It's a beautiful place to raise a family.
And yet probably every block there's
someone on heroin.
I was sort of the face of law
enforcement in this county.
I mostly just worked drugs.
Here I'm at work and I locked people up, and then I come home and my daughter is a drug addict.
She kind of felt like I was the enemy.
I've been a conservative person my whole
life and I believed in my entire life
that arrest and incarceration was the
answer to this drug war.
Drugs are menacing our society, they're killing our
children.
When Reagan took office, I mean he was a great speaker.
You know, we've got to win this war on drugs, drugs is ruining our country.
And you know, I bought into that.
I loved it.
I mean I loved chasing guys down, I loved when they'd run.
I loved tackling them, I loved wrestling them.
I mean I felt like I'm on the frontlines of the drug war; I mean I felt good about it.
If they had a lot of crack, good, if they had a little bit of crack good, if they just had a pipe, fine.
You know at the end of the night I wanted to have an arrest, I wanted to have a body.
My daughter was very outgoing and she was funny and she had jokes.
Brooke's childhood, I mean her and I were
exceptionally tight when she was younger.
I mean everywhere I went I pretty much
took Brooke with me and she wanted to be with me.
Usually the life of the party, even when she was very young.
I'm Brooke's stepmom so... but for me still Brooke's mom.
Around 12, 13 years old, middle school we noticed that there was something wrong.
When she went to high school I'd find cigarettes, vodka, weed.
I'm a little naive when it comes to certain things and of course her father's you know he was a Narcotics Task Force agent
So he saw all of it.
2013, the heroin epidemic started to take
off.
She was just turning 18 about that same time.
She calls me in the summer, and says, "I need your help Dad."
Which is something Brooke never said.
We went and met for breakfast and that's where Brooke told me that she was addicted to pills.
I asked her how she was affording to have it and she told me that she was selling her body to get the money to buy pills.
Brooke believed that I could make it go away, that I could fix it.
Probably five or six or seven different rehabs and halfway houses then that year.
When she relapsed again, she's out using, I knew she was staying in the trashiest motel around.
I knew she was prostituting, I knew she was stealing.
I felt like if she was prosecuted and she was given some time in jail that that might save her life.
I requested that she be prosecuted for
those charges, yes.
Four months in jail.
I remember when she came in you could just hear the whispers down the hallway.
It's Brooke Simmers, It's Brooke Simmers, It's Brooke Simmers.
Because of her dad, her dad.
He had a child that was committing the same sins of the people that he had incarcerated.
And he just couldn't get it. He couldn't
get it.
And I related very well because I was also struggling with
How do you make family members that do not have an addiction understand we are not doing this because we like it.
Who likes this misery, who wants to do this?
First the injection sites started to errupt. Then the skin would turn black.
I almost lost both of my arms.
She was released from jail.
She had been clean for months and months.
And she wanted to get high.
when you've been clean that long you can't take the same amount that you did before you went in.
She snuck out.
She drove off, and went parked, and
crawled into the backseat of her little red Volkswagen,
and took a sweatshirt, folded it up in a little ball and used it as a pillow
And she laid down and she died.
A lock of Brookes hair that I took.
Here she overdosed and died when she
got out. Maybe if she wouldn't have went away for four months maybe she wouldn't have overdosed and died.
I did everything wrong here, man.
I should have never talked to the police about nothing.
I shouldn't have put her out.
I should have just stood by her and get her into, I don't know...
I don't know what would have
worked.
I know what we did did not work.
In this drug business they say you
can love someone to death.
You can love them to death.
I feel like I did that.
20 years ago most people felt that we
need to arrest more people.
But I think most people were wrong, and I think I was wrong.
This epidemic was in the African-American community for years we did nothing about it.
She's a pretty white girl that lives in the suburbs
And I think that could possibly be why people were calling saying, "hey, how can we help, we want to help."
I now think the whole drug
war is total bullshit.
When Brooke was sober she said you know what she'd like to have is she'd like to have a sober-living house for women.
So shortly after she passed my wife and I sat down and said, you know, we're going to fulfill her dream of a halfway house.
So just a sanctuary. A place of safety.
One would come out here and
have an honest chance at recovery.
Hey Chief, thanks for coming out man, I appreciate it.
I would like to welcome you to the future
home of Brooke's House.
So without further ado, my longtime friend and biggest
cheerleader, Kevin Simmers.
I don't think anybody wants to build a house in memory of their daughter
but this is her dream and we're
gonna do our best to fulfill her dream.
And we're going to go ahead and take our
first groundbreaking here.
Thank you.
