every afternoon, a thirty-two-mile drive each way. Kristin sensed that Ralph got a little frustrated when the hours-long sessions ran late, as they often did, but he remained supportive of her efforts. He felt a deep pride when he watched her dance. She had such a passion for it.
Kristin was popular at Claremont High School, where her dancing skills were well known among her classmates. Her fellow students thought Kristin, who always seemed to be smiling, had a sweet nature. She was the model student.
As a freshman, Kristin briefly dated a junior named Chris Elliott, the son of family friends who used to baby-sit her little brothers while Kristin was at ballet practice. Chris’s father also taught at Claremont McKenna. The two teenagers first met when Kristin was thirteen and Chris was seventeen. Chris was impressed that Kristin was such a high achiever, dancing even when she had a 102-degree fever and focusing so intensely on her ballet rather than just hanging out after school. All her friends were “bunheads,” as her mother called them—dancers who wore their hair up in a bun.
In 1991 Kristin auditioned for a spot in a prestigious summer program with the Boston Ballet. She got it and spent the summer back east.
That fall, Ralph took a job as president of Hampden-Sydney College, a private liberal arts school in southern Virginia. Kristin enrolled at an Episcopalian boarding school for girls about sixty miles away so she could dance with a troupe in Richmond. She and Chris wrote letters to each other while she was away. She took a bad fall that year, when a fellow dancer dropped her. She tore several ligaments and had to wear an ankle cast for nearly two months. She reinjured her leg a few months later, and by the time she healed, she’d lost the calluses on her toes that allowed her to go en pointe. She also developed a stress fracture that wouldn’t heal. She grew frustrated and quit.
Kristin began experimenting with drugs and alcohol around that time—mostly beer and marijuana, though she didn’t much care for pot because “it didn’t do anything.” She also developed a fondness for cigarettes and would turn to them again later in life when under stress.
Her father remembered Kristin leaving Claremont as a girl in 1991 and returning from Virginia as a woman, just before the start of her junior year in 1992.
Ralph returned to Claremont McKenna to teach constitutional law, and Constance transferred within Marriott to a job as director of marketing. The family was happy and healthy, and everything seemed to be going along swimmingly.
“Frankly, we thought we were blessed with three lovely children,” Constance said.
Although ballerinas typically are self-conscious about their bodies, Kristin, who usually weighed between 100 and 110 pounds, took this concern to a new level, often taking laxatives and diet pills to make her small frame look even smaller.
“For some reason, she thought she was fat,” Constance said. “I don’t understand that.”
After Kristin stopped dancing, Constance noticed a sadness in her daughter that she didn’t recognize.
“She just didn’t seem like our Kristin,” she said. “I thought it was the sixteen-year-old teenage angst…. Her grades were still very good.”
Kristin’s brothers also started noticing that something was different. She was exhibiting strange behavior and staying up late at night. One day they found a pipe and a small mirror in the house and showed them to Constance. Naïve and unaware that these items were drug paraphernalia, Constance had no clue what her daughter was up to.
Kristin had always excelled in school, so when she began turning in her homework late, her parents felt something must be wrong. When they asked what was going on, she told them everything was fine. She’d do better next time. Ralph encouraged Constance to give their daughter some space. Surely, her behavior would improve. But it didn’t. It got worse, and her parents grew increasingly anxious.
Kristin’s parents made a point of getting to know their children’s friends. What they didn’t know was that Kristin had forged a new relationship she knew her parents would never condone, a relationship with crystal methamphetamine.
Kristin’s close friend since the third grade had moved to England. So Kristin filled the void with a new set of friends, a more social group that liked to party. Before the big Home-coming game, a girlfriend pulled out a bindle of white powder while they were sitting in a car in the parking lot. The girl said it was speed and drew them some lines. Kristin inhaled the powder and felt a burning sensation. After the burn came a rush. She felt revved up. Positively euphoric.
She knew the stuff was illegal, but she liked it so much that she wanted to do it again. Only crystal meth wasn’t a very socially acceptable drug. Their other friends gave them flack about using it, and her girlfriend didn’t make a habit of it, so Kristin decided to pursue a buy on her own.
Two weeks later, Kristin approached the dealer who’d sold the meth to her friend. It was easy. She bought some, and little by little, she began using it more frequently, smoking it, and always alone. Soon, Kristin was spending less time with her friends. She lost a few pounds, and her grades began to suffer. She couldn’t focus as easily on her schoolwork, and during her second semester, her usual A’s fell to B’s.
The first family crisis Kristin caused occurred in early 1993, after Ralph and Constance went on an anniversary cruise in the Caribbean. The Rossums asked some adult friends to check on the children during the day, but they left Kristin in charge overnight. They also left Kristin some money for pizza or any emergency. Instead, she used it to buy drugs. She threw a surprise birthday party for Pierce on St. Patrick’s Day, but word leaked out at the high school that Kristin was having “a rager.” Older kids started showing up. Seniors and football players. With beer.
“It kind of got out of control for a little bit,” Kristin admitted later, saying she didn’t remember whether she’d used meth that night, but it was possible. Kristin let a group of girlfriends stay over, and sometime during the same week, Kristin’s dealer came by with some friends.
A couple of weeks after her parents returned from their cruise, they discovered that some credit cards, personal checks, and a video camera were missing. On March 21, they called the police and reported a burglary. Constance also found a suspicious package of white powder in the mailbox. When she asked Kristin about it, her daughter said she had no idea where it came from, so Constance turned it over to the police. The lies were starting to pile up, and Kristin’s parents began to think the worst: Their daughter was using drugs.
Kristin knew she had a problem. She felt tired and worn out, but she couldn’t stop using. In the beginning, she’d smoked crystal because it made her feel so good. But it had become a necessity. She needed it just to feel like herself.
Methamphetamine is classified as a psychostimulant, just like amphetamine and cocaine. Methamphetamine and cocaine are structurally quite different, but both result in an accumulation of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that produces an unnatural level of euphoria in the brain. While cocaine is quickly metabolized by the body, methamphetamine stays in the system twelve times longer, and so it creates more lasting effects. Meth can produce a high that lasts eight to twenty-four hours, compared to a rush of twenty to thirty minutes with cocaine. Even in small doses, meth can decrease the appetite and keep people awake for hours. High doses can raise the body temperature to dangerous levels and cause convulsions.
On the street, methamphetamine has many names, including speed, meth, crank, ice, crystal, and glass. It can be inhaled, smoked, snorted, or injected. Chronic users can have episodes of violent behavior, anxiety, confusion, insomnia, hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia that can result in homicidal and suicidal thoughts. Psychosis can persist for months or years after a person
