Drill team given LSD-laced gum
DATE 12/02/94
NEWSPAPER THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION METRO
EDITION MORNING
PAGE b01
STORY LENGTH 30 INCHES
HEADLINE Drill team given LSD-laced gum // DRUGS: Three girls
went on terrifying trips after chewing the gum,
brought by four boys.
BYLINE/CREDIT DAN FROOMKIN; DEBORAH BELGUM: The Orange County
Register
SUBJECT TERMS DRUGS:SCHOOLS:OC
.
Five members of the Marina High School drill team inadvertently
chewed Bazooka bubble gum spiked with LSD at practice Tuesday
night, sending three on frightening psychedelic trips.
The gum was left at the school gym by four boys -- two of them,
fellow Marina students -- while the girls practiced pirouettes and
jumps.
And while the gum looked innocent enough, Huntington Beach
police said small strips of paper saturated with the powerful
hallucinogen had apparently been placed inside.
Suzanne Costanzo, mother of drill team member Lisa Costanzo, 17,
said her daughter was scared to death.
"She felt her veins throbbing all over her body and thought the
bed was swallowing her up and that dead people were after her," she
said.
"I just thought I was going crazy," said team manager Angela
Salinardi, 17. "When I looked in the mirror, I was seeing things on
my face. And for a while I was laughing uncontrollably and then I
would laugh and cry at the same time."
All the girls had recovered by Thursday.
Huntington Beach police Lt. Charles Poe said two of the boys
were themselves hospitalized Tuesday night with hallucinations, and
that all four have been identified. But Poe said no arrests are
imminent.
"We have to prove that people had knowledge of what they were
doing, and that isn't always easy," he said.
Principal Carol Osbrink, on her first day on the job, said the
school will wait until police are done before taking any
disciplinary action.
Osbrink said the two male Marina students told police they found
the gum and didn't know it had LSD in it.
"They're denying everything," she said.
Parents of the girls were outraged.
"The implications are very horrific for me as a parent," said
Rosemary Moreno, whose daughter Laura Maddalena, 17, had a minor
reaction to the gum.
Moreno said, "But how much are you supposed to protect them? How
many things are you supposed to be frightened of?
"You can't warn them against everything," she said. "You think
they're safe at drill-team practice -- and from Bazooka, of all
things."
Amy Vermeeren, 17, said her trip lasted from about 11 p.m. to
about 4 a.m.
"I started seeing shapes and 3-D images in my bedroom," she
said. "We have these Christmas lights up on our house and the
reflection of the lights goes through my shutters and makes a
pattern. They were moving around and were three-dimensional. ... I
felt tingly and giggly and wide awake."
Salinardi, who was in a coma for two days in April after her car
was hit by a drunken driver, said she feared her brain injury had
returned with a vengeance.
"I saw Transformers and, like, ghosts from the haunted mansion
at Disneyland," she said.
"I tried to blink my eyes, but the more I blinked, the more
ghosts I saw. They started coming towards me and then I'm, `Mom!
Mom! Oh my God, I'm seeing things! I don't want to go to a mental
institution!'
"And she said, `Angela, you're not going to.' "
Alisyn Case, 17, the drill-team captain, said four boys walked
in while the team was learning steps from coach Amy Snell.
After talking to some of the girls, the boys gave Snell a
handful of gum, then took some back, then left.
"I just thought nothing of it," Snell said Thursday, "and
honestly I just wanted to get on with practice, so I put it on the
floor."
Practice ended a half-hour later, and all the girls left except
the team's leaders, who sat down with Snell to talk about uniforms
and plans for the coming months.
Snell spotted the gum she had left on the floor. There were six
pieces.
"I said, `Hey, you guys, I'm not going to have this, do you want
it?' and they said `Yeah.' It looked fine. I had no idea."
Four girls had one piece each; Vermeeren had two.
"It's just kind of a sad thing that you're not even safe being
on a dance team on your own campus," Snell said.
"I'm just concerned that anyone would do this to innocent
people," Case said.
Suzanne Costanzo said her daughter and the others shouldn't have
eaten the gum. "How many times have we told our kids not to take
candy or gum from strangers?" she asked.
Moreno said the lesson should be clear.
"Everybody should just not accept anything from anybody they
don't know," Moreno said. "I want others to be very aware of that."
(SIDEBAR)
What is LSD?
LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, is made from ergot, a fungus
that grows on rye and wheat, and was discovered by a Swiss chemist
51 years ago. A liquid, it is usually ingested by eating paper or
sugar cubes that have been treated with it. Although popularized in
the 1960s by Timothy Leary and others as a mind-expanding
hallucinogen, the drug has been known to lead to flashbacks and has
been connected to some deaths. Also known as "acid," LSD can
distort thinking and feeling and create auditory, visual and
olfactory hallucinations.