WALGREEN WIDOW DIES AT DRUG HOUSE

CHICAGO (AP) - If not for her famous last name, few would have noticed
the death of a young woman found slumped over at a dining room table
at a drug house on Chicago's West Side.

Even her last name was, in fact, hers only by marriage.

By many accounts, Loren Walgreen was a smart and engaging woman in her
best moments. At her worst, she was a junkie haunted by depression.

And according to friends and defenders, she was no match for the power
and influence of the family that owns America's largest drugstore chain.

In the end, her death resembled that of her estranged husband, Tad
Walgreen, son of the retired chief executive of Walgreen Co. Tad
Walgreen - who met Loren while both were in rehab in 1988 - died three
years ago of a cocaine overdose. He was 36.

Loren Walgreen was 31 when she died last week in a basement apartment
where she had been hanging out with friends. For police - who had seen
her at that apartment before - it was all too familiar a scenario.

``It's a sad situation,'' said police Cmdr. Gerard Mahnke, who is
still awaiting toxicology reports but suspects an overdose. ``I mean,
here's a girl who could've had everything in her life.''

It's not that Tad and Loren Walgreen were ever wealthy. Tad, the
second of three sons from retired CEO Charles ``Cork'' Walgreen's
first marriage, grew up in relatively modest surroundings with his
mother.

Meanwhile, Loren's mother struggled to raise her two children in
suburban Lincolnwood after their father died when Loren was 10.

In their adult years, Tad and Loren Walgreen had drug problems that
came to light in 1992, when Tad was sent to prison for 18 months for
driving under the influence with a revoked license.

The most sordid details would, however, become public in 1996 in a
custody battle for their two young children against Tad's father and
stepmother, who contended Tad and Loren Walgreen were unfit parents.

According to testimony, the couple were living in filth, with feces
and soiled clothing on the floor of their apartment, dirty pots and
pans and a hole punched in the wall.

A judge threw out the elder Walgreens' attempt to adopt their
grandchildren. But he did allow them to keep the two children - Alex,
now 10, and Brooke, now 9 - since they had been caring for them since
1993.

Shortly before his death, Tad signed away his parental rights. But
Loren Walgreen continued to fight, even as she was arrested in 1997
for leaving unattended her third child - a 2-year-old boy fathered by
her boyfriend - while she tried to buy heroin from an undercover
police officer.

She gave up her custody fight a year later - six months before she
pleaded guilty to offering sex for $40 to two undercover sheriff's
officers.

Her last run-in with the law came in March of this year, when she
admitted having a small amount of cocaine in jail while being held for
breaking curfew.

``When Loren was well, she could hang out with anybody. You could take
her to the best restaurants in town,'' said Alan Toback, her lawyer in
the custody battle. ``But when that chronic depression struck, it got
bad.''

Still, he said the Walgreen family went too far in trying to terminate
her parental rights - especially since she never disagreed that her
eldest two children were better off with their grandparents.

Cork and Kathy Walgreen, who live in the well-to-do Chicago suburb of
Lake Forest, issued a statement saying: ``Through years of our trying
to help Loren overcome her addictions, in the end, sadly, these drugs
were more powerful. We pray now, that she has found peace.''

Those words angered Toback.

``Even in her death they're still disingenuous,'' Toback said.
``Clearly, I believe they are sad - because they would be inhuman if
they weren't sad - but to the best of my recollection, they did
nothing to help with her addiction to drugs.''

At her funeral Friday at a Jewish chapel, Rabbi Victor Weissberg did
not deny Loren Walgreen's problems - ``the monkey on her back,'' he
called them.

``There were a lot of people who tormented her,'' the rabbi said,
telling how the Walgreen family had young Alex and Brooke baptized in
a Christian church without informing their mother beforehand.

Her longtime boyfriend, Dennis Clinton, who shared a house with Loren
and their son in suburban Melrose Park, said she was particularly
distraught in the week before her death over the prospect of spending
another holiday without her two older children.

``Loren was not the street trash that the Walgreens make her out to
be,'' Clinton said. ``She was a very dedicated mother who was very
troubled and who was pushed beyond the limits by money and power.