The Meth Mistake: Chapter 1(Idaho)

Rebellion: Drug creates a junkie, a coldhearted criminal
By Matt Christensen
Times-News writer

Today was a good day. Scraping old paint off the kitchen windowsills proved an easier job than they expected.

Heather and T.J. Harbaugh, young newlyweds, spent this Saturday in early January updating the old two-level farmhouse they'd recently bought on the west end of Jerome. The renovation dragged on. It was just the two of them, and most of the work was tedious, like today's paint project.

Still, they scraped old paint, chiseled bathroom tiles and sanded floors with giddy enthusiasm. This is the home where they'll escape their dark pasts, begin their lives together, raise their family and grow old.

Heather, 21, stepped back to look at her progress.

"This wood is gonna be gorgeous, baby," she muttered. T.J., 26, glanced down from the ladder where he was removing paint from a ceiling crossbeam, squinting to protect his eyes from the smoke of a cigarette that fluttered between his lips.

"Yup, looks good."

Heather drew her metal scraping tool across the windowsill and watched the brittle paint crumble to the floor. So satisfying.

Since buying the property a few months earlier, T.J. and Heather had hauled out hundreds of pounds of trash left by previous residents, including pots of rotting food still on the stove. Garbage had covered every floor.

The Harbaughs suspected they were cleaning up after methamphetamine addicts. The scent of burned rubber radiated from the walls, the trash. Then they found burned spoons and glass pipes likely used to cook and smoke the drug.

T.J. and Heather know the signs. They know meth -- intimately. Both are recovering addicts.

It wasn't long ago that Heather lived in places like the house they're now fixing up. Places where she was raped and beaten. Places where dealers like T.J. made thousands. Places in Twin Falls and Jerome. Where teenagers shot dope. Where stolen goods were traded for drugs. Where Heather longed to die.

http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2006/04/28/news_topstory/news_topstory.1.txt