SINCE 1979 • VOLUME 37, NO. 52
SECTION A
NOVEMBER 27, 2015
$1.00
‘It’s a gift she’s still here’
By CRAIG MURPHY
Of the Keizertimes
Most of the time, Elizabeth
Smith is a strong woman.
Part of that strength comes
from fi ghting for her daughter,
Samantha Nixon, who nearly
died of a heroin overdose in
July 2012, to get clean.
In order to help her daughter,
Elizabeth had to learn dark
truths and be exposed to friends
of her daughter who were also
fi ghting drug addiction.
Some of those friends have
died of heroin overdoses.
Samantha was a lucky one.
During a two-hour conver-
sation with the Keizertimes for
this latest Chasing Dark story,
Elizabeth broke down once:
when asked why her daughter
survived her overdose when
others didn’t.
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth
whispered, breaking into tears.
“I don’t know. It’s a gift she’s
still here. You can’t just take
that for granted. Everything
happens for a reason. Samantha
and I have discussed this many
times. You feel really guilty as a
survivor. As a parent, you always
worry you’re going to join the
club; the club of parents that
have buried their children who
have lost their battle to drug
addiction. It’s a club you never
want to be a part of. At the
same time, fi ghting addiction
can consume you and ruin you,
or you can harness this hell and
make it something powerful.
I’m not going to let it ruin me,
I am going to fi ght it. I owe it
to them. That is why we made
the decision to tell our story.”
Elizabeth estimates the
problems for Samantha, now
22, started when she was 12
years old, after her parents
divorced. She started drinking
c hasing
Dark
See below for another
story in the series.
and smoking weed. When
Samantha was 16, she started
doing methamphetamine.
Samantha was sent to
the Deer Creek Adolescent
Treatment Center in Roseburg.
It wasn’t long until she bolted,
just as Elizabeth had predicted.
“They told her she couldn’t
leave,” Elizabeth said. “She
laughed and said, ‘I’m not here
because I have to be by law. So,
good luck with that’ and she
walked out.”
A furious Elizabeth got
the call, went into mama bear
Photo courtesy Elizabeth Smith
Elizabeth Smith and her daughter, Samantha.
praying the whole time I didn’t
get pulled over.”
Fortunately, Samantha ran
into a lady at a store who rec-
ognized immediately she was
an addict running away from
the treatment facility, having
been in the same position her-
self before. She took Samantha
cabinets and there was no
alcohol in the house. When not
in school, Samantha had to sit
in Elizabeth’s offi ce.
“She wasn’t allowed to be by
herself,” Elizabeth said. “I think
she hated me during that time,
but I didn’t care. You’re just
fi ghting all the time.”
Samantha
fi nished her high
school diploma
and
received
enough credits
to transfer to
Linfi eld College
— Elizabeth Smith in the fall of
2011. For a
while,
things
in until Elizabeth got there.
weren’t so bad.
Elizabeth removed Samantha
But then a series of events
from McNary High School happened that triggered a
and sent her to Chemeketa downward spiral for Samantha.
Community
College’s Her grandfather died in
Early High School College. November 2011, causing her
Medicines were removed from anxiety to spike. It brought back
“You feel really guilty as a survivor. As a
parent, you always worry you’re going
to join the club; the club of parents that
have buried their children…”
mode and got in her car.
“I had never driven down
I-5 so fast before,” Elizabeth
said of her trip to fi nd her
wayward daughter. “I was
driving to Roseburg at 100
mph. I got there in two hours,
things she had not dealt with
during her initial addiction
battle and with the death of her
best friend the year before.
“Burying emotions and
pain eventually played into
her addiction, as she was now
dealing with things she had not
dealt with before,” Elizabeth
said of Sam. “There’s a lot of
emotions there.”
Samantha hit her bottom in
July 2012. She had received a
prescription for Xanax to fi ght
her anxiety while in school,
triggering the addictive cycle
all over again. She dropped out
of college and wasn’t allowed to
move in with her mom, who
knew her daughter needed
inpatient help. So Samantha
moved in with her dad. When
he came home on the 4th of
July weekend, he kicked her
out of the house.
Ready for
a parade
PAGE A2
Author set to
release her
third book
PAGE A5
Please see GIFT, Page A9
Bids come in low Drug use, deaths on rise
for roundabout
KEIZERTIMES/Craig Murphy
Crews work on a gas line Tuesday at the intersection of Verda
Lane and Chemawa Road, in advance of the roundabout.
By CRAIG MURPHY
Of the Keizertimes
Like it or not, a roundabout
is one step closer to coming
at Chemawa Road and Verda
Lane.
Bids for the project were
opened last week by Oregon
Department of Transportation
offi cials. The project is ex-
pected to start next summer,
having been delayed a couple
of times.
Bill Lawyer, Public Works
director for Keizer, said the
project is on schedule.
“It’s on track,” Lawyer said
last week. “Prep work is be-
ing done now. First it was the
phone company contractor,
then last week it was the gas
company. They are moving
lines.”
Construction bids for
the project were opened last
Thursday, November 19.
According to ODOT fi g-
ures, 10 bids were submitted
for the project. The low bid
of $838,731.60 was submit-
ted by North Santiam Paving
Co. of Lyons. The next lowest
bid was $867,725.63 by R&R
General Contractors Inc. of
Salem.
Of the 10 bids, six were less
than $1 million. The highest
bid was $1,173,163.15 sub-
mitted by 3 Kings Environ-
mental Inc. of Battle Ground,
Wash.
Keizer City Manager Chris
Eppley noted the low bid is
about $140,000 under the en-
gineer’s estimate for the con-
struction phase of the project.
That fi gure does not include
other phases such as engineer-
ing and right-of-way acquisi-
tion.
“The bidding contractor is
a solid company, so this is all
good news,” Eppley said in an
e-mail last week.
Lee Cronemiller, Region
2 Area 3 Local Agency liaison
for ODOT, emphasized the
bid has not been awarded yet.
“Please keep in mind that
these results are preliminary
only and that the notice of
intent to award has not been
issued yet,” Cronemiller said
on Monday. “There was ex-
cellent competition with the
low bid coming in below the
engineer’s estimate.”
Please see BIDS, Page A12
By CRAIG MURPHY
Of the Keizertimes
Drug overdoses cause more
deaths each year than car
crashes and guns.
That was one of several so-
bering details in the recently
released 2015 National Drug
Threat Assessment Summary.
The summary was produced
by the Drug Enforcement Ad-
ministration and written by
acting administrator Chuck
Rosenberg.
“The traffi cking and abuse
of illicit drugs pose a monu-
mental danger to our citizens
and a signifi cant challenge for
our law enforcement agen-
cies and health care systems,”
Rosenberg wrote in part.
“The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention re-
ported that 46,471 of our citi-
zens died of a drug overdose
in 2013, the most recent year
for which this information
is available. Drug overdose
deaths have become the lead-
ing cause of injury death in
the United States, surpassing
the number of deaths by mo-
tor vehicles and by fi rearms
every year since 2008. Over-
dose deaths, particularly from
prescription drugs and heroin,
have reached epidemic levels.”
Rosenberg added that the
most signifi cant drug traffi ck-
ing organizations in this coun-
try are the “dangerous and
highly sophisticated Mexican
transnational criminal orga-
nizations” that continue to
be the principal suppliers of
cocaine, heroin, methamphet-
amine and marijuana.
“Domestically,
affi liated
and violent gangs are increas-
ingly a threat to the safety and
security of our communities,”
Rosenberg wrote. “They prof-
it primarily by putting drugs
on the street and have become
crucial to the Mexican car-
tels.”
Ocean Sushi
opens
PAGE A7
Please see DRUGS, Page A12
Stuffi ng the bus
Time for MHS
basketball
PAGE A10
KEIZERTIMES/Lyndon A. Zaitz
Whiteaker Middle School students held their annual Stuff the Bus food drive Nov. 21 at the
Keizer Safeway. The Wolverine mascot helps Jim Trett donate food as (from left) students
Nathaniel Eggert, Chris Dilger and Tate Thomas hold signs.