‘Huffing’ victim’s mom tries to save others

Angelique Flores

After losing her 12-year-old son to huffing, Renee Sherer is on a crusade

to prevent other children from making the same fatal mistake.

Tyler Pinnick died last week after inhaling fumes from a Lysol aerosol

can to get high, an attempt Sherer believes was his first.

“He was a sports jock, a computer person, not a druggie,” she said.

Now Tyler is Sherer’s angel with a message: Huffing kills.

Sherer said she plans to spread that message wherever she goes. As part

of her campaign, she plans to visit schools to show children a video

about the effects of huffing.

“I’ll go wherever they’ll take me, and I’ll start in Huntington Beach

with Ocean View School District,” she said.

A death like this has never occurred before in this city, said Lt. Chuck

Thomas of the Huntington Beach Police Department.

And Tyler’s family wants to make sure one doesn’t occur again. Dennis

Pinnick, Tyler’s father has plans to raise money to open a ranch for

troubled youth. Sherer’s sister is making T-shirts for the Promoting

Resources in Drug Education Foundation, more commonly known as the PRIDE

Foundation, to pass out to students. The group supports DARE.

“We’re just now starting,” Sherer said.And students are already

listening.

“A lot of students truly absorbed the program based on the recent death,”

DARE Officer Dave Humphreys said.

Among the hundreds of letters Sherer received from Tyler’s friends and

schoolmates, there is a letter written by a seventh-grade girl who

admitted that she and her friends had been huffing.

Several children approached Sherer at Tyler’s memorial service last week

to admit that they had experimented with huffing at school in the

bathrooms, Sherer said.

“These girls said they’d carry the cans of whipping cream in their

purses,” she said.

School officials said they are not aware of any major drug problem.

However, Humphreys said huffing is becoming a trend.

“Everybody doesn’t like this huffing stuff. It kills,” said Remington

Cox, 9, a friend from Tyler’s church. “It’s not good. I don’t want to do

it because it’s going to kill me. I want to be an architect.”

Schools are working to raise awareness about its dangers.

Parents, like Marine View School Principal Liz Williams, are now asking

their children if they are involved with drugs, specifically huffing.

Middle school teachers at Ocean View School District have brought

newspaper articles about Tyler to their classes to discuss what huffing

is and what it can do to the body.

“We’re teaching them when to break the code of silence,” Williams said.

Vista View Middle School is collecting money to donate to the PRIDE

Foundation. The school has already raised $400. Principal Kathy Bihr is

also planning a student assembly and a parent education night that will

specifically address inhalant use.

“It’s an educational moment, and we need to take advantage while it’s

still fresh,” Bihr said.

Fountain Valley School District is following suit. Drug education is

already included in the year-round curriculum in the health classes, but

officials want to do more. They sent information about inhalants to all

their school principals to include in the newsletters that are sent home

to parents, said Catherine Follett, assistant superintendent of

instruction.

“I’m very distraught and dismayed that this young man died,” said Albert

Russo, a parent at Vista View. “It was an indication that it does happen.

I hope it can serve as a way to make the danger of such actions obvious

to other kids so that he would not have died in vain.”

Some parents are surprised that children at the middle school level are

experimenting with drugs. However, Humphreys said it’s not uncommon for

fifth-graders to start using drugs --usually alcohol, marijuana, tobacco

and inhalants.Drug use usually occurs in troubled youth, but sometimes

children try drugs out of curiosity, he said. Parents should take note of

bags, rags and unusual odors in the bedroom or garage as signs of

inhalant use.