Heroin Town: Part Three

A KILLER OF FAMILIES

Siblings, parents and children have been seared by Willimantic's
scourge. It doesn't matter whether they're middle class or poor, brown
or white.

WILLIMANTIC - Luke Rector is just 20 and already his parents have
asked him what kind of funeral he wants when his heroin habit kills
him.

Heroin has robbed Sue and James Rector of the person who was once
their shy, well-behaved little boy, the one who excelled in geography
and never gave them any trouble.

"He's gone, he's lost," says Sue Rector, an elementary school teacher
in Marlborough, tears streaming down her face. "I'm sure if he keeps
going the way he is now, he'll be dead."

Luke is in prison now, serving a two-year sentence for violating his
probation on a robbery conviction. It's a lot safer than living on the
streets of Willimantic, selling his body to men for enough money to
support his heroin habit.

"Honestly, when I heard he was in jail, I was relieved because he was
off the streets," his mother says softly. Sue Rector used to see him
on the street, less than a mile from their comfortable home in
Willimantic. Sometimes she would buy him a sandwich so he wouldn't go
hungry.

Luke's older brother, Larry, used to shoot heroin, but he's been clean
since spring. Larry hopes to start some college courses. He's
frustrated that his brother doesn't want a future.

"I ask him all the time, `What are your goals, what are you trying to
shoot for?' And he says, `I don't know. Nothing.' That's what scares
me the most," Larry says. "We were supposed to grow up as two average
kids in a middle-class family, and look at us now."

Before Luke's arrest in early June, he wandered the streets of
Willimantic, sometimes sleeping outside. He seemed to be the only male
prostitute on the street, so he had little trouble finding dates.

On cooler nights, he'd shiver in a T-shirt. Bulky coats aren't good
for business. Which is why on an unusually cool night he was huddled
on a bench in Jillson Square, eyeballing every passing car for any
sign of interest. To a casual passerby, Luke looks like a handsome
young man with scruffy James Dean looks.

If he trusts you, he may talk about the time some thugs at a downtown
bar taunted him, then raped him. He may talk about how he started
drinking at age 14, then began snorting heroin at 16 after someone
told him he should try it because it was " a million times better"
than alcohol or pot.

"I need to score bad tonight," Luke says, rubbing his cold hands
together. "I don't want to get dope sick."

When he buys heroin, he often shoots up behind downtown buildings.
Sometimes, he acts like the kid he is, playing with some of the
skateboarding teens on the sidewalks along Main Street.

But not often. Mostly he's serious, working to feed his
habit.

He glances over at the annual firefighters' carnival, which was
occupying half of Jillson Square one night. Some guy at the fair was
his date the previous evening.

"He was a nice guy. Bought me five bags with the money," Luke
says.

Some of his dates are regulars who take him to their homes to spend
the night.

"That was good," Luke says, reminiscing as he stares at passing
cars.

A Honda slows down. Luke bolts off the bench into the waiting car and
speeds off with the male driver.

A 24-7 Business

The Rector boys typify a growing segment of heroin users in the past
decade - young, middle-class and white.

In 1992, the country had 630,000 heroin addicts, according to a study
by the federal National Drug Information Center. By 1999, that number
was up to 980,000, with an additional 200,000 to 400,000 reporting
having experimented with it.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Caucus on
International Narcotics Control, said after a 1999 hearing on heroin
use that during the late 1990s there was a startling increase
nationwide in heroin use among white suburban teens.

"People falsely believe heroin abuse is just an inner-city problem,"
Grassley said after testimony from teen heroin addicts from
middle-class suburbs in California, New York, New Hampshire and other
states. Several of the teens said they began using heroin when they
were 13.

"We're talking about white-collar professionals from affluent suburbs
and kids from small farm towns," Grassley said.

Many of the new users are afraid of using needles, so they sniff
heroin. More than half start injecting heroin for the stronger high.
New users falsely believe people can't become addicted by snorting,
says Dr. Herbert Kleber, medical director of Columbia University's
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.

Treatment centers in New England report an increase in heroin addicts
under age 20 seeking help, according to an August 2002 survey by
researchers with the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The average age of someone's first use of heroin dropped from 26 in
1991 to 17 by 1997, according to studies by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services substance abuse division.

Northeastern Connecticut, as elsewhere, has seen increased heroin use
among young people.

"It's everywhere. It's easier for high school kids to buy heroin than
beer. Plus, package stores close at 8. Heroin is a 24-7 business,"
says Geri Langlois, a former Thompson first selectman and former state
representative who is a recovering cocaine user. "If you gave me money
and 20 minutes, I'd come back with all the heroin we could afford."

Langlois knows of a group of eight teenagers in Chaplin, just north of
Willimantic, who got hooked on heroin last spring. They began by
snorting it. One family has two sons fighting addiction. A son from
another family is out on the streets, stealing to support his habit
and hiding from the police.

Two of those families agreed to interviews, both on condition that the
names of their sons, who are now in detoxification programs, not be
used.

In the family with two heroin-addicted boys, the parents became
terrified by the sons' wild rages. It was like "living with
terrorists."

"They used to be so close. Now it's like Cain and Abel," their mother
says. "Heroin turned these caring, compassionate boys into monsters."

The secret habit of the eight teenagers was revealed when a parent
found bags of heroin under a mattress. The parents learned that their
kids were stealing money and items for drugs that they'd buy in
Willimantic, sometimes in the Hotel Hooker.

Now five of them are in various stages of recovery. It's a
gamble.

Vivian Schweitzer of Willimantic knows. For years, she prayed that her
youngest daughter, Anne Marie Brochu, would kick her heroin habit.

Anne Marie began using at 16. She dropped out of school and once stole
$800 of her older sister's wedding money to buy drugs. The girl who
wanted to be a hairdresser grew up to be a heroin-addicted prostitute
in her hometown.

Today, Brochu is incarcerated in York Correctional Institution,
serving five years for crashing a car, while high on heroin, into
another vehicle on Route 6 on Oct. 23, 2001. She killed the other
driver, Gerry Suprenant, 23, of Brooklyn, an Eastern Connecticut State
University student. Brochu was coming off a four-bag high.

"I'm glad she's locked up," Schweitzer says. "At least we know where
she is for the next five years. I won't have to worry that she's out
somewhere, hurting herself or someone else."

Florence, a Willimantic grandmother who asked that her full name be
withheld, knows all about heroin. It wrecked the hopes and dreams she
had for her grandson, now 17, whom she raised. Now her hope is that he
stays away from her. Her dream is that he kicks his heroin habit.

She had him arrested in mid-July when he broke into her house, looking
for things to sell. He said it was for rent, but she knew it was for
heroin. He threatened to kill her when she told him to leave, so she
called the police.

A few days later, she went to Danielson Superior Court and got a
restraining order barring her grandson from any contact with her.
While there, she looked at the names on the day's court docket.

"I saw so many names of young people I knew, kids who were good but
fell apart when they got messed up on drugs," Florence said.

Alcohol At 14; Heroin At 16

Sue Rector has a difficult time talking about Luke.

It's a painful admission for his parents - one a teacher and the other
an insurance company accountant - to make, to say that their son is a
heroin addict. It's so painful that James Rector can't talk about it.

But Sue Rector wants other parents of middle-class children to know
that it could happen to them, that one day their own child could be
shooting heroin, particularly in Willimantic.

Her face is sad and worn as she talks at the kitchen table in her
quaint kitchen, decorated in country blue and brick with heart-shaped
decorations that say "peace and love." She keeps a picture of Luke in
a cap and gown holding the high school equivalency diploma he got the
last time he was in prison. He was No. 1 in his class, his one success
in recent years.

Sue Rector has taken down the most recent pictures of her son; they
are just too painful to look at. Instead, she displays pictures of
Luke when he was young, an angelic, smiling, towheaded toddler dressed
in a red-and-white check shirt and overalls.

"Luke was such a good boy. We thought, he's fine, we won't worry about
him," Sue Rector says, a tinge of irony in her voice. "He was our
little blessing for a long time."

The Rectors had moved to Connecticut from Texas, drawn by a job at an
insurance company and to Willimantic by the reasonable price of their
Dutch colonial in a decent neighborhood. Their boys went to church on
Sundays and to Bible study and a Christian youth group during the week.

Luke, it seemed for the longest time, was the perfect child. He slept
as an infant, and doted on his parents, giving them homemade gifts for
Christmas and Thanksgiving. He was a straight-A student in middle
school who played soccer and baseball.

The Rectors worried more about Luke's older brother, Larry, who had
been a difficult child and was diagnosed as bipolar by the time he was
7. Larry, two years older than his brother, needed and got most of the
attention.

The first indication something was going wrong with Luke was when they
found him drunk at age 14. He told them he was upset about something a
girl had said to him. What he was afraid to admit to his parents was
that he strongly suspected he was gay.

At 15, because of Luke's unruly behavior, his parents tried something
drastic. They sent him to a faith-based school in the Dominican
Republic, aimed at helping troubled boys. They could afford to keep
him in the $38,000 program for only a year. Luke came home.

"He came back and we tried to get him going with something else. At
that point, everything we tried to do for him, he rejected," Sue
Rector said.

By the time Luke was 16, he had run away from home and was out on the
street.

Luke says that after his first brush with alcohol at 14, he stayed
away from drinking for a while, but then started smoking pot. He first
tried heroin at 16 in August 1998, after he came back from the
Dominican Republic.

"The best way to describe it was heaven on Earth," Luke says, sitting
on a park bench in Jillson Square, between dates a few weeks before he
went to jail. "I was so high I forgot about all my problems. I just
loved it."

By the next summer, he was shooting between three and eight bags every
day. At 18, he would sleep in abandoned buildings, under bridges.

His parents would get him into program after program, and he'd always
leave after a couple of weeks.

Larry Rector tried heroin - he claims because of Luke - and two years
ago, nearly died of an overdose. Larry's heart stopped, but paramedics
revived him.

"I knew I was dying and couldn't move. I was praying for God to let me
into heaven and please forgive me," Larry says.

Larry believes his brother turned to drugs to avoid his conflicting
feelings about being gay.

"We were raised with a system of values firmly ingrained. To have
feelings that go against it would bother him," Larry says.

Indeed, Luke's parents don't accept his lifestyle, and have tried to
change him rather than accept him for who he is.

"I don't think that is something that is inborn," Sue Rector says.
"Homosexuality is wrong, which I believe. If someone is a homosexual,
it is wrong, but they need to get help in dealing with that."

If Luke ever shakes his drug habit, Sue Rector says, she would like to
send him to a facility in Nashville called Love in Action, marketed as
intensive "recovery from sexual sin."

Sue Rector says she constantly questions her decision to move to
Willimantic.

"When we bought the house, a couple of people told me there was a real
bad drug problem," she says. "If I could go back in time, I would not
have moved into this town."