Prom-Night High Ends in Death

Cathy Isford wore a white, strapless dress and her dark, red hair up in a twist for Foothill High School’s senior prom Saturday. To cap the special evening, she told her sister, she would take Ecstasy “one more time.”

On Tuesday, Isford lay in the intensive-care unit of a Santa Ana hospital, her dress replaced with a blue medical gown. The mixture of Ecstasy and alcohol sent her into a coma, the result of what medical experts and educators describe as a frightening rite of passage during prom season.

Isford’s family, friends and fiance cradled the 18-year-old in their arms as doctors at Western Medical Center disconnected the life-support system that had kept her breathing for two days. The agonizing decision, her mother said, was made after doctors told her Isford was brain-dead.

“She was doing Ecstasy to make the event special,” Pat Isford, 48, said hours after her youngest child was pronounced dead. “It just makes you realize that life’s too short to waste on so-called whims of fun.”

Cathy Isford had experimented with Ecstasy when she was younger, but her family believed she had stopped about two years ago, after meeting Rene Rojas, 26.

The couple was engaged to marry next spring. Although they had met at a rave party in San Bernardino, they stopped going to them because of the widespread use of drugs, family members said.

Isford planned to attend Cal State Fullerton and earn a teaching degree. She was saving for college and her wedding by working in the child-care center at a Linda Evans Fitness Center and as a receptionist at her sister’s car refurbishing business in Lake Forest.

A popular student, she was known for her paintings and drawings. As an aide in the principal’s office, she made school-wide public-address announcements. In recent months, she had begun volunteering as a teacher’s aide at a nearby elementary school

The week before the prom, she told several people that she planned to take Ecstasy once more. Isford told her sister Star that she was going to “roll one last time.” Star and brother Josh both said they warned her to be careful.

“She wanted to have the best possible time she could have,” Josh Isford said. “I just said, ‘Be careful and have a good time. It’s supposed to be one of the greatest nights of your life.’”

Pictures taken at the prom show Isford and her fiance smiling and dancing at Joe’s Garage, a Tustin auto museum where Foothill High School held its Knight Out on the Town prom.

Afterward, the couple headed to an Embassy Suites hotel room in Santa Ana for a party, Star Isford said, based on accounts from friends who were in the room. Isford took two pills, mixing them with wine, beer and rum, her sister said. She began complaining of a terrible headache about an hour later. About 4 a.m., she collapsed in her boyfriend’s arms, Star Isford said, and her last words were, “My head hurts really bad.”

Complete autopsy results are not expected for weeks.

Ecstasy, known as methylene dioxymethamphetamine or MDMA, is a stimulant and hallucinogen that induces a high lasting up to six hours. It can cause dramatic changes in heart rate and blood pressure and lead to dehydration. It also has been shown to cause lasting changes in the brain’s chemical systems that control mood and memory.

Even as Isford’s relatives and friends grieved, they hoped that her death would warn other teenagers.

“The reality is that this is happening in America more than parents would ever want to admit,” said Tommy Tracy, 20, one of the many friends who gathered at the family’s home in Tustin. “You don’t realize it until it slaps you in the face.”

Drugs like Ecstasy have become more widely used partly because teens can get high while appearing lucid. A federal study found that from 1996 to 2000, emergency-room visits for Ecstasy rose nationwide from 319 to 4,511.

“A lot of kids are going to get loaded that don’t usually,” said Mike Darnold, director of community outreach for Positive Action Center, a drug treatment center at Chapman Medical Center in Orange. Schools across Southern California hold seminars for parents and students about the dangerous consequences of drug and alcohol use at prom.

Foothill High Principal Al Marzilli said such presentations were held before Saturday night. At the prom itself, 30 to 40 adult chaperones helped to check purses and coats and search limousines for drugs and alcohol. Marzilli shook hands with students as they arrived and left, looking for any signs of intoxication. He remembers greeting Isford and being introduced to her finance but said he saw nothing unusual.

“It’s really upsetting,” he said. “You take all the precautions in the world and do everything you can. And then something like this happens. There just are no words.”