CRYSTAL METH ADDICT SPEAKS TONIGHT ON ROAD TO RECOVERY

Jenny Jones Came To With A Gun Pointed In Her Face.

It was a hot morning in 2002. She doesn't remember exactly when, or exactly
where. All she recalls is being with her boyfriend in the half-stripped
Dodge truck they'd stolen and pulling over in someone's driveway to finish
the job.

Perhaps it was the quiet after the rush of the theft and the slamming drop
after days spinning on crystal meth, perhaps it was the baby in her belly
draining her energy --for some reason they feel asleep there.

She blinked awake to a police officer's gun aimed at her head.

That was how Jones' new life began.

Tonight in Oak Bay, the 28-year-old will tell her story and answer
questions at a forum sponsored by The Province, focusing on
methamphetamine. The highly-addictive drug is increasingly prevalent on
B.C. streets and was recently the focus of a seven-day feature series that
recently ran in The Province.

Jones' meth run lasted three years and might have proved fatal if it wasn't
for two strangers who cared.

The addiction started when her long-term boyfriend died in a car crash.
Jones, then 24, was living in Kelowna at the time cleaning herself up and
starting her life after kicking cocaine. She left the city in mourning to
see the house her boyfriend had purchased for them in the Lower Mainland
before he died.

She stopped for one day in Maple Ridge. She tried meth.

"It just made me not feel. I wasn't hurting anymore. I never made it home,"
she says.

Jones stayed up for 18 days doing the drug. She wouldn't stop for nearly
three years.

She was scared and she was alone. Within weeks she was on the street
digging through dumpsters to find stuff to sell.

She lived in patches of bush and forest. When it rained or got too cold,
she'd crawl into a clothing donation box.

Her life took on a desperate simplicity.

"Drugs, drugs, drugs. You don't think you've got a problem," she says.

The new boyfriend beat her. They stole cars together. He was in and out of
jail. She got pregnant. Then came the Dodge and the bright hot morning.

In the cell she threw herself against the bars, intentionally injuring
herself so she could get out. It worked.

And then, sleeping on the floor of the Maple Ridge Salvation Army shelter,
she met Gord Robson.

Robson, a hotel owner and member of the Maple Ridge Rotary Club, was in the
shelter that day to try and figure out why his community had so many
homeless people. What he realized was that Maple Ridge's biggest problem
was not homelessness, but addiction to meth.

The couple took a shine to Jones, adopting her, helping her through the
process of quitting.

Erin, Jones' daughter, is now 18 months old and a healthy little girl. The
Robsons are her godparents.

"Without them, I couldn't have done it. They saved me and Erin," Jones says.

Gord Robson will speak at the forum tonight about how Maple Ridge started
to fight meth. Jones and drug awareness coordinator Const. Kim Basi will
also speak. The forum is free and gets underway at 7 p.m. in the west
building theatre at Oak Bay High, 2101 Cadboro Bay Rd.