SIFTING THE ASHES OF GRIEF

Daughter's Death From Heroin Spurs Firefighter's New Battle

When heroin calls come in, Tim Lawrence doesn't hesitate. The Lynn
firefighter rushes to the scene, gives oxygen to overdose victims gasping
for breath, and helps stabilize them before an ambulance arrives. And more
than once, he's looked them in the eye and offered hope. "I say to them, 'I
know what you're going through,' " Lawrence said. "'My daughter died from
this.' I get right close to them and I say, 'Look, you need to get help.' "

A firefighter for 17 years, Lawrence is used to answering calls for help.
He's battled blazes long into the night.

He saved a police officer's life in the late 1980s -- for which his union
named him Firefighter of the Year.

Now he's on a new rescue mission. After his only daughter, Kathleen, 21,
died 14 months ago from a heroin overdose, Lawrence is helping to sound the
alarm about the deadly drug that is hooking young adults across Essex
County. He's speaking out, hoping to save other addicts -- and their
families -- from the heartache of heroin.

"I don't have any magic words," said Lawrence, 49. "It's easy to be angry
at everybody. . . . But the truth of the matter is, if anything good is to
come from this, I can't be angry. . . . We have to look at this situation
and say 'What can a community do?' "

When Lawrence speaks today at an antiheroin conference at Merrimack College
in North Andover, he has a simple message: drugs can take anyone prisoner.
"The plain truth of the matter is, addiction doesn't discriminate,"
Lawrence said last week at fire headquarters. "It doesn't matter if you
come from a rich family, a poor family. It really doesn't matter if you
come from a family that loves you, or that you go to church every week. It
does not discriminate."

In Lynn, Lawrence is taking part in Communities That Care, a new initiative
to promote healthy living among youth. There is a lot of work to do. In
2004, there were 39 deaths from heroin and other opiate overdoses in Essex
County. Another 27 deaths, many of which are still awaiting toxicology
reports, are thought to be opiate-related, according to data tracked by
the State Police unit assigned to the district attorney's office. The
number of deaths could be higher, however, since emergency rooms are not
required to report drug overdoses to authorities. Essex District Attorney
Jonathan W. Blodgett hopes to have a bill filed in the Legislature to
require that. In 2003, Kathleen Lawrence was among the 54 opiate-related
deaths in Essex County. She died Nov. 1, 2003. In addition to her father,
she left behind her mother, Joan Lawrence, and three brothers, John, 26,
Michael, 19, and Timothy, 16. Her addiction began with sneaking beers with
friends. She moved onto pot and heavy use of OxyContin. When the little
blue OxyContin pills got too expensive, at about $80 a pop, Lawrence
turned to heroin, which police say now costs just $4 a bag.

To encourage others to face their addiction, the Lawrence family revealed
Kathleen's struggle in her obituary. A scholarship in her name was set up
at Teen Challenge, one of the many drug rehabilitation programs Kathleen
attended over the last four years of her life.

Since his daughter's death, Tim Lawrence has quietly reached out to others
struggling with addiction. Police, probation officers, and others regularly
ask for his help in placing addicts in treatment. And there is the
challenge of work, facing the threat of heroin overdoses every time he
reports for duty. Despite his grief, Lawrence never stays behind in the
station. "I can't ask people to be brave and face up to this problem and
then go hide," he said. "What we need to do as a community, and not just in
Lynn, is get people to understand how dangerous heroin is."

Blodgett said that today's conference, which is expected to draw up to 200
people, is the first step of a strategy to educate people about heroin
abuse in Essex County.

"This is not just a law enforcement problem," Blodgett said. "This has to
reach a level of awareness that it stays with everyone. I don't have the
answers. What I do know is if we don't do a better job educating kids
and families that this [heroin] is so deadly and potent, then we'll
continue to have these senseless tragedies."

Tim Lawrence remembers his daughter as "absolutely the most beautiful
girl," whose birth on Feb. 6, 1982, helped ease the pain of another family
tragedy. Two years before, the Lawrences had buried their 6-month-old
daughter, Elizabeth, who died due to complications from heart surgery.
"When Kathleen was born, my family really believed she was a miracle baby,"
Lawrence said slowly.

Shy as a little girl, Kathleen grew up to be the heart of her family. At
home, she often looked after her three brothers. She visited her
grandparents next door every day. She played youth soccer, softball, and
shared a love of running with her father. The two grew close on long runs
through Lynn Woods. "I still can't talk to my boys the way I could talk to
Kathleen," her father said. "I just think that everything we went through
together made us closer." At Classical High School, Kathleen had a lot of
friends, played sports, and earned decent grades. However, by her senior
year, she was hooked on OxyContin, a drug her parents then knew little
about. Lawrence isn't sure what, or who, turned his daughter on to drugs.
It probably was a mix of teenage rebellion and insecurity, he said. "She
was kind-hearted and smart," Lawrence said. "When she got serious about her
school work, she would definitely surprise herself. But her problem was
her self-esteem. Everybody would always say what a beautiful girl she was.
But she never saw herself that way."

In the last four years of her life, she enrolled in several rehabilitation
programs, at one point even moving out of state for treatment. She attended
meetings of 12-step recovery programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
Sometimes she lived at home, attending outpatient programs. Other times she
lived in halfway homes. For a year, she worked, waitressing at Puleo's
Dairy Bar in Salem. She planned for a life beyond drugs, taking courses at
North Shore Community College in hopes of becoming a substance abuse
counselor. "She would say to me, 'Dad, who better to understand these
people than me?' My daughter tried program after program to try and get
better. It's not like she just gave up," Lawrence said.

Yet for every stint in rehab, a relapse was never far behind. On the job,
Tim Lawrence's biggest fear was that he would respond to a heroin call and
find his daughter at the scene.

In the end, he was off duty when he got the call in November 2003 about
Kathleen's death. (The family has declined to discuss the details).
Kathleen's addiction took a financial and emotional toll on her family. "It
takes many, many tries to succeed in rehab," Lawrence said. "People have to
get up and try again. In the end, she just wasn't able to try that one
last time." And so now her father is trying for her. He hopes parents start
to talk with their kids about heroin, and that communities work on
prevention strategies. "This problem was not unique to the Lawrence
family," he said. "People are out there whispering about it among family
members, but nobody seems to say what needs to be said, that heroin is a
major threat." It isn't easy for Lawrence, a soft-spoken man, to talk about
Kathleen. As he did while she was alive, Lawrence has sought the comfort of
faith and the compassion of friends. He visits her grave every day and
carries her picture everywhere he goes. Through grief counseling, the
Lawrences have befriended other couples who have lost children to heroin
addiction. He also finds strength in reading books on grief and loss. And
very often, he turns to his daughter's own words, written while in recovery
just a year before she died.

"You just never know," she wrote, "when God is going to take someone from
here and make them an angel."