Village
COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL JUNE 7, 2017
3A
Continued from A1
on the side of the road and we
know this isn’t like our son and
we know what some of those
boys have been into and Graig
just loses it,” Munsell says. “He
starts screaming at them, ‘Do
you see this? Do you see what’s
happened?’ But you have to un-
derstand. We know these boys.
We coached these boys and fed
these boys. This is a village and
we raise our children together.”
That would be the fi rst time
their son would refuse them.
The second would be at the
hospital later that day. Over the
next two years, it became com-
mon place.
WE LOST HIM
“Karen came in one day and
said I have a program for you.
You have to do this program.”
Krista Parent has served as the
South Lane School District Su-
perintendent for nearly 15 years
and for some of those years she
was Munsell’s boss. A decade
before fi nding her son on the
side of the road, Munsell drove
the streets of Cottage Grove,
picking up kids and bringing
them to school, learning their
names and watching them grow
from grade to grade. She says
Parent has been a blessing as
the district’s top administrator
but Munsell fi rst met Parent,
not in her offi cial role, but as
a mom. And while under Par-
ent’s leadership, the high school
graduation rate has skyrocketed,
landing in the number two spot
in 2016 as much as the district
has improved in nearly every
measurable standard, she still
continues to chase the ones the
district couldn’t save.
“He was an excellent student,
very academically-minded and
a great athlete but he ended up
not playing basketball, and bas-
ketball was his thing, toward
the end of his high school career
because he got involved in these
other things. And we lost him
for awhile,” she said.
It was only a few days after
December 11 that Parent heard
of the accident and not long
after that, that Munsell was in
her offi ce urging her to watch a
video on the Every 15 Minutes
Project.
It happens every year around
prom when students are con-
templating how far into the
adult pool they’d like to wade.
When fake ID sales rise and in-
hibitions fall and inevitably a
parent is woken up by a 4 a.m.
phone call.
“They identify kids before-
hand and the grim reaper comes
in, dresses the kid in black,”
Parent explained. “For the rest
of the day they don’t talk. Es-
sentially they’re deemed dead.
It’s very intense. They stage an
accident and have a helicopter
bring one of the kids out. They
go as far as to notify the par-
ents and the whole student body
watches. It’s really impactful
for the kids.”
It was Munsell’s effort that
Parent credits for bringing Ev-
ery 15 Minutes to South Lane.
“It’s absolutely the worst
thing that can happen as a su-
perintendent,” Parent says of
hearing the news of the accident
and watching the subsequent
spiral. “Especially in a small
community because you know
the kids through their K-12 ed-
ucation, you know their parents.
My own kids interacted with
him in this case. It’s probably
the worst thing I have to experi-
ence, to have a kid like that and
to lose him. Thank God he has
the family he has. Not everyone
has a Karen as a mom who says
'ok we’re going to go after this.'
It was about saving him but it’s
much more than that. It’s about
saving all the kids like him in
the future. It takes a village.”
FINDING WHIP-ITS
Munsell’s son was headed for
medical school. His parents had
never had to use tough love or
even stretch their imaginations
for a punishment beyond having
his phone taken away or a cut in
TV time. But in the aftermath of
the accident, Munsell was left
with few answers concerning
her boy’s behavior and so, she
went looking.
She’d never seen a nitrous ox-
ide canister before but now she
had a sandwich bag full of them
and no idea what they were used
for.
“They’re basically, even
though they’re used in catering
to make whipped cream, it’s ba-
sically anesthetic gas.” Dr. Zane
Horowitz is the medical director
of Oregon Poison Control at
OHSU. “It’s basically like in-
haling a general anesthetic,” he
said. “It makes the mind fuzzy,
judgment is horrible, coordina-
tion is horrible. The difference
is obviously, there’s no medi-
cal offi cial around to monitor
and make sure you’re getting
enough oxygen.”
To use the product as a drug,
the canisters have to be opened
with a special gadget known as
a cracker. A balloon is used to
capture the nitrous oxide and
then, inhaled in the same man-
ner pranksters use helium bal-
loons to change their voice.
“But nitrous oxide isn’t an
oxygen carrying element,”
Horowitz says. “So episodical-
ly, people will die from this.”
The cause of death from a whip-
pet is lack of oxygen to the
brain. A seizure will occur. Or
the heart simply stops.
By the time individuals reach
the emergency room, it’s often
for a secondary side effect of
the drug according to Dr. Dan-
ny Kranitz, an emergency room
doctor for PeaceHealth.
“It’s a very short lived drug
and so its profi le as an anesthet-
ic is fairly safe but when used
inappropriately, you can trade
oxygen for nitrous,” he said. “If
we see it in the emergency room
it’s because of a secondary in-
jury caused by being under the
infl uence.”
According to the National In-
stitute of Drug Abuse, 9.6 per-
cent of 12 to 17 year olds had
used an inhalant in 2015 and
13.10 percent of those ages 18
to 25 had used the product to get
high. The average age of fi rst
use is 16 years old.
Munsell didn’t know her
son’s heart could have stopped.
She had no idea the crash was
a secondary cause of the nitrous
oxide when she stopped Don
Williams in the street the day
she found the canisters in her
family's shop.
“I saw him and I said pull
over!” she said, gesturing wild-
ly. Williams pulled over.
He’s served on every public
board there is in Cottage Grove.
At just over 80 he still takes part
in Rotary, matters of the fi re
board and in his spare time he
works to raise money to bring
an antique carousel to Cottage
Grove. He’s done everything
short of serving as mayor but
those who know him say it
doesn’t matter who’s sworn in,
Williams is chief of Cottage
Grove.
dows in need of a wash. It sits in
the vertex of an angle formed by
Cottage Grove High School just
up the road and Lincoln Middle
School across the railroad tracks
and to the right. It offers the
usual corner market soda cool-
er, chip rack and candy aisle but
just to the right of the register a
glass display case that stretches
for nearly a third of the length
of the store itself. The wom-
an behind the counter says she
doesn’t know what nitrous ox-
ide is. But inquire as to a “whip
it” and she nods and reaches
into the glass display case full
of brightly colored parapherna-
lia and pulls a box full of pastel
blue canisters. 99 cents each. A
box of 24 for $20. On the box is
a cartoon girl with pigtails.
WHERE DO THEY
GET THEM?
LOOKING FOR HELP
“I fi rst met Karen in the 90s,”
he says. His cowboy hat tips
and tilts as he speaks and his
nails are just long enough to tap
against the table as he talks with
his hands to better demonstrate
his point.
“She told me what was hap-
pening and it, to me, is a shame.
These kids can go in and just
buy the stuff. So I told her, you
have to talk to Tom.”
Tom Munroe was in his fourth
term as mayor when he was ap-
proached by Munsell. He had
never seen a whip-it before the
day Munsell thrust a sandwich
bag full of them in his face.
“I met her at a council meet-
ing and she told me about her
son. And I remember us all say-
ing we wanted to do something
about this, we’d never heard of
it, but we thought we need to do
something about this. We just
didn’t know what we could do,”
Munroe said. “I thought, we
better talk to the police chief.”
Munsell remembers him lis-
tening to her, looking at the bag
of whip-it and asking, “Karen,
where do they get them?”
The parking lot in front of the
CG Market is narrow, enough
room for half a dozen cars. The
paint is peeling and the win-
Cottage Grove Police Chief
Scott Shepherd couldn’t help
Munsell.
“It has to be easy for me to
tell people no because it has to
be factual,” he said. “But it’s
diffi cult sometimes because
any one in law enforcement, we
want to help.”
But nitrous oxide is not illegal
and the stores selling them are
not breaking the law. Distrib-
utors can place the products in
the store alongside crackers and
store owners can claim igno-
rance while selling the whip its
to middle-schoolers.
“Sometimes people just want
to hear that, that there’s nothing
we can do,” Shepherd said.
While the chief couldn’t do
anything legally about the sales,
Munsell said he helped to guide
her in a direction.
One day, she left her house,
traveled into town and knocked
on Shepherd’s offi ce door.
When he answered she held out
her phone and hit play on a re-
cording she’d made.
“It was my son yelling and
screaming. I told him, “This is
going on at my house right now
Scott and Graig is there alone
and I don’t know what to do.
Help me,’” she said.
Shepherd told her they need-
ed to send law enforcement out
to the house but she didn’t want
to saddle her son with a record.
Luckily, Tami Miles was on
duty. She had lived next door
to the Munsells. As children,
her daughter and Munsell’s
son would share an elementary
school kiss over the fence.
“She said, ‘Would it help if
I go? A pseudo mother fi gure
might be able to get through to
him,’” Munsell said.
TURNING TO FAITH
It wasn’t the fi rst time Mun-
sell sought help from law en-
forcement. Her son would ping-
pong between her home and a
trailer the family owned.
“He would come in and just
scream at us but we had to use
tough love and that was new for
us,” Munsell said. “He would
go in to take a shower and come
out like a raging bull. That
wasn’t my son.”
The couple would turn to
South Lane Mental Health for
help.
“We went in and said we need
to speak to someone and they
took us right there,” Munsell
said.
South Lane serves anyone in
the county who comes through
the door asking for counseling
and in the Munsell’s case, they
provided tools for dealing with
drug addiction and a wayward
child.
“They told us, the fi rst thing
to say and it took us months to
say this to him, they told us to
say , ‘This is what I think you
need right now and if you’re not
willing to do that, I can’t help
you.’”
Cindy Weeldreyer is second
only to Don Williams in volun-
teering hours. It’s not usual to
see her at every town function,
her church hat atop her head
and her heart on her sleeve.
She’s served as Lane County
Commissioner, KNND Radio
host and is currently chairing
Cottage Grove’s biggest tour-
ism draw of the year, Bohemia
Mining Days.
“Don Williams is really the
Please see VILLAGE PG. A10
Cottage Theatre presents
A trivial comedy for serious people
R ECYCLE ! R EUSE !
E
R
O
T
S
E
R
R E S TORE H OURS
T HURSDAY , F RIDAY & S ATURDAY
10 AM -4 PM
Drop off your old paint
for recycling
at our ReStore location
during business hours
Preserve our earth
Keep items out of the landfi lls
Donate to the ReStore
The
June 9–25
Importance
of Being
Earnest
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Alan Beck
Sponsored by:
Habitat Offi ce and ReStore
2155 Getty Circle ~ Unit #1
in the Cottage Grove Industrial Park
South on Hwy 99 past the High School
Call 541.767.0358
for more information
Email
info@habitatcg.org
Tickets available online, by phone, or at the door one hour before performance
Thursday−Saturday 8:00 pm; Sunday 2:30 pm. $25 Adult, $15 Youth (age 6−18)
541-942-8001 • 700 Village Drive • Cottage Grove
www.cottagetheatre.org