PROMISING LIFE DONE IN BY DRUG

In her 32 years, Tara Nicole Lian found time to lead two lives.

She was wife, daughter and mother, a woman who loved music and nature and
tried to treat everyone with compassion.

And she was a heroin addict. In search of her next fix, she hurt the people
who loved her most.

Just before she took her own life in August, family members say the Tara
they loved had triumphed, but she couldn't handle the despair she felt at
what she had done.

As a child, Tara Nicole Lian lived her life with a smile on her face. She
was born June 21, 1973, in Longview.

"She was the pride of my life," said Tara's grandfather, George Charette.
"She was a good kid."

Tara loved camping, swimming, anything outdoors, said her mother, Carol
Charette.

In grade school, she picked up the violin and fell in love. By the time she
reached junior high, she was playing with the high school orchestra, Carol
Charette said.

She continued to play as a student with Kelso High School's class of 1991.
When she wasn't making music, camping, or creating art, Tara liked to hang
out at Skateworld with her friends.

It was there that she met Jay Lian in 1989.

"She was just fun to be around," Jay said. "We went to Skateworld, we went
to several dances at school, we went shopping at Portland, we went to the
beach."

When Jay and Tara learned they would be having a baby, they decided to get
married. Jay, already out of high school, took a job at Weyerhaeuser to
support the family.

"Tara had the baby in April and graduated in June," Carol Charette said.

"It was hard to get pregnant and marry that early, but things were good,"
said Carol, who stayed close to the young couple as they raised her
granddaughter. "Tara and Jay were in love, and they were good buddies."

Three years later, Jay and Tara had a son. Not long after he was born, Tara
started hanging out with a new group of friends.

"When she tried heroin, I'm not even sure she knew what it was," Carol
Charette said. "Then she tried it again, and pretty soon she was hooked."

"The drug just totally consumed her," Carol said. "Life didn't have much
meaning to her after that."

The downward spiral was at its worst in 2001 and 2002, when Tara seemed to
care about nothing more than heroin. Even so, she went to treatment centers
several times. Although she didn't stay clean, Jay remembers good moments.

"There were a couple days here, a couple days there, where things would be
better," he said. "We would go out to dinner together. I would remember
that she was somebody down deep. She wasn't just a druggie. She loved her
kids and family very much, no matter what."

Other times, when Tara was desperate, "the draw of the junk was too much
for her to pull out," said Jay, who has raised the children for a decade
with the help of Tara's mother and grandfather.

She was in and out of jail on drug-related charges, and when Jay and Tara's
youngest daughter was born 21 months ago, the baby spent time in a detox
hospital for infants before coming home.

This June, Tara was arrested for drug possession and shoplifting.

"She was hungry, and she was probably loaded on drugs," Carol Charette
said. "She took some food, and she got caught."

In jail, Tara got clean. The wife, daughter and mother who loved her family
began to return, loved ones said.

"I had always hoped that something was going to change," said Jay Lian, who
loved his wife through their 16 year marriage. "She was a very, very
intelligent person. She had a lot of talent. She was an excellent cook. She
was a very good artist. She played the violin. I knew that deep down inside
there was a lot more than what I was seeing. I had seen it before."

On Aug. 18, she'd been off the drugs for two months when a judge told Tara
she would serve up to five years in jail on charges of shoplifting and
possession with intent to distribute.

"She couldn't handle the pain of what she had done to her family, what she
had done to her kids, while on the drugs," Jay Lian said.

"She felt as though she didn't have much future," said Tara's grandfather,
George Charette.

A cell mate found her with a bedsheet around her neck at around 5:20 p.m.
that night, dead.