PARENTS RECALL OVERDOSE DEATHS OF THEIR CHILDREN

PLANO -- It has been a year of agony and aching loneliness for the
Hills, the Scotts, the Malinas and the Bakers. They go on in spite of
losing their children to heroin.

Yesterday, federal prosecutors said that justice would be done -- that
Plano-area young people who sold the fatal doses would be held
accountable.

There were neither cheers nor high-fives among the overwhelmed
parents. "It's a first step," said Andrea Hill, whose son, Rob, died
in August. "If this works, it is going to be a shot in the arm for
drug enforcement across the country."

Larry Scott, who lost his son, Wesley, thought of the young
defendants. "I know what their parents are going through," he said.
"But we have been looking for a way to keep this from happening to
someone else." His wife, Donna, said pensively, "It's just a tragedy
all around."

WESLEY SCOTT

His father keeps thinking about the red flags.

"A week or 10 days before Wesley died, I noticed some changes in his
appearance, his attitude," Larry Scott said. "He was starting to get
sloppy. His personal hygiene was really going downhill."

His son was also hanging out with a new group of friends.

"Well, maybe I was in denial, I don't know," Scott said. "Or maybe I
was too busy being caught up in the rat race."

Wesley, described by his father as quiet and introspective, had
finished his freshman year studying philosophy at the University of
Texas at Austin and had come home to Plano for a summer job. He took a
class at Collin County Community College and got an A.

"We thought the future holds nothing but promise for this kid," his
father said.

But then the 19-year-old went to a party with his new friends and
snorted heroin. His father was told that he passed out, vomited and
choked.

The friends dropped him off at a hospital. It was too
late.

"They were scared out of their minds. They weren't really sober,
either," Scott said. "I hope they are not still using."

MILAN MALINA

The death of his 20-year-old son has forced George Malina to rethink
the meaning of friendship.

When Milan Malina overdosed on heroin, his friends didn't call for an
ambulance.

"We weren't surprised you could die from a drug overdose, but that
your friends could be around you and not call for help," said George
Malina of north Dallas. "They were all nice kids, good kids --
longtime friends. They had eaten at our house, spent the night."

But the Malinas have never felt animosity toward his son's friends.
"We say the Lord's Prayer and say, `Forgive us our trespassers,' "
Malina said. "It could have easily been one of his friends and Milan
would have been alive."

Milan had used heroin and marijuana and had been arrested on suspicion
of driving while intoxicated, his father said. But he thought that his
son was recovering.

On June 8, 1997, Milan overdosed after drinking alcohol, smoking
marijuana and using heroin with his longtime friends.

"From what I understand, he couldn't walk or talk," Malina said. "They
told him to sleep it off. They said they were taking his pulse all
night. He was sweating profusely and they found out he was dead."
Milan was days from celebrating his 21st birthday and had enrolled at
Brookhaven Community CoCollege in Farmers Branch.

"I had a heart attack in January the year he died," Malina recalled.
"I didn't know if I was going to live. Milan looked at me square in
the face and said, `Dad, if you die, I want to go, too.' "

ROB HILL

Andrea and Lowell Hill are not shy about telling the world how they
feel about the prosecution of the young men who are accused of selling
their 19-year-old son the heroin that killed him.

"I think we need to punish the young children," said Andrea Hill of
Plano. "If they don't go out as the drug runners and the drug sellers,
then big fat 40-year-old men are going to have to go out and do it
themselves."

Rob Hill was a warm, sensitive teen-ager who played running back on
the varsity football team, his parents said.

"He had lots of friends," his mother said. "In school, there is always
a group of people that are the popular ones. He was with them."

He was preparing to attend Texas Tech University in September. The
Texas Tech sheets his mother bought are still in his room.

One night, he told his mother that he was going to a party for
college-bound students. The next morning, his parents found him dead,
his head buried in his pillow and in his vomit.

His parents had been convinced that he hadn't used drugs since 10th
grade, when he was cited for possession of marijuana.

"I never thought Rob would ever use drugs, ever again," Andrea Hill
said.

ERIN BAKER

After 16-year-old Erin Baker died of a heroin overdose, her
shell shocked parents started looking for answers. They asked two of
her former boyfriends whether she had been doing drugs.

"They knew it," said her father, Bill Baker of Plano. "I said, `Why
didn't you tell somebody, your parents, a friend or one of us?' "They
both said they didn't know why, they just didn't."

Erin, an 11th-grader at Plano Senior High School, loved reading and
animals. She got A's and B's at school.

"She wasn't one of the kids who dyed her hair purple or shaved her
head," her father said. "She wasn't the president of her class. I've
described her as a kid you would call if you needed someone to baby-
sit."

On the last day her parents saw her alive, she had planned to spend
the night in Richardson "with a friend she had stayed with a hundred
times before," Bill Baker said.

Baker and his wife later learned that the two girls snuck out and went
to a party. Erin used heroin, and the partygoers went to sleep. In the
morning, the girls tried unsuccessfully to revive Erin.

"Erin was a little person, only weighed 85 to 90 pounds," her father
said. "It probably didn't take much."

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"