Portrait of Jeny

The airport job didn't work out, and Rosy moved to a temporary gig as a customer-service agent at the Aurora Mall, then to a better-paying job at American Linens, doing inventory control. She moved her family out of Aurora and into a big house in the Swansea neighborhood, but when that proved more than she could afford, she moved everyone into a basement apartment right up the street. Rudy was in daycare, and Carmen and Jeny took the bus to Swansea Elementary School.

Back in Colorado, Rosy would occasionally call Sam to ask his advice about their youngest son. She knew that Sam had a new girlfriend, but she still loved him.

In the spring of 2003, Rosy's employer wanted to send her to a seminar in Wisconsin, and she needed someone to watch the kids. Without giving it much thought, she asked Sam to come to Denver.

For a while, my Dad was the perfect dad. He spent so much time with us and he got back with my Mom, which was cool. We got involved with the school basketball team and were in Girl Scouts. But that didn't last. They got on drugs again, they argued all the time. All of a sudden we weren't allowed to go outside. We could not answer the phone or even look out the window. My sis and I were locked up in our room. We didn't go anywhere. Not even to do laundry. We hand-washed. We had one friend that knew what we were about and helped us out. She convinced my Dad to let us out. She invited us places. She was truly our best friend. But my sister was my only friend through all this.

It was hard living. We barely had enough food to eat. Constantly we ate Ramen noodles. And food pantries helped a lot. Our clothes were dirty. They were hardly ever washed, considering we didn't have much to start with. Our shoes weren't any better. We walked with holes and dirty socks. We were in middle school. It was embarrassing. At times, I felt there wasn't much to live for.

At Kenton, Jeny had gotten back together with Luis. But boyfriends were against her father's rules.

"Boys are no good," Sam told his girls. "Boys are disease."

"You guys wanted your dad," Rosy said. "Your dad has rules, too."

One rule was that the family needed to stay on a budget. The girls loved it when Rosy would take them out in her Honda, open the moonroof and cruise to 7-Eleven for Slurpees on payday, but Sam didn't like to splurge. At least he was bringing in money: He'd found work with a laundry service and at Ross Dress for Less, where he could buy his kids clothes and toys.

The rules went out the window one night when Sam and Rosy went to Hollywood Legends — a now-defunct club on West Sixth Avenue — for Old School Fridays, their regular getaway when they had enough money for a babysitter and a few drinks.

"We had one too many," Rosy remembers. Driving home, they saw a guy at a Colfax bus stop and gave him $25 for some crack. The guy ran across the street with their money, and as Sam chased after him, a cop passed by. The guy who'd taken their money flagged down the cop and said Sam was trying to rob him. The guy was a Colfax regular, and the cop knew it was bullshit, but he still patted down Sam and Rosy and ran their names.

They were clean. The cop left, and Sam and Rosy went down the street to get something to eat. They ran into the same guy again. Sam told him he could keep the $25 if he'd just find someone who could score them some rock. Eventually they got their drugs, got home and got high.

It had been three years since Rosy had smoked crack, but it soon became a weekend thing, something they did when they went out. Then they stayed in to do it. Then they did it all the time.

"If there's money, why not?" Rosy remembers thinking. "You can't beat 'em, join 'em. And that made it easier for me to get high."

As a fifth-grader, Jeny was deep into DARE drug-awareness training. She'd come home and read her DARE literature, and even asked Rosy if any of her aunts or uncles used drugs. Rosy told Jeny about one of their friends using meth, which was pretty obvious to everyone. And while Jeny never talked to her parents about their drug use, that was becoming pretty obvious, too.