HEROIN DAMAGE: SALEM MOTHER LEFT TO RAISE SISTER'S SON AFTER HEROIN OVERDOSE

SALEM - When Elena Sorrento died at 8 from a lethal overdose of heroin and
cocaine, she wasn't the only victim.

There's her mother, who is still in a deep depression three years later.
There's her sister, Jennene, a single mother who suddenly found herself
with another child to raise.

And there's Nickolas, Elena's son. He was just the morning of Aug. 5, 1,
when he woke up in bed next to his dead mother. He may have tried to wake
her - no one knows for sure. At some point they do know Nickolas got out of
bed and found his father sleeping on a sofa. They made breakfast, thinking
they were letting Elena sleep in. But around 9:3, Jennene, who lived in the
apartment downstairs, heard her sister's boyfriend yelling, "Jennene, come
up here." "She was stiff and cold, and he's shaking," Jennene Sorrento
recalled. "I didn't know what to think."

The toll heroin takes on its users is only part of the story. The drug
devastates entire families.

Troubles began early Growing up in Salem, Jennene and her younger sister
weren't all that close. Jennene was a good student who often went straight
from school to work. Elena was a tomboy who began experimenting with drugs.

Jennene was eager to distance herself from her sister and moved to
California after high school.

"It wasn't until I came back that I saw how bad she was." Jennene soon
discovered she could not keep her distance anymore. And the reason was
Nickolas.

In 1998, after several rehab stays, Elena became pregnant. Nickolas was
born premature on June 15, 1999, weighing just 5 pounds, 9 ounces. He spent
several weeks in the hospital, where doctors discovered cysts on his
brain. As a result, Nickolas is developmentally behind his peers. As far as
Jennene knows, no test was done to determine whether the baby had been
exposed to drugs in utero.

To this day, Jennene still doesn't know how many times her sister used
heroin. Until her death, family members assumed Elena's major problem
was alcohol.

On the night before Elena's body was found, she and her boyfriend, Joe,
were back together and seemed happy, said Jennene. "For some reason, I felt
calm, I felt relieved," Jennene says.

Then the next morning, around 9:3, she heard Joe screaming. The aftermath
The next few hours were chaotic: her father, sick with cancer and filled
with rage, threatened to kill the boyfriend; Jennene's own daughter, then
5, tried to distract little Nickolas by pointing out all the firetrucks on
the street; a state Department of Social Services caseworker showed up and
told Jennene she could take Nickolas.

The police found cocaine and heroin in Elena's purse, under her bed, and
eventually, in her bloodstream.

In the midst of all of the chaos, Jennene recalls, there was an unexpected
emotion: relief.

"We didn't have to worry anymore. We were sad and angry, but we didn't have
to worry." Jennene took over raising Nickolas as the boy's father bounced
in and out of rehab. "My life completely changed, and nobody ever helped
me," she says. She used every dime available to her - cashed in her
retirement account and took out a loan - just to pay for the funeral.

Last year, the father voluntarily gave up his parental rights, freeing
Nickolas, now 5, to be legally adopted by Jennene. As she started the
process, Jennene was asked how she would tell him what happened to his
mother. "I don't know," she says.

She wonders whether Nickolas remembers anything from that time. "Did he try
to wake her up?" Jennene asks, knowing that for a long time she had to rock
him to sleep at night and he wouldn't go into his mother's bedroom. In the
months after his mother's death, Nickolas would sometimes look at pictures
of his mother and say "That's my mom," and then say the same thing when he
saw a picture of Jennene.

Now he calls his birth mother "Auntie Elena" and Jennene his "Mom." Except
for one morning.

On the July day a Salem Juvenile Court judge finalized his adoption,
Jennene took Nickolas to visit Elena's grave at St. Mary's Cemetery in
Salem. They spent a few moments there, placing flowers on the grave. As
they turned to leave, Nickolas turned back. "Bye, mom," he said, waving.