For most of Mindy’s 19 years of life, she was a “normal kid” who swam on the school swim team and looked forward to trips to the zoo with her mother. The youngest of four sisters, Mindy enjoyed art and French class, and her classmates at the high school she attended. Drugs and alcohol had never been a problem. “I didn’t drink, smoke pot or anything,” she says. But Mindy’s boyfriend was another story.
“My boyfriend was into heroin,” she says. Though she was tempted to try it, she never did. And then in 2009, he jabbed her with a heroin-filled syringe as she walked by. Mindy was shocked – at first – then grew to need the drug.