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Teen Dies from Overdose Day After Getting out of Jail
By Tona Kunz Daily Herald Staff Writer
Nathan McIlvaine called his mother Friday morning to tell her that he loved her
and that he was a new man.
One day out of jail on a DUI charge, Nathan was planning a drug-free future.
"I am going to start getting my life in order," the St. Charles 19-year-old had
said.
Hours later he died alone in a friend's basement.
"I just don't know why he took that last dose," said his mother, Leslie. "He
wasn't happy doing heroin, and he wouldn't want other people to do it."
Fiercely independent, with a leather jacket and sometimes sporting a 3-foot tall
mohawk, Nathan didn't seem to care what others thought about him, but he often
thought about others.
He played video games with the neighbor boy 10 years his junior, just so the boy
wouldn't feel so alone in a neighborhood full of girls.
Nathan would send search parties of friends out when he thought his little
brother, Cory, got lost biking in the summer.
He was the first to volunteer to clean up around the Salvation Army center where
the neighborhood children played basketball.
Even after the natural-born leader started taking heroin, he would think of
others and tell them not to follow in his footsteps.
"Under his tough shell, he had a good heart," Cory, 16, said. "He was as good a
brother as he could have been."
Although heroin has been in the suburbs for almost a decade, Nathan was too busy
meeting new people, playing pranks with friends and dreaming of becoming a rock
star to mess with it at first.
In fact, at St. Charles East High School, Nathan had worn his drug-free
lifestyle like a badge of honor.
"He would see people doing drugs and say it was stupid. He would lecture his
brother and the neighborhood kids," Leslie said.
Things changed after high school. The teen who had been content to play his
guitar on the back deck, serenading the neighborhood, had trouble finding his
niche as an adult.
Others went to college. Nathan stayed in the area and started taking classes to
become a welder. He struggled to overcome a drinking problem that had plagued
him since junior high. The punk rock bands that he led in high school were going
nowhere. And Nathan, a perfectionist, wanted everything to happen fast.
So when an older friend introduced him to heroin last October, at first he asked
questions out of curiosity, then, he thought he'd try it - just once.
He threw up, but he didn't care.
He told his mom it was the best feeling he had ever had.
He used for a while, but the boy with the big heart couldn't ignore what his
using was doing to others, or what it might do.
Charismatic with a smile that lit up a room, others followed his lead. As a boy,
he took the biggest jumps on his BMX bike. As a teen he gave a speech and the
room hushed to hear his every word.
"He was the first one to try something and then everyone else was after him,"
said Jason Hellmich, a childhood friend.
Nathan didn't want that to happen with heroin. He tried to quit.
He joined Helps Ministries, a local support group for heroin addicts. After two
weeks clean, he tried to go it alone without the support group.
It is a mistake many new addicts make, said ministries leader Angelo Valdes,
himself a former cocaine addict.
"Changing your life is a process," Valdes said. "It takes time."
Back with his old friend, he went back to his old habits: booze and heroin.
"He was struggling because he said he never had such a good feeling as when he
was doing heroin," Leslie said.
A stint in jail forced him to get clean again, but it also left his system
unprepared for the next time he fell off the wagon. It took just one night of
partying to end his plans for a new future.
"They say when you go back, you go back hard," Valdes said. "And unfortunately,
that is what happened."
Overdose: Teen tried to get clean, but didn't stay sober
Hearts of Hope
P.O. Box 3314
St. Charles, IL 60174
Tel: (630) 327-9937
Fax: (630) 232-9240
Email: Info@HeartsOfHope.Net
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