THE WALGREENS' WAR: SECOND DRUG DEATH FINISHES FAMILY
FIGHT

Battle Over Children Haunted Woman

CHICAGO -- If not for her famous last name, few would have noticed the
death of a young woman found slumped over 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 Walgreen Co.'s retired chief executive. 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."

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, 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, 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."