WHEN ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD

All my friends are dead." The statement hangs in the air and it's
tough to connect it with the healthy young woman saying these almost
incomprehensible words. Tougher still to imagine just what drives this
21-year-old Ridge-Meadows woman to continue her stunning recovery from
heroin addiction.

"It's true, they're all dead," says Brandy Mingo, who has just
described the brutal murder of her closest friend. The death occurred
while Brandy lived on the downtown eastside for five years in the
midst of a heroin addiction and a cycle of jail and homelessness she
had entered when she was barely into her teens. The memories are fresh
and oddly juxtaposed to the life she has carved out of the suburban
streets of Ridge-Meadows, with little more than a long-fought for
determination to survive.

But as she returns to the present from memories of five hard years on
the street, she realizes the statement is not completely true anymore.

Yes, her closest friends from the tight-knit community she knew on the
downtown eastside are dead. Her best friend. A teenage guy she grew up
with on those streets. Another missing here in Maple Ridge. All dead.

But she is not. And she's beginning to surround herself with new
friends. Slowly. She credits her move to Ridge-Meadows to be close to
her mother as the best thing she has ever done in her life.

"I couldn't have done it without my mom," she says. It took her
several attempts of agonizing withdrawal to finally give up the drug
and enter a methadone program almost four years ago. A program she
will finish within weeks.

"Maple Ridge saved my life," she says, reiterating several times how
counsellors at Bowman Employment Services gave her practical and
emotional strength to overcome both her addiction and her fears about
changing her life.

She has a boyfriend who doesn't do drugs and who has the kind of life
she always dreamed about. "He's never been hated by anybody in his
life," she says in slight disbelief. "He had a regular life just like
a kid is supposed to have."

Something she did not have. Her mother left her father before she was
born when she found out he was a heroin addict and set about giving
her daughter that healthy normal life.

But Brandy was angry, she says. She wasn't sure why back then, but now
says she needed to know why her father would choose drugs over her.
She was 10.

She started running away until her mother couldn't deal with her and
put her in ministry care in hopes of keeping her safe. It didn't work.

Brandy ran away from care in both Calgary and Salmon Arm.

It was in Salmon Arm - mad at her mom and unwilling to let others take
her family's place in raising her - she got out the Vancouver
phonebook. She knew one thing about her father. His name. She called.
He sent her a bus ticket and she started a fateful ride that would
change her life.

Her dad was a well-known drug addict and dealer on the downtown
eastside who owned a store where scores of deals were made every day.

Brandy was 12 and about to find out more than she wanted to know about
the addiction that her father chose over her. Within months her
father's girlfriend urged her to head downtown to buy some crack and
then offered her some on the ride home - as long as she didn't tell
her father. Brandy adored her father and still does. "Ever since he
became part of my life again he's one of the most important people to
me," she says.

But her father soon ended up in jail and she was alone and homeless.

Barely into her teens she had graduated to smoking crack and shooting
heroin. She was soon dealing drugs and turning tricks to stay alive.

"I wanted to know why he would choose that little powder over me," she
said. "So I tried it and the worst part was I liked it. It was
horrible. Just horrible."

From that point on Brandy's life was a torment. Bad tricks. Bad
drugs.

Stretches of time where she slept on the pavement, in doorways or just
stayed high and awake to keep from needing sleep. She has a barrage of
stories of brushes with death, overdoses, brave and touching
friendships as she traveled to Kelowna, Maple Ridge and back to the
downtown eastside among those who have been abandoned by society.

"We were told that we were just a waste of skin," she says. "We were
told that all the time."

And that reminds her of articles she's read recently in daily and
local press. Articles that talk about abandoning those on the streets
that are too far gone for help. Articles that suggest we help only
those who can be helped. Give up on the rest. "Why don't they hassle
the dealers for a change," she says.

For the first time in this discussion of the difficult decade behind
her, Brandy gets really angry. Tears fill her eyes. She clenches her
fists and shakes her head. "The only reason I am here is that my
mother never gave up on me," she says, recounting how her mother held
a writhing and withered Brandy in her arms while she withdrew from the
drugs. It took more than one try. Her mother refused to tolerate her
drug use but has been a rock for Brandy every time she quit the street.

"We can't just throw people away. They aren't a waste of
skin."

And she is proof of her argument.

Barely an official adult, Brandy is a survivor of Canada's toughest
neighbourhood where people are routinely thrown away. She's got a good
job around the corner from her Ridge-Meadows basement suite. She rides
her bike to work in the day, hitches a ride to the evening shift.
She's got a big TV, and comfortable couch. She's got three lovebirds,
one of which she hatched herself because the parents didn't know what
to do.

"This is my little house," she says. "I think it's pretty nice and I
saved for every bit of it," she says with well-earned pride. There are
pictures of her family all over the walls. Her mom. Her dad who is 10
months into an 18-month rehab program - the longest he's managed in 30
years of addiction. Her nephew and her young brother. A couple of
bright sparks in her life. Blond and innocent. They are both heading
toward the age she was when she rebelled. She's worried about them.
She wants them to avoid the road she took.

So there's one more set of photos she keeps to remind herself - and
those two young boys - of her determination to keep clean.

She takes out two worn, crumpled pieces of pink photocopy paper,
before and after mugshots of her first trip to the BC Women's
Correctional Facility. In the first she is gaunt and sick around the
time of her best friend's murder. The second is taken after a couple
of months in jail, just days before she decided to make her first
attempt to detox at her mom's Pitt Meadows home. She points to the
barely visible black and white image that is crystal clear in her
memory. Her eyes are bright. She's straight, healthy, alive.

She looks at the papers again and smoothes out the wrinkles. She will
never throw them away.