DAUGHTER SORRY SHE TURNED IN MOTHER

The Medina eighth-grader who gave a school counselor her mother's crack
pipe now wishes she hadn't. "I feel like it's my fault," 15-year-old
Kimberly Martin said yesterday after her mother, Linda Sue Martin, pleaded
no contest to three felonies, including manufacturing crack cocaine, which
carries a mandatory two-year prison term.

Her mother is going to prison.

"If I knew it was going to get her in trouble I wouldn't have done what I
did, I just wanted her to get help," she said. "I can't go without my mom
for two years. No girl should. It isn't right. It isn't what I wanted.
She's a good mom."

Defense lawyer David Gedrock said sending Kim's mother to prison would make
kids think twice before they bring their parents' personal problems to
teachers, ministers, police, or anybody else they should be able to confide
in.

Medina County Prosecutor Dean Holman, whose office does not plea bargain
drug or sex indictments, refused to reduce the charges against Martin, 40,
which would have made her eligible for a sanction other than prison.

Martin came to the attention of police in February after Kimberly gave a
counselor at Claggett Middle School the six-inch piece of car antenna she
had found in a pillow case on a couch in her mother's apartment on W. Union
St. It was stuffed with a scouring pad and, a police lab later determined,
burned cocaine residue.

"I was scared. I didn't know what else to do," Kimberly said. "I knew what
it was. I seen people on the street do it. I didn't know if it was my mom's
or [her friend's], but if it was my mom's, I knew I had to get her help."

Kimberly told the counselor and Medina police that her divorced mother had
been keeping company with a convicted drug abuser who cooked crack cocaine
in their kitchen, smoked it in their bathroom and sold it in their living
room.

He has not been charged by police, although he is on probation for cocaine
possession.

During a police search of the Martin's apartment on W. Union St., Linda
Martin told Detective James Bigam the antenna her daughter had found was
the pipe she used to smoke crack cocaine, which had been cooked in the
kitchen. Bigam recorded the conversation.

"I know Linda Martin," said Bigam, who arrested her once before for
providing alcohol to her son, now in his 20's. "Basically she's a good
woman. She's a follower and not a leader. Our thought all along was this
woman needs help."

Martin's mother, Penny Buck, said her daughter has sought help for her
addiction.

"She's been going to her [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings and she was
working," Buck said. "I'm not condoning what Linda did - she was wrong. I
know it. She knows. Kimmie knows. But what good is prison going to do?"

Although she is to begin serving her sentence next week, Linda Martin said
she does not regret her daughter's actions.

"Who knows where I would be at today if she hadn't done what she did?"

But Kim Martin, who will return to Cleveland and live with her single
father, said she regretted it, even though she has noticed positive changes
in her mother. For instance, her mother called police last month when Kim
stayed out past curfew.

"Before she let me do what I wanted. She hardly raised her voice at me
before. She's on me constantly now about where I'm going and where I've
been. She's more grown up," Kim said. "She's become the mother I wanted her
to be."