Sober Hopes : Life Appears to Be Turning Around for Girl Who Reported Family Drug Abuse

Come January, Terah Beth Cortez hopes that three years of pain and uncertainty caused by her parents’ use of cocaine will come to an end and that she will be able to once again live with her now-sober father.

Terah gained national attention Oct. 27, 1986, when she decided to report to Los Angeles police that her mother and stepsister were using drugs. Last March, her story was told again, when she was on the verge of being moved from a foster home into a home for psychologically disturbed youths because she was refusing to attend school.

Now Terah’s life appears to have taken a turn for the better. The biggest change, she says, is that her father, Ernest, who was also a cocaine user, has been clean of drugs and alcohol for 162 days--about 5 1/2 months.

She is attending Mulholland Junior High School and getting good grades. She has been allowed by the Juvenile Court division of Los Angeles Superior Court to live with her stepsister near her father in Reseda and visits him frequently. And a Studio City movie producer is attempting to have a movie made of her life.

But Terah says she knows now that her father must fight his own battle. She realizes that she cannot keep him, or her mother, off drugs.

The bright, articulate Reseda eighth-grader says she also realizes that she is not the only youth whose family ties have been severed by a loved one’s attraction to cocaine.

“Some of the kids have gone through so much,” Terah said of those who attend her Alateen group. In Alateen, youths whose parents are addicted to drugs or alcohol share their stories with one another.

“I just noticed that I’m not . . . the only person in this world to have problems like this,” she said. “It made me feel a lot better because . . . if they can get through some of the things they’ve gone through, then I’m sure I could too.”

Her resolve to deal with her difficulties has been bolstered by her father’s sobriety.

“As soon as he changed, there was finally somebody I could depend on,” Terah said of her father, an ex-minister, ex-drug dealer and ex-Los Angeles city tree-trimmer. “A lot of the problems went away because he became more responsible and took care of things he needed to take care of, and took care of himself.”

Terah says now that she did not realize that her life would begin spinning out of control as soon as she notified police that her mother and stepsister were freebasing cocaine in the living room of their home in Reseda.

As a result, Barbara Cortez was arrested on drug charges. The Los Angeles city attorney’s office held a hearing on the charge but did not prosecute. Her stepsister was gone when police arrived. Ernest Cortez and Terah’s sister’s boyfriend were arrested on charges of child endangerment, which were later dropped.

Terah, who was 10 at the time, and another child were placed in the protective custody of the Department of Children’s Services. Typically in such cases, a social worker is assigned to make recommendations to the court.

Four months after the incident, Terah was allowed to live with her parents, but the social workers assigned to the Cortezes’ case ordered Barbara, 48, and Ernest, 58, to undergo counseling and drug testing if they wanted to regain legal custody of Terah.

But because her parents’ erratic behavior continued and they failed to abide by the court’s orders, she has been moved by the court through three foster homes. When her parents had custody of her, they moved her to the homes of various friends and into two different apartments.

In January, 1988, her parents were evicted, beginning an eight-month period of homelessness for the family. While they lived partly in their car, Barbara and Ernest Cortez moved Terah from place to place, sometimes alone, sometimes with them.

She became so depressed with all of the disruption that, about a year ago, she took a overdose of cold pills in a suicide attempt and was hospitalized briefly. She has also endured an emotionally draining series of court hearings, meetings with lawyers, therapy sessions and confrontations with psychologists, social workers and educators.

Finally, just over five months ago, Ernest Cortez said he realized that he was on the verge of losing Terah forever, and he began complying with the court orders.

Cortez said he stopped using drugs and began attending individual and group counseling and meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous. He rented a quiet, one-bedroom guest house in Reseda and cut himself off from his circle of drug-using friends. Cortez said he still must attend a court-ordered parenting class, but hopes that Terah will again be allowed to live with him permanently by early next year.

He said Barbara Cortez, still struggling with her own powerful cocaine addiction, has moved to the East Coast to live with her mother.

Living on Streets

But before her decision to move, Barbara had been living on the streets of Los Angeles. The fact that she “was out in the street with no home, no place to go and sometimes no food to eat and involved with a bunch of druggers was a very heavy thing that weighed on Terah and my mind,” Cortez said.

In June, Cortez said, he finally gathered up his resolve and ordered Terah to go back to school. Although Terah was a good student who had previously done well in school, the turmoil in her life had distracted her and made her unwilling to go.

“You have to make yourself do this,” he remembers telling Terah. “I said that’s what discipline’s all about. You’ve got to make yourself do stuff.”

He told her that it was not easy for him to go to the meetings and talk about his powerful attraction to cocaine or alcohol. It was not easy to cut himself off from his drug-using friends. And it was not easy to work for $50 to $80 a day as a masseur, when he had made that much in a matter of minutes as a drug dealer. But he did it, because he didn’t want to lose her, he said.

Terah took an art class this summer and resumed going to school in September. She attends Alateen sessions twice a week, meets frequently with a school psychologist and is making plans to attend modeling school with the proceeds she hopes to get from selling her story to a movie production company.

TV Movie

Michael McCabe, the co-founder of the Actor’s Center of Los Angeles, and a partner, Michael Fournier, have written a treatment of the Cortezes’ story for a television movie and said it is generating considerable interest.

McCabe said the proposed movie project would cover the period of time from when Terah called police until the present, but will also tell the story of the Cortezes’ slide into drugs.

“The finish will be a happy ending, which we are all hoping for,” he said. “She’s back in school and at least one of her parents is straight, and she is happy.”

Terah said the lowest point in the past three years was when she wanted desperately to be back with her mother, but her mother had disappeared. Eventually, she said, she learned to let go.

“I’d done all I could for her and after awhile I learned to separate myself from her, like when a kid goes off to college,” Terah said. “I had to get on with my own life. I couldn’t hide forever, and as soon as he changed, I felt I could change.”

Gloria Walker, a Hermosa Beach woman who contacted the Cortezes after reading about their story and who put them in touch with McCabe, has noticed the change in Terah.

“She’s come out of her depression,” Walker said of Terah. “She feels hopeful. If you saw her in a room of kids now, you would just think she is a normal, all-American girl.”

Terah recognizes the progress she and her father have made and has written a poem to thank him for his efforts to free himself from drugs.

“Being clean and sober is the most wonderful high of all,” the first line of the poem reads. The last line reads, “You’re with people who care for you most of all.”

Terah said: “He’s come so far. We’ve both come so far. Since it happened, this is like the best it’s ever been.”