Sally, Rocco, and Cisco: To Be Continued. Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Monday, October 26, 2009

Cisco walked in the door at 6:15AM. He thought he would make it back before we woke up. He was wrong. We told him this was a violation of his house arrest and that we were taking him up to Shuman Center. He went willingly.

Fortunately, Cisco has an excellent P.O. who had all the paper work in order and Cisco was admitted within fifteen minutes. We attended our PSST meeting that afternoon. I don't remember everything about the meeting because Cisco's welfare was on my mind but one thing that stands out clear is that a parent who attended the PSST meeting talked about the death of a child, due to drugs.


I take this moment to pause and be thankful that Cisco is in the system. That he has not fatally hurt anyone including himself and that we did the right thing by taking him to Shuman.

Our son spent 90 days at a rehabilation center this summer and was home and clean for an additional 40 days, he was attending a program at Gateway Rehab, he was doing ninety 12-step meetings in 90 days, his grades were good. He has a supportive network. I wrote down these and other reasons and asked his P.O. to consider letting him come back home. It was a positive experience to explain to Cisco that we wanted him home, there would be rules and restrictions that needed to be followed but we wanted him home.

Cisco had a hearing on Tuesday.

Luckily, the judge agreed to let Cisco come home after a home detention monitor was set up.

It's curious but this is when I went onto an emotional roller coaster. I truly wanted Cisco home but began to doubt if it was the best decision. After all, what do I know about addictions? I was wondering if Cisco would make it even a day on the home monitor. He might be impulsive and run away or something. I doubted if Cisco had enough respect for Rocco and myself to follow the rules.


After the hearing, the reasons why he should be placed all came flooding into my consciousness. He may hurt someone or hurt himself. I would be the one to blame because I went to court and expressed that he should be home.

Fear and doubt led to sleepless nights and sleepless nights lead to confusion.

To make matters worse there was technical difficulty in getting the phone line into our house for the home detention monitor.

Then I came home from work one day to a message that Cisco was shipped out to Auberle and that he was safe. That was the whole message: "Hello, This is So-and-so, we have your son at Auberle Male Shelter and he is safe. If you have any questions please call 412-XXX-XXXX.

- to be continued -