By Jacob Hancock
Charles Saltkill pulled over on state Route 201 in Salt Lake City after the tailgating driver behind him flickered his headlights persistently.
Fifteen minutes later Saltkill would tell a UHP trooper he thought the person was 'going to possibly advise him of some sort of mechanical malfunction with his vehicle,' according to a police report.
But in reality, Saltkill sat seconds away from a highway robbery.
The driver approached Saltkill wearing a ski mask and asked him for the nylon pack he wore around his waist. Scared, Saltkill quickly gave it up, along with its contents of freshly filled prescription bottles. Then the masked assailant, who authorities believe watched Saltkill''s prescriptions being filled earlier that night, fled in his truck.
Saltkill''s pastel-colored painkillers are likely to have been worth more than the 'older gray pickup' the suspect escaped in. A 100-count bottle of the narcotic OxyContin sells on the streets for $4,000 to $10,000, depending on the milligram strength.
' will do anything to get it, including blow a pharmacist''s head off,' said DEA supervisor John Moseman.
From greedy sellers to addicted users, a rising wave of OxyContin abusers is destroying lives and wounding communities in its wake.
Initially, reports of illegal diversion surrounding the drug were centralized in the East, nearly all in Appalachian states where it got its nickname 'Hillbilly heroin,' for its poor, rural abusers. It is no longer limited to poor hands in Appalachia and has rippled outward to western urban areas.
Utah''s OxyContin abuse rate is low compared to other states such as California and Arizona, whose illegal demand for the drug dwarfs Beehive State statistics, but the figures still indicate a growing problem.
If an increase of robberies for the drug is an indication of its demand, Utah hosts a front line in the national drug war.
Provo police records for the past five years show seven robberies for the morphine-like medication; Orem officials report four heists. But Salt Lake County police say their total is higher - much higher.
'We''ve had nearly 30 instances or more,' said one Salt Lake City police record keeper, also referring to the last five years. Numbers are heavily weighted in the years of 2002 and especially 2006.
Robberies are usually clumsy and erratically planned stick-ups where a pharmacist finds himself or herself on the business end of a gun.
Nevertheless, even abusers gripped with an addiction don''t always choose the quick over the careful. Many users, especially in the East, have found success in a more diplomatic approach - ask a doctor. Then ask another and another. Abusers will 'shop doctors' by simultaneously seeking different physicians who will give them a prescription for the abuser''s pretended or exaggerated pain. Users can obtain significantly more this way, and nearly all are funded by insurance.
Philadelphia''s Rep. John Taylor knows something about the heartbreaking side effects of a community of abusers.
In 2003, Taylor attended some of the 10 funerals of young adults in a 14-month period, all of whom died overdosing on OxyContin, his spokesman Marty O'' Rourke said.
Each of the young adults lived in Taylor''s district, only neighborhoods apart. In fact, the deaths from overdoses were so close in time and region that O''Rourke said Taylor remembers more than once seeing a face at one funeral he attended, and then seeing that face again a month later, only this time in a casket.
Young adults in the same social circles dying months apart pushed the close-knit community into protests of the drug''s maker, Purdue Pharma.
Grieving families in Pennsylvania are not alone. Families across the United States are shedding tears for sons, daughters, mothers and fathers who couldn''t break the ironclad grip of the drug''s addictive nature.
And a study by the National Institute of Drug Abuse indicates there will be more somber times ahead. The total number of abusers is trending upward.
The institute said Oxycontin 'significantly increased' among 12th-graders from 2002 to 2005. The survey showed 5 percent of high school seniors admit to using the drug at least once.
But once is all it takes.
Holly Bareno, 21, of Santa Barbara, Calif., might tell you the dangers of trying it just once, if she were alive.
Bareno, who loved the beach and animals enough to volunteer at a local animal shelter, 'passed away unexpectedly,' her obituary stated.
Her still-grieving father, Jim Bareno, said his daughter didn''t even understand what the pills were.
'It was her first time,' Bareno said in frustration. 'She only took two tablets. A parent should never have to bury their child.'
Many experimenters who abuse the drug for the first time fall asleep - forever.
They fade from consciousness; their heart rate and respiratory slow, and death settles.
Dead silence.
The reason for such high first-time deaths among the drug''s users is quite simple:
An OxyContin pill, packed with painkilling power, is designed to last hours. The pill is built to dissolve in layers, releasing the active ingredient, oxycodone, gradually.
But abusers bypass the slow-release mechanism by chewing the pill or snorting its powder to get an all-at-once, high-powered wipeout.
Mark Wasden, 18, remembers having those kinds of wipeouts with six of his friends last year as a senior at Bingham High.
He said he snorted the few 'Oxys' he could get his hands on, which he said were relatively tough to obtain compared to heroin and meth.
'You have to have connection to get it, but once you do, you can get it pretty easy,' he said.
He confessed to regretting Oxy joy rides, but admitted some of his highs were 'pretty good.'
'They just mess you up though,' he said. 'I''m surprised a lot of my friends aren''t dead after the crap they were doing with it and other drugs.'