Parents speak of 'P' heartbreak

By SCOTT MacLEOD

Malcolm and Joy Todd cannot say when their son started smoking the P they believe claimed his life.

The Dairy Flat couple buried Sam Todd on Saturday after watching his helpless slide into a life of drugs and crime.

Yesterday they joined a stream of families speaking out against the methamphetamine epidemic that is wrenching at our society.

Sam Todd's body was found in his car's passenger seat last Monday. Etched into his dashboard were the words "I love you, uncle Kev. I'll see you on the other side".

Although they did not know it at the time, Sam was almost certainly smoking before Christmas. That was when they saw broken lightbulbs in his car, often used by P smokers as makeshift pipes.

The leadup to his death was inexorable. September 8, a Monday, was Sam's 20th birthday. The family had a wonderful dinner together, Joy Todd said.

That day was also Sam's first in a new drainlaying job, which his mother says he was excited about.

But that night he stayed up late smoking P. He arrived for his second day at work "crashing" from the drug, turned around, went straight home and phoned a relative in tears.

That was the end of another job.

Later that day Sam phoned his mother to help him pick up his car, which some friends had parked on double yellow lines in Sunset Rd on the North Shore, after using it to "pinch something".

On Wednesday, Sam and his mother visited a counsellor to discuss a drug rehabilitation scheme. Mrs Todd listened in shock as her son admitted that, apart from the P, he had smoked cannabis for six years, took LSD once a month and Ecstasy "sometimes".

Mrs Todd cried all the way home. She decided to raise $10,000 to put her son through the rehabilitation programme at Hanmer Springs, in North Canterbury.

Although Sam was always polite, well-groomed and willing to help, his family admit he was never an angel.

He knew many police officers by name. He wore a police hat during a liquor-store theft and racked up $15,000 in traffic tickets.

Towards the end, the crimes started hurting his family. Sam stole cash from a drawer, and a family credit card. Although he lived with friends, he was able to break into his parents' home "even when it was locked up like Fort Knox," Malcolm Todd said.

There were growing signs of violence, then the "three shocking calls" to the family answer-phone that were partly threatening and mostly disgusting.

Calls such as those prompted the Todds to pull their phone from the wall in the days leading up to their son's death, something Mrs Todd cannot discuss without weeping.

Sam had been making his peace with family and friends, and Mrs Todd wonders what might have been said had she spoken to him one last time. But Mr Todd says the family feared for their safety.

Last Sunday, a relative asked Sam if he would like to go to church. Sam chose to stay home. Sometime that night or early the next morning he slipped out to his car. His body was found at 8am last Monday, with a bottle of wine and two small, empty, plastic bags.

His rehabilitation course was to start on Tuesday - one day too late for Samuel Arthur Eric Kearns Todd.

* This week the Herald will feature the personal tragedies behind the P statistics. Contact us to share your story


Herald Feature: The P epidemic