TO: MY FRIENDS AND OFFICIALS A Little Long but as Vital as you will ever Read

PRELUDE: I am asking you to help me. Please follow my next few columns. I am deeply hurt. This is about a young girl. My good friend for 7 years. And my efforts to save her. And keep her alive. I am all in, to pursue this until she is well. This girl was recently on her death bed due to drugs and then beaten by their purveyors. I want them. Miraculously, she is alive. She deserves a life. Her and her plight have become my charge. This must all end. This is about victims. So young. So much suffering and lost life. And minds stolen from young Moms and Dads of babies. So dirtbags can get money. My goals are strategic and targeted: To save this girl, to give her 1-year old daughter her Mom. To revive techniques from my past to fight those that poisoned her and her peers. To show the city a system (in the next two columns) that will save life and give you chills, as you understand the workability. If you follow this column for the next few months, we can put into place rehabilitative systems to give this girl a chance. And address the cruel element that thrives on other’s suffering. That is what I am asking for. Together, there is much we can do. Table Hopping comes out in the first few days of each month. I can be reached at w173@aol.com or friend me on Facebook and we can communicate through messenger. Others can read this column by Googling: Word on the Street TableHopping. com. It is a direct connection. Please let our friends know.

TO: The County Executive, the Mayor, the DA, the Sheriff and the Chief and the Sheriff’s Department and Corrections and the Police Department and my friends in Politics, from Congressional Candidates to Mayoral Candidates and Judges and Attorneys and Social Workers and to my friends everywhere. This is also directed to the same officials, Brother and Sister leaders in Oswego County as they will be a major player in her case. My britches are not too big. This is about genuine deserved compassion and justice. I have some real talents and knowledge from my past. For some reason we do not effectively use these things in civilian life. If you read this column and the next two, I hope that chills are yours and we accomplish amazing and decent and good things. I know I am largely engaging with the legal arena. Please know I seek no favor and absolutely no impropriety. All that I say is with compassion and truth.

A little about me: I was born in Hyde Park, N.Y. My father worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt. I still have a letter from Eleanor to my dad. I had a great start in life. Alcohol took out my dad and mom, all the way, and later me. I am recovered now for nearly 40 years. I served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the Green Berets. I never fought. Just the luck of assignment. But trust me, my boys did fight and I would fight for anyone of them as I am going to fight for this young girl.

I am motivated by the suffering of a deserving young lady, consumed by heroin. A young lady not old enough for much life experience, yet what she has experienced, has been permeated with terror, that when known, would break the heart of our strongest. This column is a brief Compendium of her plight and what I seek to do to save her and her child from a life without a mother. As you go on you will understand my care and why she is deserving. I am giving birth to an attentive effort to put in place in every conceivable way, procedure, intervention and process, short and long term, to restore her value for life. She has a desire for happiness but her confidence that this is possible is completely shattered. This entire matter is gravely urgent to her survival and requires a thinking that only our best can offer. And I know without doubt that you are the best. We are also are going to go after some drug dealers.

I am designing a plan to work on lowering the number of drug dealers. There are too many, too cruel that will destroy you over ten or twenty dollars. The culture is hideously violent. Over peanuts. They rule over our sick like czars in hell. A city our size, that is manageable, does not have to tolerate this infection. There will be more on this soon in this column. Few know this city like I do. I have a background and I learned well. I have effective ideas. And I will be calling on you. Please read my next few columns. And please get through this one. It will break your heart but you will see. Next month I will offer a plan that will work, to rid a severely degraded section of the city of this heartless cruelty.

Addiction is complex but there is much healing avenue. Emotional triggers. Restoring self-value. Showing a workable path exists. And more. Emotional triggers that a few of you helped with, way back in the day, pulled me out of alcohol nearly 40 years ago. Within the disease of addiction, one undergoes a series of emotional triggers that collectively bring them to recognition. All this junk, like “they have to do it themselves” is more salve for guilty consciences than truth. Because it negates or retards one’s responsibility to get the addict to where they have the desire. One should not allow their life to be unreasonably disrupted nor should they enable, but to give up may remove the emotional trigger you may find, to pull, that brings them back.

Herewith a brief recent history and this is just a small part of a 7-year saga. This is the life in the world of heroin and molly. My friend has been incarcerated 7 times for substance abuse difficulties since she was 18. She is in jail now. Right now, jail is all that will keep her alive. We have no facilities designed for confinement rehab. That is the missing link. Each time she is released she quickly goes right back. Heroin is a “God-Awful” mind sucking drug. Two times ago she became pregnant. She told me she was worried about her baby’s mind because she could not stop. She said she would be better off in jail. She found a way for that to happen and she had her baby in jail, and today she has a healthy precious one-year old daughter. That is true love, and true compassion. When she was released after this she began using right away. I see the paradox. She insured her baby’s health yet still could not stop. Within the complex realm of heroin addiction, she did what she could. This addiction is heinous and straight out of the bowels of hell. Her love for her daughter is enormous. At times she becomes delusional and sees her baby in trees and windshields and cannot get to her. The stories are beyond tragic. She has called me freezing in the snow, along the highway near Auburn, lying helpless on the ground by a dumpster behind the dollar store on Butternut and Lodi with the lowest of low trying to get sex from a girl with swollen hands and ankles that could not walk. They left. This time it was peaceful.

Beyond Heartbreak: She was released from jail in the spring of 2020 and by fall (just two months ago) she wound up with infected organs. Likely from a used needle. The infection ate through and punctured a lung. She had a hose draining the blood. Infection had spread to other organs. Her heart was weak. The hospital fought for her. When she stabilized enough, they did emergency open heart surgery. They opened her chest and replaced a heart valve. She was released in just over 3 weeks. It was way too soon for her. The same night she was using. The last two weeks I have been trying to get her off the streets. When I found her, she refused to leave the drug area. She wanted a fix at all costs. She had lost hope. She became reckless. Safety meant nothing. Danger meant nothing. She was ready to die. You cannot imagine how helpless you are rendered. I thought of forcing her to CPEP, but the wrestling could kill her. And not being related I could not authorize CPEP. Finally, I worked with a family member and set up a process where we might be able to get her into CPEP. She had become completely delusional. I had to buy her phone from drug dealers. (another despicable story of cruelty) Probably the ones that beat her. I had a knife and a box cutter pulled on me over the weekend. I managed this without hurting them. I will tell you those stories later. These creatures that she was with as I found her, thought they owned her. In the last week they pulverized her face. When I heard this, I intensified my effort to find her. How she is alive I just don’t know. I spent last Saturday and Sunday searching non-stop trying to find her again. I called her phone contacts and call log, then I recalled that the convenience stores know her. I found the store where she was arrested on Nov. 14th. I had called the Police during the knife incident. I explained her medical condition. They knew what was going on and it was time. They literally saved her life. When this is all calmed down, I will be doing another column about heroes in these dark and dangerous streets. Every single day. Lots of these kids are alive because of Cops.

My friend was born in 1994 into a broken family with a mentally ill Mom and mental illness in the family history. Her parents were estranged. She has never had the smallest break, not even a decent place to stay. Growing up in the midst of mental illness and drug abuse she suffered great neglect and abuse and the gift of beauty in these conditions was a curse that invited sexual abuse on several fronts. She had a daily unspeakable childhood. She has been on her own since she was 14. She is able to present with normalcy when she is completely sober. I hope for you to envision her. When sober, a young, beautiful, petite, smart, strong willed and artistic. An absolutely lovely young lady. Her sweetness in her plight is heartbreaking, to see someone so fragile and alone and deserving and so broken. Today she is broken, recklessly suicidal, severe weight loss, facial features drawn tight by heroin, beaten by ruthless drug dealers with no heart or regard for humanity. Her eyes and face blackened and discolored by the fists of scum. She is recklessly brave, and when threatened, the streets have taught her, and she instinctively fights back. This tiny little girl faced three drug dealers. And they had no problem beating her face already blackened two days before by some other vermin.

I want you to know that there is explanation and mitigating circumstance that makes all that has happened the product of her experiencing childhood abuse and the resulting mental illness, the complex affects of mental illness in the family mixed with heroin addiction. Her mental condition needs comprehensive review. I have looked at her charges. Each time she was under the influence of heroin, hallucinating or having a mental departure from reality. I have seen her, functional yet in this complete departure from reality. She is a victim. When you know her you adore her? Sober you could not imagine she would do any of these things. And she would not. She has no predisposition to any of these charges. When you comprehend her experience, you weep.

This girl can be saved. And her baby can have her mom. This can be done. I am not trying to get her off. At this time that would likely be a death sentence. Drug Court is not viable. She cannot follow rules when free. “Yet”. And tragically we have no mandated confinement rehab option. That is a tragic shortcoming in our system. She has been in jail 7 times, 6 months at a time. Imagine if that were mandated rehab. The greatest failing in our system is this nonsense that one must want to be sober on their own. That is not true. You do not enable but you provide help, you teach, you encourage and you love. You rehab. You provide the path for them to see, for them to return.

This is my hope for the near future. She is justifiably extremely and with complexity, very physically and mentally ill. A fair compassionate sentence of course is hoped for. Long enough for rehabilitative options to take hold as best as can be determined. Something compatible with her needs. Without a confinement rehab option, jail is the only avenue available that will save her life for the near future. That is happening. Jail will provide the safety for her to regain health she needs to live. That alone will provide the few months of healing for her heart valve and her chest bones and punctured lung and beaten face, as her proceedings move forward. She needs to be monitored for infection. Her doctor told me it can recur simply by finding a temporary dormant spot in any of the infected organs or areas.

The drug dealers need to be dealt with. Before she gets out, I hope for them to feel some justice. She will have time to heal. Then compassion and justice are the goals. Jail is the only structure and the only safety she has known since recognition. That is wrong with no matching words. I am hopeful proper authority (The Judge or District Attorney) may design her incarceration. If one clearly has a severe substance abuse problem then their entire incarceration might be designed around mandated counseling and rehabilitation. Then I believe a specially designed probation would massively protect or cause recovery. At least if we could parallel this as close as the law allows. By that I mean, if she uses, she should be violated. Then, and this is the key element, she should do 30 days, not big time, and try again. And this procedure should be indefinite until success or unredeemable failure. Along with mandated times for probationary monitoring, this thinking with a recurring 30 days that would get old quick, may at this point in recovery cause recovery. Using would be just too difficult, and with substantial rehabilitative efforts already achieved potential success is maximized.

Of course, the goal while she is in jail will be to cause a workable recovery mindset prior to her release. I will find every innovative way there is, and I will use every influence I have, to get rehabilitative thinking, friendships and self-worth building measures to her inside. This girl can and will be saved. And her baby will have her mother, and one day she will be ever so thankful that good people saw the invasion of evil in innocence and came to her aid.

I will be designing ways to help her throughout her incarceration. She loves Demi Lovato and Staying strong (365) days. She has a love for Hope. She has such a good chance. Let’s be careful not to overly punish her. Few have already been through more. I got her this Demi Lovato book on hopeful sayings while in the hospital. I will get her another. She lost her belongings. She likes adult coloring books. And word scramble books. And she loves the world of beauty. She tries in such innocent and beautiful ways. She wants to be ok. We will find the bridge. I will find measures to help her and give her strength and where my friends can help, I will ask. I am all in with this girl. Next month: “The PLAN”

A Prison Guard at Jamesville who had seen me often in recent years, once asked me: When do you give up? My answer to her was: Until they make it, or until they die.

My deepest thanks, Bill

Bill McClellan