"Her addiction devastated our family, and we are all reeling from the shock waves that it has created," said older sister Margaux Lodge, a Salt Lake-area sales representative. "It's especially hard that we never even got to say goodbye to her. She just died all skin and bones, like a neglected animal left to fend for itself in the wild, and there was nothing we could do."

Lodge wonders if she could have saved her sister had she known more about meth addiction. She, her sister Annette Baird, a registered nurse, and their mother, Mindy Ruhlmann, are determined to not let what happened to Monica happen to someone else's sister or daughter or mother.

Lodge and Baird are among dozens of people who, after reading the Deseret Morning News series "Generation Meth," shared their personal experiences with the drug. Some want to know how to help addicts and their families.

They don't know exactly how to go about it, but the sisters want to bring attention to Utah's meth scourge. If that means making phone calls to policymakers, talking to schoolchildren or starting a support group, they intend to do it.

Sharing Monica's story, they say, is one way of raising awareness.

Monica displayed the classic signs of meth addiction — weight loss, boundless energy, deep sleep, irresponsibility, child neglect, crime. But as Baird said, "None of us wanted to believe it."

Family members did try to rescue her, but she refused to be rescued.

A family intervention was met with vehement denials. Pleading with Monica to get help and even driving her to a treatment center failed. They couldn't get her to face meth addiction.

"It happened so quickly for her. She never really got a chance to hit rock bottom. Bottom was . . . ," Baird said, stopping as Lodge finished the sentence, "Death for her."

The sisters and their mother worried that she was slipping away. "You could just feel it when you were around her," said Ruhlmann, who as a nurse midwife is used to seeing life begin, not end.

Monica's son, Caleb, who now lives with his father, told his schoolteachers his mother was already dead. Asked why, he replied, "I knew she was going to die."

Maybe Monica knew it, too.

On Wednesday evening, the family, including Ruhlmann and husband Mark, sisters Baird, Lodge and Lorien Lyde, brother Neil Baird and three nieces spent the evening sifting through Monica's belongings.

The sentimental woman kept everything from kindergarten to high school, Primary to Young Women's of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They tearfully read her journals and leafed through her photo albums.

Ruhlmann discovered in a spiral notebook a letter Monica wrote to her son, the third such letter the family has found since her death. Another was folded in her wallet.