THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE:

Death Of 19-Year-Old Puts Focus On Lack Of Treatment Services

Friends always suspected drugs would catch up with Frank Snow. The tragedy
is when they did, he seemed on the verge of putting his life back in order.

Snow, a gregarious, 19-year-old mountain of a man, was found dead two weeks
ago at the Common Ground homeless shelter in downtown Framingham, the
victim of an apparent overdose.

Shelter workers found his 6-foot, 6-inch body on a Saturday morning when
they tried to wake him, and noticed blood coming from his nose and vomit
around his mouth.

"I told him numerous times, I said, 'Frank, that stuff's going to kill
you,'" said shelter worker Jim Bauchman, who discovered Snow's body. "And
he would say, 'Oh, no, no, no,' like any indestructible 19-year-old kid says."

But the tale of the one-time Malden High School honor student, whose life
tragically ended on a thin mat in a homeless shelter, isn't just about the
insidious nature of heroin addiction. People who fought to get Snow the
treatment he needed say it's also a book example of how a lack of services
can wreak a terrible cost on those who need them.

Although he'd been through several detox programs -- including a six-month
stint in a Westborough rehabilitation program -- only to relapse several
times, friends insist Snow wanted to get clean.

"We had a lot of conversations about trying to get straight," said Brian
Walker, a recovering alcoholic who met Snow at the shelter. "He was
struggling. Part of the problem is there aren't any detox programs in
MetroWest."

An unnecessary death

Though the South Middlesex Opportunity Council formerly operated a 15-bed
detox program on Merchant Road, just minutes from the shelter, budget cuts
forced the social service agency to drop the program last summer.

Walker said he believes the cuts only make it harder for Snow and others
who want treatment, to get it.

"When somebody has decided they've had enough, there's a window of
opportunity before they begin to truly suffer," Walker said. "But there's
such a long waiting list to get into most detoxes that the window goes by
before you get that person in.

"Frank's death, in my opinion, was unnecessary. How many more people have
to die before somebody gets the message?"

In the months before he died, Snow finally seemed serious about kicking his
habit, according friends and family interviewed this week.

He had struggled for months with his heroin addiction, but finally managed
to stay clean for several months and was looking forward to visiting
Florida, where his parents live. On top of that, he had just landed a
full-time job making nearly $20 an hour.

Just hours before he died, Snow called his parents from a pay phone in
downtown Framingham to tell them about the job, and his excitement was
impossible to miss, even nearly 1,400 miles away in Florida.

"He left us a message that he just landed a full-time job...and he was
doing great, and he would call us Friday night," Snow's father James said
in an interview from the family's home in Brandon, Fla.

Although it's unclear how Snow spent the rest of that day, shelter staff
this week said he showed up, as usual, at about midnight following his
shift as a cook at Richard's Cafe.

Before he went to sleep, however, it was clear something was wrong: Snow
was vomiting in a bathroom at the back of the shelter, Bauchman said, and
refused his offer to go to the hospital. By the next morning he was dead.

"As far as we know he was eight months sober," James Snow said. "He was so
proud of himself he was clean like that. My wife talked to him (that)
Wednesday...all he said was, 'I can't wait to come down there.'

"I can't understand it. I don't know why it happened, I just don't get it.
He knew he could talk to us at any time. Any...day or night, anything. If
he knew he was going to slip, or felt he was slipping...it was just...I
don't know how to describe it. Very unexpected. Devastating."

A big teddy bear

For all its tragic end, though, Snow's life began like many other
middle-class kids growing up in the suburbs of Boston.

Born in Malden, Snow started as a shy, easy-going child, before blossoming
into a 300-pound teenager who played defensive tackle for Malden High.

Though his biological father was largely absent, Snow was adopted before
his second birthday by James Snow, the man he called his father. By all
accounts their home was a warm and loving one.

"He had some problems," James Snow said, mentioning a bipolar diagnosis and
attention deficit disorder. "But he was going to the doctor, and he was
taking medication. All in all, the kid was a great kid."

Frank's size often put off those who didn't know him, said Joseph Sasso,
Snow's best friend from the age of 10. But Snow was more gentle than giant.

"He was a big teddy bear, you know?" Sasso said. "I just looked at him as
really harmless. Everyone loved him."

Friends at 8 years old, Sasso and Snow grew up living just minutes from
each other, and quickly became nearly inseparable. This week, Sasso could
be seen around town, wearing Frank Snow's shoes as a small reminder of his
best friend.

"His family was like my second family," said Sasso, a quiet 18-year-old
with wide eyes and close-shaved brown hair. "We spent Christmases,
Thanksgivings together."

A fun-loving fan of art and music, Snow often traveled to different places
for concerts, and regularly came to the defense of those who needed it,
Sasso said.

"Frank always stuck up for me," he said. "He stuck up for his friends. He
stuck up for people he didn't know. You couldn't walk down the street and
see somebody who did not know Frank. He had to take his phone off the hook,
'cause it wouldn't stop ringing."

By about the 10th grade, however, Snow's life began to tumble out of control.

Although he was an honor student, he transferred from Malden High to
Northeast Regional Vocational School in Wakefield, and began a downhill
slide into drug use.

"I would say, basically, he fell into the wrong crowd," his father said.
"That's where he got into experimenting with some drugs. We found out later
that he was trying them like (lots of) other kids do. It was just in the
last year that he really got into it."

"Frank, even though he seemed very positive all the time, he didn't have
the best life," Sasso said. "He had a lot of tragedy in his life."

Solace in drugs and alcohol

Sasso said he believes Snow was influenced by his new friends and also
suffered emotional damage wrought by an absentee natural father. When Snow
went looking for solace, he found it in drugs and alcohol.

"I guess he fell into a lot of peer pressure early on," Sasso said. "When
he was mad about something or whatever, people would tell him, 'Use drugs,
it makes you feel better.' Unfortunately, he fell into that.

"He wasn't using heavily early on, but then it just progressed. It's a
snowball, you know?"

And, like many people, it wasn't long before Snow got into trouble. After a
run-in with police, Snow wound up on probation, finally prompting him to
reach out for help.

With the help of his family, he was able to get into a six-month
residential drug-treatment program run by Spectrum Health Systems.

After emerging from the program, Snow moved into sober housing in
Framingham, but relapsed. Unable to stay in Framingham, he checked back
into a six-day detox program in Westborough, then later moved on to the
Framingham shelter.

"Me and him talked several times since my mom passed away about him using"
drugs, Sasso said.

In September 2001, Sasso said, his mother overdosed on heroin and died, an
incident which left a deep impression on Snow.

"Frank and me always talked about that, about how he should go to a detox
or try to get some help," he said. "Because he loved my mom dearly and
didn't want to end up like her.

"You know...he tried. For a while he was doing good, and then he fell back
into it, and then he started doing good again, staying clean and sober. It
was just like a vicious cycle, and you fall back into it again."

Sasso wasn't the only one familiar with Snow's fight to stay sober.

'I can just use once'

"We had a lot of conversations about trying to get straight," said Brian
Walker, who met Snow at the shelter. In the few months he knew him, Walker
said, Snow tried quitting cold turkey, and with methadone treatment.

"He said what he was afraid of was he would get off all the other stuff he
was doing and get hooked on methadone, and (it was) how do I get off of
that?" Walker said.

"I think he wanted (to get sober) more than anything, but he just wasn't
getting there," he said.

When the news reached Sasso that fateful Saturday morning, it was something
he had braced for, but still didn't want to believe.

"I didn't believe it," he said, his voice barely a whisper, as tears wet
his cheeks. "Someone said, 'You know, Frankie died at the shelter this
morning.' and I said 'Frankie who?'

"They said, 'Big Frankie, your Frankie.' I said what are you talking about,
and they said, 'Frank Snow.'" he recalled. "When she said that my jaw
dropped. I didn't know what to say, and just thought about it for five
minutes, and tears started rolling down my cheeks, and I didn't know what
to think."

"I knew because of the way he used, I knew it was going to
eventually...start giving him a hard time. And, you know, I talked to him
about getting some help. Sometimes he did take my advice...but then, you
know, he'd have these thoughts, like, 'Oh, I can just use once, and nobody
will find out, and I won't get into trouble.' I was trying to get him help,
he was trying to get help. Everybody that works here was trying to get him
help, but, you know, it didn't come through."

Days later, Walker was one of several friends from the shelter who traveled
to Malden for Snow's wake.

As they arrived, he remembers an incident that seemed almost as if Snow
were speaking to him, telling him he'd finally found his peace.

"We crossed the street, and the first thing I was struck by, at the corner,
there's a pharmacy, but it doesn't say Rexall or pharmacy...it says, in
six-foot letters, it says 'drugs.' That's all it says, and then I looked
across the street, and there was Frank's Flowers."