end her
own life.

Misha began smoking pot and drinking with friends in middle school. As
a freshman at Rocky Point High, she was caught with ground-up
prescription pills. Before that year was done, she was forced to
transfer to a Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services school
in Bellport. For a time, Misha attended an afternoon outpatient
program and later entered an inpatient facility at John T. Mather
Memorial Hospital. The problems persisted.

Over the next two years, Misha befriended kids from treatment groups
she felt were, like her, struggling at the fringes, Lauren said. Some
made their way to Misha's home. "Michelle would talk to them all
night, and they'd feel better," she said. "She was drawn to these kids
who didn't have a lot of other people helping them."

Over the last six months or so, Misha seemed to improve. She took more
interest in her appearance, and she made the honor roll. She was
affectionate with her 6-year-old brother. But among the good news were
signs of trouble. In February, she told a school counselor that she'd
tried heroin. She complained of fatigue, sometimes sleeping 15 hours
at a stretch. Her eyes were red, and she complained of nausea. But
drug tests she agreed to take came back clean, and she "was a good
actress," Lauren said. "I think now she was living a double life."

On May 30, Misha went on a school trip to a water park, then shopping
with her mother. After work, she drove up to her house about 10:40
p.m. then left again. She returned in the early morning hours, waking
her mother to ask for help getting up the next day.

Late the next morning, Lauren found her daughter in an upstairs
bedroom, dead.

Today, Nick and Lauren struggle to understand Misha's life and death.
"If you could have put all the pieces together with what we knew and
what the counselors knew and what [her friends] knew and these other
people knew, I really believe she'd be alive today," said Nick, an
electrician with the Long Island Rail Road.

His tone swings between remorse, anger and admiration. "She was a
unique person. She wasn't a conformist - she hated conformity," he
said. "She wasn't a fearful person, or I guess her fears were well
hidden."