DEADLY MALADY INFECTS A PLACE OF HEALING

Heroin Use Becoming Epidemic In New Mexico
Region Known For Miraculous Powers

Chimayo, N.M. -- For two centuries, the sick have come to an adobe
church in this village in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The fine,
talcum-like dust in the sanctuary's tiny chapel is said to possess
miraculous powers. Each year, a few pilgrims leave their crutches
propped up against the walls.

Now the town of Chimayo itself is suffering from an ailment that not
even ``the Lourdes of America'' has been able to cure. It is a
sickness that has shattered the lives of dozens of families in Chimayo
and many more in towns peppered across the stark but beautiful valleys
and mesas of northern New Mexico.

Chimayo is the heroin capital of Rio Arriba County, a rural region of
34,000 people with one of the highest rates of drug overdoses in the
United States. Nearly 100 Rio Arriba County residents have overdosed
in the past five years, according to state officials, a death rate
more than three times the national rate.

A series of drug-related crimes -- ranging from the mundane and
pathetic to the horrific -- has brought about both a crackdown by
federal agents and a small but growing protest movement against the
state's Republican governor, Gary Johnson, who has called for the
legalization of drugs.

No one has been able, however, to stop the overdose deaths in Rio
Arriba County. At least 19 county residents died last year, all but
one of them male, most of them 30 or older.

Allen Sandoval, 36, succumbed to heroin last June, about five miles up
the road from the santuario at Chimayo. He left the world with several
religious medals and cards in his pockets, along with 13 cents in change.

Death found him outside his home, on the dusty ground of a town whose
bleak, narrow streets resemble those of an impoverished Latin American
village. A few hours before he died, he used a pocketknife to carve
his initials in the tree that looms over his mother's front porch.

``He would say, `Mom, mom, I'm afraid. I don't want to die,' '' said
Olivama Sandoval, his mother. ``But we couldn't help him. He was so
afraid of death, and look where he's at now.''

Sandoval was laid to rest in June in the town cemetery, next to a
friend who died two months earlier, also of an overdose.

Plenty Of Reasons

No one can say with certainty why drug addiction is so rampant in this
corner of the Southwest. Heroin use has been on the rise across the
United States since the early 1990s. The number of emergency room
admissions for heroin overdoses has doubled since 1991, with the most
dramatic increases in overdoses occurring in such urban centers as
Baltimore and Newark, N.J. But a recent study by the U.S. Conference
of Mayors found that the availability of heroin in rural areas now
matches that of big cities.

Some speculate that this state's proximity to Mexico has brought an
especially potent mixture of the ``black tar'' heroin produced there.
Nearly everyone agrees that the region's unrelenting poverty is a
factor. In overwhelmingly Mexican- American Rio Arriba County, the
poverty rate is about 30 percent, reflecting the centurylong economic
decline of northern New Mexico's subsistence farmers.

Lauren Reichelt, director of health services for Rio Arriba County,
said the drug problems are spurred in part by ``cultural dislocation
and cultural oppression. People are in pain.''

The epidemic has reached its most intense proportions in the isolated
settlements in the region, in places such as Cordova (population 700),
where at least six residents died of overdoses in the past few years.

Sense Of Euphoria

Heroin, a sedative, soothes its users with a brief but powerful sense
of euphoria. It erases all discomfort of body and mind. It makes the
weak feel strong and the lonely feel loved. Then its magic wears off
- -- after minutes, or hours -- leaving its users even less able to face
pain than before.

``For a long time, heroin wasn't big around here,'' said Anthony
Trujillo, a church deacon in nearby Santa Fe. ``All of a sudden, in
the last few years, it's the drug of choice. . . . I don't think there
is anyone in Rio Arriba County who has not lost a friend or a relative.''

Drug abuse has fed a wide variety of crimes across the state, police
officials say, with the crime rate increasing in New Mexico each year
since 1993, bucking a nationwide trend.

A substitute teacher at Espanola Middle School was arrested in 1998
for selling heroin near school grounds. At least 1 in 4 homes in
Chimayo are burglarized each year, according to the New Mexico State
Police.

Perhaps the most notorious drug-related crime in recent years was the
1998 carjacking and murder of 18-year-old Erik Sanchez, a standout
student from Espanola. Sanchez's captors took him to a bridge over the
600-foot-deep Rio Grande gorge and threw him over the railing -- it
remains unclear whether he was still alive. The assailants allegedly
wanted to sell his car for drug money. One man from Taos pleaded
guilty to murder charges and is serving a life sentence; a second is
scheduled to go to trial this year.

For law enforcement officials, the most violent crimes bear the
hallmarks of heroin and cocaine addiction as desperate addicts resort
to ever more brazen crimes to feed their habits.

``You think of heroin as an urban problem, but it's part of the fabric
of this community,'' said Capt. Quintin D. McShan of the state police.
``We've got art, landscape, scenery and good, honest, hard-working
people. We've got a lot of good things going on. And we also have heroin.''

McShan said an increased police presence has helped lower the crime
rate slightly in Chimayo, where, for a time, dealers had set up
open-air drug bazaars on the highways. The open drug sales are a thing
of the past, but the crimes continue. And so do the deaths.

The rate of death from overdoses in the county has remained steady
since 1995, about 20 each year.

Beginning Of The End

Olivama Sandoval, a retired state employee, traces her son's downward
spiral to the night when he was 19 years old and his girlfriend's
father shot him. A bullet passed through her son's forehead. ``That
shot messed him up. It affected his brain. He stayed like a little
boy.''

Although she does not know exactly when he started using heroin, she
does remember vividly the night her 29-year-old son confessed that he
was addicted. He fell to his knees at the foot of her bed and pleaded
for help.

``When things like this happen, you don't know who to blame,'' she
said. ``One day I told him, `Why are you doing this to me? Since I
found out you're doing drugs you don't know how my heart broke and
it's never, ever mended.' ''

After at least seven years on heroin, in and out of rehab five times,
Allen Sandoval was once again on the waiting list for a clinic when he
overdosed and died.

His graveside service was in the old, rural style of funerals in
Chimayo, ending with a dozen neighbors and relatives taking shovels to
cover his coffin with dry earth, building a mound and covering it with
votive candles and silk flowers.

In the small, 100-year-old brick house where Olivama Sandoval still
lives, there are nights when she feels her son's presence. ``I hear
him knocking, I hear his voice calling, `Mom!' ''