WEST SIDE MOM SUPPORTS SAFE INJECTION SITE

As with many young drug addicts, death for Alexandra Thorpe came much too soon.

The 21-year-old West Side woman died last summer after overdosing on
heroin, a drug she thought she would never get hooked on.

"My poor little Alexandra," said mother Patsy Thorpe. "The last few months
that she was alive, she kept saying, 'I just never thought this would
happen to me. I just thought I'd never get addicted. I thought it would be
only someone stupid who would get addicted.'"

Raised in a well-educated, loving family by a mother who is a nurse and a
father who is a financial consultant, Alexandra died in St. Paul's Hospital
July 16, 2002, a week after she and two other girls injected heroin in a
hotel room on East Hastings Street. The drug took over Alexandra's body,
causing her to go into seizures. The two other girls feebly attempted to
perform CPR before paramedics arrived.

"She lived for about a week, and then she was gone," said Thorpe, who has
treated heroin addicts as a nurse at B.C. Children's and Women's Hospital.

For Thorpe, who has two other daughters who lead normal lives, discussing
the details of Alexandra's death is difficult, but she feels compelled to
do so to dispel doubts about children using supervised injection sites.

On Sunday, the Courier reported addicts as young as 16 are allowed to fix
at Insite at 139 East Hastings, North America's only legal, supervised
injection site.

Dr. Perry Kendall, the province's chief medical health officer, said the
facility has to be open to teens that young because they're at high risk of
contracting HIV and Hepatitis C.

Thorpe, who attended the opening of the site last month, said Insite
probably would have save Alexandra's life, noting staff at the facility
have already averted two overdoses.

"I totally understand how people don't understand this. You know, if I had
not been faced with this situation, I don't know where I'd be on this, but
I really see it through different eyes now."

Thorpe believes Alexandra, who lived near 33rd and Arbutus, got hooked on
drugs when she and two other girls began smoking heroin at 17. One of the
girls died in February after smoking heroin and the other has turned her
life around, Thorpe said. "She was just one of the lucky ones," she said,
noting the girl attended the same treatment facilities as Alexandra.

A graduate of Spectrum alternative school, Alexandra was a horse lover and
part of the riding community at Southlands. How she got addicted still
confounds her two sisters, one in Grade 12 at Point Grey high school and
the other a human resources worker.

"It's been just a dreadful, dreadful time for them having a sister that not
only was addicted, but then died. The girls tried desperately to stop her,
and they have a lot of guilt because they were angry at Alexandra."

Thorpe is now a member of From Grief to Action, a support group for parents
whose children died from on overdose or are addicted to drugs.

Since Alexandra's death, Thorpe had also been involved in fundraising for
the illegal injection site at 327 Carrall Street that closed early Tuesday.