THE NEEDLE HUNTER

A Former Addict And Prostitute, Sherry Latreille Now Helps Rid The
ByWard Market Of Discarded Drug Paraphernalia

OTTAWA - Sherry Latreille's father used to tell her that he read the
newspaper obituaries each morning, expecting some day to see her name
there. "He thought I'd be dead in a river somewhere," she recalls.

Her father's concern was not fanciful. An addict with a taste for
heroin, cocaine, crack and crystal meth, Latreille, 40, estimates
she's spent 10 years in jail since her first arrest when she was 18,
and somewhat wistfully lists the holidays -- Christmas, Halloween,
Valentine's Day and Canada Day, as well as at least three birthdays --
she's spent behind bars on various drug, prostitution and shoplifting
charges.

Her mother, known in the community as Indian Pat, was also a user and
prostitute, plying her trade in the ByWard Market while Sherry sold
her services on Gladstone Avenue and Wellington Street.

Sherry, tired of being known only as "Indian Pat's daughter," decided
to move to Vancouver and make a name for herself there.

There, things were no better. In one unfortunate incident involving
drugs, a man crushed her skull with a hammer and cut off one of her
fingers. She lost her teeth to crystal meth. She turned tricks to pay
for her heroin addiction, which she depended on in part to dull her
loathing of her prostitution.

After her return to Ottawa, she recalls being visited at the
Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre by Vancouver detectives asking her to
look at arrays of mug shots. She recognized one -- a pig farmer she'd
once performed oral sex on but, distrustful of his windowless truck,
refused to go home with.

The detectives also showed her photographs of Robert Pickton's
victims, one of whom -- Aunt Bobby from Edmonton, she called her --
was a dear friend of Sherry and Pat's.

"I couldn't sleep for three days after that," Sherry says. "I had
nightmares."

The experience, though, helped straighten her out -- she immediately
stopped "doing dates."

"I can't do that to my mom," she says. "I don't want her ever to open
a book and see that somebody killed me."

Three years ago, after quitting drugs almost entirely ("I still smoke
a little pot now and then"), Sherry joined the Needle Hunter Program,
an initiative by Ottawa Public Health to help keep neighbourhoods with
high drug use -- Lowertown, Centretown, Hintonburg and Vanier -- free
of discarded condoms and drug paraphernalia.

For two hours a day, three days a week, and for $10.50 and hour,
Sherry dons steel-toed boots, vest and gloves and, tongs in hand,
scours the ByWard Market for needles, syringe and screen packages,
condoms, crack pipes and tourniquets. In 2009, needle hunters
recovered more than 4,000 syringes.

Her aunt, Gail, has been a needlehunter for five years. Pat has been
doing it for four.

"My mom got me the job," Sherry says. "I was always getting into
trouble and my mom said, 'Well, why don't you give back to the
community since you took so much?'"

She likes knowing that she has a role in cleaning up the
neighbourhood, and that her efforts are appreciated by people she
doesn't even know.

"A lot of people thank us for picking up the condoms and pipes and
stuff. People shake our hands.

"It makes me feel good," she adds. "I always thought that because I
couldn't have kids, I thought, 'Well, what have I accomplished in my
life?'

"This way I feel that I've accomplished something because I know
there's a kid out there who's not going to step on a needle, or
there's two that are going to come out of their house and not see
crack pipes and condoms on the ground, and it brings them a little
peace of mind. And I'm happy to do that -- even if they're living in a
really bad area, they know their area is clean."

Some days, she won't find a single needle. On others, it's a
pharmaceutical landslide -- one of the hunters recently came across
178 needles in a single spot.

Sherry also enjoys the social aspect of her job, as many of the people
she encounters on her route are ones she used to get high with. But it
can also often be difficult, she admits, to be so overtly exposed to
the world in which she once partook so freely. She fell off the wagon
once in the last three years, and immediately quit the Needle Hunters
program.

"I told my boss I'd rather quit than be fired," she recalls. A couple
of months later, however, she was back on the job.

With her heroin habit behind her for now ("I wouldn't give it to my
worst enemy," she says), Sherry's new addiction is getting to all the
dirty needles she sees.

She'll climb fences to reach them, and if she sees one that's fallen
out of reach in a crack, she'll return later with a pencil with tape
on it. If she can't pick one up, her palms get clammy and she starts
to sweat.

"I'd do this as long as I can," she says. "If I'm 60 and still doing
this, I'd be happy. Even if I wasn't getting any money, I'd still do
it because I did a lot of wrong, and it makes me feel good knowing
that I can kind of make up for it.

"Maybe I'll get my wings to go to heaven," she adds. "I've done a lot
of sinning and I think I'm going to hell, but I may get my wings."

Through profiles in these pages and online, Bruce Deachman uncovers
the people who bring Ottawa to life, people who exhibit an unusual
passion or obsession. Do you know someone who is one in a million?