"Over the last year and six months I have been following the life, or rather death, of a local homeless man. Six months ago he was a panhandler outside of ZCMI Mall. He looked like an average, everyday, take-off-a-semester college student looking for some change to get a cup of coffee. There wasn't anything that was overtly eye catching about him. Every day for two weeks I saw him begging money from people at the same spot. After two weeks I saw that he had smoked (meth) and had meth bumps all over. He asked me for money and I said no. He was going to spend it on drugs. He went berserk and started yelling at me about how difficult it was for him to find work, how he was from California and waiting for his Social Security card to come through.

"I walked away knowing this was a lie. At that time he looked undernourished, but not too bad. Over the summer I saw him lose about 45 pounds. He is maybe 22 years old, but his skin had that awful grayness and his eyes were sunken in. I saw him about a month ago at 12:30 a.m. on the corner of 400 South and Pioneer Park. He was prostituting himself. He had bleeding gums, bloodshot eyes and no semblance of humanity left. He was 'the walking dead.' He was tweaking and very jittery. Beyond that sadness, as I waited for the light to change to green, a car pulled up and propositioned him. I haven't seen him since than. I can only assume he is dead." — Catarina Reyes, juvenile probation officer, Salt Lake County

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"In our home, we used the picture as well as some of the facts in the article to educate ourselves further and teach our children about the horrid effects of this evil." — Kari Wahlquist, South Jordan

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"I just wanted to write in and let you know how painful it has been to watch the terrible demon that is crystal meth take the life of my beautiful baby sister . . . I wonder if awareness and education will be able to help gain more funding to create more programs and shelters for people who need help desperately, so they won't get turned away due to lack of space. I know that I will forever dedicate my life to doing just that. How can it be that our country, the land of the free, spends billions of dollars on war and aiding other countries far away from here while we don't even have enough aid for one little American girl who is scared out of her mind to get the help she desperately needed to stay alive. Her family and her son, who now has to grow up without his mother, will be asking that question for a long time to come." — Margaux Lodge

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