Heroin killed Valley Christian High athlete

A Chandler high school student and football player died from a heroin overdose, the county medical examiner’s office confirmed Tuesday, the tragic end to a longtime addiction.

Danny Pasanella, 17, a junior at Chandler Valley Christian, never awakened after his father found him unconscious on his bed Sept. 21. His football teammates dedicated their game in Yuma that night to his memory.

“It’s a living hell to lose a child,” said his mother, Tammy Pasanella. “People tell you it’s bad, but you have no idea.”

A Chandler police report, also released Tuesday, showed officers found glass pipes and three pieces of black tar heroin in Danny’s backpack, along with two types of pills.

The boy had been fighting drug addition for years, first to Oxycontin and then heroin, friends and family said. He’d overdosed at least once. But things looked brighter after he left a Utah drug treatment program in 2006.

He transferred during the spring semester from Horizon High School in northeast Phoenix to the Chandler school, and his family hoped the move would aid his recovery.

Danny earned good grades, had a nice girlfriend and excelled on the football field.

“They try this stuff once, and they’re done. It’s that addictive,” Tammy Pasanella said. “They smoke it instead of shooting it. They have no idea how much they’re doing. ”

Drugs, particularly heroin, are claiming young lives in the Valley at an alarming rate. Tammy Pasanella said she knows of about 15 kids who have died in the past six months, including two northeast Valley boys within days of Danny’s death.

Drug treatment experts say heroin has quietly emerged in recent months while most of the attention and money has been focused on methamphetamine.

“I’m absolutely overwhelmed by how many parents are calling in for help,” said Kristen Polin, community programs director for Community Bridges, a drug treatment and prevention program in Mesa.

Heroin “is the new drug,” Polin said. “It’s clearly a trend that’s getting kids into treatment or killing them.” It’s easier and cheaper than ever to do heroin, and smoking it is the preferred method. It can be smoked in a pipe or sprinkled in a cigarette, she said.

Some kids are doing “monkey juice” Polin said, where they mix heroin with water and spray it up their nose, while others are sticking it to the roof of their mouth and sucking on it.

However they ingest it, it’s highly addictive and deadly, though many users mistakenly believe it’s less so if they don’t inject it.

Heroin is also easy for parents to miss.

“Kids are good at hiding it,” Polin said. “They’re good at hiding their drugs, and they’re good at hiding being on drugs.”

Tammy Pasanella said she didn’t think she had to worry about Danny, the youngest of her three sons.

“I would have never dreamed in a million years that he would have done this,” she said. “I thought I didn’t have to worry about the things that other people worry about.”

Once she discovered he was using drugs, she sent him to the Utah treatment facility, but brought him home early because the $5,000 a month cost became too much. But friends and family thought he was done with drugs, especially after transferring to Valley Christian.

“His mother and I both were very involved in trying to get him away from the drug problems,” said Tom Ohmart, a board member with the Paradise Valley Unified School District and assistant Horizon High football coach.

“She made every effort ... and surrounded him with great Christian athletes,” Ohmart said. “It’s just a tragedy that he was able to link back up to the drug culture and succumbed to it.”

Drugs are easy to get, no matter where you live or how many times you move, said Frank Scarpati, CEO of Community Bridges.

“It’s not difficult to find the same kind of group and the same type of drugs wherever you go. It’s the age group and it’s the availability,” he said.

“The parents, I know, try their best,” Scarpati said. “You do the best you can. You stay involved. You get them into recovery support groups. You learn all you can.”

Tammy Pasanella believes schools and police aren’t doing enough to arrest drug dealers and crack down on drug use. She’s given police and Horizon High School administrators the names of suspected drug dealers.

“Nobody cares,” she said. “In the meantime, all these kids keep dying.”