HEROIN VICTIM'S DEATH SURPRISED FAMILY

Cindy Pless eagerly was awaiting her daughter Diane's upcoming trip to Indiana.

She's ended up dreading it for what it's become.

Instead of sharing in a joyful family reunion, Diane Pless -- by all
accounts a caring, sensitive young woman who died earlier this week
of a heroin overdose in her Shadyside apartment -- will be the focus
of a funeral service today.

She is one of at least six people to die since Sunday after
overdosing on a potent strain of the drug that reached the area last
week. Four people died in Pittsburgh, one in Munhall and one in Aspinwall.

Two other men died of heroin overdoses Thursday, but tests on stamp
bags of heroin found at both scenes turned up no evidence of the
powerful painkiller fentanyl, which is suspected of being involved in
the other overdoses. Toxicology tests on the victims are pending and
may take weeks, investigators said.

There have been at least 40 nonfatal overdoses in Allegheny County
since the heroin and fentanyl mix surfaced June 2 in Hazelwood.

Cindy Pless is reeling from the loss of her daughter. Her first
thought after learning of her daughter's death, she said, was: "This
can't be happening. I kept saying, 'I've lost my baby. I've lost my baby.' "

At first blush, Diane Pless, 20, would seem like anything but the
typical heroin user. A 2004 graduate of North Allegheny High School
and the daughter of an executive, she was a Girl Scout, played
softball and basketball, and adored animals.

But an addiction treatment expert claims that the typical profile of
a heroin user, at least for the Pittsburgh area, has changed. Now, he
said, heroin can be found in virtually every community and in every
demographic layer.

Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director of Gateway Rehabilitation Center,
said that until five or six years ago, when one thought of heroin
users, "you didn't think of the suburbs, of 20-year-old Caucasian
women from nice families."

But as heroin's purity increased, enabling users to snort it rather
than inject it, it hooked a whole new segment of the population.

Capretto estimated Gateway has seen a 600 percent increase in
admissions of heroin users since 2001, and 95 percent of the
increased admissions were of Caucasians and about 70 percent were
from the suburbs.

Nationally, the number of people seeking treatment for heroin
addiction increased by 18 percent between 1993 and 2003.

But in Pennsylvania, that increase has been much more sharp.
According to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, admissions for treatment jumped from 46 per 100,000
people in 1993 to 146 per 100,000.

Cindy Pless said she had no clue that her daughter - who worked at
Bravo at the Waterfront -- was using heroin.

"I was very taken aback," she said.

Dubbie Buckler, a longtime friend of the Pless family, said Diane
Pless' father, Dana Pless, told her he was "absolutely stunned to
hear the news" of his daughter's death.

Buckler said Dana Pless told her that Diane, whose family moved to
the North Hills from Katy, Texas, prior to her entering the
eighth-grade, was working on "getting some focus and direction in her
life and she was becoming self-sufficient."

However, she also said that Dana Pless, the chief financial officer
for the Society of Automotive Engineers, "was concerned about the
crowd she had started running around with."

Of her daughter, who briefly attended the University of Pittsburgh at
Greensburg, Cindy Pless said, "I think you're always concerned about
your children and whether they're hanging around with the right
people. But in our minds, we always knew she was this sweet, loving
girl. She's trying to find herself, but we didn't know this ... we
didn't know this.

"You raise them and try your best, and at some point they have to go
out on their own and grow up and make their own way. We've all made
decisions that were not good decisions. But in her case,
unfortunately, her bad decision ended up taking a terrible turn."

Some heroin users are luckier.

Lou Lardo, 45, a recovering addict who works as a project director at
Summit Medical Services -- a methadone maintenance treatment facility
in the Strip District -- is one of them.

Lardo used various substances for 18 years -- starting with
cigarettes and alcohol -- before getting clean at the age of 29. He
began using narcotics, including heroin, in his early 20s and can
remember how hard it was to kick his habit.

"With any opiates, it's not only that mental obsession that you have,
but you also have the physical symptoms and the physical withdrawal
to deal with," he said Friday, a day after celebrating his 16th
"clean" anniversary.

"Imagine having the flu and multiply that by seven or eight - the
worst flu you ever had. You're throwing up, you have the chills and
aches. And you know all you need to do is take something and it will
all go away.

"That's the battle. People many times will kick it and get through
that sickness, but they romanticize it and start it all over again."

Today, almost 300 miles away, family and friends will gather to
remember Diane Pless in Warren, a small Indiana farming community
near where her mother relocated from the North Hills less than a month ago.

It is not the sort of return that Cindy Pless anticipated.

"She wanted to be able to come and visit me in Indiana and see all of
her cousins," Cindy Pless said. "It's always a big event when she
gets to visit Indiana. She was looking forward to that."

Cindy Pless remembered her daughter -- a movie buff who loved caring
for her two cats -- as a kind, sweet person searching to find herself.

"She was trying to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of
her life and her future," she said. "She didn't know yet.

"Unfortunately, since this happened, we know she made some wrong
decisions. But that doesn't change the underlying person. She was a
very loving daughter."

Cindy Pless said she hoped her daughter's death might serve as a
warning to steer clear of hard drugs such as heroin.

"If some of her friends were on the edge, I hope they'll be able to
say no because now they know someone personally that this happened to
- -- and they won't want it to happen to them," she said.

"This is a tragedy that could have been avoided."

[sidebar]

FATAL OVERDOSES

These people have died since Sunday, possibly from a lethal mix of
heroin and fentanyl:

Joseph Zielinski

Age: 45

Occupation: Electrician

Residence: Verona

Died: Sunday

Place of death: Greenfield

Dorothy Iannone

Age: 56

Occupation: Ex-waitress

Residence: Hazelwood, Roma Way, Hazelwood

Died: Monday

Place of death: Roma Way, Hazelwood

Lynn Margavo

Age: 30

Occupation: Unemployed

Residence: Greenfield

Died: Monday

Place of death: UPMC South Side hospital, after overdosing in
Hazelwood

Diane Pless

Age: 20

Occupation: Restaurant hostess

Residence: Centre Avenue, Shadyside

Died: Tuesday

Place of death: Centre Avenue, Shadyside

Lawrence Jordan

Age: 48

Occupation: Unemployed

Residence: Munhall

Died: Tuesday

Place of death: Munhall

Harold Bradley

Age: 50

Occupation: Car salesman

Residence: Virginia Avenue, Aspinwall

Died: Tuesday

Place of death: Virginia Avenue, Aspinwall