A mother, a daughter and a drug dealer

July 12, 2006

This is a story about a beautiful, but confused, young woman who fell in love with a charming Kingsley businessman who made her laugh. She realized too late that he was a crack cocaine dealer, and that was most unlucky for her because it plunged her back into an addiction she had escaped months before.
This is also a story about the young woman’s mother, who went nearly crazy with grief and wanted to save her daughter from herself. It takes place in Traverse City, but it could happen anywhere for it has to do with the human drive for love and the quest for justice, which you won’t necessarily find in this story.
Jessica’s story (not her real name) begins at Traverse City West High School, where she was popular and a fairly good student, her ambitions lying in the business world. She did well in her part-time retail jobs, always getting promoted, and sometimes she celebrated at the lake or in parks with her friends, drinking and getting high.
She graduated from high school in 2001 and was making such good money at the time that she didn’t want to go to college like her brother did—at least not right away. She started seeing a man who was four years older than her, college educated, and good with computers. Hopeful about the relationship, she moved in with him a month after she turned 18 (against her parents’ wishes).

DABBLING WITH CRACK
For Jessica, he was the kind of man she identified with. His parents were teachers and he was smart and ambitious. Her own parents had to work hard, her dad a skilled factory worker, her mom at a nursing home. They struggled over money ever since she could remember. In fact, memories of their fights over money were still fresh in her mind. She wanted to marry a professional, she wanted to be a professional, maybe work in a corporation someday, putting off marriage and kids. Above all, no money problems.
But Jessica and her boyfriend fought a lot and she was shocked by how intense, how much her fierce temper turned her into a screaming fool. They ended up fighting more than they got along, and he asked her to please move out. Disappointed and feeling rejected, she stalked him in parking lots and kept calling him at home and work. She was shocked by her behavior, and blamed her parents.
But good things were happening too. She was hired as an assistant sales manager for a successful local company, earning an excellent salary with benefits. She moved into a Victorian house in a Traverse City school zone, with three other girls.
She was 19 and was dabbling with snorting cocaine, smoking pot, and drinking. And then one of her new roommates introduced her to crack cocaine. She loved it.
“I mean, whoa, it was amazing. The first time, it’s euphoric—like an all-over body experience, an all-over body orgasm. It’s like a rocket went off in my head,” she recalls.
Jessica learned how to slowly exhale the smoke, feeling her heart race and her ears ring—at least with the first hit.
“The first hit is amazing,” she said. “You can never take another hit like that again during the night, but you continually try to chase that first hit. It lasts seven minutes and you stay stuck. You don’t move, you don’t say anything, and then you can’t wait to do it again.”
‘I’D DO ANYTHING’
For eight months, Jessica partied with her roommates (one later went to prison for dealing). Jessica found that smoking crack cocaine was cleaner and more euphoric than snorting. But it was expensive. She netted $3,000 a month, but she found herself bouncing checks, despite the small rent she paid. She found herself scrounging around for what she could sell—a jacket, a ring, anything.
“When a guy asked me to give him oral sex for another hit, it was no joke—that’s what they wanted and I’d do anything.”
She thought she was hiding her habit pretty well, but at least one girlfriend caught on. Jessica had asked to borrow money from her, and she said sure, meet me at Mabel’s restaurant. It was an intervention, though, and her friend and her friend’s uncle—an ex-crack cocaine addict himself—took Jessica to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Jessica was shaken. She went home and took a serious look in the mirror. She hated what she saw—the sad, shadowed eyes staring back at her. They somehow looked evil.
She decided to quit cold turkey. The next day she told the landlord that she wanted out of the lease. She moved home, telling her parents that she was tired of dealing with her roommates. They didn’t pay their bills, she said, and they drank too much; one threw up and cleaned up the vomit with her robe. She was a little broke and wanted a fresh start.

MEETING JAY
So she lived at home, in her parent’s comfortable two-bedroom apartment, for a couple of months, and then moved in with a nice girl from work, a girl she knew was clean. Jessica spent most of her spare time that summer riding horses, and partied without the crack. But she drank and smoked marijuana, and that’s how she met Jay.
She and her friend were trying to score some pot one night and met him in a hotel room. He had a beautiful smile and an intriguing accent that he picked up from his father, who grew up in Trinidad; he made her laugh. She fell for him almost instantly, and started going to his basketball games with a video camera in hand.
They started seeing each other, but she kept her past a secret from him. He also had a past to hide. On July 3 in 2003, she started to discover the kind of guy he really was.
Jay didn’t have a driver’s license, so he asked her to give him a ride down to Baldwin to give his ex-girlfriend some money for a prescription for his son. He also wanted to buy some marijuana. Jessica jumped at the chance for the road trip, to drive his white, gleaming SUV. She was 20, he was 30, they were high, she was speeding (70 mph in a 55 mph zone), and a Lake County deputy pulled them over.
“I know how bad it looked. We were in a brand new SUV, a young pretty blond and a black thug. It didn’t look great.”

DRUG-SNIFFING DOG
Jessica didn’t see him do this, but Jay slipped a baggie of cocaine in his crotch when he heard the siren. The deputy approached and began asking questions. He smelled marijuana, and Jessica readily admitted she had been smoking marijuana. Jay lied and said nothing was in the car.
A drug-sniffing dog discovered otherwise. Marijuana leaves and stems were concealed in various compartments. The two were hauled into jail, and Jay fessed up, giving the deputies the cocaine and $1,800 in cash.
This is where “justice” seemed to take a turn. Jessica was charged with drug possession and her parents had to spend $2,500 for jail fines and an attorney who was able to get her charge reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor. Jay? Nothing. He even got to keep his cash, which under Michigan law could have gone to the sheriff’s department.
Jessica was angry with Jay and didn’t return his calls for a month. He lied to her, in essence, by never telling her that he had cocaine in the car; she could have been prosecuted, along with him.
Jay kept calling, visiting her at work, apologizing and charming her. After a month, he called when she was feeling needy. “I want to get messed up,” she told him, and they did. She was back on crack cocaine.

JAY’S ‘MULES’
The shine of Jay’s love blinded Jessica. She overlooked everything. He was living with a woman in Kingsley. He talked freely about his six illegitimate children, who live in Baldwin, Arizona, Mississippi, Traverse City, and Louisiana.
He called himself a businessman, but his business was crack cocaine. She, along with his harem—three other women—were his “mules.” They found new customers for Jay through their network of friends and helped with the deliveries, driving Jay to Traverse City and Petoskey.
“We’d sell to builders, construction guys, one guy who works for Yellow Book, professionals, old men, and young kids,” she recalls.
At night they usually stayed at the Restwood Motel, Motel 6, or the Sleep Inn; they tried to mix it up. After the deliveries, they counted up the money--$1,700 to $2,000 a night—got high, had sex, and slept in.
Jay sold drugs because he considered normal jobs a form of legalized slavery, Jessica said. Unlike many drug addicts, he didn’t seem to suffer childhood demons. He spent part of his childhood in Trinidad, and visited his parents in Florida
“He just liked the cat and mouse game with the police,” Jessica said. “He lived in a Peter Pan world, a fairy tale. That was his lifestyle. We’d talk about his future, and how he was never going to be the man for me, and that saddened both of us.”

$10,000 PER WEEK
His biggest problem was keeping up with the child support of his six children. To get around his unusual way of earning money, he’d give his drug money to a local businessman, who would issue him a work check to show proof of income. Despite the huge amounts of money from selling—grossing about $10,000 a week—he didn’t share any of the profits with Jessica, although she didn’t have to pay for her drugs anymore. He also paid a few of her bills, but he made it feel like he was doing her a favor.
“At one point, I really thought he loved me. It was just a façade, I know now,” Jessica said. “But he really enjoyed being with me, having me ride with him by his side. He made me feel very special. He was hilarious and fun to be with. The whole lifestyle was so alluring. I’d never been with a black man. He treated me like a white little flower and he was going to protect me. He had two SUVs with leather (neither registered in his name). I liked the whole life because it was so different, so wrong, so illegal, and that made it more fun. The luxury lifestyle and getting high and having sex and having nice things.“
Jessica was getting tired, though, from the late night partying and then working the next day. At her real job, she was able to put on her cheery face, but she wasn’t feeling that way.
Jessica kept quiet about her nightlife and tried to pass off Jay to her friends as a normal businessman. Her roommate, though, was suspicious and tried to get Jessica to dump him. She, her boyfriend, and Jessica moved out to a beautiful home in the country, but they barely saw Jessica. She was either with Jay or sound asleep in her bedroom.

DATING A DEALER
Jessica lost weight and started coming to work late nearly every day. Her boss kept talking to her and finally demoted her. In June of 2004, her boss fired her, saying her focus and quality of work had slipped too far. Jessica’s parents said they were clueless. They thought Jessica was drinking too much and partying too late, but they had no idea she was using drugs, much less dating a drug dealer.
“The red flags go up, but when you see your kid, you see her at 4-H, sitting second chair in band. You see the invincible equestrian. You don’t want to believe your kid is doing something you don’t want her to be doing,”said Carrie, Jessica’s mom.
After Jessica lost her job, she devoted herself completely to Jay and being his mule. She’d wake up at 5 p.m., help Jay pack up the drugs, and deliver until 1 a.m. They’d check into the motel, get high, have sex, and count money until 8 a.m.
It all ended two months later in August, when Jessica drank a couple of high-octane Long Island ice teas and drove into the parking lot of Restwood Motel in the early morning hours to meet Jay. She was arrested for drunk driving, 21 days after turning 21.

Next week: Jessica’s mother tries to save her from a life of addiction.

Partying Stats
16 percent of Grand Traverse area juniors said they used hardcore drugs in the last year

Every year that a teen gets older, the likelihood kicks way up that they’ll drink, take drugs and have sex.
In the Grand Traverse region,* the percentage of kids who said they used marijuana once or more in the last 12 months gets significantly higher with age: 7 percent in the seventh grade, 22 percent in ninth grade, and 39 percent in the 11th grade. The percentages of those drinking alcohol in the last 30 days are double digit even in the early years—15% in seventh grade, 31% in 10th grade, and 44% in 11th grade.
When it comes to kids saying they used hard drugs in the last 12 months—LSD, PCP, angel dust, heroin, or amphetamines—the percentages are lower and the increase with age less steep: four percent of seventh graders, 10 percent of ninth graders, and 16 percent of 11th graders in the Traverse City region.
More than one out of 10 seventh graders (11%) said they had sexual intercourse one or more times; 25% of ninth graders and 48% of eleventh graders.
The good news it that fewer kids, on average, are engaging in bad behavior compared to 1997. Surveyors compared kids across the state, and averaged the three grades. The percent of students who rode in a vehicle with a drinking driver decreased from 37 percent in 1997 to 25 percent in 2005. The percentage of kids who recently used marijuana dropped from 28 percent in 1997 to 19 percent in 2005. A press release from the Department of Education credits the Michigan Model program, which teaches kids about how to make wise choices.

Students surveyed are enrolled in the public schools of the the Traverse Bay Area Intermediate school district.