Series: Meth In The Mother Lode (Part 2d)

BOY LOSES DAD TO METH

After eating a giant bowl of chocolate ice cream, Robert Rochester watched
a movie about a talking pig, then climbed into bed to get a good night's
rest before school in the morning.

But the 11-year-old woke when he heard people screaming outside his bedroom
door.

"Then I heard a gunshot and then I panicked," he remembers.

Looking out of a peephole in his door, Robert saw his father limp into a
bedroom where he would later die.

His father, also named Robert Rochester, was shot and killed by Dianna
Andersen - sentenced last September to three years in state prison after
pleading guilty in Rochester's death.

Police say Rochester showed up the evening of Nov. 9, 2003, looking for his
son, who was staying at Andersen's house with his mother, Phyllis Rochester.

Abusive mentally and physically, Robert Sr. caused Phyllis to take her
three kids and leave him, she said.

Rochester's autopsy revealed he had a "very large level" of methamphetamine
in his bloodstream, said Robert Torres, a former employee at Clovis-based
Central Valley Toxicology, Inc. - a private lab that does testing for the
coroner's office.

"Someone at that level, and who is still walking around, is probably a
chronic methamphetamine user," Torres said of Rochester, a 45-year-old
Chinese Camp man.

Andersen, too, was under the influence of methamphetamine when she shot
Rochester in her Copperopolis-area home. During an interview at the
Calaveras County Jail, she admitted to smoking meth about five hours before
pulling the trigger.

About a year after his father's death, Robert, then 12, spent an afternoon
watching Nickelodeon cartoons and eating sunflower seeds out of a bowl with
a spoon.

When asked where his father is, Robert shrugged his shoulders before
saying, "Up there, duh," while pointing the remote to the ceiling.

His mother then chimed in, "He's your daddy angel."

Phyllis, 41, married Robert Sr. in 1990. She still goes by the last name of
Rochester, she says, because it costs money to have the name legally
changed and she doesn't like her maiden name, Sandman.

Seven years ago, the Rochesters moved to the Sonora area from San Jose,
where Robert was a roofer and his wife was a homemaker.

While in the Bay Area, at the age of 25, Phyllis was arrested for being
under the influence of cocaine. She remembers snorting meth a few times,
but not liking it.

"I was a bad kid. I was a monster," she said. "I was introduced to drugs at
a very early age when it wasn't talked about."

As a result of a urine test in jail, Phyllis said she found out she was
pregnant with her oldest daughter, Samantha, who is now 16 and a
cheerleader at Bret Harte High School. Phyllis also has a 14-year-old
daughter named Stephanie who just joined the cheerleading squad.

After spending four months in a Milpitas jail cell, Phyllis went to a rehab
center for six months and was then placed under house arrest for another
six months.

Now a single mother raising her three children in an Angels Camp apartment,
Phyllis supports her family on a fixed income of survivor benefits and a
small allowance from her mother. She worked briefly as a veterinary
assistant, but is now a stay-at-home mom.

Phyllis says she hasn't touched drugs since being booked in jail 16 years
ago, when she was pregnant with her daughter, yet she sees the effects
drugs have had on her family.

"I felt really sad," Robert said, recalling when a detective interviewing
him after the shooting told him that his dad had died.

One day when Robert was having a difficult time dealing with his father's
death, his mother made him a photo collage with his name and different
pictures of him and his father on it.

"That's what my dad looked like - a total geek," Robert said, referring to
his father's eighth-grade picture hanging in the collage on his bedroom wall.

Robert - now 13 and a seventh-grade student at Mark Twain Elementary School
- - said his best memory of his father is when he bought him a go-cart. His
worst is when he was grounded by him for not taking out the trash.

He remembers his dad acting "sorta meanish" sometimes.

At times, that mean streak was fueled by meth, Phyllis said, adding that
her late husband dabbled with the drug and would disappear from his family
for weeks at a time.

The night he was shot, Rochester beat a visitor at Andersen's house with a
MAC flashlight and threatened several people at the home, Phyllis said.

"He was acting like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, but with Arnold
Schwarzenegger being the bad guy," she added. "He came in like a rocket. I
like to call it, 'A monster in the Twilight Zone.' "

Sorting through a pile of old family photos, Phyllis divided the pictures
on a wooden table in her pale-yellow kitchen.

On the right side were photos taken, she thinks, when her husband was under
the influence of drugs, including one in which he was teasing Robert with
some Thanksgiving turkey and another where he looked disturbed during his
son's first birthday party.

On the left side of the table were happy, sober pictures where Rochester
was seen smiling and bouncing his children on his knee without any
sunglasses or hat on.

While Phyllis went through the pictures, Robert played with the family's
three-legged cat, Whispers, whom he calls Tripod.

"I want him to love his dad," Phyllis said of her son. "Their dad loved
them all."

As part of a writing exercise shortly after Rochester's death, fifth-grade
students were asked to write a "Kindness Hero" essay about someone they admire.

In Robert's piece, he describes a day when he was 5 years old. He woke up
to eat breakfast and his dad surprised him with a German shepherd.

"My father was kind because he had got me a dog," Robert wrote. "My father
was not mean that day. Plus, he spent some time with me. The reason he was
my hero was because he was my dad and I am his son and I loved him."

Weeks later, Robert returned home from school with a handwritten letter on
lined notebook paper that he wrote during recess.

"Dear Dad: I love you," the letter began. "I will never stop loving you. If
there is a way I can bring you back I'll do it and it might bring you back.
Love, Robert. I love you."