A Life Lost to Heroin Addiction

Editor's note: The first of a two-part story on Huntley resident Jeannine Garriepy.

Jeannine Garriepy carries in her wallet her favorite picture of her brother. It is a black-and-white one showing him happy and laughing at a friend’s wedding.

It is a stark difference from the way he was found dead in their mother’s home two years ago.

John Yost was found on the floor with a needle in his hand. The 30-year-old was holding the cap of the needle in his mouth when the heroin hit his veins, killing him instantly, the medical examiner said.

Heroin ruled Yost’s life from the moment he tried it, his sister said.

Garriepy could not help him, though she tried for years. She was left with many questions that will never be answered. The Huntley woman has turned her energy to telling John’s story with hopes of helping others and turning the spotlight on heroin use in the suburbs.

Heroin Hits Home

Garriepy was close to her baby brother. It was always Garriepy, Yost and their mom after their parents’ divorce. As they grew up, their relationship changed. It wasn’t the typical sibling relationship because of his drug use.

He first tried pot at age 14. Garriepy is not sure when he started using heroin.

It was in 1998, as Garriepy planned her wedding, that her mom gave her some devastating news.

“I remember my mom telling me he had to go to a methadone clinic because he was a heroin addict,” Garriepy said. “I was devastated. We didn’t even know about heroin.”

Heroin use in the suburbs was just becoming a concern about that time. The U.S. Department of Justice reports hospital discharges for heroin use increased more than 200 percent in the collar counties among 20- to 24-year-olds from 1998 to 2007.

Until that time, heroin was considered an inner-city drug. Heroin use began increasing among suburbanites as young adults began traveling to Chicago’s West Side, just off the tollway, to score the substance.

Garriepy did not know her brother was using heroin. He never acted like someone who was on drugs — he was a functioning addict, she said.

“I lived in the house still and I had no idea,” she said.

The family kept the addiction a secret at first, since her stepfather was Roselle police chief. Yost was able to enter a rehab program in Hinsdale. It was his savoir, she said.

Rehab helped him for a while. He had a girlfriend, got a job driving a truck and making deliveries and he was healthy. One day, he had to make a delivery to the city. He found his way back to the old neighborhood he frequented. There, he bought some drugs and was busted in the company truck.

He went to jail, lost his job and tried detox again. It was a long cycle of recovery, relapse, recovery, relapse, she said.

“There were so many times he’d go into rehab, be clean, relapse,” she said.

At one point, he wanted to become a paramedic and actually had an internship. The addiction always would alter his path.

“It always came back,” Garriepy said. “It had a hold on him."

Downward Spiral

Yost would tell his sister not to worry. Garriepy did anyway.

She and her parents would find rehab facilities for him, would go to counseling with him and go find him in hotel rooms during his binges. Garriepy became the cornerstone of the family, also stepping in to help her mother when Garriepy's stepfather died. Yost did not make it to the funeral.

Garriepy was at her mother's side as she battled breast cancer while still worrying about Yost.

There were good times with her brother. The family trips to Wisconsin as children. One of the last good memories she has of John was during a family trip to Disney World. Her father had won the trip and took Garriepy, Yost and his youngest son from a second marriage. It was 2007.

The next few years would be hard.

There was the time Yost went downtown to buy drugs but got into a car accident. He was afraid police would find the drugs so he shot up before they arrived on the scene. He was blue when they got to him. They had to give him a shot of adrenaline to save his life, she said.

He was using again weeks before his death. Garriepy had written him an intervention letter telling him she would get him help, but she would not be part of his life. Nor could he be part of her daughter’s life.

Yost agreed to get help. Every center had a waiting list. There was no help anywhere, she said. He finally entered a program at a Hoffman Estates hospital.

“He was in the program for a few days and in true John fashion, he said he didn’t need it,” she said.

Garriepy continued to worry about him.

“I would wake up and look at the flashing light on the answering machine and worry it was the call saying he was dead,” she said.

The Call

Yost’s girlfriend had been looking for him one day in March 2009. Garriepy was at work and kept getting texts from the woman. She called her father to see if he’d heard from John, who was staying at his mom’s home with both parents. She left work, picked up her daughter and went home.

“I remember the phone rang and it was my dad. He said you have to come here,” she recalled. “I asked, ‘Why?’

“ ‘John’s dead,’ ” he told her.

Garriepy had a neighbor watch her young daughter and drove to Roselle. Her dad stopped her at the door. She wanted to see her brother, but the police told her she shouldn't to go in the room.

“I was just hysterical,” she said. “All I could think of was my mom. Then I saw her and I couldn’t stop crying.”

An autopsy showed Yost died of a drug overdose, a combination of heroin, cocaine and a prescription drug.

Garriepy gave the eulogy at her younger brother’s funeral.

“I was thinking look what this drug did to him,” she said. “We are not going to grow old together. We aren’t going to see him get married. We are not going to see him have kids. But he’s at peace.”

She, too, is at peace.

Yost’s death felt as if a 100-pound brick had been lifted off her shoulders, she said.

“I don’t have to worry anymore,” she said. “I don’t have to wait for that phone call. You just didn’t know what would happen next with John. We saw him go through hell.”

Earlier this year, Garriepy joined the Robert Crown Center Family Advisory Council to share her story with others.

She is working on getting more information about heroin out to families in McHenry County.

Garriepy hopes that the story of her brother’s life helps save someone else’s.