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Having lost my daughter to drug addition this past year, I felt compelled to give my view.

There is no greater heartache than losing a child. Janine was a bright, beautiful girl and struggled with addiction for many, many years. She was a college graduate with many honors, popular and had it all except common sense.

My husband, who passed away six months before her, and I lived a life of hell on earth. She was jailed several times for possession or breaking probation. She overdosed at least eight times and was on ventilators. The last time she was in jail in Lackawanna County. They kept her there for almost a year, waiting to be placed in rehab.

Mike Donahue, head of the Luzerne-Wyoming Counties Drug and Alcohol Program, helped me get her placed after a long wait, as there was nothing available. Mike was a dear friend who tried so hard to help Janine, and I will always be thankful to him. He has been trying to establish a facility for addicts to go after rehab – as they come out so confused and unable to cope.

Janine needed long-term rehab, but the people at the facility felt she was ready to face the world.

She was home less than a week when she wandered in the middle of the night last Thanksgiving Eve and was found dead in the early morning hour. The coroner stated she died of hypothermia and not an overdose. Of course, in her frame of mind, it was drug-related.

Needless to say, the need for rehab facilities is so important, and you folks who object so much should “walk in my shoes.”

Jane Saba

Hanover Township