A FAMILY ADDICTION

It had come to this.

Mike Petek grabbed a butcher knife from his kitchen, concealed it
under his jacket and walked out to the boulevard in front of his house.

Minutes earlier, his daughter Gelena left the small, tidy house near
Main and 28th to wait on the curb for her drug dealer. Petek stood
far enough back so Gelena couldn't see him.

They waited for the car to roll up.

Petek knew the dealer would be no different than the others, just
chatty enough to get his money so Gelena could get her drugs. That
would be the moment Petek would strike.

"I was going to stab this prick and keep stabbing him until the cops
came and pulled me off of him," he recalls from his kitchen table.
"He was poisoning my daughter."

The memory causes Petek to shake. His speech is rapid and he has a
wide-eyed look that must have been present on that day three years ago.

He calms down when he gets to the end of his story.

"But as fate has it, a buddy pulls up and says, 'Hey Mike, how you
doing?' Gelena sees I'm standing there, so she quickly moves on. I
came close that day, I came close to losing."

Loss is an understated word to describe the 50-year-old
longshoreman's life. But that's how Petek talks. It's about winning or losing.

Losing would be him ending up in jail. Winning would be getting back
what he's lost. And that, he says, won't be easy. Maybe even impossible.

He's lost 27-year-old Gelena to the Downtown Eastside, where she is
entrenched in the drug world. He's lost his 29-year-old son Justin to
drugs and to jail.

Another daughter, Laura, 21, followed her siblings' path to drug
addiction; Petek found her one day rail thin and sleeping in an alley
near Burrard Street.

Then-if three drug-addicted children wasn't enough-there's mom. Susan
used heroin and crack cocaine for more than 10 years until she got treatment.

The 47-year-old says she's been clean almost a year, is back at home
and got a job this month welcoming cruise ship passengers to Vancouver.

She had good reason to kick drugs. Two reasons, in fact. Their names
are Halle and Gloria. Halle is five, Gloria is seven. Both were born
when Susan used drugs.

The Ministry of Children and Families seized the girls for two years
before their mom sought treatment and Petek won them back. They've
been living at home for 10 months.

Susan kept her drug use from her husband, who worked long hours on
the docks. Petek only found out when doctors told him drugs were
discovered in the newborns' blood systems.

So far, the parents say, the little girls are showing no ill effects
of Susan's drug use. They're both in school and active as kids their
age should be.

Petek is not without an addiction himself.

In his 20s, he was a volatile alcoholic, racking up impaired charges
and scrapping on the streets. At 30, he ended up in the now defunct
Oakalla prison for three months on an assault charge.

Justin was nine, Gelena seven and Laura a newborn.

While in prison, a friend encouraged him to attend Alcoholics
Anonymous. He's been clean and sober for 20 years and still attends
AA meetings.

He's got a steady job on the docks driving heavy machinery. And a
couple of years ago, he began attending Coastal Church, where he's
learning to pray for his kids.

He wants calmness in his life, not pity.

Yes, he could have been home more, he could have been a better
communicator and the drinking didn't help. But he knows other parents
like him who haven't lost as much.

"I ask my neighbours, 'Why is it that your kids are electricians and
have good jobs while all my kids are hooked on drugs?'"

For more than a decade, he's tried to get his kids clean, taking them
to hospitals and detox centres, only to see them stay for a few days
or run out of the building.

That's if they didn't jump out of his truck first.

He's left messages with MLAs and Solicitor General John Les. He's
talked to the police, social workers and doctors. Nothing they can
do, they say. Your kids are adults. They're on their own.

His helplessness is exacerbated by Vancouver's liberal drug policies
which led to the opening of a supervised injection site and heroin trials.

When you allow such "harm reduction" initiatives while drug dealers
continue to receive lenient sentences, Petek wonders how an addict
can ever recover.

But what really infuriates him is the law that prevents him from
forcing his adult children into treatment. Never mind their rights,
he says, they're slowly dying.

"The only thing I haven't done for my kids is put them in a cage. And
I've thought of it-making my own little dungeon, my own little cage
and detoxing them. I've come to that point, and I haven't done it
because it's against the law."

So this is what he does instead.

He lays awake at night, wondering if his daughters are safe. He
thinks about Justin in a jail cell and his upcoming trial on car theft charges.

And when Susan and Halle and Gloria are asleep, he quietly gets out
of bed and fires up his old black pick-up truck. It's the one with
the orange and yellow flames on the front end.

On this early morning, he's dressed in jeans, a red hooded jacket, a
blue fleece pullover and black runners. His mop of salt-and-pepper
hair matches the colour of the stubble on his weathered face.

He rumbles down Main Street to East Hastings, where the notorious
corner is plugged with zombie-like characters, some of whom are
staggering and shouting at the rising sun.

This is where he might find Gelena or Laura.

Petek slowly rolls by the packs of people, picking off each one with
his eyes. His daughters know his truck and usually come running.

He continues down East Hastings, past the supervised injection site
and the crowds lined up outside the bottle depot. He turns right on
Columbia Street and points to a stretch of sidewalk.

"This is where I picked up Gelena last time-couple days ago. She was
out of her mind. Took her to breakfast at McDonald's and then she was
gone again."

He turns the corner onto Cordova and circles the block again.

He is in a reflective mood, saying the long hours spent trying to
move up the job board at the docks kept him away from his family.

Not knowing how to deal with Justin when the police first brought him
home in his early teens for stealing a car also set off the family in
a downward spiral.

"I neglected my family-I know now I did. I'd come home and I'd see
Justin ready to punch out his mom. It was chaos, fighting and
arguing. I told all of them I didn't want them in the house as long
as they were on drugs."

Gelena soon followed her brother's descent into trouble. Both were
kicked out of Sir Charles Tupper School for fighting. They didn't
make it to Grade 11.

Laura was four months from her Grade 12 graduation when she dropped
out of Eric Hamber annex. The former air cadet was battling an eating
disorder and a friend turned her on to cocaine.

Petek's drive to help his kids is all the more courageous considering
Justin and Gelena are not his biological children; their father,
Bernie Kenowesequape, was stabbed to death in December 1982.

Petek and Susan met the next year and he adopted Justin and Gelena as
his own. He's raised them from a young age, coached Justin's hockey
team and got Gelena involved in gymnastics.

They went on camping trips, rode mini-bikes around the yard and spent
summer days at a favourite swimming hole in the Capilano River.

To this day, they still call him Mike instead of dad.

Forty minutes passes since Petek began his search. He wonders out
loud how his daughters are making money when he spots Gelena on Carrall Street.

She's dressed in a three-quarter length army-style jacket, jeans and
untied black runners. Her matted long blonde hair is caught in a
white scarf and hiding much of her heavily drawn face.

She doesn't wave or signal but walks swiftly up to the truck. She
throws one of her two bags in the back and climbs into the cab.
There's no embrace, no hello.

"How you doing my big girl? Being safe?" asks Petek, as he leans
across the cab to give her a reassuring pat on the leg.

"Mike, I want you to check out this guy around the corner," she says
business-like.

"Which guy? Is he hurting you?"

"Mike, I just need to go to Melville."

"C'mon Gelena, let's get you some help, let's take you to the hospital."

"I just came from the hospital."

And then she's off-talking fast, really fast, and flailing her dirty
bandaged hands up and down as she attempts to make a point. She rocks
back and forth as if she's lost in a heavy metal song.

Gelena is not making sense.

"You know, maybe I'm lucky-construction work is different because
First Nations have made it-me having a relationship and he's part
native-my family has been fighting and there it is-"

I tell Gelena that Petek wants her to get clean.

"You know what's going to be clean? I'm telling you I've worked too
hard to be living in any of those low-income houses or any of those
apartments down there. I stay with a few certain people, and that's
it. You know what, I'm waiting to say, 'Hey, you know what, c'mon
over to my place because I'm getting old enough and I can't be like
half a kid and then half messed up looking.'"

She continues to ramble as Petek turns into an alley near Victory
Square. Laura is on his mind and he is retracing some of the spots he
last saw her.

Halfway down the alley he slows to a stop as a motley crowd, many in
oversized coats, creep out from alcoves. Petek notices a man he used
to work with on the docks and lays into him.

"Johnny, what the hell are you doing down here?" he yells from the
cab. "Get out of here, man. That shit will kill you. Run, go."

Johnny doesn't budge. Two men in hooded jackets lean into the cab.
They don't say anything. Petek, maybe sensing danger, tells them God
is praying for them.

A man standing a few feet back of the truck holds up a new Blackberry
and blurts out, "Yeah, well God wants you to buy this Blackberry."

He looks familiar; he's one of the three men Vancouver police
officers beat in Stanley Park a few years ago. Petek doesn't respond
and turns to Johnny to ask him to keep an eye out for Laura.

"Dora?" Johnny asks.

"No, Laura."

The exchange sets off Gelena, who convinces Petek to drive on. She
asks Petek if he remembers the time he jumped on the couch and had
Dora in his hands.

"What?"

"You know-Dora? Dora, Mike. Dora."

She might be referring to Dora the popular cartoon character. But
Petek isn't sure. His face is more puzzled than when Gelena got in the truck.

"Like David says in the Bible-I need to get something for the
girls-I'll get cleaned up-Gloria likes Bratz dolls, Bratz, Mike-"

It's just before 10 a.m. when Petek parks his truck outside the
International Village mall on Abbott Street.

He pulls two five dollar bills from his wallet and gives them to
Gelena. She heads into McDonald's while Petek paces on the sidewalk.
He goes from crossing his arms to putting his hands in his pockets
before lighting up a smoke.

"I feel shaky, I feel mad, I feel I want to do something-take care of
these dealers. But the cops keep telling me, 'Don't do anything
stupid, Mike, don't do it, or you'll lose.'"

Gelena sits in the cab and leaves the door open. She quickly works
her way through a stack of pancakes, an Egg McMuffin, hash browns and juice.

Petek pleads with her to check into treatment. She keeps eating. He
sticks his hand in her jacket pocket and pulls out a plastic bag full
of whitish brown powder. She's got needles, too.

"Oh, Gelena. Get rid of that stuff, get rid of it."

She grabs the bag from Petek and stuffs it in her pocket. She wants
to leave. She's on about Melville again. But this time she says it's a street.

The treatment centre attached to the city's drug court is on Melville
Street, near Canada Place. I tell Petek it's possible she's got an
appointment there.

The courthouse, she says, let's go to the courthouse to get an
address. Petek is encouraged by the connection and 10 minutes later
he's parked near the courthouse on Main Street, across from a probation office.

Gelena shuffles across the street into the office. Petek waits in his
truck. He has Johnny on his mind, the guy he just saw in the alley.
He's got a wife and four kids, Petek says.

"Unbelievable."

Gelena returns to the cab with a sheet of paper with the address to
the treatment centre. Maybe the food has kicked in or her high is
subsiding; she's calm.

"Good girl," says Petek, giving her a hug.

On the way to Melville Street, his cellphone rings. It's his boss,
wondering where he is. They know about his family troubles but they
still need him on the job.

"I just found my little girl here and I'm taking her to treatment,"
he says into the phone. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

Gelena stares vacantly ahead. The traffic is heavy along East
Hastings, near Save-On-Meats supermarket. A long yellow school bus
with "Chilliwack" marked on the side idles next to the truck.

Young girls, maybe 6 or 7 years old, press their faces against the
bus windows. They're looking at Petek's truck and frantically waving.
Petek returns a wave.

"Look, Gelena, the little girls are waving at you. Wave to the little girls."

Gelena turns slowly to catch the eye of one of the girls. She feigns
a wave. The young girl stops waving and the smile drops from her face.

A Courier photographer is waiting on the sidewalk outside the
treatment centre when Petek rolls up. Gelena pulls down the
passenger's visor and checks herself in the mirror.

She looks sleepy, her eyes circled in black. Petek throws his right
arm around her and the photographer clicks away before they enter the
treatment centre.

She signs her name at the reception counter and a case worker invites
her in to a back room. Petek accepts a coffee and waits for word on
his daughter.

It's the most relaxed Petek has been all morning.

The case worker eventually introduces herself, tells Petek that
Gelena was supposed to check in two months ago. She tells him
something he already knows-Gelena's drug use is extensive.

He pleads with the case worker to keep her at the centre until she's
clean but quickly learns clients come here voluntarily. She didn't
tell him if there was any penalty for her not showing up.

"Can't you take her home with you-or tie her to a chair?" he asks in
desperation. "Where do you think she's going to go when she leaves
today? She'll be right back out there, doing it again."

Gelena will stay a few hours to get assessed by counsellors and see
about getting welfare. The case worker promises to call Petek to pick
up Gelena.

There's nothing else he can do. He has got to get to work. On the
walk out to his truck, he's feeling ambivalent about what he's just heard.

But, he says, "she's safe right now, and that's a good thing."

That afternoon, Petek calls me on his cellphone. He's standing
outside the treatment centre. There's a heavy sigh before he breaks the news.

"She's gone, they tell me she left. She's an adult, she can do what
she wants. What a waste of time, a bloody waste of time. Don't these
people get it? You've got to lock her up."

Two weeks later, Gelena shows up at her parents' house on Mother's Day.

She arrives with two dolls, wrapped in newspaper. A Dora for Halle, a
Bratz for Gloria.

Petek doesn't let her stay long, keeping a pledge he made with the
Ministry of Children and Families to not allow any addicts on his property.

"Gloria kept saying, 'Gelena is drunked, Gelena is drunked.'"

Petek worked hard to get Halle and Gloria back. He enrolled in anger
management courses, saw psychiatrists and had the ministry watch over
him as he prepared dinner for the kids.

He makes their meals, bathes them, reads them stories and takes them
to the park. They are never far from his thoughts; he keeps a
Polaroid of them and Susan tucked in his dashboard.

He drops Gelena near Main and Sixth, where she plans to see a friend.
Laura shows up later that night. She tells Petek she has been clean
for three days. She doesn't stay long either.

Like her sister, her visits are unpredictable. A few days later,
while the Courier photographer is with Petek, they coincidentally
meet up with Laura and her boyfriend, near Robson and Thurlow.

Petek gives her some money for food. He tells her how much he worries
about her, gives her a hug, a kiss and then she's gone.

The same weekend, Justin calls home from the North Fraser Pre-trial
Centre in Port Coquitlam. It's the first time since his Feb. 11
arrest that he is able to call; Petek removed the block on his phone
hoping to re-connect with his son.

Police arrested Justin for allegedly stealing a car and then stealing
groceries from a T and T Supermarket. His trial is later this month.

Before Justin called, he sent a picture in the mail to his mom. He
drew it himself, using various colours. It's simple, one-dimensional,
as if done by a child.

He drew a black truck on the left side of the page. It has a stick
man inside. He wrote "Mike" above the truck. His mom and four
sisters-all with their names above their heads-are lined up next to the truck.

There's a house, with their address, and trees. A large yellow sun is
among the clouds. The sun has a smiling face and wearing sunglasses.
There's a cat, too. His name is "Badboy."

In big block letters across the page it says, "To the best mom in the
world." There's no letter accompanying it, no note.

Susan has it with her at her kitchen table. She doesn't have much to
say about the drawing, but appreciates it. She's very calm, as if her
emotions were numbed many years ago.

But her courage is in check, candidly talking about a family life
that she and Petek are trying to win back. She feels guilt for her
drug use, explaining that she did it to ease her stress.

Her sister gave her methadone one day in 1994. That high led to
smoking crack cocaine and heroin. It wasn't a secret with her kids,
who used with their mom from time to time.

"I stopped here and there," she says, fidgeting with Justin's
picture. "I had to hold a household together, so it wasn't like I was
out of it all the time."

She managed to keep her job as a hairdresser at Metrotown for three
years. When she got pregnant with Gloria, she continued to use.

"It's a disease, it's not something I choose to do. Who would do that
to themselves when they're pregnant? But I couldn't stop. I had such
cravings. I never used anything with the other three [adult
children]-not even an Aspirin."

Petek somewhat naively believed the needles and pipes he discovered
when he got home belonged to his kids or their friends.

"It was go to work, come home and sleep," he recalls. "But when I got
home, it was chaos around here and so much was going on. But I never
thought Susan was on drugs, I never did."

Doctors kept Gloria in hospital for three months to flush the drugs
from her system. Susan's drug use was less frequent when pregnant
with Halle, who didn't need further hospitalization.

Susan sought treatment in 2002 for six weeks but relapsed. Last year,
she entered a treatment centre in Maple Ridge, where she stayed for
eight months.

So far, so good.

"I don't have this obsession to use at all, but it's a disease so of
course sometimes you think about using."

She now attends regular support group meetings and knows if she
relapses that Halle and Gloria will be taken from her. She is quite
aware they are her second chance at raising children.

That comment reminds her of where she has to be.

She cuts the interview short because she agreed to help out with a
walk-a-thon at her daughters' school. Before Susan leaves, she
mentions the strength she is getting from attending church and the
friends she's met there.

Her resolve to get better, to kick drugs is a decision she hopes her
three adult children will make one day. All she can do, she says, is
lead by example-a good example, this time.

"I can show them you can quit drugs. It's working for me."

It's a point Petek stresses when he visits Justin in jail two days
after Mother's Day.

"Mom says 'hi,'" Petek tells him. "She's been clean almost a year
Justin. You could do it, too. Just take it slow, like in here. You
could do it."

Justin is dressed in a jail-issued red sweatshirt, red sweatpants and
white runners. He has thick jet-black short hair, sideburns and
eyebrows the size of caterpillars.

His deep set eyes and prominent nose are similar to his sister's.
He's soft spoken and, at times, difficult to hear through the
Plexiglas and metal screen separating him from Petek.

He turned 30 this month.

"Today, I feel pretty strong within myself," he says, shifting in a
chair in C block of the North Fraser Pre-trial Centre. "When I'm in
jail, I feel like that because I'm not abusing substances."

The last time he used drugs, he says, is the day before he was
arrested for allegedly stealing a car and groceries. He doesn't want
to talk about the charges but admits his drug use causes him to commit crimes.

He says he's been in and out of adult jail for 11 years. And, he
says, he's stolen cars, committed burglaries and robbed a bank. He
blames it on crack cocaine and heroin.

Justin says he fell in with the wrong crowd at Tupper school. He
recognizes his crimes coupled with his drug use caused trouble for his family.

"I'd have to say a lack of discipline," he says, explaining his
choices. "I always knew the right thing to do but I didn't have the strength."

He's tried to kick drugs, he says, recalling a 58-day stretch in 2000
when he was clean. He's surpassed that now, having been in jail since Feb. 11.

He doesn't blame his family life for his troubles, reminiscing with
Petek about playing hockey, ice skating on Friday nights and hanging
out at home.

"Looking back now, I cherish those days, sitting at the dinner table
and watching TV. I miss those days."

He spends his time in jail serving meals to inmates, playing bridge,
working out and cleaning his cell block. For this, he earns $31.50
per week. He has saved $210.

He's reading The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, advertised on
websites as a blueprint for Christian living in the 21st century.

"I feel I have a good chance at living a whole, complete life with a
job, a family and building healthy relationships. But I get confused
day to day. I've had some bad relationships. But right now I'm by
myself and I don't want to mess up again."

When talk turns to his sisters, tears flow. Justin says he can't be
around Gelena and Laura because of their drug use. He doesn't want to
preach to them for fear of being a hypocrite. But right now, he's clean.

"I'm scared for Gelena and Laura. I really want to do good for my
family, but it's easier to be around people who don't use drugs."

He hardly knows Halle and Gloria but Petek tells Justin they cry for
their big brother. They want to go swimming with you, he adds, which
brings more tears.

He doesn't know what to expect at his upcoming trial but says if he
gets out of jail he wants to work. Petek says he can line him up with
a job as an ironworker.

"I've wasted so many years," he admits.

The visit comes to a close with a guard's voice coming over the
public address system telling inmates to return to their cells. He
leaves with a grin and a wave.

He sounds positive, he's fit and thinking about a future that doesn't
include drugs or crime. He now has words to go with the Mother's Day picture.

Outside the jail, Petek reflects on the visit. His reaction is
similar to the morning he left Gelena at the treatment centre on
Melville Street.

"I feel good about him and he's looking healthy and not using drugs.
But when he gets out, what's going to happen? Maybe this time he'll
surprise me."

From the boulevard, the family's two-level stucco house near 28th
and Main gives no hint of what's gone on all these years.

The yard is well kept, flowers bloom in planter boxes and it is quiet
enough to hear the chit-chat of neighbours.

There is a slide, a swingset and a wooden playhouse near the back
steps for Halle and Gloria, who are riding bikes on the front sidewalk.

Soon, it will no longer be home for the family.

Petek has put his house up for sale. He wants to move to the country
and buy a hobby farm. He's had enough of the city and what he sees as
an increase in drug use among kids.

"I'm tired of hearing parents talk about their kid who jumped off a
bridge because they thought they could fly."

Yes, Petek wishes his life turned out differently. But don't
stereotype him, he says. Privileged folk are not immune to their kids
becoming addicts, either.

Drugs, he's learned, grab hold of a person with such a grip that it's
hard to ever let go-no matter who you are or where you're from.

So what to do?

It's simple, he says. Force kids and adults into treatment, sentence
every drug dealer to five years in a work camp and get rid of
injection sites and heroin trials.

His solutions may seem extreme, strong-headed, even. But then how
extreme is plunging a butcher knife into a drug dealer to save your
own daughter from a desperate life of drug addiction?

Mike Petek hopes he never finds out.