Son's meth abuse turns into nightmare for family

June 21, 2006

By STEVE BOGA
FOR THE ARGUS-COURIER

(Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series examining methamphetamine use in the Petaluma area.)

Late one night in 1996, 16-year-old Anthony Soper was stopped by the Petaluma police for speeding. The cop, smelling alcohol, took Tony to the station and called his father, Ray. Because he knew the Soper family, he let Tony go home that night, but charged him with speeding -- going 55 in a 35-mph zone -- and drunken driving.

Ray had doubts that Tony's pickup truck could do 55 on its best day, and the tests he ran confirmed it. When he presented that evidence in court, the judge agreed there was no probable cause and dropped all charges.

Today Ray says, "I was trying to teach my son to fight back legally when he knows he's right. Now I wonder: Did I do the right thing? Would things have turned out differently ..."

Soper is plagued by such doubts because that incident began his son's decade-long plummet into hell.

As a child, Tony gave little indication of what was to come. Although a mediocre student, he had a lot of friends and loved dirt bikes and athletics. "He was probably the youngest pitcher ever drafted into American Legion baseball," says Soper. "And he was a kicker on the football team. My wife and I took him to Sparks, Nevada, to train under Rob Pelfrey, probably the No. 1 trainer of kickers on the West Coast."

Tony so impressed Pelfrey that he took the boy to a scholarship camp, where Tony finished among the top five kickers. Division I schools, including Cal, Stanford and Washington, showed an interest, but his GPA was so low he would first have to attend community college. College of Marin recruited him, but he never showed up for classes.

"The drugs had started by then," Soper says. "When I found out he'd been drinking and doing pot in high school, I dropped the hammer on him, put him on restriction. But how tough do you get? I'm not the type to take my kids out in the backyard and beat them."

The day before Tony's 20th birthday, while still living with his parents, he received a call from a friend who needed a ride. Tony drove to a bar in Cotati to meet his friend, then, for another hour or so, pounded down drink after drink with him.

As Tony was driving his nearly comatose friend home, his cell phone rang. He reached down for it, lost control of his truck, and crashed into a telephone pole. The air bags deployed, knocking his friend out cold. Turns out, the friend had a blood alcohol level of .375. Had Tony dropped him at home, he probably would have died.

Although Tony himself had a blood alcohol level of .24, three times the legal driving limit, the prosecutor dropped felony drunken driving to a misdemeanor and the court suspended his license for six months. When Soper reprimanded his son, Tony laughed it off. Says Soper: "'Good comes out of bad,' he told me. 'If I hadn't had that accident, my friend would've died.' 'That's not the point,' I told him. 'You could have hit someone on a bicycle.' His answer: 'But I didn't.'"

"Looking back," Soper says, "I realize that's when the meth use began to surface. I started noticing signs, like Tony dropping weight."

Meth surfaced in a big way when Tony was 22. By this time, he had a girlfriend, a San Francisco stripper and the mother of their son. One day he walked into his dad's insurance agency and announced, "I'm in trouble."

Not for the first or last time, the elder Soper felt his heart sink. "Now what?" he said coldly.

"I can't stop using meth," Tony replied. He was referring to methamphetamine hydrochloride, chunky crystals typically smoked in a small pipe.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"I need to go into treatment."

He did, and over the years, Tony has been in and out of treatment, some of it paid for by his parents. And more than once he has emerged with seemingly firm resolve to stay clean. Once he even announced his intention to become a rehab counselor. In each case, however, the resolve quickly faded.

His dad says sadly, "Every time Tony got out of rehab, his so-called friends sought him out -- and they always found him."

Tony's mother Patty, a thin, embattled-looking woman for whom laughter seems a struggle, adds, "Not even once has he made it through probation without a problem. He's been on probation or in jail since he was 20."

It soon became clear that Tony's girlfriend was as much a chaos junkie as Tony. She drank, she did meth, and she seemed to delight in pushing Tony's emotional buttons. Their relationship was relentlessly tumultuous -- with frantic phone calls to the cops, suicide threats, even a high-speed police chase from San Rafael to Santa Rosa.

When Soper confronted Tony about his grandson's developmental problems -- "he's four years old and can barely talk" -- Tony sheepishly admitted that his girlfriend, not knowing she was pregnant, had done meth during her first trimester.

Someone once said that the only thing children wear out faster than shoes is parents. Though no doubt uttered in jest, the Soper family sees more truth than humor in that statement.

Tony's "incidents" have caused enough friction in his family to wear it threadbare. After one such incident, Ray, a recovered alcoholic and a longtime member of AA, began drinking again. Two days before Tony's accident, he and his wife split up. They quickly righted the ship -- 10 days later she moved back home and Ray stopped drinking. Sober ever since, he dismisses that period as "a bump in the road."

Of course, it's not just the Soper parents who have suffered. Tony's two brothers have borne the burden as well. Older brother Will stopped speaking to his parents for two years. "I didn't think they were helping Tony by taking him in again and again," he says.

Will has now rejoined the family, and his parents are hanging together. Says Ray: "My wife and I now have an understanding. I understand that if Tony walks through our door with a packed suitcase, she'll walk out with her suitcase."

None of the Sopers seem able to muster much optimism about Tony's future. Too many late-night phone calls; too many brushes with the law; too many broken promises. "When he walks out of jail, he'll have nothing," his mother says. He's spent it all, lost it all. We won't give him money anymore, though we continue to support our grandson as much as possible."

Recently, Ray wrote a letter -- a plea, really -- to Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other politicians, then made it available to the media. In the letter, he documented his son's tragic decline from baby boy to charming child to addled addict -- "so addicted he can't make a simple decision between right and wrong." Soper also criticized the Republican Party's simplistic solution to the drug problem -- "just say no" -- as hopelessly out of touch with reality. And he contrasted the billions of dollars lost in the Iraq war with the woefully inadequate funds available to combat the scourge of drugs.

Soper praises State Sen. Jackie Speier, both for responding to his letter and for sponsoring a bill (SB 1299) that he supports. "She has it right," he says. "Criminalize the supplier, not the user. If you get caught making meth, you'll face 30 years without possibility of parole."

Ray, a Vietnam vet, adds, "In a war, you have no chance to win if you can't cut off the ammunition." Worry lines spread across his face like cracks spiderwebbing a vase. "We may not win -- my son may continue to kill himself on the installment plan -- but I'm not accepting it without a fight," he says.

Update: Tony Soper was recently released from the North County Adult Detention Facility, or Honor Farm. He got out early, a glowing letter of recommendation in his hand, and these days father Ray sounds downright ebullient. "Tony did everything they asked of him and more," he says Now he's working full time as a carpenter on a clean and sober crew. He hasn't had drugs in his system since January, and he attends AA and NA meetings every day. We're hoping he's one of the 5 percent who takes it all seriously and makes a change."

(Contact Steve Boga at argus@arguscourier.com)