Town grieves, takes stock after 3 deaths

Last July, a group of Darrington teenagers celebrated a friend's birthday in the way some Darrington teens have celebrated for years: They loaded beer in the back of a pickup, drove out the Mountain Loop Highway and partied at a deserted campground.

About 1:30 a.m., Ashley Griffiths and Annette McMillion started back down the dark highway that winds along the Sauk River east of town. Griffiths was driving her beloved '83 silver Chevy pickup, a gift from her dad for her 16th birthday the previous year.

She had wanted a convertible; her parents thought a 1-ton truck would keep her safe.

Spirited and unafraid to speak her mind, Griffiths was everybody's friend. She earned high grades. She edited the high-school yearbook. She planned to be a business major in college and come back to this mountain town to help run her father's construction business.

Driving back to town, Griffiths steered the truck with her elbows as she tried to light a cigarette, McMillion said. McMillion told her to put on her seat belt, and Griffiths said she would. The truck hit a curve going about 55, left the highway, then shot back across the road and struck a tree. It shuddered sideways and came to rest upside down.

Sometime later, another car returning from the campground overtook McMillion running hysterically down the dark road. Sheriff's investigators arriving at the accident scene found empty beer cans inside the cab of the truck. The autopsy report said Griffiths' blood alcohol was almost twice the legal limit.

In a town of just 1,500 people, the death of a popular student, the only child of a mother who had grown up in Darrington and a father who had been a logger and builder there for 20 years, by itself would have touched off sorrow. But Griffiths' death was followed in quick succession by two others.

Marty Lenker, 28, died July 22 after diving about 100 feet from a cliff on the Columbia Gorge. The Darrington native had spent the afternoon before a Pearl Jam concert Jet Skiing with friends, swimming and drinking beer.

He struck the water at an angle and never regained consciousness.

Among the mourners at Lenker's funeral in Darrington the next Friday were three Weidman brothers. All three had grown up with Lenker. All three had struggled with methamphetamine addiction and had criminal convictions related to their drug use. Two years earlier, Nathan Weidman, 22, had moved from Darrington to Alaska to get clean.

At the funeral, his brother said, Nathan ran into his former drug dealer.

The next morning, he was found behind the couch in his parents' house, dead from an overdose of methamphetamine.

For a group of mothers in the community, the deaths of the three young people, all linked to alcohol or drugs, set off alarm bells. Last month, they presented a petition with about 300 signatures to the Darrington City Council. Under the headline "Take Back Our Town," the petition said residents were tired of the drugs, alcohol and an increased number of thefts in town. The following night, the mothers spoke to the School Board, asking for its help as well.

Pain adds to problem

Linn Brooks, a cafeteria worker for the Darrington schools who organized the petition drive, said she thought the deaths would be a wake-up call for the town's young people, but in the months that followed, what she saw was a surge in drinking and drug use to cover the pain. Her son Robbie, 18, a high-school senior, partied heavily, came home drunk and finally ran away from home. He had grown up with Griffiths. As small children, they built forts in the woods and played with Barbies.

Her son is back home now, but Brooks said she wanted other parents to realize that too many Darrington teens were engaging in the same risky behavior that killed Griffiths.

She said the town needs healthy alternatives for its young people. The nearest movie theater is 45 minutes away in Arlington. There is no video arcade, no shopping mall. The town's Youth Center — an old storefront with two pool tables and a Foosball table — doesn't operate because of a lack of staffing and funds.

"Every night, our kids leave town," Brooks said. "They ... score their beer, their tobacco, their drugs. I know it happens in other places, but in a small town the effects can be devastating."

Linda Friddle, another concerned parent, saw her 17-year-old daughter Kodie's experimentation with drugs and alcohol intensify. She dropped out of high school. Her substance abuse seemed calculated to deaden her depression and anxiety. It was Kodie's birthday being celebrated the night of the crash, Kodie who urged Griffiths to go to the party.

After coming upon the accident scene, Kodie raced to town trying to call 911. She finally located a sheriff's deputy and led him back to the scene. Griffiths' parents were alerted to the accident, and when they arrived at the overturned truck, it was Kodie who sat with her arm around Ashley's mother as they waited for the ambulance to come.

Like Brooks, Friddle said her concern wasn't only for her child. She said a lack of law enforcement in Darrington contributes to the problem. For years, only one officer was on duty on weekend nights and 911 calls sometimes went unanswered for lack of staffing.

The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office says it provides coverage in the greater Darrington area 24/7. A new contract signed with the city earlier this month places two officers on duty Tuesday through Friday nights, but not on Saturday night, when law officers tend to be stretched thin throughout the county. City officials say that at $260,000 a year, law enforcement already eats about one-third of its budget.

What epidemic?

The mothers' presentations to the town leaders weren't uniformly well received.

Mayor Joyce Jones was quoted as saying the drug and underage-drinking problem was a bother, but not an epidemic, though in subsequent interviews she said she welcomed the opportunity for the community to address the problem. City Councilwoman Frankie Nations suggested that parents take more responsibility for their kids.

At the School Board meeting, the mothers presented figures from the Snohomish County Healthy Youth Survey showing that 74 percent of Darrington High School seniors said they had drunk alcohol in the past month — almost twice the state average of 43 percent. But high-school principal Dave Holmer protested that the statistics were three years old.

In June, the district eliminated its drug-and-alcohol intervention counselor, Stephanie Galbraith.

Superintendent Larry Johnson said declining enrollment and the consequent loss of state funding, coupled with a reduction in federal Title I money for poor students, forced the district to cut five positions. Because Darrington's standardized state test scores were the lowest in the county in 2005, the School Board directed that the cuts be kept out of the classroom.

"I'd love to have four elementary counselors," Johnson said. "The reality is, we can't be all things to all people. We can't be Mom and Dad."

A fun-loving brother

Just off Highway 530, the main drag through Darrington, a dozen mobile homes line a dirt drive that fills with huge puddles during heavy rains. In the last home on the left, Jennifer and James McFadden live with their two girls. Inside, Jennifer, who works at the IGA market down the street, assembles a set of scrapbooks for her family, a project she started after her brother Marty Lenker's death.

His sister said he dreamed of setting up a fishing-guide business and taking paying clients out into the rivers he loved, but at 28, he hadn't settled down and didn't yet see a need to.

"He liked to party, to be where the action was. He was out to have a good time," Jennifer McFadden said.

Lenker's best friend, Darron Weidman, was with him on the Columbia the day he died. The two had grown up in Darrington, spent summers jumping from highway bridges into mountain rivers and from the high cliffs at Baker Lake.

Weidman said that just before Lenker launched himself out over the Columbia, he shouted, "Hey, Red! This is for old times' sake!"

At Lenker's memorial service, McFadden said her family told mourners they didn't want any other families to go through their pain. Please don't drink and drive, they said. Please don't party. And then the next morning, before they were even awake, came the call Nathan Weidman was dead.

McFadden said she joined the other mothers in calling attention to the issue of drugs and alcohol in town because of her concern that some adults in Darrington regularly buy liquor for minors. She remembers, as a teenager, getting someone older to buy her beer and picking it up a short time later at the old archery range.

"It was an every-weekend thing," she said. "Now I have 15- and 11-year-old daughters. The thought that someone would buy alcohol for them is scary. We need to break the cycle."

From grant to grant

The Darrington Family Support and Resource Center runs out of an old storefront next to the darkened teen center. Stark posters, dramatizing the effects of drinking and driving, are tacked to pegboard walls. The center is closed on this weekday so that the administrator, Wyonne Perrault, can complete a United Way grant application to keep its operations going.

"We get a grant, we offer lots of services and then the grant goes away," said Perrault, who has worked in Darrington since 1993.

Perrault said that the poor economy in the area may contribute to the drug and alcohol use. Census figures show that the average household income is about $36,000, far below the county average of $61,000. Employment numbers are up, Perrault said, but "jobs are scarce, and the ones available don't pay what they used to."

With its limited resources, she said, Darrington can't offer much in the way of after-school and evening activities to keep kids connected to school and to positive adult role models.

But Perrault is optimistic that the town will come together to support its youth. A group of teenagers from the family center recently developed a proposal for a skatepark and are now working with City Councilman Gary Willis on fundraising ideas. Perrault is collaborating with the high school on an end-of-the-year program modeled on the county's meth summit.

The center's sponsoring agency, Deaconess Children's Services in Everett, announced last week that it would launch a three-day-a-week after-school program for young people in Darrington.

Perrault has ideas for art in the park this summer, game nights, evening concerts and barbecues. What she needs most, she said, are adults willing to volunteer to work with the kids.

Daily visits to her grave

Darrington's small cemetery lies at the west end of town, bordered on one side by a paved runway one-half-mile long and on another by the highway. Surrounded by forested hillsides and sharp peaks, the cemetery seems unnaturally flat and spare.

Ashley Griffiths' mother, Ona Mae Griffiths, comes here every day, sometimes two and three times. She brings fresh roses, wipes dust from her daughter's polished granite headstone. She said she used to think growing up in a small town was a good thing for kids. Now, she says, she's not so sure. She sees a fear in many of the youth, an inability to imagine their lives away from here.

"When they do graduate, they don't know how to step off into the world," she said.

Kodie Friddle sometimes stops by her house to talk. She's off drugs and working on her GED, but she still cries when she talks about the accident. Robbie Brooks stops by, too. He's joining the Army when he graduates in June.

Ashley's friends also visit the cemetery. Ona Mae finds their anonymous offerings — a plastic Chevy decal with shooting flames, a baseball cap in Ashley's favorite color, pink.

Ashley would have turned 18 last week.

Lynn Thompson: 425-745-7807 or lthompson@seattletimes.com