MOM BATTLING ECSTASY DEALERS

High School Senior Died After Taking Drug At A Party

Kathy Ford couldn't say why she chose to adorn the lid of her late daughter
Nicole Crowder's violet blown-glass urn with a dragonfly.

"It was youthful and it was just something I knew that I wanted to put on
her urn, and I knew I didn't have an urn yet," Ford said during a recent
interview in her Yuba City home. "I later found out that dragonflies have a
short life."

After having one made of glass, she visited her ex-husband, Crowder's
father, in Vacaville to show him the urn. While Ford was making a U-turn on
the way, one of the dragonfly's wings broke off.

Some time later, while her boyfriend was visiting her, a living dragonfly
flew into the house and landed on the glass one, exactly where four silicon
drops of glue were placed for its repair.

"And of course, that day we put it back because we knew that Nicole was
saying, 'Hey, put it back,'" Ford said.

Crowder died in April from an Ecstasy overdose. The 17-year-old was a
student at Yuba City High School.

Ford grieved in a way that only someone who has lost a child can know.

The message on Ford's answering machine still begins: "Hi, this is Kathy and
Nicole ... ." An electrical storm cut the power to Ford's home one day after
her daughter's death and erased the original message. Ford said she replaced
the message exactly as it was, knowing that's what Nicole would want.

For almost a year, Ford has been trying to combat the cause of her
daughter's death, becoming a spokeswoman of sorts for tougher penalties for
Ecstasy dealers.

"It's certainly not what I ever would have imagined my life to be," Ford
said.

It started with a wrongful death lawsuit Ford filed in September against the
parents of Tomio Izumi, at whose home Crowder took the fatal dose of
Ecstasy.

Since then, Ford has spoken twice before state legislative committees,
pushing to toughen the penalties for suppliers of the drug.

"It's her spirit that pushes me on to do these things," Ford said. "I feel
like if I don't do these things, I feel like I'm letting Nicole down."

According to Ford's lawsuit, Izumi stopped others at his party from calling
911 so he could clean up evidence of the "rave" and agree with others on a
story to tell the police.

Evidence presented during a grand jury investigation into her daughter's
death showed the party at the Yuba City house wasn't the first. Ford said
she filed the lawsuit because she didn't believe the criminal charges would
make it the last.

Izumi, now 19 and a student at California State University, Chico, pleaded
no contest in January to three felony charges of conspiracy to obstruct
justice, child endangerment and maintaining a place to sell or distribute a
controlled substance. He is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.

The lawsuit is pending.

An autopsy showed the immediate cause of Crowder's death was an Ecstasy
overdose. Izumi was not charged with Crowder's death.

"At that party, there were 17 other children," Ford said. "And Nicole was
the only one who died."

Sutter County Deputy Chief Coroner Butah Uppal was unable to say exactly how
much of the drug Crowder had ingested or why other teens at the party, who
also allegedly took Ecstasy, survived.

"The body reacts differently. It really is Russian roulette," Ford said.
"The same pill can come from the same guy, the same distributor. Some people
can have ill effects from it and others don't, and you don't know what the
effect will be on any particular person and how far the effects will go."

Testifying For Change

When Assemblywoman Patricia Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, asked Ford to be a
spokeswoman for Assembly Bill 2300, legislation Bates introduced last summer
to reclassify the drug Ecstasy as a harder drug, Ford didn't think to say
no.

Admittedly not a politician, Ford said she is just a woman who has felt the
pain of losing her only child, misses her daughter deeply and wants to make
sure other parents don't go through the same situation.

"I don't know a lot about how the legislation of things work, but if I know
that this legislation could help somebody's son or daughter, I'm going to
go," Ford said.

AB 2300 died in committee last summer after Ford's first speech. She said
the political current at the time was against stronger regulations on "rave"
parties in general. When Bates reintroduced the bill in December as AB 57,
she asked Ford to speak again.

The legislation would classify the chemical
3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), commonly known as Ecstasy or X, as
a Schedule II drug, similar to narcotics such as cocaine, methadone, opium
and Phencyclidine (PCP).

MDMA is currently classified in California as an "analog" substance of
another chemical, MDA, meaning it is a derivative and not itself listed as
an illegal drug.

The sale or possession of MDMA is illegal, but its use is not. If the
Legislature approves and the governor signs AB 57, the penalty for use would
be a misdemeanor, while sale or distribution would bring a penalty of five
to 40 years imprisonment and/or up to a $2 million fine. That would bring
California law into closer consistency with federal law, which already
classifies Ecstasy as a Schedule I drug, Bates said.

"This bill closes a dangerous loophole in which the use of Ecstasy is
technically legal," Bates said. "This bill will send a message to youths and
their parents that Ecstasy use will not be tolerated, and will warrant
punishment as severe as use of other serious narcotics."

When Ford spoke on Feb. 25 at the state Capitol in front of the state
Assembly Committee on Public Safety, her speech received a better response,
she said.

The committee passed AB 57 unanimously, and the bill is now before the
Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Ford said she told the committee her daughter was not the stereotypical,
drug-addled youth. She lived in an upper-class neighborhood, had a 3.33
grade point average and was planning to go to college after high school.

"Nicole was one week away from her junior prom," Ford told legislators. "The
dress Nicole had chosen to wear to her junior prom was the dress Nicole
instead wore to her funeral."