Breaking the silence

On a chilly February night, Ricky David Norris III, known to friends and family as Tripp, left his band’s gig and went to a friend’s house. Along the way, he withdrew $20 from his bank account. Only a few hours later, Rick and Suzanne Norris got the phone call every parent dreads.

Tripp died on Feb. 25, 2011, from a mix of alcohol and $20 worth of street heroin. He was only 22 years old.

“It was such a waste of a life that had so much to give,” Rick said.

Three years later, Rick is sharing about his son’s journey in hopes parents will learn from his heartbreak and do everything they can to prevent another death happening much too young. He will be speaking at the first Help the Hills town hall meeting on Aug. 18 at 6 p.m. at Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church. 

Everyone’s best friend

At the time of his death, Tripp was a senior English major at the University of Alabama with a sharp wit and a passion for music. He always had a notebook in his back pocket to write song lyrics and poems when inspiration struck. He referred to everyone as his best friend, which his parents always found funny. 

When more than 700 people showed up to Tripp’s funeral, they realized that he truly had hundreds of best friends.

“When you were with Tripp, he was solely focused on you. Nobody else,” Suzanne said. “So he always made a connection with people. He was very in touch with other people.”

Tripp’s difficulties with substance abuse began while he was attending Vestavia Hills High School. He sometimes drank while driving to school and got high with friends on medications. Rick suspects his son was an alcoholic by the time he graduated in 2006.

Rick and Suzanne knew that Tripp continued to drink in college, and they wondered if he smoked marijuana or used pills. They tried to do the “right” things by calling him every day, keeping tabs on his spending and visiting every few weeks. They encouraged their son to be honest and offered help if he needed it. Tripp denied any substance use, and he continued to go to classes and get good grades.

“That’s what’s so scary. Parents can do all the right things, and it can still happen,” Suzanne said.

Despite knowing at least three other VHHS graduates who died of overdoses, Rick and Suzanne did not seriously consider that Tripp might be using heroin. Based on what they learned from his friends after his death, they believe their son used heroin on several occasions but had been clean for about a year on the night of his overdose. They don’t know why he chose that night to try it again.

Fighting back

Tripp’s story is a familiar one for many in Vestavia’s schools and law enforcement. Vestavia Hills Police Lt. Johnny Evans, who works in the Special Investigations Unit, said the police have seen at least eight deaths from heroin overdoses in Vestavia Hills in the past four years.

“There have been three or four deaths over last four or five years of VHHS alumni,” Dr. Jeff Dugas said. “They were from good families, not forgotten kids by any means. They also were kids who started out using recreational drugs that escalated to heroin addiction. And it’s not stopping.”

Like Tripp, many of these addicts started with lighter substance use and progressed over time to hard opiate use. The 2010 Pride Survey, a national study on substance abuse, showed that 59 percent of VHHS seniors drink alcohol and 34 percent use marijuana with some regularity.

“I’ve seen several Vestavia kids who are off at college, and they are in real trouble,” Vestavia Hills City Schools Director of Administrative Services David Howard said. “Almost 100 percent of the time, they tell me their first drug use started with marijuana in middle school. Now they are at the point where they can’t just take a Lortab. They need higher dosages to feel right again, and it’s living hell if they try to stop.”

Dugas and Howard are two of the many people on the front lines of the city’s efforts to prevent opiate-based drug use in the community, in particular through the formation of a new Drug Task Force. The task force is comprised of city administration, school system officials and an anonymous VHHS student. 

This month, the Drug Task Force will launch the school system’s first volunteer drug testing program, open to students in grades seven through 12. The program costs $40 annually and guarantees enrolled families two tests, one per semester. Successful completion of the program will earn participating students a certificate of merit, which Dugas said could hold considerable weight with college admissions counselors, military recruiters and human resources managers. 

“This is starting us down the necessary path of reining in a very serious issue,” Dugas said.

The lack of local police presence on the Drug Task Force is deliberate.

“We fully support what the Drug Task Force is doing, but we have no formal association with their efforts,” said Vestavia Hills Police Lt. Brian Gilham. “Doing so would deter the entire purpose of the group.”

The police department has its own anti-drug efforts, including the National Night Out Program in October and a prescription drop-box. Gilham’s unit, Community Oriented Policing, just received a $1,000 Wal-Mart Community Giving grant, which he hopes will fund the installation of another drop-box at the East Precinct in Cahaba Heights. The current drop-box, located at the police department on Montgomery Highway, is emptied weekly and the contents are incinerated at U.S. Pipe.

Gilham said prescription pill use often leads to heroin use, and parents who want to proactively take on the issue should start with their own medicine cabinet. He was skeptical about community response to the drop-box, until he opened it for the first time. 

“There was a huge bag, so big I could not get my hands around it, with 300 to 500 pills inside,” said Gilham. “How does one person even accumulate that many? When I saw that, I knew we were doing the right thing.” 

The efforts sit well with Liberty Park resident and Jefferson County Drug Court Judge Shanta Owens.

“Well-intentioned, loving families can enable in ways that are unbelievable,” she said. “There is great denial, and by the time they reach the criminal justice system, we are seen as the bad guys. I have had so many mothers tell me, ‘My child is just experimenting. He is not a real drug addict.’ I am always saddened when I hear that.”

Help the Hills

Leadership Vestavia Hills (LVH) is making its own attempt at grass-roots change with its new Help the Hills campaign. The campaign started as a project for the 2011-2012 LVH class, but it is now transitioning to a community program. Help the Hills will host a series of community forums throughout the next year to take away the stigma of talking about drug addiction.

“Some of our parents have a child who is experimenting or is in rehab and may not be comfortable speaking out or asking questions in a large public setting,” LVH Board Member Julie Ellis said. “We want to remove judgment and blame from the conversation. We hope that Help the Hills will foster healthy, honest conversations with families and neighbors.”

Through the Aug. 18 Help the Hills event, the Norrises are also working to remove the taboo because they have seen how prevalent heroin and substance abuse is, both in Vestavia Hills and among Tripp’s friends. Rick knows he does not have the solution to drug use, but he can still make parents aware of how frighteningly close the problem is to home.

“I don’t want anyone else to go through the same nightmare,” Rick said. “If we’ve got anything we can say that points somebody in the right direction toward things that they see in their own kids and prevents another wasted life, then I think we’ve got some obligation to do that.”