When police responded to a phony suicide call, she was in the back room of a friend's house getting high.
For years, she had chased the false escape of drugs and alcohol. At just 24, she was completely out of control.
In that moment, like a drowning victim, she reached out.
"I was begging God to help me get out and a knock came at the door," said the woman, now known as inmate 1644 at Hernando Correctional Institution. The young woman will tell the story of her decadelong struggle with substance abuse in an episode of Hernando County Government Broadcasting's Focus on Hernando called Drugs in Hernando County, an Ongoing War.
"I was tired of getting high," she said before sitting down to chat on camera with Brooksville police Detective Eddie McConnell.
"I told the cops they were here to arrest me. It seems crazy to say, but I got arrested and locked up so that somebody could grab me and stop me."
Police found an outstanding warrant for her arrest and her drug recovery began. The tale of her downward spiral, however, began when she was just 13 and trying to fit in.
"I was walking down the railroad tracks with a bunch of guys and they were smoking a blunt (a cigar filled with marijuana)," she said, dark eyes serious above a rueful smile, as she recalled her first taste of marijuana. "I thought, well, I'd better smoke or they won't think I'm cool."
She smoked pot regularly for two years, then her parents moved to Las Vegas to get her away from marijuana.
It worked. She switched to crystal methamphetamines.
After a year, the family moved back to New Jersey and the marijuana. But this time, she added cocaine and acid to her narcotic menu.
At 21, she followed her father on a move to St. Petersburg, promising to stay off drugs and save money.
For eight months, she stuck to her promise, if only because she didn't have a source to buy drugs. But working as a waitress, she was constantly exposed to other vices.
"I was a roaring alcoholic," she said. "I wasn't on drugs, but I was still addicted."
Eventually, she noticed other waitresses rubbing their noses and discovered rock cocaine. Soon after, she spent a week in a hotel room with a friend.
"I didn't call anyone. I didn't shower. I didn't eat. I just stayed high," she said.
Before long, she met a 65-year-old man who became her "sugar daddy," supplying her with drugs and money in exchange for sex and companionship.
Together, they smoked $1,500 worth of crack a day.
Now serving the fourth month of an 18-month sentence for possession of crack cocaine and solicitation to buy crack cocaine, inmate 1644 said many of her crimes, like forgery, prostitution and attempted robbery, don't appear on her record because she was never caught.
"I have no secrets," she said, dressed in chambray prison blues. "The things I did were out of desperation. You have to not care about yourself or the next person."
The hourlong program will air on Hernando County Government Broadcasting, Channel 19 at 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. today, 4 p.m. Friday and occasionally through the end of the year.
"I'm looking for it to be aired a couple of times through the holiday season because of the importance of the show's message," said Rick Fote, production manager for the station.
Though she was a high school dropout at 16, inmate 1644 now has a GED and is taking a college-level class in Web design.
"I don't know where I'll end up," she said. "But I know I can't go back to where I was."
