COLUMN: HEROIN DEATH SHOCKS PARENTS

Mom Wants To Warn Other Parents

It has taken all of two weeks, but Cindy and Duane Stellner have finally
accepted that their 20-year-old daughter, Sarah, is dead.

What they haven't come to terms with is the probable cause of death: a
heroin overdose.

"We knew she was partying, of course, because 95 percent of the college
kids in Madison do that," Cindy Stellner said in a phone interview from the
family's home in Gays Mills, a small farm community about 15 miles east of
the Mississippi River in southwestern Wisconsin.

But heroin?

"I was just floored that she'd do anything like that. We're having a real
hard time with that part of it," she says.

As reported previously, Sarah Stellner - who had moved to Madison last
August and was working at Cookies by Design on Mineral Point Road - was
found dead in her Langdon Street apartment the morning of April 26.

Though police are still awaiting the results of toxicology tests to
determine the cause of death, Stellner's roommate, Morgan Fenick, 17, has
confessed that she injected Stellner with heroin earlier that morning.
Investigators also found drug paraphernalia in the apartment.

"So we're pretty sure it's drug-related, let's put it that way," Cindy
Stellner says.

Two weeks after getting the news, Stellner says she and her husband and
their four other kids - all boys, ranging in age from 32 to 9 - are still
in a state of shock. But she consented to an interview because she thinks
other parents should be aware that heroin has re-emerged in Madison in the
last few years.

And she wants people to know that while her daughter, like a lot of young
people today, had a few alcohol-related incidents in her past, she was the
last person you'd expect to get caught up in hard-core drugs.

This was a kid, her mother says, who was extremely bright - she had
graduated early from North Crawford High School - and had recently talked
about becoming an elementary school teacher. A kid who got along with
everyone and had a wide circle of friends. A kid who enjoyed simple
pleasures, like camping and wild flowers.

And maybe that's why this is so hard to accept, Stellner says - and why she
and her husband, a saw filer at a local mill, have all sorts of questions
at this point but very few answers.

For instance, they still know only a few details of what happened that
night. They know, she says, that Sarah had been partying in the apartment
with Fenick and two males, and that at one point Sarah's cousin - who was
asleep in an adjacent bedroom - had asked them to quiet down.

And they know that Sarah came into the bedroom herself around 3:30 a.m. and
plopped down on the bed. And that when her cousin tried to wake her at 9
a.m. - after his alarm had gone off - "she was already gone," Stellner says.

"We think they were just partying and that things got out of hand. I mean,
you know these kids today. They're not afraid of anything. Ten feet tall
and bullet-proof - isn't that what they say?"

Stellner acknowledges that among the questions she and her husband are
asking themselves is whether they should have spent more time talking to
Sarah about the perils of drugs. The thing is, they did talk about it
casually, and Sarah took drug awareness classes in school, Stellner says.

But they certainly would have made it a higher priority, she says, had they
known that heroin was among the drugs that are easily accessible in Madison
- - especially on the UW campus.

"One detective told us that the heroin they get now is almost pure and that
it's really strong stuff," she says. "And he said a lot of people don't
even realize it's out there, because it's just recently resurfaced."

Lt. Sandy Theune of the Dane County Narcotics Gang Task Force said Tuesday
it's true that heroin use is on the rise in the Madison area, but notes
that it's still not as prevalent as marijuana or cocaine.

"Parents need to be aware that we're seeing younger people experimenting
with a variety of drugs and any one of them could be lethal," she says.
"And I think it's accurate to say today's drugs are more potent."

How would parents know if their child's on drugs?

Look for sudden changes in their behavior - or declining grades, Theune
suggests. "Those are often red flags."

Though Stellner says she can't talk about the investigation itself, she's
confident that police will track down the individual or individuals who
supplied Sarah and her roommate with the heroin, and that criminal charges
will follow. And yes, she says, that will alleviate some of the pain her
family is experiencing.

"That's our goal - just to get a couple dealers off the streets," she says.
"That's about all we can do."

In the meantime, Stellner says, she and her husband are left with the
memories of a daughter who had great promise and was a delight to be
around, but who found out what a harsh and unforgiving world this can be
when you make bad choices.

"And please emphasize that she was a good kid," Stellner says.

"This never should have happened."