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By Christy Strawser PUBLISHED: February 13, 2006 The is the last in a four-part series about local teens struggling
with addictions and parents coping with their kids' heroin overdoses
Vacation pictures tumbled from her bag next and she spread out photos of precious years when her son loved spending time with his family. In one of Mackie's favorites, Mike stood less than shoulder high in front of his 5-foot-3 mother against a Manhattan skyline. Mom, dad, Matthew and Mike looked tanned and relaxed, a typical suburban family on a big city vacation. The picture was taken in 2000, so the Twin Towers were solid and immovable in the background. It was a year before the towers crumbled, and five years before the gap-toothed boy in the picture was killed by a drug habit he couldn't break. "I cry every day, every single day," said Mackie, fingering her photos at a local restaurant as tears poured down her face. "There's a spark I used to have that I just don't have anymore. And I'm angry, I'm just so angry at him I could scream." Getting help If you knew who he was, his story might surprise you. But this father wants to save his family embarrassment, so he remains anonymous. Let's call him a local professional, happily married with two cars in the driveway and a landscaped lawn. He has a $50,000 second mortgage on his house, not uncommon, but his doesn't pay for college tuition. The money goes to Pathway Family Center in Southfield for his son's rehab. His son had to leave home for nine months to dry out and learn to avoid the friends he bonded with over drugs and alcohol. The boy is 15 years old. And he's starting over. "I cried the first two weeks he was there," the teen's father said, adding that his son was troubled, but not lonely. Several friends from a Royal Oak middle school are in the same program. Also at Pathway is the daughter of a Farmington Hills father who knows Royal Oak well. Kevin doesn't want to reveal his last name, but said his daughter Amanda, now 17, was 15 years old when she first asked him to bring her to Main and Fourth. Kevin, 50, thought she was hanging out with some alternative-style friends. He later found out she went there to shoot heroin. "Her problems originated at Main and Fourth," Kevin said. "I didn't have a clue until the school called and said, 'We arrested your daughter.'" Staff found her heroin kit at school with the needles, and other paraphernalia that gave away his little girl's secret. Kevin and his wife did everything to help their daughter, from putting her through three rehabs to sleeping in her room and talking to her via cell phone while she bought heroin — to ensure she survived the trip to her dealer's den in Detroit. That was not even Kevin's worst moment. Rock bottom came after he chased his only child around their family home, desperately trying to grab the heroin kit from her hands. "We had a conversation in the garage and I told her she was going to kill herself," Kevin said. "I told her I was ready, I had made peace with it. She took that hard." These families had frightful moments. But they, at least, still have a child to save. Deadly mix A potent cocktail of cocaine, heroin and painkillers, probably Vicodin, killed Kimball High School student Michael Mackie, 16, on May 27, 2005. Oakland County Medical Examiner Dr. Ruben Ortiz-Reyes ruled Mackie's cause of death as cocaine and opiate intoxication. His mother does not know which drugs he took or how he got them. She only knows she opened her front door early on May 28 and let in a nightmare. "There was an officer and a pastor standing there, and I knew, I just knew what happened," Mackie said. She slammed the door shut and turned away, but the cop and the preacher wouldn't leave. They insisted on telling her what she already knew. Mike had overdosed in his father's garage, just a few miles from his mother's house. He probably died at 10 p.m. but wasn't found until a friend came by before school the next morning. "I had seen Mike that afternoon. He came home from school to get something and I had had this strange foreboding all day," Mackie said. Her son had become sullen and withdrawn, explosive sometimes, and she knew something was wrong. She wanted to stay in constant touch, so she asked him to meet her after school so she could take him to buy a new cell phone. "He said he was going back to school, so I said 'Hey, be careful — I love you,'" Mackie said. "He called out 'I love you, too mom.'" It was the last thing she heard from her son. Mike never came home after school and his exasperated mother assumed he went to his father's house because the boys split time between their parents' homes. She found out later her ex wasn't home that night. "I screamed when they told me what happened," Mackie said. The pastor told her he would never forget the way she sounded. Hard to control Mackie feels for other parents struggling to keep a kid off drugs because she knows how hard it is to force a 6-foot teen to do anything he doesn't want to do. She couldn't stop her son's drug problem after it became apparent in March 2005, when he laid on her living room floor and almost died the first time. "His lips were turning blue, he was just barely breathing," Mackie recalled. Her son told her he had taken too many prescription pills and Mackie called 911 and watched with her younger son as paramedics brought Mike back to life. She wanted to believe he had only taken pills, but she heard paramedics say they saved him by injecting something to counteract heroin. "I knew he had been depressed. That's what it was, but I didn't want to think he was taking anything like that," Mackie said. Kimball High School Principal Tom Neville described Mackie as a nice kid who was part of a crowd that staff suspected was heavily into drugs. "I've been principal for 33 years, and there was alcohol, marijuana, speed, Quaaludes — but this is the first indication that these hard drugs are here at such a young age," Neville said when Mackie died. "It's frightening if we have 14- or 15-year-olds involved in this." Neville thinks the hard drug crowd at his school is very small, though Mackie was such a popular kid, 30-40 students sought grief counseling at school after he died. His mother remembers his funeral procession as three miles long. Mike was well loved as the class clown, the kid who would do or say anything to make other people laugh. "That's always the way he was," his mother said. "People either loved him or hated him, but they could never ignore him." Gravesite reminder Mackie visited her son's grave at Roseland Cemetery in Berkley on Jan. 18. She had to see him on his 17th birthday. She was gratified classmates remembered his special day, too, and left colorful balloons and coins on his headstone. She knows she can't blame anyone but Mike for his own death and fights feelings of guilt, though she thinks ending her 17-year marriage with Mike's dad two years ago coincided with her son's drug addiction. A talented writer, Mike was close to his father and penned letters about how much he missed seeing him every day. The teen was despondent for months after the divorce and doctors put him on antidepressants following his first overdose. "But he stopped taking them because he didn't like the way they made him feel," his mother said. Working at a local restaurant, Mackie couldn't afford a costly rehabilitation program, so when her son got home from the hospital she kept a close watch on him and took him to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Mike started to smile again after his hospital stay. When he told his mother he really liked NA meetings, she hoped the crisis was over. However, two weeks before Mike's death the same old signs returned and she suspected the drugs were back. Mackie took afternoons off work to be home when her son arrived from school, hoping if she was there it would be enough to stop him. But sometimes he didn't come home. In the aftermath of Mike's death, Kimball staff rallied to battle drugs. Twenty-three teachers volunteered to attend training programs about preventing teen drug abuse over the summer. Neville applauded the effort, but he's not sure it worked. "The kids that were involved with Mike Mackie," he said, "rather than moving away from it after he died, from our understanding they're going deeper into it."
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She
lingered over a shot of Mike at a few months old, soft and sweet
in blue striped pajamas, then moved to a photo of a blond toddler
with his mother's sea blue eyes, smiling in a studio shot with little
brother Matthew.