When the Parade Passes By

Mary Dollar remembers Laurie as the kind of winning, outgoing little girl who could charm the stars right out of the sky.

The youngest of seven brothers and sisters, she had the sort of dazzling persona that created a party wherever she went.

“If Laurie wanted a parade,” Mary said, remembering, “there was a parade. She made life special for us.”

But children grow up and parades end, and Mary, her mother, now sobs in regret for not having seen Laurie’s “dark side.”

It was the part of that sunshiny little girl that concealed a feeling of worthlessness, of not belonging anywhere, of severe depression.

A friend told Mary once that in a group Laurie always seemed to be looking around, a puzzled expression on her face, as though trying to determine exactly where she fit in.

Mary blames herself for missing the signs of Laurie’s pain. “I should have recognized the look on her face, the conversation without words,” she said the other day in her small Arcadia apartment.

She held a photograph of her four sons and three daughters. Laurie, about 18 at the time, is at the end, a willowy blond woman wearing the kind of golden smile her mother recalls so vividly.

“She was special,” Mary said, savoring the picture, “and I want her back.”

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The little girl who could once create parades is 35 now and living on the street. Mary doesn’t know exactly where and hasn’t heard from her since she called weeks ago and left a telephone message saying she’d been beaten up but was doing the best she could.

The likelihood is that she’s on drugs, Mary says, and working as a prostitute to support her habit. The words are difficult for Mary to say and she attempts to mitigate Laurie’s bleak existence with family history.

Mary’s father suffered from depression and committed suicide by drowning himself. Mary, a retired teacher, is under treatment for depression and believes now that Laurie inherited the condition.

“It’s odd,” she said, “that I was smart enough to recognize my own depression but never admitted that it existed in her. I guess I never wanted her to be like me.”

Twice divorced and now living alone, Mary raised the seven children mostly on her own. The six others live normal lives. Laurie was the most extroverted of them and seemed to be “on” most of the time. Her grades were good and teachers liked her. Nothing seemed amiss until high school.

Laurie began dating an older man and it was then, Mary believes, that her daughter was turned on to cocaine. A series of symptoms typical of drug use followed: her grades tumbled, she began missing classes and ultimately dropped out of school.

Some kids, and I’ve known a few, realize the rate of their descent into despair and manage to stop it. Laurie wasn’t one of them.

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Her first “disappearance” occurred when she went to Hawaii to try her hand at being a model. The effort failed and Laurie broke contact with her family. A sister went searching for her, found her and brought her home.

She was heavily into drugs then, Mary says, but gave them up when she married and had a son. For a while, at least, it seemed that Laurie had her life together.

Photographs of her with her little boy show an almost serene woman of 24, half-smiling into the camera, emulsifying a moment gone too quickly. Shortly thereafter, the marriage ended, her little boy was given to his paternal grandparents to raise and Laurie resumed her downward spiral.

Twice she served time in prison for charges relating to drug abuse and for short periods managed to stay sober. Alcoholics Anonymous helped and so did steady employment as a waitress.

But failure at just about everything she undertook seemed a part of Laurie’s parade as an adult, and she was fired by the restaurant that employed her. From there she went to work as a cocktail waitress in a bar where drugs were plentiful and . . .

The last time Mary saw her daughter was five months ago, and she fears she might never see her again. Mary is 78. “My family says I’ve got to let her go, to forget about her,” she said, crying softly, “but I can’t.”

She has asked me if I could help, but words won’t undo what’s been done or bring home a golden girl when the glow is gone. I’m sorry, Mary. The parade has passed by and Laurie has followed it into darkness.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com