Carol Maciuba keeps replaying the voice mail message, grasping for any connection to her 17-

year-old grandson, Matthew S. Rybinski:

&#8220Hey, Gram, it&#8217s Matt. Call me back when you get this message. Call me on my cell

phone. I love you. &#8217Bye.&#8221

Less than 24 hours after leaving that message, on the afternoon of Dec. 2, Matthew died

from an apparent heroin overdose in his Lancaster home.

The five-second voice mail message and an urn of his ashes are the only tangible reminders

that Maciuba has of her grandson.

&#8220Heroin just overtook him,&#8221 she said. &#8220It&#8217s such a powerful thing. He

lived for the next heroin fix. He was obsessed with it.&#8221

Matthew Rybinski&#8217s death puts a human face on heroin addiction and other drug use

among young people in Lancaster — and in virtually every local community, suburban or

urban.

&#8220I don&#8217t think it&#8217s unique to Lancaster,&#8221 said Charles H. Tomaszewski,

agent in charge of the Buffalo office of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. &#8220I

just think it&#8217s a problem in most suburbs in Western New York and across the

country.&#8221

The Erie County medical examiner&#8217s office investigated 64 fatal drug overdoses from

Erie, Niagara, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties in 2009, according to Health Department

public information officer Kevin P. Montgomery. Eleven of those 64, including Matthew, were 25

or younger.

&#8220These are 11 kids who didn&#8217t need to die,&#8221 said Dr. Anthony J. Billittier

IV, the county health commissioner. &#8220That&#8217s the frustrating part of all of this.

Kids aren&#8217t supposed to die. . . . They&#8217re risk-takers. They don&#8217t perceive

their own mortality.&#8221

Friends and relatives say that Matthew, who attended Lancaster High School until November

2008, took a fairly common drug path — moving from marijuana to painkillers such as

Lortab and OxyContin to snorting and then injecting heroin.

Matthew wasn&#8217t alone in &#8220graduating&#8221 from painkillers to heroin.

Why the switch?

Because a heroin habit is much cheaper to feed than a painkiller addiction.

&#8220That progression of abuse is something we see everywhere,&#8221 said Dale M.

Kasprzyk, DEA group supervisor. &#8220They transition from the OxyContin to the heroin,

because it&#8217s so much less expensive.&#8221

Maciuba, who feels that she has nothing to lose as she grieves over her grandson, has harsh

words for Lancaster High School and the local police.

&#8220Trust me, Lancaster High School is nicknamed Heroin High for a reason,&#8221 she

wrote in a letter to The Buffalo News.

She remains upset that Lancaster police, although given names, addresses and phone numbers

of Matthew&#8217s possible heroin supplier, have yet to make an arrest.

Authorities have a totally different view.

Lancaster police Capt. Timothy R. Murphy, chief of detectives, doesn&#8217t think it&#8217s

fair to call the high school Heroin High.

&#8220There are students involved with drugs, but the ones with serious drug issues are

approximately 5 percent of the high school population,&#8221 Murphy said after conferring with

the Police Department&#8217s high school resource officer. &#8220So we&#8217re talking about

maybe 100 kids. Those individuals are being monitored by both the Narcotics Unit and the

school resource officer.&#8221

Lancaster police, while not willing to say much about their investigation into the source

of the heroin that killed Matthew, sound optimistic that they still can trace that supply

line.

&#8220We have received tips following the death of Matt, and every tip we have received has

been followed up,&#8221 Murphy said. &#8220We have spent a lot of man-hours on this and

involved other police agencies, but we haven&#8217t been able to prove where the heroin came

from.&#8221

Lancaster&#8217s drug problem

No one denies that Lancaster has a drug problem. Town officials have gone public about the

issue, in an attempt to throw more resources at the problem there.

In 2007, the town hired three new police officers and created a two-member Narcotics Unit

to deal with what authorities called a dramatic increase in the number of drug investigations

in the previous two years. The police force also has two full-time school resource officers,

one in the high school and the other in the middle school. Police have lobbied for and

received between $44,000 and $50,000 in grants in each of the last four years to combat drugs.

And the Lancaster schools have a reputation for seeking full prosecution for anyone caught

with drugs on their campus.

&#8220The Lancaster school system is very proactive, so sometimes it seems that

there&#8217s more of a problem here than in other communities, which I do not believe to be

true,&#8221 Murphy said.

Town officials and Matthew&#8217s family and friends agree on one point: that painkillers

and heroin remain the drugs of choice for young people in Lancaster with significant drug

problems.

How does someone get hooked on heroin, though?

Kids, often in their early teens, typically start with marijuana or a painkiller taken from

their parents&#8217 medicine cabinet. The problem is that a drug user starting with a 5 mg

tablet of Lortab or OxyContin often looks for a better high and may graduate eventually to 80

mg pills.

The rule of thumb is that those pills cost roughly $1 per milligram. So 80 mg tablets can

cost anywhere from $60 to $100 each on the street.

Appeal of heroin

&#8220OxyContin is a strong pill, but it&#8217s ridiculously expensive,&#8221 said Dustin

Pericak, a Lancaster High School senior who described himself as Matthew&#8217s best friend.

&#8220You build up your tolerance, you need more and more of it to get high, so some kids

actually have a $250-a-day habit.&#8221

That&#8217s when young people start stealing from parents and friends, or selling their

clothes and DVDs. Some even turn to selling drugs to finance their habit.

Drug dealers often prey on the hooked user&#8217s desperation, as described by a Lancaster

police detective who has handled several drug cases.

&#8220So the supplier says, &#8216I&#8217ve got something better for you. Here&#8217s a bag

of heroin for $15,&#8217 &#8221 the detective said.

Heroin apparently has less of a stigma than marijuana among young people, as evidenced by a

comment from one drug user to that detective a couple of years ago:

&#8220I don&#8217t smoke marijuana. Are you kidding me? I&#8217m an athlete. I started with

heroin.&#8221

Tomaszewski, from the DEA, called the pills a &#8220gateway&#8221 to the street drugs, such

as heroin and cocaine.

&#8220Once you start messing with street drugs, you don&#8217t know what you&#8217re

getting into, and overdoses do occur,&#8221 he added.

Matthew&#8217s family members have been told of the possibility that the heroin that killed

him could have been laced with some lethal ingredient.

&#8220If somebody sold him heroin laced with something, then it&#8217s murder,&#8221

Maciuba contended.

Dustin, Matthew&#8217s good friend, described the lure and danger of heroin, compared with

pills.

&#8220Heroin is so much cheaper, it&#8217s a better high, and it&#8217s so addictive,&#8221

he said before sharing a haunting comment from his friend. &#8220Matt would tell me the only

way to describe [injecting] heroin is you feel like God.&#8221

Dustin doesn&#8217t think Matthew&#8217s death has had a chilling effect on other young

heroin users.

&#8220Nothing&#8217s changed,&#8221 he said. &#8220If anything, the people who use heroin

are looking for the same [batch] Matt took. They think they can get that high without

dying.&#8221

Maciuba&#8217s husband, Dennis, a retired Cheektowaga police officer, put it another way:

&#8220Once it hooks you, you&#8217re done.&#8221

That&#8217s exactly what happened with Matthew.

Dustin described Matthew as &#8220your average funny, popular, goofy kid that everybody

loved.&#8221 Like Eddie Haskell, from the old &#8220Leave It to Beaver&#8221 television show,

he was a charmer, often greeting friends&#8217 parents with comments about how beautiful or

fit they looked. Some teachers, when he was younger, called him the &#8220class clown&#8221 on

his report card.

Charming but complicated

Matthew enjoyed taking a playful dare, like the time he rode a skateboard in broad daylight

without most of his clothes. And he didn&#8217t fit the stereotype of a heroin user, according

to Dustin, who called him well-dressed and clean-cut.

But he acknowledged that his friend was complicated.

Carol Maciuba talked about her grandson&#8217s strong will. As a young boy, maybe 5 years

old, he walked off the baseball field after his time at bat, because he was there to swing the

bat, not play left field.

&#8220Matthew was so strong-willed,&#8221 she said. &#8220I couldn&#8217t believe that

someone with such a strong will and so stubborn couldn&#8217t fight the drugs.&#8221

Without getting too specific, Maciuba said her grandson had emotional problems because of

some family issues.

&#8220He took the drugs to get away, to escape the hurt,&#8221 his grandmother said.

&#8220I even asked him, &#8216Why do you do this?&#8217

&#8220He said, &#8216Grandma, I do it to escape the pain.&#8217 &#8221

Maciuba said her grandson&#8217s death has devastated his family.

&#8220I can&#8217t tell you the pain,&#8221 she said. &#8220We sit in this house, and we

can&#8217t function. Nothing can ever make this better. I would give my life to have him back.

&#8220But we can&#8217t fix this.&#8221