NEEDLES POLARIZE THE HILLTOP

As The Tacoma Neighborhood Makes A Comeback, Some Residents Say It'S
Time For A Needle Exchange Van That Serves Drug Addicts To Go Elsewhere

David and Terrie Vestal wanted to be part of the Hilltop revival.

They smelled new paint, new carpet, new life when they moved into
their two-bedroom, two-bath home on South G Street in the fall of 2003.

They thought they were buying into an urban lifestyle.

They didn't expect drug addicts shooting up in their yard. Used
syringes littering their landscape. People dropping their pants and
defecating on their property.

No one told them about the "needle van."

The Vestals and others in the resurgent neighborhood see the Point
Defiance Aids Project syringe exchange as a magnet for drug abusers
and drug dealers.

Others believe the van is exactly where it needs to be, stopping the
spread of AIDS by handing out clean needles and offering rehab
referrals to typically homeless intravenous drug users who congregate
in the area.

The free swap of used needles for clean ones takes place out of an
unmarked van at South 14th and South G streets from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
every weekday. The van's been doing its business on this quiet
residential street, one block up from the Tacoma Avenue South
commercial district, since 1992.

"We're there to save lives," said Dave Purchase, who founded the
Point Defiance Aids Project in 1988 and has built it into an
international model. "We use the most proven HIV-AIDS prevention
known. It works. It's scientifically valid."

And it's supported by tax dollars - the Tacoma-Pierce County Health
Department budgeted $256,000 for the AIDS Project's needle exchanges this year.

Health officials say contaminated syringes are frightfully efficient
carriers of blood-borne pathogens such as the viruses that cause AIDS
and hepatitis B and C. Project workers traded 338,291 syringes at
South 14th and G in 2005 - about a third of the just over 1 million
needles exchanged in Pierce County last year, records show.

Neighbors don't dispute the program's effectiveness, but many believe
it's time for the van to move on.

"The cops want it gone. We want it gone. The businesses want it
gone," said attorney John Spencer, president of the Upper Tacoma
Business Association.

Public meetings to discuss the van's presence grew so heated last
fall and early this year that both sides agreed they were
accomplishing nothing. A group of representatives from neighborhood
groups and organizations is trying to find a resolution with a mediator's help.

A Question Of Safety

The Vestals see their neighborhood as New Tacoma, a testament that
crime is out, community is in.

Families are getting fresh starts in the rebuilt Hillside Terrace
apartments at 1511 S. G St.

New homes in brown, green, orange and tan await owners up the block.

The 93-unit Reverie, with one- and two-bedroom units starting above
$200,000, is under construction down the hill on Tacoma Avenue South.
But not long after they moved from Edgewood to their new home on the
Hilltop, David and Terrie Vestal began finding discarded syringes in
their yard and other evidence of drug use.

Terrie said she was accosted at her back door one night. And after
several encounters with drug users on their property, they installed
a 6-foot cyclone fence topped by barbed wire so she could safely use
the garage and let Tigger, their miniature pinscher, out.

She carried their concerns to the New Tacoma Neighborhood Council,
where she discovered area business owners and other residents
complaining about drug trafficking and use.

Last July 19, while the couple were taking photographs to document
the activity around the needle exchange van, a group of angry men
surrounded them, Terrie said.

As onlookers cheered them, some of the men "used threats of physical
harm while yelling at us," she said.

Only a call to 911 restored calm.

Concerned as they might be for their own safety, the Vestals say
they're more worried about the increasing numbers of children in the
neighborhood.

"We question how this neighborhood or any other residential community
can be forced by a public health department and its private
contractor to allow the most dangerous of drug delivery paraphernalia
handouts near ... the children," Terrie Vestal said.

Hillside Terrace manager Patrell Penny says she understands the need
for the van. But her priorities rest with her tenants and their 21
children, some of whom recently came out of shelters or homelessness.

"How can I say, 'I want to provide better for you' when you have to
shoo off drug users and undesirable people?" she said. "How can I
say, 'I am providing better for you' when you're afraid to go outside
with your kids?"

The white 2000 GMC Safari van pulls up at 9:59 on a cloudy spring
morning. Soon, two men from the van begin picking up litter in the
area, depositing it into plastic garbage bags temporarily hung on the
chain-link fence separating the sidewalk from Guadalupe Gardens.

At first, there are no customers. But as the clock winds toward noon,
they come in ones and groups of two and three.

Some are there for a moment or two. Others stay and talk a bit.
Counseling is offered. Referrals to drug rehabilitation programs are
available. Health care information is distributed.

In part, it was the AIDS Project's increasing vigilance against
health risks that alarmed residents and spurred them to seek the
van's removal from South G Street last summer, e-mails and records of
meetings show.

Suddenly, some neighbors learned a vocabulary of potentially nasty
drug-use complications they didn't know about before. Needle exchange
workers began distributing booklets about MRSA, or
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a dangerous
antibiotic-resistant infection. Between February and September, van
workers also handed out 1,600 wound-care kits.

While such exchanges concern some, they're reason for celebration for others.

"The needle exchange van is building trusting relationships," said
Laura Karlin, a staffer at the Tacoma Catholic Worker/Guadalupe
House, which provides clean and sober transitional housing.

Giving good information and counseling can help people make changes
in their lives "and start them on a trajectory toward better
choices," she added.

The AIDS Project referred 562 men and women to drug treatment in 2004
and 445 last year, Health Department records show.

But supporters also know most addicts will remain addicts.

"It's the 'reduction of harm' principle," Karlin said. "If I cannot
change someone's behavior, how can I reduce the harm of that behavior?"

Karlin and others remain convinced the van serves a need in the area
but doesn't create the problems the neighbors complain about.

Needles are exchanged free at the Health Department main office on
South D Street and by delivery to some people who request it, said
Nigel Turner, public health manager of the communicable disease
control program. Twelve pharmacies recently agreed to sell fresh
syringes for a nominal fee in exchange for used needles, Turner
said.Turner and Purchase described the van as a good neighbor.

Said Turner: "The needle exchange always takes in more needles than
it gives out, so it's part of the solution."

Mary Bradford, pastoral assistant for social ministry at St. Leo's
Parish, believes some people in the neighborhood are "scapegoating
the needle van" for problems that it does not bring.

Purchase doesn't think his clients, who treasure their used syringes,
are leaving them lying around. "You have to give one to get one," he said.

"I have to have clean needles - it's safer," a 49-year-old heroin
addict named Kathy said after leaving the van.

"Those people are wrong to complain," she said. "Those people (in the
van) have done nothing but good. They get us counseling. They'll even
take you to the hospital if you need to go."

Softening Of Attitudes

This isn't the first time neighbors have taken on the van.

Businesses successfully booted it out of downtown in 1995, arguing it
attracted drug dealers and frightened merchants and shoppers. But
needle deliveries continued in the area by handcart.

In 2002, Bates Technical College student leaders unsuccessfully
sought the van's removal from their neighborhood.

The recent mediated group sessions appear to be moving both sides
toward a compromise, said New Tacoma Neighborhood Council President Bill Garl.

"I've just seen an absolute softening of attitudes" from the heated
public meetings, Garl said.

The work group expects to meet with the mediator, funded by the
Health Department, once more before making a recommendation during a
community meeting May 11, he said.

Garl wouldn't disclose the direction the talks are taking. But he
pointed out the Neighborhood Council's concern "isn't shutting the
needle van down; it's relocating it."

Tacoma police Lt. Corey Darlington, a member of the group, believes
the key to solving the dispute "is to locate the van in an
appropriate location at appropriate times for an appropriate length of time."

He agrees with those who believe the needle exchange is an attractive
nuisance where it currently sits.

"The increased economic development in the area no longer makes it a
good fit," he said.

A number of ideas are being discussed, including another location in
the same area.

Purchase wouldn't speculate on what solution might be brokered, but
he pointed out he's already trying to reduce the van's impact on the
neighborhood by urging people to use other exchange points.

The van at 14th and G averaged 681 exchange contacts a month last
year, he said. That number is already down by 27 percent this year, he added.

Health Department director Federico Cruz-Uribe says he's willing to
consider a new location for the exchange, but whenever they've looked
for another site, "it's always been 'Not in my backyard.'"

Despite the fact that needle exchanges are "probably one of the most
successful disease control efforts that we have," no one wants to
live near one, he added.

He thinks the van is in the right spot.

Nearby St. Leo's Parish draws people for thousands of meals each
month, he pointed out.

"Guess what? If the needle exchange van wasn't there, people would
still be going to that neighborhood for those services," he said.

Some residents counter that argument is more proof the neighborhood
already has more than its fair share of social services. Upper Tacoma
Business Association President Spencer, who's also a member of the
work group, isn't optimistic about a resolution.

Spencer owns and works in a two-story office building at the Tacoma
Avenue South and South 14th Street. Weary of seeing drug deals being
made in the shadows behind his building, he hired someone to cut down
the trees last summer. Workers put up a fence last fall.

He pays a woman $20 a week to clean his property of dirty syringes.
His gardener wears protective clothing when he mows the parking-strip grass.

Every day, he said, he watches drug dealers wearing backpacks get out
of their cars and peddle their products to the needle van's clients.

If the van isn't moved, he'll go to court.

"I want them to have a needle exchange, but it has to be inside and
it has to be dispersed," he said. "The big thing is distribute it out
and take away this streetside exchange."

How To Get Involved

WHAT: A public meeting about the needle exchange van, and discussion
of a report from the dispute-resolution work group.

WHEN: 5 p.m. May 11

WHERE: Associated Ministries, 1224 S. I St., Tacoma

How To Exchange Needles

Intravenous drug users can exchange dirty syringes for clean ones in
several ways:

At the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, 3629 S. D St.

At the Point Defiance AIDS Project van, South 14th and South G streets

Through participating pharmacies

By pre-arranged delivery

For more information call the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department
at 253-798-6410 or the Point Defiance AIDS Project at 253-272-4857.

Why so many needles?

If you take a straight average of the number of needles exchanged per
visitor in 2005, it comes out to about 85 for the Point Defiance AIDS
Project during 2005. At the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, it's 96.

Isn't that a lot of needles for one person?

Yes, AIDS Project founder Dave Purchase says, but it's not unusual.

One drug addict can easily go through three to four needles a day,
Purchase said.

About half of the people who get needles at the van parked at South
14th and South G streets are homeless and walk there, Purchase said.
They get one or two syringes at each exchange. But many come in cars,
often bringing in hundreds of needles at a time and taking home a
fresh supply for themselves and their friends, Purchase said.

Health Department director Federico Cruz-Uribe agreed it's a common practice.

"A huge number of people do that, getting some for themselves, some
for their buddies and colleagues," he said.