PARENTS CALLED KEY TO FIGHTING DRUGS

Some say helping youths isn't that easy

Mom and Dad went out of town for the weekend, leaving their barely teenage
son home alone. He invited eight friends over for an all-night party, one
loud enough to make neighbors call the police.

"When I brought this to the parents' attention," says Plano Officer Susan
Baumert, "the reaction was, 'How dare you! What were you doing in our
house?' "

Not exactly a typical response, the officer says, but disturbingly common
all the same. She sees in it some of the underpinnings of Plano's drug
crisis - an absence of supervision and a knee-jerk defensiveness that
seemingly would rather save children from a juvenile record than save their
lives.

"A lot of what I see is parents who have looked the other way and made
excuses their whole life," says Officer Baumert, who's usually stationed at
Hendrick Middle School. "Many of them are in denial until it's too late."

A few years ago, perhaps, it was harder to imagine the fatal consequences
of such an attitude. But in the last 26 months, heroin has killed at least
a dozen young people with Plano ties. This week, students accused of
dealing a smorgasbord of drugs were arrested at their high schools.

At Monday's news conference announcing those arrests, Police Chief Bruce
Glasscock cited one of the most striking things that undercover officers
had seen in the preceding months: a lack of parental involvement in some
families.

"Know where your kids are," he said. "It has to start at home."

To those elsewhere in the trenches, such statements sound a bit like platitudes.

"It's not easy to know what your kids are doing," says Dr. Doyle Dean,
principal of Plano Senior High School. "It's hard to know how much freedom
to give a child."

Much easier, he says, is "to condemn someone you don't know."

Across the street at Disciples Christian Church, which offers a Narcotics
Anonymous meeting six days a week, Pastor Carl Zerweck utters similar
cautions.

He acknowledges that denial - by users, their relatives, the community at
large - is fueling this epidemic: "That's why the problem is probably going
to continue to get worse."

But he also stresses that he sees plenty of addicts from good homes with
good, caring parents. And he believes there are signs of hope, of a
community-wide solution to the problem.

"Addiction is a disease," Mr. Zerweck says. "When we put it in those terms,
it's not as easy to moralize about it.

"For some people, all it takes is one drink, one joint, one hit of chiva" -
the capsulized heroin-sleeping pill mix implicated in several Plano deaths
- - "and they're a full-blown addict."

The uncle of the latest victim, 17-year-old Natacha Campbell, tried to
explain in a recent letter to The Dallas Morning News:

"You think they are too smart to take heroin," wrote Michael Graham. "Think
again. Remember when we were young and drunk? We may never have been
tempted to do heroin because we envisioned a skid-row bum with syringes.

"But what if a cool or good-looking guy came up to your unsuspecting
daughter and offered her a capsule form of heroin? The fairly innocent
victim is told that it is a new kind of drug that makes you feel great -
'Everyone's doing it, try it once!' "

At that noisy, unchaperoned party to which she was summoned, Officer
Baumert says she found no drugs - though she notes that it took 10 minutes
to get inside the house, plenty of time for evidence to go swirling down
the toilet.

What remained for officers to do that night was reconnect the revelers -
boys and girls, as young as 11 - with their parents. These adults, unlike
the host's parents, were merely clueless; they had been hoodwinked by the
old, "I'm staying over at so-and-so's" line.

"They were embarrassed and flabbergasted that they had been so completely
taken in," Officer Baumert says. Her simple counsel: "When your kids say
they're going to spend the night someplace, you've got to call" to check it
out.

The officer reels off other horror stories, many starting not when she
calls parents with news of a crime but merely with a heads-up.

Stories that start like this: Did you know your 14-year-old daughter is
having sex?

Mom's response: "You interrupted my day to tell me that? I've got
meetings." Later, she "came up here and screamed at me for 30 minutes."

Another example: Your 12-year-old son is threatening to commit suicide.

Response: "It's his life."

Or I'm going to arrest your child for threatening to kill a teacher.

Response: "We'll handle it at home - please don't file charges."

Officer Baumert caps her quiet sermon with a lament that stereotyping has
more often attached to the welfare mom:

"Unfortunately, it takes no qualifications to have children."

Danny Goldberg has hazy memories of an early encounter with Officer
Baumert, back when he was a middle-school pup of 12 or 13. Back before he'd
become a midlevel cocaine dealer, before a family car got torched, before
he got stabbed, before he got busted, before mixing coke and speed nearly
killed him.

And before more friends than he can count died.

Officer Baumert had an idea where the boy was headed and stopped by his
house. The father, now deceased, "knew I had smoked pot but didn't think it
was anything more," the son says. Wrong.

Dad threatened to sue for harassment. "My kid's not like that," Mr.
Goldberg recalls him saying.

"Yes, he is," came the officer's reply.

And "ever since then, she's been on my ass," Mr. Goldberg says. "She's a
wonderful woman."

Having survived to the ripe old age of 20, he says he's clean and sober,
working on a tech-school degree, paying off his debts to society and
determined to clear probation.

Mr. Goldberg's advice to the parents of those arrested this week at Plano's
high schools:

"I wouldn't bail 'em out."

For some of those caught, many of whom are in their late teens, it may be
too late even for tough love to work. Officer Baumert says it may have been
too late for a long time.

"Many kids start experimenting when they're just hitting the teenage
years," she says. "If you haven't laid the foundation by age 6. . . . "

Time now for Officer Baumert to walk the walk: She and her husband, a
fellow officer, have a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old.

"I'm a working mother," she says. "I'd love to stay at home, but we can't
afford it."

Her assessment of parenthood: "It's the hardest job in the world."