Series: Part 1B

SCOURGE IN CALLOWAY COUNTY REFLECTS PATTERN OF RUIN

MURRAY, Ky. - Hours after her wedding in 1996, Cindy Kilgore found herself
on the phone calling everyone she knew - looking for meth.

The drug had been circulating for about a year in Calloway County, and the
25-year-old wanted some for her wedding night.

Then her father gave her a present.

"He pulled the meth out of his shirt pocket and said, 'All you had to do is
ask,'" Kilgore recalled.

By that date, her father, Gary Kilgore, and a partner had been importing
methamphetamine for a year from California at $40 a gram, according to
Cindy Kilgore's affidavit taken by Calloway County prosecutor Victor Cook,
who met with her in jail earlier this year.

Within two years, Cindy Kilgore told a reporter, she learned to make the
drug with her father.

And as other meth users learned to make it using stolen fertilizer and cold
and allergy pills, a homemade epidemic spread across Calloway County,
mirroring the destructive pattern that ravaged Midwestern communities years
earlier.

The number of meth manufacturing and dealing indictments in Calloway rose
to 39 this year, from 28 in 2001 and 10 in 1999, according to records from
the Administrative Office of the Courts.

Meth's impact on Kilgore was immediate and devastating.

Five years after the wedding, the drug that her father had given her had
all but ruined her life and the lives of the those closest to her, she
said. She was never arrested for meth use or for making the drug, but she
said her addiction to it destroyed her marriage, caused her to lose custody
of her two sons, now 10 and 6, and put her in jail on other drug charges.

"It's what fueled everything," she said.

Gale Cook, the commonwealth's attorney for Calloway and Marshall counties,
who prosecuted Kilgore, said hers is a classic story.

"Had there been some type of intervention back when her father was
introducing her to meth. ... Well, it might have been a whole different
story," Cook said.

Losing Control

Addiction Prompts Woman To Turn To Dealing Meth

Kilgore said she started using drugs off and on at age 15, a year before
her parents divorced, and she dropped out of school. She used meth about
three times as a teenager, she said.

Her aunt, Joyce Thompson, recalled a trip with Gary Kilgore to visit his
daughter at a drug-treatment center when she was a teenager. "She was a
happy girl. She really was, but when she got into teenage years, she wasn't
happy. I never really understood why, but that's when she got into drugs,"
said Thompson, 63, of Valley Station.

About the time she turned 20, Kilgore said, she and a friend moved
temporarily to Phoenix, where she began using meth more frequently.

She recalled spending $20 for enough meth to last a weekend.

"I was up two days straight, and then I came down, and I thought my life
was over," Kilgore said. "I was going to come home and I swore I'd never
use it again."

But she did.

Soon after her wedding, Cindy Kilgore began dealing her father's dope, she
said.

She would buy meth from him at $50 a gram and sell it for twice that,
boosting her income from a part-time lawn-care business, she said in
interviews in jail and since her release on parole in August.

Her meth use grew out of control, she said.

She paid too little attention to her oldest son, and she ignored her
husband, who objected to her sudden disappearances, although he was aware
of her drug use, she said.

"It was great," she said of the meth. "We could cook all we wanted."

Kilgore said she used meth and other drugs nearly every day until 1998,
when she learned she was pregnant with her youngest son. But even that
interruption lasted only until shortly after she gave birth, she said.

She didn't stop again until her first arrest, in 2000. Just days after her
father's death from stomach cancer, she tried to fill a prescription for a
bottle of painkillers she had taken from his hospital death bed, she said.

Battling Back Demons

Friends From Drug Days Test Vow Of Sobriety

Kilgore was released on shock probation after four months on Sept.11, 2001,
and she said she faked her way through a 30-day treatment program.

By Christmas Eve 2001, she was up all night wrapping presents for her sons,
high on meth and painkillers, she said. "I tried to stop during that time -
at least I thought I was trying," Kilgore said. "But I see now I didn't
really make an effort."

She kept using meth and painkillers, she said. And in August 2002, she was
charged with driving under the influence, theft of controlled substances
worth less than $300 and wanton endangerment, because one of her sons was
in the vehicle with her.

Her probation was revoked, and she eventually pleaded guilty to each charge.

Three months later, in November 2002, her ex-husband won custody of her
children but later relinquished them to her brother, she said. Her former
husband could not be reached for comment.

In February 2003, Cindy Kilgore began serving a five-year sentence in jail.

She was released on parole in August.

Kilgore's first two months of freedom were spent living with a friend in
Murray and working at a thrift store, she said. It didn't take long for her
sobriety to be tested, she said.

Stopping by the home of a former friend to pick up some belongings, she was
asked whether she wanted to get high, Kilgore said.

"All the sudden I was just sobbing and shaking," she recalled.

She didn't use then, and she said she has not come so close to using since.

When she thinks of drugs, she said, she thinks of her children.

And that led her to move to Oldham County, where she now lives in an
apartment across the hall from her children, who are being raised by her
brother, now 28, and his new wife.

Kilgore hopes to regain custody eventually.

She is the production manager at a thrift store in Jeffersontown, where she
said she earns $10 an hour and is only just learning to deal with the
stress of a full-time job with management responsibilities.

Her new job, and living across the hall from her children, has kept her
mind off using drugs so far, she said.

"All I think about is my boys, getting back to make things right with
them," she said.

But it's been more difficult than she imagined to re-establish a bond with
her sons, whom she saw only infrequently while in jail, she said.

"There are tensions there I can't describe," she said. "But I am not going
to rush the custody thing. With my record, the court is going to look for
some stability. And I think that's fine."

Kilgore said she has been told she won't make progress with her life and
addiction until she places blame for her problems where it belongs.

Even now, she says, she cannot blame her father.

"He knew I was struggling, being a mother and trying to run a lawn-care
business. And that drug did help me get by. I could take it and stay up all
night long doing the things I thought I was supposed to do: clean and cook
and take care of the house."

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WHY WE SHOULD CARE

Why the methamphetamine epidemic is important:

The drug is highly addictive and relatively easy to make, and addicts cut
across all social strata.

Someone in your neighborhood could be cooking the drug, risking an
explosion that could expose others to toxic fumes.

A family member or coworker could be abusing the drug, which could lead to
deteriorating personal or work relationships.

Your county and state could be forced to spend millions of dollars to fight
the problem, money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Meth addictions create more crime than other illegal drugs, forcing law
enforcement to tie up increasing resources to combat meth.