Telling these difficult stories is worth it if it saves young lives

Editor's note: This story originally ran on Jan. 24, 2002 as part of the Daily Herald's "Hidden Scourge: Heroin in the Suburbs" series.

Andrew Davidson, we were told often, was "one of the good ones." The fact is, all of them are.

There may be some kids whose death by drug overdose surprises us more than others, but no kid deserves that fate. Every young death is a tragedy, a lost opportunity, an everlasting ache for a family. And with each new victim, the questions linger: Was it avoidable? How did it come to this? Could it happen to me or my family?

A newspaper may never be able to answer all those questions definitively. Indeed, decades of scientific research and caravans of federal money have not been able to do the job. But we can help.

This year, we have committed ourselves to contributing what we can, and we will be seeking your help as well, in the hope that parents and their teenagers may see, before it is too late, real-life stories of what can happen to "good kids" in almost any circumstance.

Our commitment began this week with the story of Andrew Davidson. Andrew was a Rolling Meadows High School student with a loving family, a large network of close friendships and a good record at school. On Saturday, Jan. 12, he was found in the front seat of his running car, dead of an apparent drug overdose.

In the past, stories like Andrew's might be tucked away in the obituary columns or dispatched with a simple report of police records, if they were covered at all. But one thing we learned in researching our December series "The Hidden Scourge" is that lack of awareness has contributed to the rise of heroin and club-drug use among suburban teenagers. Many of us don't know the extent of the phenomenon, and some of us who do aren't willing to acknowledge it.

So, over the course of this year, the Daily Herald intends to tell in as much detail as we can the stories of young people who die because of drug and alcohol abuse. We will describe the friendships they developed, the interests that drove them, the struggles and achievements that made them individuals. In the process, we expect to show how each is more than just a label - a "drug abuser" - and to show how remarkably diverse are the circumstances of every tragedy.

"We will never know whether this treatment had a significant impact," Executive Editor John Lampinen says. "We likely won't ever know who got off of drugs or who got help because of this reporting. And certainly, of those, we will never know what ones might have died or ended up in a life of crime if they hadn't (gotten help). But the goal isn't to get high marks and pats on the backs. The goal is to help. And frankly, if one life is saved because of that reporting, it all will have been worthwhile."

These stories will not be easy to tell, nor sometimes even to find. We know that for most families, talking about any tragedy is difficult and talking about this one is especially hard. We know that telling their stories won't relieve their pain and sometimes could actually add to it. We care deeply about that. Often, such concerns deter us from writing stories of personal tragedy at all. But with young lives at stake, we feel a special obligation - an obligation to write sensitively and carefully, to be sure, but an obligation, still, to write.

There will be practical challenges. Sometimes, we simply won't know what caused a young person's death. Not every case comes to our attention or to that of authorities we deal with. In some cases, we hope you will pitch in to alert us to important stories that could help other readers, other families, before problems get beyond control.

Already, readers are responding to our series. Some, yes, have been shocked or angered by the personal stories we have told. Many, many more have been grateful for the attention we have generated. In fact, many families have described their personal struggles and wished they had seen stories showing it could happen to them before circumstances proved it.

Of course, we hope Andrew Davidson's story is the last of its type ever to appear on the front page of the Daily Herald. Experience tells us that is not likely. Still, we believe this project will keep some front-page stories - and some obituaries of "the good ones" - from ever appearing. You might think it odd for a newspaper to rue the prospect of a compelling Page 1 story. In this case, we crave such disappointment.