MARK LUJAN: 'WE WERE FIVE BROTHERS; NOW WE'RE ONLY FOUR'

Mark Lujan liked beer and he liked heroin. He loved to mix the two.

On Nov. 30, 1998, the combination proved deadly.

Mark Lujan's brothers, Martin, left, and Manuel, center, and nephew
Stephen, 13, hold crafts Mark made before he died. Lujan was killed by a
mixture of beer and heroin.

"We were five brothers; now we're only four," says his brother Martin
Lujan. "I think he just didn't want to live anymore.

Mark Lujan was found dead at age 37 in his small trailer behind his
mother's home in Espanola. He had been playing cards with his mother, who
is elderly and confined to a wheelchair.

"He was teaching her to play poker, but she noticed he was trembling and
shaking," Martin Lujan says. "So she told him to go home and get some sleep."

Mark had a long history of alcoholism. "A six-pack for Mark was six
40-ounce bottles," Martin says.

Shortly before his death, he had seemed more depressed than usual. He had
become estranged from the mother of his son, Adam, 10, and hadn't been able
to see the boy.

His older brother Manuel remembers Mark as easygoing and funny, as someone
who loved hiking and wood-carving. As an alcoholic who nevertheless would
bring home homeless people to share his small living quarters.

"We used to call him the two-dollar man. He'd always ask to borrow two
dollars. We'd say, 'Mark, why not $5 or $10." But his answer was, 'Someone
might say no to $5 or $10, but anyone can give you two dollars.'

"I'm not going to put his death down as an (overdose)," Martin says. "I'm
going to say the Lord took him."

"The funny thing is, I think he'd be happy he made the news."