FAMILY'S NIGHTMARE STARTED WITH POT

Like many families, the Krahs' horror started with a little pot, and
like most families, they didn't recognize it as a nightmare at the
time.

Mason was 15 and a student at Highland High School in Gilbert when his
parents, Donna and Bill Krah, found out he was smoking pot.

"I was just ignorant, like a lot of parents," Donna said. "We thought
pot was the worst thing we were dealing with."

It would get much worse before Mason died of a heroin overdose in a
bus bathroom between Phoenix and Casa Grande.

The four years between the first time drugs touched their lives and
the last time they saw their son were some of the Krahs' worst. But
they don't compare with the anguish Mason's parents and family have
lived through in the three years since he OD'd.

After they discovered Mason was using drugs, they tried everything to
get him to stop, including six weeks at a survival camp when he was
16.

Nothing worked.

By the time he was 18, Mason had tried marijuana laced with heroin and
was locked in a pattern of abuse.

"We've all heard that expression 'Oh, it's only pot,' " Bill said. "I
don't buy that anymore. It's always something until it gets to the
hard stuff."

Mason's addiction was a familiar, steady progression from one drug to
the next until he found one he couldn't control.

"My son was terrified of needles and he ended up shooting up," Donna
said.

His parents were terrified, too.

After Donna found Mason doing heroin in their home, they kicked him
out.

After saving Mason from a near overdose right before Christmas, when
doctors said he had ecstasy, marijuana and heroin in his system, the
Krahs put their son in a treatment center. When that failed, they
tried a different clinic. When Mason got kicked out of there,
reportedly for flirting with a 19-year-old patient, his caretakers put
him on a bus for Texas.

A 90-minute layover at a bus station in west Phoenix was all it took
for Mason to find his last fix.