NEWS

In hell: The fight to save one addict

Terry DeMio, and Liz Dufour
Cincinnati
Dominique waits in her dad's truck after receiving her first Vivitrol shot at the Florence Medical Group shortly after being released from Hamilton County Justice Center. She was acquitted on a drug paraphernalia charge. She's wearing the same clothes she had on when she OD'd 9/27 in the West End. Vivitrol is used to prevent the cravings for opioid drugs, like heroin. 

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Dominique Warren, 18, from Erlanger, Kentucky, started using heroin when she was 12-years-old. She was in and out of group homes and treatment centers. Her dad, Harold Warren, said she would never stay home for long. She was a frequent runaway, mostly heading to Over-The-Rhine and the West End where she prostituted for drug money. On September 27, 2016, she ODÕd in the West End and was revived by Narcan. Because she was now an adult, she ended up in the Hamilton County Justice Center. After getting out and before her dad could get her to a new treatment center, she ran again. This time, she was picked up in Kenton County under CaseyÕs Law and spent three months in the Kenton County Jail's treatment center. She got out on Dec. 29, 2016. Her next stop was to be Teen Challenge Priscilla's Place in Louisville. She lasted four days, running on Jan. 2, 2017.

Dominique Warren came to our attention through Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan, who directs the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition's law enforcement task force. Synan contacted The Enquirer's heroin-beat reporter, Terry DeMio, after receiving desperate phone calls from Dominique's father, Northern Kentucky resident Harold Warren. DeMio and Enquirer photographer Liz Dufour followed the father and daughter for four months.

Everything reported here has been verified through personal interviews,emailsand texts with the principles, the courts, police and jail documents. Because of the nature of the story, there is language within this narrative that some will find offensive. We chose to leave it intact in order to convey the truth about the drug and about the life it forces people to lead.


Harold Warren is panicked. He cannot find his daughter.

This is not the first time the Kentucky truck driver has been so adrift. But this time, it feels more urgent, more important.

She is 18. She is an adult. And she is addicted to heroin.

Harold needs help, but who can he call? Who can help him help her?

He decides to call the police.

Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan listens to the frightened man on the phone.

"He convinced me she'd die," Synan says.

The law enforcement officer contacts the Addiction Services Council, the region's 24/7 helpline, attaching Dominique's name,photoand circumstance, hoping somehow she'll end up in the agency's care. He emails everyone at the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition asking how to help the teen and her father.

He has little hope.

Dominique is found beaten on a street in Over-the-Rhine.

Cincinnati police dispatch Officer Derrick Hill to the assault on Central Avenue. First, the broken girl tells Hill that the 42-year-old man with her is a friend, and the two leave the scene. But minutes later, Hill finds Dominique a few blocks away, alone and crying and further injured. She admits the man, who is her boyfriend, beat her.

Hill finds and arrests the man for assault. His report reads that Demetrius Deramus had attacked Dominique, "slamming her head against the ground."

On Facebook later that day, Dominique writes: "So today D beat the shit out of meout sidepunched me several times kicked me in my pussy threw me in the air and slammed me on theconcreat(sic) ground 2 times I have marks on my body to back me upal(sic) this happened bc I left the hotel roomwith outcalling him and he called me every name in the book accused me ofhoen(sic)wenI was taking care business went to the church get free cloths (sic) are that walked in a couple places to see if they were hiring. D has let menothat he will be looking for me everyday (sic) to do thesme(sic) thing."

After the attack, Hill stays with Dominique as she talks to her father by phone. That's when the officer learns of her heroin addiction.

"She told me she started doing that at 12," he says. "That's very young. That really hit me."

Harold picks up Dominique on Central Avenue and takes her to a hospital.

She stays with her father for two days, but when he wakes up on the third, she is gone. No money, no phone, just gone.

At 6:30 a.m., Dominique, arms splayed, barely breathing, is on the ground behind a house in the 400 block of Whiteman Street in the West End.

She has overdosed.

Hill is again called to the scene. He walks through a narrow alley that leads to the backyard, straining to see the thin, young woman with the oxygen mask on her face.

He asks, "Is that Dominique?"

She comes into view.

"Dominique," he calls to her. She is silent.

A Cincinnati firefighter administers two doses of the heroin overdose antidote naloxone because one is not enough to revive her. Hill bags a syringe that a firefighter found near her body.

As she is hoisted onto a gurney, Dominique comes to.

Hill calls her father to tell him that he found Dominique.

He tells Harold Warren he plans to arrest Dominique for the syringe. It will get her to the safety of jail, he says. Harold welcomes the arrest.

The Hamilton County booking mug of Dominique from Sept. 27, 2016.

Hill had seen a lot. He's been on the Cincinnati force for more than 20 years. He's watched the heroin crisis explode, seen the overdoses and witnessed families' pain.

He decides he'll be there for Harold as much as possible, even though Dominique doesn't trust cops. Even though it means responding to Harold when he isn't working. Even though it means keeping in close touch with a man who lives across the river.

Hill hearddesperationin Harold's voice. He heard fear. And Harold Warren asked.

"I have a 21-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son," Hill says. "That could be my kids."

Hours later, Chief Synan is scanning overdose reports, a disheartening, routine job on any day, when he reads, "Female, OD."

"Right when I got done reading it, Harold called me and told me about her overdose and arrest."

Synan could've left Dominique to the criminal justice system, but he is moved to try something else. Harold had contacted Synan first, before anyone else. The two bonded, Synan out of empathy and the frustration of a cop who'd seen too many people die from heroin, Harold out of hope and trust that this police officer would not abandon him, or his daughter.

Synanthinks,if he can get her to Kentucky, if he can enforce the state's Casey's Law, if he can put her in jail in Kentucky, where a judge had ordered her into treatment, she might have a chance.

But, first, he has to get her across the Ohio River.

Synan sends one of his Newtown police officers, Lt. Shawn McBreen, to the Hamilton County jail to try to convince Dominique to come home for treatment.

With McBreen headed for the jail, Synan calls the Kenton County Attorney's Office. They agree to a plan: If Dominique will go with Ohio police, Kenton County will have a sheriff's deputy meet them on the bridge over the Ohio. She could get out of one police cruiser and into another to be taken to the jail on the Kentucky warrant.

Dominique's first court appearance on the drug paraphernalia charge following her OD.

Think of this as the state border equivalent of a Cold War prisoner exchange at the Berlin Wall. Except the prisoner would have to agree.

The trade-off is the only way to manage it. The cops could not cross state lines. It is an unfathomable legal roadblock just to get someone help, Synan thinks. He waits for his officer to call.

"She looked tired. Worn out. She was skinny," McBreen said later. "I wanted to help her."

McBreen calls his chief and gives Dominique the cell phone.

"It was strange because you hear these moments where the little girl comes out," Synan says. "We are battling to save this 12-year-old that's in an 18-year-old's body."

"I thought, I can do this. I can get her to treatment."

But then Dominique's voice seamlessly morphs: "It was almost like a switch," the police chief says. "From playful to this long, slow, drawn, almost kind of evil talk.

"I knew that wasn't her," Synan says. "That was heroin."

Heroin, in the end, dominates the conversation. "I heard the cries, the denial, her wanting her dad. And the manipulation of heroin when she finally said, 'You can't force me to go, can you?'"

He could not.

But Dominique had unknowingly set into action a months-long intensive rescue effort, one whose sole purpose is to get her off the streets, off thedrugand into a normal life.

Problem is, Dominique does not know normal. She never has. And saving her will be hard. Especially if she waffles about how badly she wants to be saved.

This is the story of heroin's hold on an 18-year-old girl and how a crowd of agencies, a perpetualvigilanceand seemingly endless love tries to shake that hold.

What are the chances they can succeed?

Harold emails Synan again. Dominique is in the Hamilton County jail.

"I visited Dominique yesterday at the jail and she threatened to run when she got out of jail, I know what you have said but chief we have to do something I do not want my daughter to die. Can you forward me the Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine number please there is just something we can do, I have to do something, we have to do something her very life depends on her dad saving her life."

Synan again feels stymied.

Harold can't stay still. He is not that kind of dad. He'd had years of searching for his daughter and he had sworn he would never give up on Dominique. He reaches out to the Addiction Services Council's Northern Kentucky heroin hotline.

There, he finds Chris Hamilton, a clinical triage specialist who has worked with kids on the streets. Hamilton talks to Warren about addiction, about Dominique, about how to manage bit by bit.

He offers his help.

"I'm so scared for my daughter. I cry every day. I'm so stressed and it hurts. I see my child suffering and if she dies part of me is going to die," Harold emails.

Harold is suffocating in his dread.

It is just months after Dominique turned 18. She is an adult, and he is powerless to control her. As if he ever has.

Harold listens during Dominique's court appearance in Hamilton County Municipal Court.

Warren had petitioned Kenton County for court-ordered treatment for Dominique in July, right after her May birthday, and found a residential treatment center in Richmond, Indiana, which could take her in mid-October.

If only he could get his daughter to stay put in his Erlanger home until then, Warren thought, she'd be safe.

She had not stayed put.

Dominique had crossed the Ohio River to live in Over-the-Rhine. "Home," she called it.

Dominique appears in Hamilton County Justice Center in Cincinnati for court. Her dad is surrounded by Hamilton, Synan, a Northern Kentucky preacher, a Salvation Army worker who helps victims of human trafficking and Officer Hill.

"The needle came back clean," says her attorney. He wants the charge dismissed. The prosecutor argues that Dominique is a danger to herself. "If she gets out, she will use again."

It's a short hearing.

Municipal Court Judge Cheryl Grant sets trial for Oct. 13 and says Dominique will remain in jail unless she can make a $1,000 bond to get out. Afterward, Officer Hill stands outside the courtroom with Harold Warren, trying to comfort him.

But when Dominique sees her father in the hallway, the handcuffed young woman, escorted by a law enforcement officer, shouts so that everyone nearby can hear.

"Go to hell."

A day after Dominique's court appearance, Harold is on the upswing.

"I felt relief that she is safe and alive, and she looked better than she had been looking," he says.

Seated on a couch in his suburban home, the father begins to talk about his little girl and show pictures of her.

"I had them both since they were in diapers," he says of Dominique and her younger brother, Matthew, now 16. Harold has been estranged from their mother for years.

Harold, who every night heads to a city near St. Louis and back as a truck driver for GLM Transport, is a big man, soft-spoken and tough.

Dominique, 13, and her brother Matthew, 11. He calls her Sissy.

When the kids were little, their father took them with him on his runs. When they were in elementary school, his mother helped him care for them if he was away. But usually, he says, he was able to stay home with Dominique and Matthew.

"She went to the beautician quite often," Harold says, the thought provoking a tired smile. "That was my little princess."

"I could take her anywhere and drop her off anywhere. She wouldn't cry, put up a fuss. As long as she knew Daddy was coming back," he says.

She learned easily at school. "She never failed."

But as Dominique entered adolescence, she became more stubborn. She did not, however, stop being his loving little girl.

She had started using marijuana and alcohol young, Harold says. He asked for help from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which placed Dominique in Kenton County's Holly Hills Home, a residential and educational system for troubled children 12 to 18.

She was 13.

After one school year, she returned to Tichenor Middle School.

Then one day, Harold walked into their home after work to find a gathering of Dominique's friends. His 14-year-old daughter appeared in the hallway leading from her bedroom.

"She said, 'Dad, I just shot up heroin.'"

"I about fell through the floor."

It was then, he says, that "she just started taking off on the streets and hanging around with the wrong crowd. She just was running the streets."

A photo taken by Officer Hill after Dominique was beaten along Central Parkway on September 24, 2016.

Her education suffered after the eighth grade, and Dominique moved in and out of state's custody.

"She kept running from placements," her father says.

Eventually, Dominique went to Ramey Estep, in Boyd County, Kentucky, which offers residential and educational services to kids 12 to 18. She returned home at 16. Dominique continued alternative schooling, but she continued running. She was just shy of finishing high school when she ran off in the summer.

As she moved toward 18, Fort Mitchell attorney Mike Hummel, who'd been an advocate for her through her teen years, told Harold of Casey's Law. Enacted in 2004, it allows parents of addicted adult children to seek court-ordered treatment against their will.

But the threat of arrest could not keep her at home.

"She now has holes in her body," Harold says. "She prostitutes."

Harold grew more religious as his daughter's health deteriorated. He prayed repeatedly for her.

But he also remained relentless in seeking help for his daughter.

Harold is upbeat after visiting his daughter in jail.

"She smiled and laughed there," he says. "I haven't seen Dominique do that for a long time."

She told him she'd learned about a medication that could prevent heroin from affecting her, injectable naltrexone, which she knew by the brand name Vivitrol.

Artwork Dominique made while at the Hamilton County Justice Center's treatment program.

"She seemed happy," Harold says. "Almost like a normal person."

Harold had heard of the medication through Addiction Services advocate Chris Hamilton and was planning to require his daughter take it.

While at the jail, he captured Dominique's atypical behavior with smartphone pictures he took through the glass partition between them. Dominique smiling, posing with the phone against her ear. She'd made a poster for him that boasted, "Daddy's Lill Girl." He took a picture of that, too.

"I love her," Warren says. "She says she loves me, too."

He adds, "She thanked me today for putting her in jail."

Back in court, a handcuffed Dominique smiles at her dad when she is escorted in.

She smiles at Officer Hill.

Dominique looks over at her dad, smiling.

She says she didn't remember anything for two days after shedrippedcarfentanil, the elephant tranquilizer, into a syringe before dawn on Sept. 27.

Prosecutor John Kessler argues that Dominique had a drug abuse instrument and should be convicted. Defense attorney Scott Nazzarine argues for her acquittal.

The attorneys agree to play a video from Officer Hill's body camera from the overdose call.

Dominique watches expressionless at first, then she puts a handtoher face. She drops her eyes to her lap. Then she rights herself, looking hard at the video until it ends.

Despite this, the judge finds there is not enough evidence to suggest she used that needle. She is found not guilty.

She smiles, big.

"I'm getting the Vivitrol shot today," she tells the judge.

Harold is propelled into frantic phone calls to try to make that happen.

He'd set up an appointment for Monday with Florence Medical Group for Dominique to get the shot. Yet here he was on Thursday afternoon, anticipating his daughter's release from jail. She had nowhere safe to go, no medical protection from heroin.

Jailers say Dominique will be let out in one to three hours. It is already after 3 p.m. The doctor's office usually closes at 5.

Warren is aghast. A woman at the doctor's office tells him they'll keep the office open until 5:30 p.m. for Dominique. After 4 p.m., Warren's incessant calls go straight to a recorded message.

Synan calls jail officials, who promise to move quickly on Dominique's release. Maj. Charmaine McGuffey meets Warren at the jail about a half hour later. She makes another call and tells him that it'll be about five minutes.

Five minutes tick by, but Dominique doesn't emerge. There's paperwork to be completed, McGuffey tells Warren.

Dominique leaves the Hamilton County Justice Center after being acquitted of her charge.

At nearly 5, Dominique walks out of jail to freedom, beaming.

She jumps up and down, embraces her dad and practically skips down the sidewalk.

She and her father clasp hands and do not let go all the way to his truck.

They make it to the doctor's office on time, and Dominique gets her first shot of naltrexone.

The release from imprisonment has changed her mood. She is happy, talkative. She wants pizza for dinner. She shows off "homework" that she'd done in jail.

Dominique says it was not simply heroin that captured her.

"I was addicted to calling my dope boy, prostituting. I was addicted to the street life. I got off on the street life," she says. "And it was so miserable too … but that's all that I was used to. That's all I know.

"You can't expect me to stop living the life that I used to in one day," Dominique says. "It's a process to living a normal, sobriety,no-drugs, no having to go to an alley and suck-a-dick life."

She understands a lot, but not her father's tears. "It pisses me off," she says of his raw emotion.

She had been in the jail with women struggling with addiction, including middle-aged women who'd been living a street life for decades. That helped a little, she says.

"I don't know who the old Dominique was, but I feel like she's trying to come out, and she's starting to come out," she says. "I like that, and I miss her, and I'm wanting more of her to come out.

"So, we'll see."

Later, she confesses that the overdose video scared her.

"Knowing I was alive, I was like, 'Oh my gosh! Wake up! Wake up!'" she says.

"Seeing myself laying there..." she trails off. "I'm right here, I'm alive."

"That's not how I wanna be dead," Dominique says. "That's not how I wanna die."

This was not the first time she had overdosed.

"I died five or six times of heroin," she explains. "I just thought it was normal."

Synan texts: "Harold called. She was wanting to leave and go back to the city to see her friends."

"We talked to her and a counselor took her to a group." Hamilton, abandoning his day off, was that counselor.

Everyone is determined to help keep Dominique occupied with recovery groups. They just have to keep her grounded until they can get her to the treatment center on Monday.

Through Synan's connections, Sandra Kuehn,presidentand CEO of the Center for Addiction Treatment in Cincinnati, finds two peer mentors who offer to talk to Dominique on Saturday.

Synan throws out another idea: "I will take them to dinner tomorrow."

On Saturday, Dominique speaks with one of the peer mentors. She attends recovery groups, including one at Hamilton's church.

But during the session, Dominique flees from the church.

Harold, Hamilton and church members find her nearby. She's in a wooded area adjacent to the church lot. She surrenders to her dad.

When they return home, Warren gives his daughter a sleeping pill to help her relax. They camp out on separate sofas in the living room, so he can keep an eye on her but both can rest.

On Sunday morning, out of a sense of propriety, Harold walks to his bedroom to change his pants. When he returns, the couch is empty, the front door open.

He runs outside to look for his daughter. Frantic again, he texts: "She is gone."

It is 8:33 a.m.

Harold calls Synan, who advises him to call the police.

Erlanger police find Dominique walking in the city.

She is booked into the Kenton County jail at 10:22 a.m.

The bed at the treatment center is gone. In any case, Dominique isn't free to take it.

Three days after Dominique is released from the jail and a day before she's due at a Richmond, Indiana, treatment facility, she walks away from her Erlanger home.

Judge Ann Ruttle has ordered her locked up for 90 days in the Kenton County jail's addiction treatment program.

Dominique pulls on the issue-pink scrubs and joins a women's dormitory again. She sobs. She tells Addiction Services Director Jason Merrick that she will only speak to her father.

Soon she meets with a counselor. She'll take part in group and individual therapy. She will not get the monthly naltrexone shots in the jail.

Instead, she will get one on the way out.

Harold talks to his daughter by phone when he can. He thinks she's improving.

She likes most of the women in the drug-abuse dorm. She calls them her sisters. She starts to trust Merrick.

Her father relaxes only enough to worry whether he is back to Square One. Will Dominique be released from jail and come home only to run away again? What will he be asked to do next to keep his daughter alive?

Dominique walks into an empty classroom at the jail smiling.

She talks about experimenting with heroin at 12 and getting hooked at 14. That's about when she started prostituting, she says, so she could get the heroin she needed.

"At first, I ain't gonna lie, I thought it was fun," she says. "I'm getting all this money and, 'This is what I got for doing this,' and 'Oh, you want this for this?' "

Within a couple of months, though, Dominique says, she realized that she no longer recognized herself.

"I changed drastically. I started cussing a whole lot. I'm dropping every f-bomb there is. Lashing out at people," she says.

It wasn't like her, she insists.

The girl in her that loved herself was gone.

"I remember when I was little I used to always love being in the mirror. Like the mirror was my best friend. And then it was like every time I went to the bathroom, there was, like, I barely could look at myself in the mirror."

Street life, itsgritand danger, was just life. She now knows why: "My addiction had gotten worse."

Dominique was on her own. She'd renamed herself "Lexy" from her middle name, Alexis, a nickname she still prefers to be called.

A view of West McMicken Avenue in Over-The-Rhine, an area that Dominique previously said she ‘owns.'

"My street was McMicken. I was addicted to McMicken," Dominique says.

"At first it was scary, but after a while, you get used to getting robbed, you get used to getting fucked over, you get used to it. It sucks ... for real, it sucks when it happens, but after a while, it's just like, oh, OK," she says.

"That's just like with being raped," Dominique says. "You fight and you fight and you fight every time you get raped. But after a while, it's just like, 'oh, OK.' And you just lay there, 'cause you eventually know that if you lay there, that would make it easier, 'cause if you fight, it'll make it worse and you don't want it to be worse. So, you just lay there."

Yet, the pull of the streets was so strong that Dominique found herself trying to get back there every time she was lifted out for her own safety. She'd sleep on a porch, in abandoned buildings.

"Sometimes mylickswould want me to spend the night with them, so I would," she says. For about the last year, she lived in hotels with her then-boyfriend whom she identifies as a drug dealer.

Dominique realized, while in jail, that her dad's incessant interference with that street life she'd chosen was what hoisted her out and to safer ground.

A jail visit from two moms made that clear. Holly Specht, whose family started the organization NKY Hates Heroin after son Nicholas died from a heroin overdose, and TinaGarera, with the Kentucky chapter of nonprofit Parents of Addicted Loved Ones, told the inmates of their grief, isolation, depression and fears for their addicted children.

"I ain't never heard a parent tell their side of the story," Dominique says. "That really opened up my eyes, like, dang. 'Are parents really for real?' As soon as class was over, as soon as I got to call my dad, I called my dad. And I was like, 'Yo, Dad, I'm sorry, man.'"

"He was like, 'What are you talking about?' "

"I'm sorry I put you through all this. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I had you up all night worrying. I'm sorry I had you, as soon as you got off work, going to Cincinnati, like, driving up and down McMicken and Race and, like, looking for me," she told him, crying.

Dominique believes that her entire world is changing. And she is pushing that change.

"I did my head, shaved it," she says, pointing to the sides of her head. " 'Cause I want something different, you know what I mean? I wanna change everything that was the old me, and I want atotalnew me."

She's hoping she can get rid of the tattoo on her chest that reads, "Baby D," with hearts all around it. It was a tattoo for her ex-boyfriend, she says.

She's been told by Merrick if she finished the addiction program, he might be able to arrange the removal. He has a friend who can do it, she says.

Making this new life will be arduous. She has things she knows she can't do, like crossing the Ohio River. And things she must do, like take a bus.

"I'll learn," she says.

She must learn, as well, how to respond to a simple compliment from a stranger.

"I'm not used to respect," Dominique explains. "I'm not used to a normal life. I'm not used to waking up every day not having to get that fix. Waking up every day and not have to sleep with different men.

"I'm not used to people just calling me pretty and that just be that."

Dominique participates in a group session in a treatment program at the Kenton County jail.

The women in her jail program and the clinicians had helped her learn how to change, she says. As much as she had been ashamed about being locked up and abhorred the lack of freedom, Dominique is now comfortable in the jail.

"I'm scared, like, I'm so used to incarceration," she says. "I'm scared to go back out."

Inked on her wrist is the word "Faith." It's not a permanent tattoo, but a penned image that helps center her when she worries.

Dominique has never lost her faith.

"Whenever I feel down like that, or whatever, I just talk to Big Homey," Dominique says. "That's Jesus."

The women file into group therapy. No one is required to say anything, but when people want to talk, they introduce themselves this way: "I'm (name), and I'm an addict." or, "I'm (name), and I'm an alcoholic."

They talk about their issues and concerns. "My issue is swearing. "My concerns are, I'm nervous" or "I'm angry." The lists go on.

Then, Lexy, as her sisters call her, is invited to the front of the room. Behind her is a whiteboard and another inmate is poised near it with a black marker.

Dominique sits at the front of class as fellow 'sisters' talk about their concerns and suggestions in helping her fight her addiction.

This is how it works: Inmates can tell Lexy what they think her concerns are or should be, and they do. They can identify issues they believe Lexy has. They come up with two action plans that primarily consist of writing papers addressing the issues and concerns. They all vote on which plan she must follow.

Dominique/Lexy shifts in her chair. Someone confronts her about her posture. She shoots back, "This is me."

She looks away from a woman who is explaining why she thinks Lexy lacks respect. That prompts the woman to point out Lexy's lack of eye contact as disrespectful.

After a group therapy session focused on Dominique, fellow group members wish her well.

Words like "lack of control," "argumentative" and "attention-seeking" get thrown around.

One woman acknowledges that she does the same thing. Another adds, "I'm speaking from experience."

To questions about her future, Lexy responds that she's eager to move into a sober living home and get a job.

"I'm sure my dad can help me find a job," she says. (He will have to. The after-jail rehabilitation center requires this or 20 hours of volunteer work a week.)

Before she is through, she tells the group that she already has a circle of help waiting,peopleshe doesn't even know.

"I'm not going to be alone, by myself, for a long time out there."

A few days before Christmas, Dominique gets her last naltrexone injection in the jail, The medication will block effects of any heroin she may ingest, inhale or inject for about a month.

Harold is on his own journey. He's been taking part in a 7 Hills Church support group for families of the addicted for a while. Now he is reading "The Four Seasons of Recovery for Parents of Alcoholics and Addicts" by Mike Speakman.

From this, he says, he has learned a new word: Enabling.

He has never bailed Dominique out of jail and he has long ago stopped giving her money or anything that could lead to her ability to acquire drugs, such as a phone.

Still, he feels he has not let her go. And he needs to.

"I can't enable Dominique anymore," he says. "She's an adult."

Even so, Harold's wish is to, at some point, move Dominique away from Cincinnati. Some place that has no reminders of that street life she's lived.

"I am aware that when this heroin comes aknockin', it doesn't matter where you're at," he says. "But the driving thought behind it is to take her out of her environment. And her environment is Over-the-Rhine."

Then his phone rings. It's Dominique, she says she has three minutes to talk.

She is not happy that she has been enrolled in a yearlong residential program in Louisville called Teen Challenge, Priscilla's Place.

Gone is the idea of being in a sober living home, working and doing intensive outpatient care with medication.

The recommendation had come from Merrick at the jail. Dominique, he says, is not ready to be out on her own. But he hopes and believes she can be, he says, if she'd complete the Christian-based residential program

"I'll stay eight weeks, or five weeks," Dominique tells her father. "Not a year."

Dominique is released from jail at 8:12 a.m.

"Hi, baby," she says to Matthew, reaching up to hug her brother. She hugs her dad and chats for a few minutes.

"I need a cigarette," she says and they all climb into Harold's pickup, Dominique in the middle.

There is no rush to get there, so Harold stops for an early lunch at an Arby's. "I want curly fries!" Dominique says as she walks in.

Dominique walks out of the Kenton County jail on Dec. 29 after serving nearly three months in its treatment program.

She fawns over her tall little brother, teasing him and leaning on him and providing some big sister wisdom, including, "Being 18 ain't all that fun. That adult jail is no joke. No joke."

She opens her recovery folder, pulls out a worksheet and ticks off her fears. Abandonment, she says. Spiders. Snakes.

Dominique gives her father the names and phone numbers of two sponsors.

She feels better about herself now, she says.

"Now, every time that I look in the mirror, I tell myself I'm beautiful."

Dominique takes a selfie shortly after getting out of Kenton County jail.

Before she eats, Dominiqueprays. "Please put your hand on me," she says. For her brother, she asks, "Let him learn from my mistakes." For her father, "Don't let this kill him. Let this make him stronger."

She recites a formal prayer and speaks more personally, her head down, hands clasped, addressing "Big Homey."

During the lunch, Dominique takes a few selfies with a borrowed phone, then finds her favorite song on YouTube, James Arthur's "Recovery," and sings along quietly.

"In my recovery
I'm a soldier at war
I have broken down walls"

Before her fries are gone, Dominique looks directly at her dad.

"I'm ready," she says.

Harold drops off his daughter at Priscilla's Place at about noon.

At 5:02 p.m., Dominique walks to the front door of Priscilla's Place, signs out. And is gone again.

At 2:15 a.m., Dominique posts on her Facebook page: "Guess who back."

Harold is driving through the streets of Cincinnati, searching for his daughter. After three futile hours in the rain the night before, he has little hope.

But just after 4 p.m., he spots her.

Dominique runs at first, but Harold circles around, drives and looks, and finds her again. Dominique is walking on Whiteman, the same street where she'd overdosed in September.

She stops, but she is angry.

"Honey," he says. "Why?"

She says she doesn't want to go to the yearlong recovery program.

"Honey, there's options," Harold says. "You don't have to be out here."

Harold talks to Dominique after finding her  in the West End. She'd been living on the streets since walking away from a treatment facility in Louisville on Jan. 2. She said she wasn't using drugs, but Harold disagrees.

"I have my own place here," she tells her dad.

She won't say where. She says the police have already warned her that they'll arrest her when they get the chance.

A police officer stopped her today, she says, and told her, "'You're on my radar. We may not be able to do anything because you're in Cincinnati, but I'm just letting you know, you're on my radar, and, I will get you for jaywalking, I will get you for any little thing, to just get you locked up and get you help.'"

She's had it.

She tells her father, "I'm not on drugs."

But Harold doesn't believe it.

"Dominique, you are. You can see it in your face."

Dominique shows him her arms, to prove she hasn't shot heroin.

"I don't care where you go to treatment," Harold says, but he tells her he wants her to get another Vivitrol shot.

Dominique says she wants the shot, but there is no immediate plan.

He tells her that he loves her several times as they talk.

Dominique says she'll meet him for lunch the next day. The two hug.

Harold hugs his daughter before she walks away, back to the street life.

Back in the truck, Harold is replaying all that has happened, and trying to make sense ofit,and to think of what to do next.

"It just makes me feel as hard as nails. I just got that strong, hard feeling," he says. "It's gonna make me more determined to get her the heck out of here. And I will."

Her hands were cold, Harold says. "I was holding her hand for a moment."

"I could've snatched her up, but that would've just been bad, a.bad situation," Harold says.

"It's the hardest thing, to let your baby walk away from you, into the streets, but," he stops, lost.

Haroldwaitsbut Dominique does not show for lunch.

Mike Hummel, attorney, Northern Kentucky

Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan, director of the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition

Cincinnati Police Officer Derrick Hill

Newtown Police Lt. Shawn Breeden

Neil Tilow, president, CEO of Talbert House

Kelly Firesheets, coordinator for Interact for Health's Preventing Opioid Misuse and Safety Network.

NicoleSchiesler, certified healtheducationand prevention specialist with PreventionFirst

Nan Franks, CEO of Addiction Services Council,Cincinnat

Chris Hamilton, NKY Heroin Hotline triage outreach worker, Addiction Services Council

Maj. Charmaine McGuffey, Hamilton County Sheriff's Office court and jail services coordinator

Hamilton County Heroin Coalition

Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Cheryl Grant

John Kessler, assistant city attorney, Cincinnati

Scott Nazzarine, public defender, Hamilton County municipal court

Dr. Jeremy Engel, St. Elizabeth Physicians

Florence Medical Group

The Rev. William Wragg, Northern Kentucky preacher

Kenton County Attorney's Office

Kenton County District Judge Ann Ruttle

Sandra Kuehn,presidentand CEO, Center for Addiction Treatment

Ginny G and Nicole F, peer mentor coordinators with the Center for Addiction Treatment

Kenton County Jailer Terry Carl

Jason Merrick, addiction services director, Kenton County jail

Bethany Ball, Kenton County jail addiction services clinician

Rachel Schweigert, Kenton County jail addiction services clinician

Holly Specht of the nonprofit NKY Hates Heroin

TinaGareraof Parents of Addicted Loved Ones, Kentucky chapter

Estelle McNair, director, Tamar's Place, Over-the-Rhine, safe support for women in prostitution who suffer from addiction

AimieWilhoite, social worker, Tamar's Place

The Salvation Army Anti-Human Trafficking Program

Teen Challenge, Priscilla's Place, Louisville

Kentucky Parents Against Heroin founder Kimberly Wright, and support group members

Charlotte Wethington, the Northern Kentucky mother who initiated the Matthew Casey Wethington Act for Substance Abuse Intervention

The Cincinnati Police Department

And the 29 inmates who were with Dominique in the Women's Drug Abuse Dormitory, Kenton County jail.