HOW FENTANYL LEFT ONE FAMILY WITH SHATTERED LIVES

Max Perez had big dreams and bigger problems. They died with him May
17, when the college junior with a bright mind and long rap sheet was
found in a Wayne State University bathroom, syringes in his pocket.

The janitor who unlocked the bathroom about 6:30 a.m. discovered more
than the film student who stayed up late as a child watching "Star
Wars" and "Vertigo." He stumbled on one of Metro Detroit's worst
health crises in years.

Toxicology reports must confirm it, but Perez, 28, is suspected to be
among the first casualties in a recent wave of overdoses from heroin
spiked with the painkiller fentanyl. As many as 64 Wayne County users
have died in the last three weeks, atop the 130 confirmed dead since
January 2005.

"It's heartbreaking, and we get mad," said Gerald Perez, 55, a
Livonia reserve cop and day care operator. "You didn't listen, Max.
Why'd you take that drug? The other part of you says, 'God, how sad.
You were finally doing so good.' "

Gerald Perez calls the death murder. Sirena LaPoint, Max's estranged,
secret wife, calls it the final act of a slow suicide.

Most who knew Max call it a spectacular waste of a life brimming with
potential. It came amid Max Perez's most successful rehab, when
Gerald Perez said he "got a glimpse of the man my son wanted to be."

The day after his death, Gerald Perez opened an e-mail from Wayne
State informing Max he was one of five juniors accepted as Ronald
McNair Scholars. The program provides mentors to students who are
considering doctorates and are the first in their families to
graduate from college.

"It's still so hard to believe," said Karen McDevitt, an adjunct film
theory professor who called Max her best student.

"He was finally turning things around. He was finally so excited
about the future. We were all so hopeful that this time would finally
be different."

Perez, who idolized director Orson Welles, never made the masterpiece
that LaPoint said haunted him. His life, though, had the makings of a
silver-screen weeper.

His score on the ACT college-entrance test, 32, was four points shy
of perfection, but a run of bad decisions -- or demons -- turned him
into a felon who spent nearly six years bouncing between school and jail.

Professors envied his intellect, even though Perez sometimes slept
through class. When his mother, Terri, died in 2001, he inherited
$100,000. Gerald Perez said it went in his son's veins and funded a
cross-country trip with LaPoint.

It ended, LaPoint said, when Perez was extradited from Mexico. Court
records show he served time for retail fraud, stealing a van, drugs
and assaulting a police officer. All the while, he kept returning to
Wayne State and maintained a 3.65 grade-point average.

"He lived this double life," said LaPoint, 25, of Toledo, who
described herself as a former user. She and Max wed in 2001, but he
kept the relationship a secret from his family.

"There were people who walked through the halls and went to classes
who never realized he used. He went to school, he had jobs, he got
straight A's. It's hard for the outside world to understand why
someone so smart would do something like this."Family has questions

What haunted Max Perez?

Perhaps unanswerable, the question has been posed lately by family and friends.

The kid with what his father called a "1,000-watt smile" grew up in
middle-class Livonia.

His hockey, bowling and baseball trophies are still in the basement
of the family ranch. His youth was scarred by his parents' divorce
and achingly suburban: Opening Day Tigers games, skiing trips,
pumpkin carving, school plays and renaissance festivals.

His background is indicative of the broad reach of the fentanyl crisis.

"We consider this outbreak an equal-opportunity destroyer," said Dr.
Michele Reid, medical director of the Detroit-Wayne County Community
Mental Health Agency.

"It's equally hit African-Americans, whites, males, females, city and
suburban subsets across all socioeconomic groups."

The most likely overdose victims are users whose tolerance is low --
either recreational users or those using the drug after a hiatus,
Reid said. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than morphine.

When Perez graduated from Livonia Stevenson High School in 1996, he'd
taken enough advanced classes to start at the University of Michigan
as a sophomore.

The first year was fine. He dropped out in 1998, not long after
Gerald Perez found his son on a park bench with gaunt cheeks and faraway eyes.

"I thought 'Something's not right,' " Perez said. "This is a different kid."

It was a look Perez had seen before. His brother, Bob, died in 1972
of an overdose of Seconal, a barbiturate.

The next few years were a blur. Convinced his son needed to hit rock
bottom before he could recover, Perez practiced tough love and prayed
for the best.

He lost contact with his son, but the snippets he heard weren't good.
Rumors had his son living in a Highland Park crack house, nearly
overdosing in Detroit or in jail.

Max only told his father he tried heroin because it was "the
ultimate." LaPoint, who he met at a techno concert in Toledo in 1999,
had other ideas.

"It made him numb," she said.

"He didn't have to deal with the pain. He had a lot of guilt and was
never able to deal with what he put his parents and loved ones through."

LaPoint said she left Perez in 2004 as an act of "self
preservation."Perez, family reconcile

And then, after eight years, Max Perez was suddenly back.

Freed from Oakland County Jail in January on a retail fraud charge,
Perez returned to Wayne State, checked into rehab and reunited with his family.

There was skepticism. His father didn't want him to have a car. A
film professor, Susan L. Palazzolo, thought twice before trusting him
with a $2,000 camera.

Max won them over.

"He was my top student," Palazzolo said.

In an application letter for the McNair program, Perez wrote he
wanted to work with disadvantaged youths because he had empathy for
them. "I want to be the best man I can for humanity; and I want to
make the world a better place," he wrote.

Perez reconciled with his family and was "like a kid again," Gerald
Perez said, playing board games, helping around the house, studying
non-stop and threatening to learn how to cook.

"We got him back," Gerald Perez said. "I finally told him, 'I'm
really proud of you.' "

And then, he was gone.

Max Perez signed himself out of a rehab center May 16, went to Wayne
State and was found next to a toilet the next morning in the fetal
position, his body stiff and his skin purple.

It was a shock that came in waves. In the next few days, Gerald Perez
learned there was much he didn't know about his son.

When he phoned the morgue, an operator told him a relative had
already identified the body. That's when Gerald Perez learned his son
had secretly married LaPoint.

Other secrets were pleasant surprises: How well Perez had done in
school; his high regard he had around campus; and his progress toward
post-graduate work.

"The kid must be looking down now and thinking, 'Boy, you really did
it now,' " Gerald Perez said. "You were finally doing great. You had
everything, all your dreams, so close and within your grasp."