LIVES SHARED FEEDING HABIT

Couple Devoted To Smoking Rock

Edward and Sherry are both 25 and have been together for more than 10
years, first meeting when they were 13 and serving time at the Calgary
Young Offenders Centre. They share a decade-long history of time
behind bars, days spent on the run from the law and a drug dependency
so entrenched they may never be free.

Edward recently finished a five-year, nine-month sentence for offences
that include armed robbery, trafficking, stealing cars and other
crimes committed in 1998.

He was let out on day parole in 2001 and almost immediately screwed
up.

"Within 30 days, I tested positive for coke and heroin in two tests --
I didn't stick around to see how the third test turned out," the
heavily tattooed man said from a kitchen table in his three-storey
apartment.

On the lam for a few months before he was nabbed, Edward said he's
spent about 12 of his 25 years behind bars.

"I'd get out of jail and go live with my folks, but I'd get right back
into the drug scene," he said.

He committed his first armed robbery at the age of 12 when he pulled a
knife on his own mother. "I wanted five bucks," he said.

He earned two months in juvie and two years probation for the
crime.

"I haven't been off probation one day since," he said.

The personable addict with the quick smile said he started doing crack
when he was 15, then got into the cocaine scene in a big way.

"I started fixing (injecting) cocaine when I was 16 or 17," he said.
"I didn't think I'd see 20."

Sherry's a pretty woman who speaks in clipped sentences and looks at
the world through half-lidded eyes that constantly threaten to spill
tears. She's an unemployed short-order cook who said she'd slept about
an hour-and-a-half in the last several days.

Two days before she sat for this interview, she'd been on a week-long
crack binge that ended when she went home to Edward and tore their
modest apartment to bits.

Theirs is a volatile relationship, rife with scraps, break-ups and
reconciliations.

Through it all, Edward and Sherry share three common bonds: They have
a child together, and both have Hepatitis C and an addiction to crack.

When the couple was "really on a roll," they said they spent about
$2,000 a day for drugs.

That kind of money can only come one way for the pair of perpetually
unemployed addicts. And they had a heck of a scam going.

"She'd pick up a john in his car and make him take her to a certain
spot in Victoria Park," Edward recalled.

When the timing was exactly right -- when the mark paid the cash, but
before sex -- Edward said he'd pound on the passenger side window and
order Sherry out of the car.

"She'd get out with the money and there's no way the scared john would
follow because I would have killed him," Edward said.

Added Sherry, a mom of two youngsters now in her parents' care: "I
don't think I can walk down the street and not see someone I scammed."

While the couple -- who've kept a frank journal of their lives
together -- deny pulling crimes to finance their lifestyle, they said
they would change very little in their lives because they like smoking
rock.

"When I'm high on crack, it makes it so I don't feel guilt for who
I've hurt in my life or for what I've done -- including the drugs I
just smoked," Edward said.

Sherry said she's confident drugs won't always been an integral part
of their lives.

"It's just a phase right now," she said.

(Just as the interview ended, I stopped before leaving and asked
Sherry why she seemed like she was constantly on the verge of crying.
She looked at me and her eyes suddenly filled with tears that spilled
onto her cheeks).

"I hate this ... life," she said, choking back a sob. "We promised
each other we wouldn't get like this again."