Family Lifts Recovering Addict

It’s the little things that remind Karen Bagby how far she has come in a year’s time and how close she came to losing everything she cares about.

She thinks about it when she watches her son and daughter asleep with the easy slumber of children who are well cared for. Or when her 3-month-old baby boy, Auston, cries and she’s there to comfort him.

Bagby, 27-year-old mother of three and recovering crack cocaine addict, was given trial custody of her children in December. A few weeks ago she was awarded permanent custody.

“I know it’s permanent--that it’s all over with when they’re sleeping at night or I just sit watching them playing,” Bagby said. “He (Auston) gets his bath at a certain time every night and his bottle and he’s gone. There’s just that feeling that this is permanent.”

Bagby, who once spent her nights at a crack house, lost her two older children--Michelle, now 7, and James, now 5--about two years ago when authorities in Los Angeles County ruled her neglectful and unfit as a mother. She moved to Orange County about six months later and shortly thereafter entered the county’s drug treatment program.

A Los Angeles County court’s earlier decision to take away her children was reversed on June 14.

“They terminated my case and wished me luck,” Bagby said, recalling the moment in court when the judge ruled her a fit mother. “It means I’m not in the system anymore. It’s like a happy ending, huh?”

For Orange County health officials, who last year spent $454,340 on a drug rehabilitation program for mothers addicted to drugs, Bagby is a success story to be heralded. It is a program in which officials acknowledge the relapse rate is more than 50%. So far, Bagby is hanging on.

She admits to slipping once her first month in the program, more than a year ago, but subsequently passed all her mandatory weekly drug tests while still under the court’s supervision. She regularly attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings because, she acknowledged, she will always be an addict.

In April Bagby gave birth to a healthy, drug-free baby boy.

“He was a very active baby inside me. He moved around a lot,” Bagby said, laughing. Then, she added proudly, “He’s starting to get where he’s getting a grip on his bottle. He’ll probably be holding it by next month.”

Bagby said she is now hoping her younger sister, who moved in with her a few months ago, will be able to “get it together.” Her sister, she said, has lost custody of all five of her children, including the baby girl she gave birth to while high on crack.

As children, the two sisters provided each other their only nurturing in an otherwise loveless household--a home where they were left to fend for themselves.

As adults they have often followed the same path: They married brothers, lived in side-by-side homes--and became addicts. Karen Bagby said she offers encouragement to her sister but can do little else.

“She’s in the process of getting her children back--she’s been clean for six months,” Bagby said. “If you’re going to get clean, you’re going to get clean yourself. All anyone can do is give you support.”