'CHASING THE DRAGON' ON N. RIDGEWOOD

DAYTONA BEACH -- Driving down North Ridgewood Avenue to take her
2-year-old daughter to day care, Nerdy Francois relives her past as a
crack addict, a horrifying glimpse of another life.

Inside the car, however, she has only to turn and gaze into her
daughter's brown eyes to find hope or look to the key chain dangling
from her ignition, a reminder from her drug program that she's been
clean for nearly three years.

"I was there at one time," she said, "I see a lot of pain and misery
that I don't want."

Stories like Francois' do not shock Jesse Godfrey, the Daytona Beach
police lieutenant who oversees the department's narcotics unit.

"Crack cocaine is called chasing the dragon," said Godfrey, who has
seen his share of tragedy because he has worked in the city's drug
division for more than a decade. "You get a euphoric high the first
time you try it, then you spend the rest of your life trying to get
it again, and you can't."

Crack is the scourge along North Ridgewood and many of its side
streets, police say. The North Street area, which Godfrey called the
"the most notable" for sales and use of the drug, is a sometimes
bustling thoroughfare where addicts and dealers converge, then
scatter like cockroaches under a harsh light when police are near.

Here, the drug rules. And it has the prostitutes, the homeless, the
day laborers and the outsiders who know where to go to score a rock
in its grip.

Without a doubt, it's the felony drug of choice, Godfrey says, the
one narcotic that's still cheap to get and even tougher to shake.

"A $20 rock is still a $20 rock," Godfrey says. "We have women out
here who will sell their body for it."

What makes it even harder for police is that Daytona Beach has bred a
handful of families who have made it their business to pass on the
crack-selling trade to their children. Some of these clans live near
North Ridgewood, Godfrey says.

"I've arrested the fathers and mothers, and now I'm arresting the
children of some of these people for dealing," Godfrey said. "We
can't solve the problem until we break the cycle of crime in these
families, and that's going to take time."

Godfrey said the demographics of the city have almost made it easy
for crack to flourish. Because almost 50 percent of the residential
parcels in Daytona Beach are rentals, some of the properties are
owned by absentee landlords who have leased apartments and
single-family homes to a less than law-abiding element.

Police continue to have undercover stings and surveillance operations
designed to nab crack dealers and users, but it takes several felony
crack cocaine-possession convictions before someone is sent to prison.

The one bright spot, Godfrey says, is that in a city of roughly
65,000 people, less than 1 percent of the population is linked to
crack cocaine either through addiction or as dealers.

Dr. Doug Davies, medical director of Stewart-Marchman Center for
Chemical Independence in Daytona Beach, said crack is highly
addictive because once smoked it "goes straight to the brain."

"It blasts tight into your brain and acts as a central nervous system
stimulant," Davies said. "It makes you good and crazy -- they call it
geekin' and peakin' "

Francois remembers the effects of the drug well: "It's almost like
having an orgasm. That kind of rush. It's also different because
after you don't have anymore, you're just chasing that high."

Chasing the high is the goal and coming off the drug is sheer hell.

"It messes with the brain and can cause seizures and tremors," Dr.
Davies said. "Crack addicts become paranoid. They will hide inside
and look out curtains because they think they're being watched.

"It's a tough one to walk away from," Davies said.

So far, Francois has.

Now 30, she is going to school at Daytona Beach Community College,
working two jobs and taking care of her three daughters -- ages 2, 4
and 6 -- in a home she shares with her boyfriend in Holly Hill. It's
a life she could never have imagined when she was living in her
fiance's brother's garage in Miami. Back then she spent money set
aside for milk and diapers to get a rock.

A chance meeting with her sister in a Daytona Beach supermarket made
Francois -- nearly eight months pregnant at the time -- enter a
treatment program with Stewart-Marchman. Her sister called the state
abuse hot line, and child welfare officials threatened to take her
children. Having grown up in foster care, she didn't want the same
life for her girls.

"I stopped enjoying getting high a long time ago," she said. "I
looked all skin and bones. And I wanted to give my kids a chance."

Francois still has stress in her life. The kids crawl on top of her
vying for her attention as she tries to do the laundry or make lunch.
She wakes up at 5 a.m. daily to go to work. On the nights she attends
school, she gets home late, leaving little time to think about
getting high, she said.

"When I drive down Ridgewood," she said, "I can see that I don't ever
want to be there again, so I keep driving."

[Sidebar]

Cocaine Facts

Arrests:

Possession of cocaine 2004: 523 2005: 575

Sale of cocaine 2004: 101 2005: 112

ER Treatments:

Patients with a cocaine abuse or dependency-related diagnosis are a
fraction of total treatments in the Emergency Department at Halifax
Medical Center in Daytona Beach. But they are up by almost 200 in the
most recent tracking period, Oct. 1, 2005, to Sept. 30, 2006:

2002-03: 531
2003-04: 701
2004-05: 645
2005-06: 717

Did You Know

Pure cocaine was first used in the 1880s as a local anesthetic in
eye, nose and throat surgeries because of its ability to constrict
blood vessels, limiting bleeding. Safer drugs made cocaine medically
obsolete. Today crack and its hybrids are known by a street language
all its own.

BINGERS: Crack addicts

GEEKER: Crack user

JELLY BEANS, ROOSTER, TORNADO: Crack

MOONROCK: Crack mixed with heroin

OOLIES: Marijuana laced with crack

WICKY STICK: PCP, marijuana and crack

SOURCE: The Office of National Drug Control Policy