SHE HAD TO MAKE THE CALL

Eight months after her daughter's fatal heroin overdose, Joretta Hill
contacted Amber Thompson's family to let them know they were not alone

Joretta Hill never had any doubt she would make the phone call. She had to.

The Thompsons were just starting to live her nightmare. They were grieving
the death of their daughter, who died of a heroin overdose.

Hill knew a lot of the world would be ready to write her off as an addict
who got what she deserved.

So Hill had to tell them they were not alone. She wanted to ask for the
mother. Tell her that if she needed anything, she would try to help.

But Hill was nervous. And she had no idea what she was going to say.

And she did not want to sound like a nut. She did not want them to hang up.

Hill called information, got the number for Amber Thompson's parents. She
made the call.

"Hello?"

A beautiful life

Toni Lechuga was born Dec. 2, 1972, to Seymour and Joretta Lawrence. By the
time Toni was at Oswego High School, she was popular, a star volleyball
player and plenty smart.

Her parents actually got called to school because Toni's ACT score was so high.

"We had a beautiful home," said Hill, Toni's mother. "We had a beautiful
family. We did all the things we thought we were supposed to do. We were
just four people (including her husband's daughter) I assume going along as
happy as can be. But sometimes that's not enough."

It was around Christmas 1988, when Toni, 16, first started to get a little
sassy. At first, her mom attributed it to normal teenage mood swings.

But then the grades started to plunge. And her parents suspected she might
have been experimenting with drugs.

On March 3, 1989, Hill took her daughter to rehab for the first time.

"When it started, it was fast," Hill said. "The first day that I found out
my daughter was using heroin, I knew she was going to die."

'Didn't see it coming'

Amber Thompson had a lot of plans for the future. She was a teenager, so
just one wouldn't do.

She was set to graduate from Minooka High School in May 2009. Then she'd
join her older sister at Eastern Illinois University, where she would study
psychology. Or graphic arts. Or food. Or writing. Or maybe teaching. The
future was a fantastic blank slate.

At home, Amber was a good kid. She'd volunteer to scrub the beautiful
hardwood floors that covered the first floor of her family's home just
outside Joliet. She'd often pick up her little brother after school and
take him to Chuck E. Cheese. Or she'd grab coffee - she called it "mud" -
and bring it to her mom at the family business, where they'd spend the
afternoon talking about all her plans.

What druggie does things like that?

"I feel like our daughter was taken out by a sniper out of a window,"
Amber's dad, Dion Thompson, said. "Didn't see it coming. We didn't have an
opportunity to fight for her."

'Maybe it was peer pressure'

So when was the first time that Toni Lechuga used heroin?

Over the course of her daughter's heroin addiction, Hill learned a lot of
things that a mother shouldn't have to know. Toni never tried to hide
anything. She talked about her sex life and her drug use.

But when she first used heroin isn't quite clear.

Hill says after Toni was married, she picked up heroin, or money to buy
heroin, from her husband, Lionel Lechuga. But Hill doesn't think Lionel
gave Toni her first drugs.

"Why she said yes, I don't know," Hill said. "Maybe it was peer pressure.
Maybe it was that everyone else was doing it."

'Was she sniffling?'

So when was the first time that Amber Thompson used heroin?

At first, her parents were sure that it was the night she died. But later
police told them she had used it at least once before. Dion and Kathleen
Thompson were shocked.

If you had told them that Amber had tried alcohol or smoked cigarettes,
they would have been disappointed, but they would have believed it.

And they had already dealt with the marijuana problem. Amber had spent an
entire summer in the house after that episode. But there was really no
reason to suspect she was into anything more dangerous.

"Was she sniffling?" Kathleen Thompson said. "For someone who had
allergies, yeah, but not for someone who is addicted to heroin. To know
Amber, she just seemed smarter than that."

'It was insanity'

It wasn't long before Toni was a full-blown addict. Hill took her to rehab
for the first of five times in January 1989. She is still paying bills from
those visits.

Toni dropped out of high school. She overdosed for her first time on July
4, 1996. Hill went to the hospital.

"I knew when I was driving to the hospital she was going to die," Hill
said. "Thank God she didn't. It was the beginning of the end."

Toni got married to Lionel and they had two children in between his stints
in prison. While Lionel was in prison, Toni would live with Hill and could
stay clean. She got her GED and started working as a respiratory therapist.

But when he got out, the trouble would start again.

Toni kept working, but would never accept more than contract work. She
didn't want stay at one place, where they get to know her well enough to
figure out she was an addict. Toni tried to be a good mother, but she knew
she was failing. Her addiction led her to prostitution, theft, more drugs.

"She always admitted she had a problem," Hill said. "She never tried to
deny it. She didn't like who she was. She was embarrassed who she was."

In 1999, Toni crashed her car and broke both legs after she had a cocaine
seizure while driving.

"It was out of control before," Hill said. "It was insanity after that."

Toni lost her job. She got her own apartment and the kids lived with Hill.
And Toni kept using.

Even as she tried to get help for her daughter, Hill was very blunt and
never hid what she thought. She would see glimpses of her cheerful young
daughter, but they were fleeting. Toni would call every night to talk to
her daughter and son.

In August 2008, Joretta stopped by the apartment. There was no food, so
Joretta bought a few groceries.

"I'm trying so hard to get straight," Toni told Hill. "If I stay straight
for a whole weekend, can I see (my son)?"

Hill was going to a breast cancer fundraiser that weekend. She told Toni to
call on Monday and they could arrange something.

On Monday, there was no call.

"I knew what no phone call meant," Hill said.

'She's still a good girl'

Amber was with a friend when she died.

Kyle Hayes, 20, was practically another child of the Thompsons. He was at
the house all the time. He was in several of the pictures the family
displayed at Amber's funeral. And Kathleen and Dion Thompson almost bailed
him out. That was before they heard the full story of what happened the
night she died.

"He would do anything except call the paramedics," Dion Thompson said.

It was Saturday, March 21, 2009, the second day of spring. Amber and Hayes
went to a home in Aurora, where Ryan Faber, 25, and Christopher Parker, 22,
lived. According to police, Faber sold heroin to Hayes. Parker loaded the
heroin into a syringe and injected it into a willing Amber.

They continued to use heroin through the night. Amber struggled. At least
two times, the men had to do CPR on her to revive her. But when she
recovered, they let her go to sleep.

On Sunday morning, according to Aurora police, Amber wouldn't wake up.
Hayes put her in his car intending to take her to the hospital, police
said. Instead, he stopped at a gas station and called 911, police said.

Paramedics found Amber barely breathing. She died at 11 a.m.

"Even if Amber was doing heroin, she still didn't deserve to die," Kathleen
Thompson said. "She's still a good girl. She was 18."

Hayes, Parker and Faber all were charged with drug-induced homicide.

"Kids feel like they can't die," Dion Thompson said. "No one says, if you
do heroin with someone and they die, you'll go to jail for 30 years."

'It's complicated'

On the weekend Toni was trying to stay clean so she could see her son, she
met a man from Naperville. He drove Toni, then 36, to Chicago, where Hill
says they bought cocaine and heroin.

The man provided the drugs and Toni provided sex.

On the following Tuesday, Toni took a mix of heroin and cocaine in his
bathroom. Her heart stopped beating. She died eight days later, on Aug. 15,
2008.

Toni's husband was convicted in a federal racketeering conspiracy and faces
a lengthy prison sentence. Hill is angry with him, but still holds Toni
responsible for her own actions.

In Toni's obituary, Hill asked that donations be sent to the Oswego Police
Department's drug prevention program. They got $1,050, Hill said.

Hill has custody of Toni's kids. Her grandchildren are now 16 and 13. Hill
doesn't hide what happened, but she can't explain everything.

"It's complicated to me and I'm an adult," she said. "This dominoes down to
so many people."

Sharing their grief

When Hill read in the paper that Amber Thompson had died of a heroin
overdose, she knew she had to call.

She had never met them. She was a stranger. Of course, she knew they were
grieving. So was she.

Though their stories were not the same.

"I was hurting," Dion Thompson said. "I could hear in her that she was
hurting."

Joretta Hill and Dion Thompson - strangers with too much in common - talked
for two hours.

They cried and they shared and they tried to figure out why good little
girls become victims of heroin.