Drug Ring Takes Toll, But Neighbors Unite

Taylor Gibson knew she was in trouble the night she crashed her mom's car on the way home from Washington, D.C. How, she wondered, could she explain to her parents why she had stolen the car and driven from Centreville into the city? As she sat, one idea after another running through her head, the answer came to her: just tell the truth.

"I eventually decided that the best way to distract them from the fact that I had stolen their car and crashed it was to tell them that I was a heroin addict and I needed help," said Gibson, "and that’s why I stole the car. I intended to seek help and detox so I wasn’t physically dependant on heroin anymore." 

Despite her decision to go to rehab that night three years ago, Gibson wasn't ready to completely give up on drugs. 

"I figured after I went there and my parents thought I was fine that I could just recreationally do drugs and it would all work out in my favor,” she said. 

But when she arrived back at her house that night, there was an unpleasant surprise: the police were there, and they had a search warrant with them. Inside her room, they found drug paraphernalia. That night would mark a turning point in Gibson's battle against addiction. 

Neighbors band together after tragedy

Gibson told her story to a group of a couple dozen people at a Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) meeting held at the on Tuesday night. She was joined by Greg Richter, whose daughter Anna also overcame addiction, and Greg Lannes, whose daughter Alicia died at the age of 19, following a heroin overdose. Alicia's death, within months of several others in Northern Virginia, set off a chain of events that eventually led to an FBI investigation, "Operation Smackdown," and the subsequent, highly-publicized conviction of 16 people on federal charges—the "Centreville heroin ring."

Determined that some good come out of the experience, her parents and neighbors joined together several years ago to help raise awareness and support families. The group is called Parents Reaching Out to Educate Communities Together (P.R.O.T.E.C.T.). They tell Alicia's story, and their own, to communities in Northern Virginia, hoping that the harsh reality will open eyes.

"Though her life could not be saved, the death of her is going to save other lives," Greg Lannes said of his daughter, a grad who wanted to go on to pre-med studies. "That’s the strength that we get, my wife and I, and we hope that we spark the community and others to get involved and do more."

Lannes, an assistant football coach at  and a  grad, urged people to speak up and not be afraid to become involved. 

“We need to help our kids," he said. "It starts at home, it starts with our teachers, it starts with our community, coaches. Everybody that’s involved with these kids. If you see something, tell a parent, at least, make them aware of what you see.”  

Those who were most culpable for Alicia's fatal overdose, in the eyes of the law, received over 20 years in federal prison. Their trials and her death were highly publicized. But the story still retains all the power of the heartache that tore through the community just a few years ago. 

Alicia's story

At 5:30 a.m. on March 5th, 2008, the phone started ringing in Greg and Donna Lannes' house. As they scrambled from their sleep to answer it, a loud knock came at the door.

Outside, there was an ambulance and emergency workers from the police and fire departments. They said a young lady inside the house was in trouble. Immediately, Greg and Donna knew that it was 19-year-old Alicia. They ran down to her bedroom in the basement, but it was too late. She was lying on the floor next to her bed, after having overdosed for the final time. 

"My daughter always tried to get rid of her demons. She wanted to live. She really did," Lannes said. "She was a great student, she wanted to go into premed, graduated with 18 college credits. Had the world ahead of her—except for the demons that were dragging her down."

Alicia's problems had started long before her fatal overdose; she had turned to heroin as a way to self-medicate, her father said. She was brutally raped at just 14 years old, while on a trip to California. She kept it a secret for several years and tried to commit suicide at the age of 17. A psychiatrist diagnosed her with PTSD and severe anxiety. Her problems got worse in her junior year, when her boyfriend, Skylar Schnippel of Virginia Run, introduced her to heroin. 

Greg and Donna tried everything they could think of to help their daughter regain a normal life. Alicia enrolled in the Virginia Commonwealth University. Donna even moved down to Richmond with her, knowing that her daughter couldn't be alone—and wanting to keep her away from Schnippel. Eventually, though, Alicia moved back to Northern Virginia, then back into her parents' home in Centreville. She had treatment at a rehab center; they said they believed she was not addicted, but should look into the reasons why she was self-medicating. She got a job at Greg's company; finally, it seemed like things were looking up, she told her parents.

In the early morning hours on March 5th, Alicia began taking heroin and sending text messages to Schnippel, who had given it to her. But then she stopped responding. For an hour and a half, he called her, finally sending two friends to check on her. They looked through her bedroom window, saw her lying on the floor, and drove to a pay phone to call 911. They wanted to call anonymously, so they wouldn't be tied to anything. Only at that point did the knock come at the Lannes' door.

In the months following Alicia's death, police set up a task force set up to investigate those involved in the heroin ring. The FBI became involved as the investigation began to cross jurisdictions. Charges were upgraded to the federal level for everyone involved, including Taylor Gibson and Greg Richter's daughter, Anna.

A father's struggle

Though in the beginning Richter couldn't pinpoint the exact problem, he knew something was wrong with his teenage daughter, Anna. She had gone through some hard times, with several friends dying young. Though they tested her for drugs, she passed them all, her father said. They eventually got her into short-term treatment—but it wasn't enough.

One night, things hit "rock bottom," he said.

"I found my daughter, about one o'clock in the morning, in a hospital in Baltimore," Richter said. She "had an overdose right out on the streets of Baltimore, had gone up on her own, had purchased heroin, had snorted it right there in the car, had passed out at an intersection with her foot on the brake and the car running."

That's how police found her, he said, the car ransacked and her money stolen from her purse. So Richter brought her back home. 

"At six o'clock in the morning she's sneaking out of the house and going out and getting high again," he said. At that point, he and his wife knew that it was "beyond us," he said. 

That's when a neighbor called up, saying he had a similar experience. He offered to chat. Richter sat down with the neighbor, who listened and then said Anna needed long-term rehab.

"My first reaction was...'I can’t afford that,'" Richter recalled. "His answer to me was, 'well can you afford her funeral? Because that’s the choice you’re going to make here. You’re either going to act on this thing or you’re going to bury her.' That was the choice, that was the stark reality that hit me in the face." 

That night, Richter and Lucy convinced their daughter to go to treatment. They eventually found a 90-day treatment center for her. Anna stayed much longer—six months. The treatment took every penny they had, and then some. But it was worth it. 

"She was in bad shape when we got her there. But at the end of six months, we got our daughter back," he said.

Lessons learned, the hard way

It was a long road for Taylor Gibson, too. She had a typical suburban background, attending , and then . She had a lot of freedom as a teenager, because her mother had been ill with a brain aneurysm. She started using drugs at age 17, starting out slowly: first weed, then psychedelic drugs, and finally, heroin.

Though Gibson was initially afraid to try such a hard-core drug, the fact that her friends were able to shoot up, seemingly without consequences, emboldened her. A month after she used it for the first time, she was arrested on charges of intent to distribute. The charges were dropped, but her parents gave her a drug test. She failed it, but convinced her parents the cause was Percocet, a legal prescription drug.

"I suffered no consequences from my parents or from the legal system," Gibson said. This was the second time drug-related charges against her were dropped. 

So Gibson continued to use heroin, which was supplied to her free of charge by her drug-dealer boyfriend. The addiction would wreak havoc on her life. 

“I just quit going to work because it was getting in the way of my doing drugs. He was paying for my drugs, so it just seemed like it was a waste of time,” she said. She enrolled in VCU, then dropped out after a few weeks and returned to Fairfax County, miserable that she couldn't find any drugs. 

Nothing deterred her, she said: not when her boyfriend was arrested over and over again, not when friends died from overdoses. When her boyfriend was arrested for a final time, she needed a way to support her habit, Gibson said, so she started buying drugs and reselling them to friends. 

But it wasn't until the night she crashed her mom's car that she started making changes. She went to treatment for two weeks, but was kicked out for using while she was still there. On the day that she got out, she found out that the charges against her were going to federal court. 

The trial was a wake-up call. Gibson went to jail for 30 days, was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and is still serving the five years of supervised release. She stopped using drugs and a month after she was sentenced, quit drinking.  

"I've been sober for over two years," she said, to applause from her audience.

Likewise, for Anna Richter, things started looking up after her trial. The judge gave her a lenient sentence, saying that she was a success story and had clearly rehabilitated herself. She was sentenced to 60 days community confinement. Anna has stayed sober, away from Northern Virginia and has since become a sponsor for others with addictions, Greg Richter said. 

Richter stressed that parents shouldn't doubt themselves if they think something's amiss. 

"Chances are, if you’re a parent, there’s a God-given instinct. Trust it," Richter said. "We felt this was going on, we tried to verify it many, many times and couldn’t. But we knew there was a problem.” 

He'd also advise parents to just get their children the help they need, without worrying about what other people might say.

"You’re going to be amazed that when you do act on it, the number of people that are going to come out and say, 'you know, we saw this,' or 'we’re here to support you for what you’re doing,'" Richter said. 

Gibson, Lannes and Richter have shared their stories countless times over the past few years, hoping it will help others.

“No matter how many times that I speak to the public, it never gets easy," Lannes said. "But there’s somebody that’s watching over me along the way, giving me the strength.”