A DESPERATE NEED FOR $40

'The Tragic Interplay Of Drugs, Guns, Gangs And Death'

On a golden morning last fall, a man somewhere in Louisville started
his day with a desperate need for $40 to feed a gnawing addiction.

On that same morning, I awoke full of happy plans for a busy day that
I would begin by meeting a student at a nearby coffee shop, making a
quick stop at the bank, walking home and ...

Then, our paths crossed.

What happened next speaks to the need for every one of us to take an
interest in the tragic interplay of drugs, guns, gangs and death that
is torturing some Louisville neighborhoods. I would not have thought
it a part of my life.

I was wrong.

That morning, I said good-bye to my student, deposited a check and
withdrew $40 from my bank machine while two young men watched from
across the street. When I started walking home, down a quiet
residential street, someone followed, probably in a car. Then, at 11
a.m. on a perfect fall day, on one of the city's safest streets,
someone yanked my shoulder bag hard enough to leave two long black
bruises on the back of my arm. Someone crashed something hard down on
my head.

Then they left me face down on the sidewalk in a pool of blood, not
caring whether I lived or died.

A kind and alert neighbor found me there and called an EMS ambulance.
It whisked me to the terrific University Hospital trauma team, which
cleans up much of the carnage from the gang, drug and gun trade.

We believe I was a part of that trade because police say my
little-noticed assault and robbery fits the pattern of what happens
when a young man needs $40 for a day's drugs. We don't know exactly
what happened because the blow wiped the day from my memory. Much
later I looked out at the technology and uniforms of the ICU and said
to myself, "I know it isn't a dream - but what am I doing here?"

Measuring the cost of that one, $40 crime isn't easy, but the ICU is a
good place to start. After I'd gotten home and moved on with healing,
University Hospital sent a bill for nearly $20,000. My insurance
company negotiated a lower price, leaving my fellow policy holders and
taxpayers to pay the bill.

In the weeks that followed, more medical bills dropped through our
mail slot. We paid to replace all our locks and the other things
anyone does when a purse is stolen. Since police took my clothes as
evidence, I had to replace my new running shoes and favorite jacket.

That part of the price tag is easy.

Police salaries would be harder. My fellow taxpayers paid the
detective who arrived promptly in the emergency room and the carload
of detectives who came to my home from time to time after that. No one
has been arrested, although we've been told that police are still on
the case. A case with no witnesses is understandably tricky.

It's harder still to measure the angst of my family or the expressions
on the faces of dear friends who came to the ICU.

And, how can we plumb the feelings of my neighbors who discovered that
our always-safe neighborhood isn't?

That is the point of this tale.

We don't have to live within sight and sound of the yellow tape and
police radios to have a mortal interest in what has happened there.

Those horrors are our horrors, and we all have a stake in ending them.
The responsibility for solving the problems that lead teens to gangs,
the necessity to end the drug trade and the need to get handguns away
from people who use them to shoot each other extend even to our safest
suburbs. None of us can claim it's not our problem.

Every morning until we find a solution, somewhere in Louisville a
young man is going to start the day with a desperate need for $40 to
feed a gnawing addiction.

The writer retired in 2001 as public editor of The Courier-Journal; in
her career at the Louisville newspapers she was Neighborhoods editor
and Business editor, among other capacities. She is now a teacher.