http://www.azstarnet.com/star/sat/20413OVERDOSE.html

TEEN'S DRUG EXPERIMENT NEARLY FATAL

Dad: 'He Wasn't a Junkie'

Robin and K.C. Hardy never thought they would be shopping for a nursing
home for their 17-year-old son.

They're doing so now because Wayne Hardy is in a vegetative state after
overdosing on heroin and cocaine his parents say he bought at school.

Wayne injected the drugs into his arm after apparently reading step-
by-step instructions he found on the Internet, says his father, K.C. Hardy.
That was the last Web page Wayne visited the night he took the drugs, K.C.
Hardy said.

Robin Hardy found her son slumped in a bedroom chair, covered with vomit
and gurgling the morning of March 28. Paramedics found a syringe, a
blackened spoon and a lighter on his desk.

"He's a teen-ager, he's smoked pot, we were riding him all the time," said
K.C. Hardy.

The Hardys thought they were doing what they needed to keep their two kids,
Wayne and a 14-year-old daughter, away from drugs - a priority since
addiction runs on both sides of their extended family, K.C. Hardy said.

"I drilled (it) into their heads since they were 2 years old. It's the one
thing I did constantly," he said. "It probably backfired on me."

Wayne was arrested on two counts of marijuana possession and one count of
possession of drug paraphernalia in July. He completed a diversion program
by doing 35 hours of community service, taking a daylong drug- education
program and writing a three-page essay on the dangers of drug abuse, said
Gabriella Rico, spokeswoman for the Pima County Juvenile Court.

He also took ketamine hydrochloride, or "Special K" - an animal
tranquilizer that causes hallucinations - on a Thanksgiving trip with
family friends in Mexico and nearly needed to be flown back to Tucson for
medical treatment, Robin Hardy said.

The Hardys took away the truck they'd bought Wayne, searched his room, sent
him to a psychiatrist and talked to him about getting treatment. Wayne
insisted that he didn't have a drug problem, K.C. Hardy said.

"He wasn't a junkie, he was just like everyone else's kid," K.C. Hardy
said. "He tried something and it killed him - or almost killed him."

Wayne had two strokes and a heart attack after injecting the drugs last
month and is now in a vegetative state that will require around- the-clock
skilled nursing care to dispense medications, control his seizures and
fevers and maintain his permanent feeding tube.

Heroin and cocaine can each starve the brain and heart of oxygen, leading
to severe damage, said Dr. Leslie Boyer of the Arizona Poison and Drug
Information Center. People take the drugs in combination mistakenly
thinking the lulling effects of heroin will offset the shakes and
stimulation of cocaine, she said. "The fact is they never balance out
because the two drugs start working and wear off at different rates."

"If you overdose on both you tend to have severe cocaine effects first,
followed by severe heroin effects and anything can happen including death,
heart attack, stroke, liver damage, kidney damage and permanent
disability," she said.

Doctors suggested putting Wayne in a hospice, but his parents aren't ready
to let him go because he has cried, laughed and opened his eyes, Robin
Hardy said. The doctors told the Hardys those are involuntary responses and
he is in a comalike state.

The Hardys say Wayne bought the heroin and cocaine at Sabino High School.

Sabino Principal Susan Preimesberger said the school tries to keep drugs
out of the school and educates students about the dangers of drug use.
Prescription drugs - snatched from parents' medicine cabinets - are the
latest trend in high schools, she said.

"We're in the business to educate, and our job is to educate students but
we don't serve as police agents," Preimesberger said. "That's the role of
parents and any time we have information we do investigate."

Sheriff's officers made four citations for drugs and three arrests in 2001
at Sabino High School, and have made three citations and two arrests so far
this year, said Deputy Steve Easton, Pima County Sheriff's Department
spokesman.

The Metro Area Narcotics Trafficking Interdiction Squad is investigating
Wayne Hardy's overdose. Tucson Unified School District is cooperating with
authorities, said spokeswoman Toni Cordova.

"Drugs are available on every high school campus," said Sgt. Brad Foust,
supervisor of the Sheriff's Department school resource unit.

Parents should talk to their kids about drugs, and not be afraid to
confront them with suspicions, said W. Mark Clark, chief executive officer
at CODAC Behavioral Health.

"Parents need to do whatever they think in their gut to take care of the
problem," Clark said. "Injecting drugs is big-time, very risky behavior and
the combination of finding the needles, finding the heroin and cocaine
would indicate to me that the teenager had a substantial substance abuse
problem.

"Parents need to trust their guts, and you do need to be pretty intrusive
with your teen-agers," Clark said.

Robin Hardy said she could not find a treatment center that would take
Wayne because he would not sign himself in.

The parents didn't want to check him into an involuntary treatment program
because a friend said Wayne would just make more drug connections, Robin
Hardy said.

"There was no avenue open to me as a parent," Robin Hardy said.

The Hardys thought Wayne was just experimenting and didn't realize where
their son was headed until it was too late, she said.

"I have a full life - a daughter, three horses, birds, a business with 15
employees. I didn't spend every day on that issue. We're very, very busy,"
Robin Hardy said. "We figured he's a teen-ager."

Parents must understand that no one can keep another person off drugs and
that substance abuse is an illness that needs treatment, Clark said.

"We live in a very complex world, and kids are exposed to many different
things," he said. "Parents can't control everything that goes on with their
kids and schools can't control everything that goes on in the school."

The Hardys are now searching for a nursing home that will work with Wayne's
brain injuries and offer rehabilitative care. They may have to foot a
$5,000 to $7,000 per month bill if insurance doesn't cover his care, K.C.
Hardy said.

"We have to give him a chance; you never know," he said. "He could live 20
or 40 years. That's morbid, but who am I to kill him?"