COMMUNITY FIGHTS TO CONQUER DRUG DEMONS

CHIMAYO, N.M. -- It has been described as a place caught between heaven and
hell: a sacred valley whose vistas inspire the mind and whose soil is said
to have healing power, and yet a place of so much pain.

Makeshift memorials brand the landscape with crosses, and dirty syringes
often rest nearby. Death haunts those who have lost loved ones to the
demon, and those who accept they might be next.

This is Rio Arriba's hell: For years, the county of 40,000 people in
north-central New Mexico has had the highest drug-overdose rate in the
nation; 20 people died last year alone. The killer often is heroin, or a
deadly cocktail of drugs that includes it.

The plight is hardly unique to rural New Mexico.

About 16 million Americans use illegal drugs, according to the latest
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Use has increased among both
teenagers and adults who abuse Ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine, painkillers,
tranquilizers, heroin.

Communities are feeling the effects. In tiny Willimantic, Conn., police
scour the streets for heroin traffickers and prostitutes working to fund
their habit. In nearly a dozen towns across Appalachia, methadone clinics
treat clients addicted to the painkiller OxyContin. In Midwestern
neighborhoods, police discover more methamphetamine labs every day: 2,725
last year in Missouri alone.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy wants to reduce
nationwide drug use by 25 percent over the next five years. Deputy Director
Mary Ann Solberg acknowledges it's an ambitious goal.

"We know we don't have a prayer unless each community across this country
works with us hand-in-hand," she told some 40 politicians, treatment
providers, retirees and recovering addicts at a meeting last month in Rio
Arriba County.

Yet her comments were met with some skepticism. Not unlike Renee Martinez,
Rio Arriba already has taken the first step. It readily admits it has a
problem. The hard part is getting clean.

"Hey, Ness. Happy birthday, baby." Annette Valerio squats down, scoops up a
mound of dirt with a garden shovel and firmly plants the paper plate that
reads "Happy Birthday" in a rainbow of colors.

She continues until her daughter's grave is wreathed in cheerful decor,
then sits on a bench and gazes at the photograph of a beaming young girl
with hazel eyes and long ebony hair.

Venessa -- "my Nessie," her mother always says -- would have been 19.

Her mother still imagines all the missed moments even now, a decade after
her 9-year-old was shot in the jugular by a heroin-addicted burglar who
broke into their home to steal, among other things, the syringes Venessa
used to treat her diabetes.

"Her last words to me were, 'Mommy, Mommy,' " remembers Annette, who also
was shot on that stormy September afternoon in 1993. Her daughter bled to
death in her arms, on the rose-colored rug that still carpets their living
room.

Yet Annette feels assured that her daughter did not die in vain. With
Venessa's death and others, Rio Arriba began to recognize it faced an epidemic.

Most say it began after World War II, when soldiers returned home to few
jobs and little opportunity. Farming had declined as the government set
aside land for parks and forests. Some landowners sold out when Los Alamos
National Laboratory was established.

The people turned first to alcohol. Then, after the Korean War, some
veterans came back addicted to pharmaceuticals. The Vietnam War introduced
a new drug of choice -- heroin -- and increased production just across the
border in Mexico meant a steady supply north to Rio Arriba.

By the 1980s, Rio Arriba was "fully blown," as one recovering addict puts it.

"Heroin was the law around here," says Chimayo native Phillip Martinez, 43.
His old track marks are accentuated by two small scorpion tattoos on his arms.

Despite the growing problem, little was done to fight back.

Then, the innocents began getting caught in the crossfire, like Venessa
Valerio and a 10-year-old classmate fatally shot in a drug feud. Burglaries
climbed as users broke into homes and businesses.

And the overdose deaths escalated -- from four in 1994 to 13 one year later.

In March 1999, Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico convened a congressional
field hearing in Rio Arriba County. Six months later, armed with maps of
drug dealers' homes plotted by Richardson and his committee, state police
and federal agents descended on Chimayo and other villages in the county in
a pre-dawn raid that netted 31 heroin traffickers.

Rio Arriba celebrated.

It was quiet, for a while. Petty crime fell. But a new crop of dealers
quickly moved in, and some of those who were busted are already back out,
says State Police Capt. Quintin McShan, who oversees Rio Arriba County.

"The raids were a good part of it, but did we change the behavior? We made
it more subversive, more out of sight," he says. "Can you still buy heroin
in Chimayo? Do we have heroin in our school system? Do we have teenage
addicts? The answer is yes."

Along with the raids came new money for treatment and outreach -- more than
$10 million in state and federal dollars and grants. In December 1999, a
nationally recognized drug treatment foundation opened an outreach and
prevention center in Espanola, a few miles from Chimayo.

Yet the center, Amistad de Nuevo Mexico, included no inpatient beds.
Amistad sent 52 clients to a residential facility in Arizona and reached
1,500 through outreach.

But spokesman Karl Moffatt acknowledges there's no real way to track success.

"There's only so many people that just totally turn their lives around. On
the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a lot of our clients who are
dead," he says. "The majority are in between."

Rio Arriba is far from heaven, but it's not quite the hell it once was
either. There is hope here.

Annette Valerio senses it when she talks to high school students about her
Nessie, and sees their tears fall. Phillip Martinez finds it in the rapt
audiences of addicts he tries to help at group meetings.

You could even catch a glimpse of it in the vacant eyes of Renee Martinez
that morning she scouted the methadone clinic parking lot for enough cash
to buy her dose. On that day, she got her money, and strolled out of the
clinic with a grin on her face.

Yet to truly curtail the culture of addiction, the people of Rio Arriba say
they must ultimately address its underlying causes: the lack of jobs and
opportunity, their faltering faith in the future.

Toward that end, they are focusing on the children. Two offshoots of the
Chimayo Crime Prevention Organization -- a youth corps and local Boys and
Girls Club -- launched programs in the past few years to provide mentoring
and activities for kids.

Last month, the day after the Boys and Girls Club dedicated a new building
adjacent to Chimayo Elementary, about 30 children jumped rope, shared craft
projects and kicked a soccer ball across the school gymnasium. A banner on
the wall behind them read: "Real friends don't let friends take drugs."

Miguel Quesada, a 17-year-old from Chimayo, is one of five youth interns
helping supervise the children. Of his beloved community, Miguel had this
message: Things have changed in Rio Arriba.

"I used to walk home from the bus stop, and there'd be needles on the
ground. Not anymore."

"I don't think there's one person in this community that addiction hasn't
touched," added fellow intern Nicholas Martinez, 16. "We're just trying to
grow out of it. And we will."