WHEN ALL IS LOST

Dawn Can't Stay Clean, So The State Takes Away Her Kids

Tonio Smith stares mutely out the window as his mother, Dawn Nicole
Smith, slumps, smoking, in a stained chair. The 8-year-old's eyes are
solemn beneath black bangs as his mother stares unseeing into some
middle distance.

His father, Tony Smith, who long ago moved in with another woman even
though he is technically still Dawn's husband, gathers his children's
clothes and their important papers from a house strewn with trash,
beer bottles and food. He's taking the four kids he had with Dawn to a
new home. Garbage bags serve as luggage. It's May 2007. Tonio and his
three younger siblings are leaving their eighth home since 2004, the
latest Lexington area rental unit to start out nice enough but soon
reflect the chaos of a drug-addled family life.

Dawn's mother, Brenda Raines, after a brief period of sobriety, has
returned to drinking, and after a series of health problems, isn't
working.

Tonio's half brother, 8-month-old Dakota, has been placed in foster
care. Dakota's father, Larry Raines, is Dawn's stepfather. After
spending nearly a year in the Jessamine County Jail, Larry has pleaded
guilty to incest and is in prison. The earliest he can be released is
Aug. 8, 2010. His family is trying to get custody of Dakota.

Fooling the drug tests?

As the time to leave their mother nears - it has become a frequent
routine, with Dawn making about a dozen trips to jail or treatment
during the past few years - Tonio, David, 6, Kobe, 5 and Mary, 2,
scamper about the house, grabbing whatever they want out of the
refrigerator. On this day, it's Popsicles and ham. But unlike previous
times, none of them cries.

The hopeful road to recovery that a judge laid out as Dawn began drug
court in the spring of 2004 has led here instead.

Dawn, 25, has lost custody of her children. She has no job. She is
being evicted. She's still using drugs.

In fact, she now says, she never really quit using
drugs.

After Dawn was caught using in July 2006, she was kicked out of the
drug court program and went to prison. In October 2006, shortly after
she'd given birth to Dakota, and after the dark circles perpetually
under her eyes had been lightened by sleep and regular meals, she came
clean about using.

Dawn said that except for some part of her pregnancy with her fourth
child, Mary, she had never been off drugs for more than a couple of
days in a row.

Drug court never caught her. Nobody knew. For most of that time, she
had no positive drug tests. Because her drug of choice was pills, she
had no track marks or paraphernalia, no odor to detect, just a hazy
disconnected sense of depression.

Drug court officials say it's possible she sometimes beat the drug
tests. They can't test for every drug, though changes are constantly
being made to adapt to the inventive and ever-changing ways that
addicts cheat.

Officials say that Dawn, because of her many complicating factors,
probably needed long-term residential treatment where she could be
with her children. Such opportunities are rare in Kentucky.

They also say Dawn, as is an addict's way, might have been
exaggerating her claim of continuous drug use for effect. The idea is,
if you can't be good, you might as well be good at being bad.

Dawn says she did find ways to cheat on the tests, including using her
sons' clean urine to replace her own. She says she found a doctor
known for a free hand in writing prescriptions and, using her Medicaid
card, got prescriptions every two weeks.

Brenda, in a separate interview, says that she sometimes helped Dawn
get pills because Dawn's withdrawals were so bad that, as her mother,
she felt she had to do something to help.

But even all that wasn't enough.

The "weird and wonderful" feeling that Lortab had promised early on
was long gone. Dawn needed painkillers to get through the day.

Like Brother Lloyd said all those months ago when Dawn was baptized:
Sometimes, when money is low and the need to get high is unbearable,
addicts who have given up everything else then give up themselves.
Dawn says that, eventually, her stepfather was giving her pills in
exchange for sex.

Another goodbye

In prison, Dawn said incarceration was just the thing to turn her
around. But like the vast majority of addicts, once released, she went
back to using. She and the kids reunited, but she worked only
sporadically and was soon as lost to drugs as ever.

And that leads to her oldest son staring silently out the window, days
after state social workers were called.

Dawn contends that an angry ex-boyfriend told authorities she was
working as a prostitute, an allegation she denies.

The paperwork asking for the children's removal from her custody cites
a reason that's less dramatic, but impossible to deny: Dawn is still
abusing drugs.

The four oldest children are returning to their dad,
Tony.

Generally, efforts to terminate parental rights do not begin for at
least a year. During that time, if Dawn is to get her children back,
she must find stable employment and suitable housing, take parenting
classes, show up for all of her court dates and stay clean. Those
requirements parallel her drug court goals. But this time, she does
not have the support that drug court provides.

Tonio, the little boy who always seems to try to get his grown-ups to
do right, is asked whether he'll feel safer living with his dad.

He looks briefly to see if his mom, lost in despair and drugged
delusion, is paying attention. When he sees that she isn't, Tonio
slowly nods his head.

"Yes."

As Tony packs, Dawn sits bleary-eyed, immobile. This is as bad as it
can get, she says. She is going to get clean. She is going to stay
clean.

Starting today.