Joey Doron arrived home early from a night out with his friends.
Despite a rough year personally and with his family, Joey stayed up talking to his father, Michael, until nearly 2 a.m.
"It was the best conversation we'd had in a year and a half," said Michael Doron.
When Michael told his son he couldn't stay awake any longer, he retired for the evening.
"I said, 'I love you,' and he said, 'I love you too,' " Doron said.
Less than six hours later, 17-year-old Joey Doron was found dead in his bedroom of an accidental drug overdose. An autopsy would later reveal a mixture of heroin and cocaine in his body.
Michael Doron is among several parents who have contacted the Deseret Morning News since July when a story ran examining a recent spike in the number of Utah teenagers fatally overdosing on drugs, predominantly heroin. The drug appeared to be making a comeback in the Beehive State, especially among middle- to upper-class juveniles who did not fit the dated stereotype of a heroin user.
The parents either wanted more information about teenagers and drug use or they wanted to share their own story of how this addictive, destructive and too often deadly drug was responsible for tragedy in their families.
Doron said more parents need to be educated about today's drug culture because drugs don't respect racial, ethnic, monetary or religious boundaries.
Salt Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. Jason Mazuran agrees that today's typical teen drug user is not an uneducated, unkempt homeless person, which is why many parents are being caught off guard. Doron himself lives in an Olympus Cove neighborhood where your neighbor is likely to be a doctor, attorney or judge. But when it came to illegal drugs and the ways in which teens were obtaining and using them, he was completely in the dark.
"They think, 'Not my kid, not in my area.' They're not even looking for it. It sneaks up on them," Mazuran said. "As a result, they're not prepared for it. They don't take measures in their own home or do simple things such as increasing their own awareness."
To help parents recognize the red flags to possible drug use, Doron is organizing a conference aimed at raising the awareness of parents to the problem of juvenile drug use. His panel discussion tentatively scheduled for March 16, 2006, is expected to include local law enforcers, doctors, judges, school officials and others.
By calling the conference "Connecting the Dots," Doron is describing what he wished he would have done when he saw pieces of aluminum foil disappear from the kitchen or unexplained black marks on his son's fingers. Joey would ask his father to pick up specific brands of pens for him so he could use the hollow tubes. Michael Doron would find out after that the items were drug paraphernalia and the marks on his son's fingers were residue from drug use.
By the time Doron did connect the dots, it was too late. His son was battling a drug addiction that would eventually kill him. Michael Doron said the next time he saw his son after their late-night talk, he noticed a white foam coming from his mouth as he lay in bed.
"I screamed. His brother cried hysterically," Doron said. "I tried to do CPR even though I knew he was gone."
Raising awareness
Doron isn't the only one who wants to raise awareness of heroin use among teens.
Since the heroin-related deaths of Amelia Sorich and Zachary Martinez, both 18, earlier this year, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson launched a billboard campaign that encourages young people to call 911 when their friends overdose rather than do nothing.
The bodies of both Martinez and Sorich were dumped in mountainous locations by friends who panicked after they died.
It's those same "friends" that generally introduce heroin to others.
"There's not going to be some mean and ugly drug dealer that's going to walk up to your children and force heroin down their throats," said filmmaker Curtis Elliot. "The key is one of their friends, someone they love and respect. They're going to say, 'Try this, it's going to be fun. You can handle it. It won't kill you, you can control the drug.' "
Elliot recently made an award-winning documentary called "Hairkutt," which follows a group trying to help one of their friends kick his heroin habit. Because of the recent media attention to heroin in Salt Lake City, Elliot picked Utah as one of the places to premiere his film.
"The person who is going to give them the heroin is not going to be a stranger. It's not going to be someone who is out to hurt them, but in their own mind they're being nice to them by turning them on to this drug," he said. "Kids have such bad information (about heroin). Kids are not told what's going to happen to them."
Also in an effort to better inform teens and parents, Smith's Food and Drug pharmacies has produced a DVD. It features Brock, 17, a former drug addict who shares the methods and mind-sets of teen drug users.
Brock, who does not want his last name used, was 14 when he started doing drugs. From what he observed in high school there were "many kids" using heroin, he said.
Brock said he started smoking marijuana and then progressed to prescription drugs, including OxyContin.
"It was no big deal. It was just a prescription," he said.
But as his use grew so did his addiction, something that also affected his wallet. For some of Brock's friends in the same situation, the goal became getting the same high but at less cost. The solution was heroin.
"It's something you didn't think you'd do," he said.
Teens would obtain the drugs by sharing the phone numbers of known dealers with other users, Brock said. The dealer would tell the juveniles to meet one or two delivery men in a store parking lot. The group would then drive to a nearby neighborhood, and the men supplying the drugs would spit several balloons out of their mouths, Brock said. Inside each balloon was black-tar heroin.
Dealers' greed
It was exactly the type of scenario that Taylorsville Police Sgt. Keith Stephens told the Deseret Morning News in July that his officers were seeing a lot. Since then, business has not slowed down.
In August, Taylorsville police had approximately 55 drug cases and made 35 arrests, he said.
"We're spending time talking to each (buyer, after they're arrested). None (of their use) is recreational. It's physical and psychological dependence that's driving this. I don't see any end to this in the near future. It's supply and demand. We're still finding people selling to drug addicts, supplying their habits," Stephens said.
In fact, he said, 98 percent of the spitters being arrested for selling drugs don't use drugs themselves.
"They're being driven strictly by the greed," Stephens said.
An arrest in early November highlighted the heroin addiction problem. Stephens said his deputies witnessed a drug deal go down in a Taylorsville parking lot. After the dealers left, officers stopped the buyer, questioned and ticketed him and then took his freshly purchased drugs.
Just 20 minutes later, the same man called the dealers back and asked them to meet him at another location. Officers who were still monitoring the man busted him for a second time and this time sent him to jail.
On Saturday, the obituary of another 19-year-old man who died of a heroin overdose was published in the Deseret Morning News.
"Heroin stole John first from his family, then from his friends, then from all who loved him. Early Thursday morning, heroin stole John from himself," the obituary read.
Mazuran said that according to reports coming to the sheriff's office, heroin has made a comeback over the past two to three years in Utah because young people are smoking it now rather than injecting it.
"Opiate abuse in general among young people right now is a pretty severe issue. It seems to be very popular," he said.
The first clues
Joey Doron was born in May 1988. He attended the Jewish Community Center, Wasatch Junior High and Skyline High School before transferring to East High School.
He was an avid fan of the Miami Dolphins and Phoenix Suns. Basketball in particular was a passion for Joey, who enjoyed playing as well as collecting NBA trading cards. He had an excellent memory of all the players and teams. Father and son would routinely enter fantasy basketball leagues together, and thanks to Joey's vast knowledge of statistics they went to the finals four times and won twice.
At one point Joey wrote articles for the Miami Dolphins Web site from a fan's prospective. It was sort of a precursor to blogs before blogs became popular, his father said.
"His dream was to work for ESPN," Michael Doron said.
Joey was a good student, with a 3.4 to 3.5 grade point average, said Michael Doron. But he also had a stubborn streak and wasn't afraid to occasionally challenge authority.
"He had the persistence of an excellent trial attorney," his father said.
At the end of his sophomore year that first "dot" appeared: Joey's grades began to slightly dip, although they were still considered good.
And a bigger issue for Michael was that Joey started becoming uncharacteristically lazy. He began a pattern of failing to turn in homework assignments. School administrators told Michael Doron it was just a classic case of adjusting to schoolwork that was getting harder.
But his behavior continued to change noticeably between August and September 2004, his junior year. Michael said his son was angry more often than before.
In October 2004, Michael Doron found a marijuana pipe in his son's room. After confronting him about it, Joey admitted to smoking marijuana with his friends, Michael Doron said.
"By the end of October his behavior was rude and surly. He said things to me like, 'You don't know what it's like being a teenager,' " Doron said.
The growing anger came to a head one day when Joey threw an object at his father and then tried to hit him. Michael Doron said he had to physically restrain his son before calling police. He had his son taken to juvenile detention for a night.
'Under the radar'
But the anger continued to grow. And none of the counselors or doctors Michael Doron took his son to believed drug use was the reason behind it, Doron said.
In the middle of his junior year, Joey asked his father if he could transfer from Skyline to East High School, something Michael thought was peculiar.
"He said he wanted a fresh, clean start," he said. "For a kid to switch in the middle of 11th grade is pretty dramatic."
Whether Joey really did simply want a fresh start or if he had other reasons for transferring schools, Michael never really found out.
In December, Joey Doron was deeply affected by the death of Kali Breisch, one of his closest friends. Breisch, a sophomore at Skyline, was swept away from a beachside bungalow by the giant tsunami that hit Thailand on December 26, 2004.
"He was in denial. He thought they would find her," Michael Doron said.
After a weeklong search, Breisch's body was found by her family in a morgue waiting to be identified.
In addition to Breisch, Joey lost four other friends in a car accident and a hiking accident.
According to Joey's friends to whom Michael talked after his son's death, it was after these tragedies, about last February, that Joey slipped into heavy drug use. His grades had sunk to a new low, as did his behavior.
Police were called again to the Doron house in April when Michael said his son swung a metal pipe at him. It was then that one of the responding officers suggested to Michael that his son might be on drugs.
By this point Doron said he felt completely helpless. Joey had "slipped under the radar" because he had not been caught red-handed with drugs or busted at any time by police, Michael Doron said.
Joey stayed in juvenile detention for eight days and then was released to the custody of his parents for house arrest. While in the custody of his parents he received frequent drug tests and counseling.
Undetected drugs
This apparently still did not deter Joey's drug use.
Eighteen days after he was sent to juvenile detention, Joey overdosed on drugs and was taken to Primary Children's Medical Center, where he was revived and treated for a little less than a week.
"I told people he's going to be dead or in jail before he's 18," Michael Doron said.
Doron sent his son to the University of Utah's Neuropsychiatric Unit for a week after he was released from Primary Children's. From that point he thought things were finally improving.
The good days seemed to outnumber the bad. Joey was doing well with his community service, working at an autism school. On his last day at the school, Michael bought his son a book, "Animals in Translation — Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior," and on the inside page wrote that he was "proud of you and your volunteer work."
But in reality, Doron believes his son had learned how to use heroin and not have it detected in drug tests.
On July 1, 2005, Michael allowed Joey to go with some of his friends to Snowbird. He got home before curfew that evening.
"He seemed fine. His eyes looked fine," Doron said.
At 11:30 p.m., Joey had a deep conversation with his dad and admitted all his drug use to him.
"He told me, 'You should have been even more strict with me,' " Michael Doron said.
During the conversation, Joey seemed to be extremely parched. Michael said he would only learn after it was too late that it was yet another red flag.
The next morning Joey was dead.
One friend with whom he went to Snowbird came over the next day and was shocked to learn what had happened and admitted drug use that night to Michael Doron. He told him that Joey had smoked heroin a little over a dozen times since he had known him but never injected it.
The other friend who was with Joey that night refused to talk to Michael. That friend is now incarcerated for allegedly stealing checks and credit cards from his mother to buy drugs, Doron said.
Selective denial
Since Joey's death, Michael has been gathering as much information as he can on drugs and trends among juveniles for the upcoming conference.
Doron said it's an issue important to all parents with teenage children or younger. He said those who don't believe their own son or daughter would ever do drugs suffer from what he calls "selective denial."
And then when something tragic does happen, Doron said many parents are embarrassed that their child did hard drugs and refuse to talk about it with others.
"Don't be embarrassed. Talk about it," he said. "We need to wake everyone up."
Five hours after Joey's death, Michael Doron wrote a letter to his son.
"Joey, there is so much I wanted to say to you, there is so much I wanted to do with you. You will be dearly missed by so many people — your mom, your brother Max, your grandparents, uncles and friends. They will all miss you. And most of all I will miss you," Doron wrote.
The August newsletter from the Jeanne Wagner Jewish Community Center remembered Joey and published a poem he wrote about hope when he was just 13.
"If you lose your hope, you will lose yourself," Joey wrote. "It is the glue that holds your life together, it is the dreams that make living possible."
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com