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A cry for help while we all sit and watch
© St. Petersburg Times Last week I was out of touch with my daughter for almost 48 hours. She lives in North Carolina, and an ice storm had knocked out her phone and, I read in the news, her electricity -- along with that of a million and a half other people. (Yes, like every living human under 30, she has a cell phone. Naturally, it wasn't charged.) It was a terrible storm -- worse, I read, than the hurricane in 1989. I had talked to her last Wednesday evening. The store where she works had closed early -- at 4 instead of 10, and her drive home had taken her an hour instead of the usual 10 minutes. Trees were bent over under the burden of the ice, crashing down onto the power lines. The roads were a mess. As she would find out later, one of the casualties was the mother of her boss'close friend, killed in a car accident during the storm. No electricity means no heat, and, in her case and the case of most people, no stove. Power might not be restored to many homes for a week, I read. People were being advised to leave, if they could. And it was cold. On Friday I turned on the TV, anxious to find news of the storm and the power crisis. I turned first to CNN and saw there was some courtroom proceeding going on, and before I switched the channels, I noticed the words "Ryder fined $5,000." I figured it was Ryder, the company, and that for such a tiny fine they really hadn't done anything Enronish enough to be televised. I switched to MSNBC and then to Fox News, and there was the same courtroom, but this time I recognized a pretty face. It was, of course, Winona Ryder. The movie star. On three news channels. Unless you have been in a coma for the past several weeks, you are aware that Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting a bunch of stuff from Saks in Los Angeles. We already knew it was outrageously expensive clothes and laughingly outrageously priced hair bows. We already knew she had paid for a lot of the outrageously expensive stuff, but for some reason had chosen to cut the sensors off the rest and leave the store with it. We also knew a jury of her peers, including a man who'd produced several of her movies, adjudged her guilty. What I'm getting at is this wasn't even her trial! She was being sentenced, that's all. Live. On three news channels. I have to say Ryder looked exceptionally lovely -- what skin! -- for someone soon to have her own probation officer. But really is this news -- I mean big news? And if so, why? Are we so thrilled that someone richer and more beautiful than we are got caught that we want to watch her get sentenced on TV? Let me tell you, it did not thrill me. Nor did it thrill me to learn that -- and we're not supposed to know this, but of course it leaked out -- that Ryder's handbag when she was arrested contained in the words of the prosecutor, more painkillers, including morphine, than are prescribed for someone who is terminally ill. And a syringe. And that she'd gotten 37 prescriptions for painkillers from 20 doctors in the past year. This is not something to be thrilled about. I don't like to say it, but the same thing has happened to someone close to me -- a beautiful girl, drugs, shoplifting. It was part of a cycle of mental illness and addiction that took years and years to properly address and to fight. Ryder has to pay back Saks -- no problem. And in addition to probation, she must get psychological and drug counseling. This is no small thing. The cure rate for addicts is very low. It can be a long, long process that zigzags rather than moves directly forward. In some cases, it's a matter of learning how to live for the first time. Perhaps the shoplifting was a cry for help. If so, I hope she gets it. As for my daughter, it's a simpler story. She lost power for 24 hours. She was cold -- but she's fine. -- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com. City Life appears on Saturday.
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