Hitting Back Against Heroin: Part I

From police to public health officials, leaders across the country are desperate to get control of the heroin and opiate abuse epidemic.

But one community in our region is taking a unique approach in hitting back against heroin.

White Earthers are doing the things police in the Fargo metro do — outreach programs for at–risk kids to keep them in school and stepping up police patrols in areas with gang and drug dealing activity.

But the new MOMS program is different.

It’s a comprehensive, community–based approach to bringing heroin addicted pregnant women off the streets and into treatment, to help save their lives and the lives of their soon-to-be kids.

Arts and crafts, games and books – the perfect Mother’s Day scene.

For some of these moms, it’s a scene they’ve been out of for years.

“He’s my inspiration, pushes me to do better…Some days I just want to give up and get high but then I think about my baby,” said Zoe Gagnon, who’s in recovery with the Moms program.

We think a mother’s love is boundless, but sometimes, these women found, there’s one thing that can make you love it – more than your child.

“I’d stop in, see my kids, leave. Sometimes I wouldn’t see them for months at a time,” said Maisie Sargent, also a program participant.

“I got further along, got scared to tell anyone I was using heroin while I was pregnant. I knew something was going to happen but I didn’t want my baby taken away,” said Gagnon.

Zoe is here on a civil commitment that almost didn’t take.

Before enrolling in the program, she was hiding from the legal system trying to get clean on her own.

It didn’t work.

“I was scared to meet the cops. They started looking for me at all my family’s house – I’d tell them, I’ll meet you this day, meet you this day. And I wouldn’t show up.”

On the day we arrive at the program headquarters, half the program’s clients leave in advance, having heard a rumor police are coming with us.

A ridealong with tribal police reveals what substance abuse, fear and poverty have done to this community – four of five homes on some streets, boarded up after eviction.

“My mom and my dad uses too,” said Sargent. “My sister she’s here too…I have one brother who’s never used before. It’s just me.”

Turning to home and family sometimes isn’t an option for these women.

Sargent describes being out on the streets, where she’d turned to dealing heroin, winding up on federal indictment before program coordinators found her.

“I was in jail, then Mina and Julie found me there. On the website. I was pregnant. I was 8 months pregnant,” Sargent said.

Today, she’s been clean and sober for almost a year.

Since then, her sister has joined her.

“The moms all bring their kids here. We all are like – pretty much a family here,” she said.

As for Gagnon, her son is the first of his cousins not to go into foster care, thanks to drug involvement in her siblings’ lives.

“I was sexually molested. He didn’t only do things to me, he did things to my mom too,” she said.

She’s decided this little family might have to be her only family, for now.

“Not so close to them as I used to be. My sisters, I don’t like talking to them because of the things they did,” Gagnon said.

But in this safe place – they’ll have one Mother’s Day the way it was meant to be.