PLANO \u2013 In early July 2003, Taylor Hooton seemed to be breaking free from the anger and depression that had dominated his months of anabolic steroid use.<\/p>\n
Crammed into the back seat of the family\u2019s rented Rover sedan, the teenager kept his parents and older brother and sister laughing at his wisecracks as they drove to an old English castle in the countryside south of London.<\/p>\n
At the end of a happy week, they flew home. Taylor, who had turned 17 a month earlier, spent most of the six-hour flight writing a passionate love letter to his girlfriend.<\/p>\n
But by that evening, the Hootons were gathered around the kitchen table to discuss a disturbing discovery: Taylor had stolen a laptop computer and two digital cameras in England and smuggled them home in his suitcase. In contrast to his steroid-fueled rages of previous months, Taylor sat quietly, head down. The conversation ended with Don and Gwen Hooton grounding their troubled son and Taylor pleading for a reprieve.<\/p>\n
About 11:15 the following morning, July 15, Gwen went upstairs to ask Taylor what he wanted for lunch.<\/p>\n
She found him hanging from a pair of belts draped over his bedroom door, a noose around his neck, the life choked from his muscular, 6-foot-2-inch, 200-pound body.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you guys,\u201d read a handwritten note on the floor. \u201cI\u2019m sorry about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Collin County medical examiner ruled Taylor Hooton\u2019s death a suicide. The Hootons say steroids killed their son.<\/p>\n
Taylor\u2019s autopsy found traces of nandrolone, a family of anabolic steroids that includes Deca 300, which the teenager had started taking about six months earlier to get bigger and look better. The autopsy also found citalopram, a drug a psychiatrist prescribed for depression, which sometimes occurs after steroid use.<\/p>\n
After Taylor\u2019s death, rumors that he was abusing recreational drugs spread. But the autopsy found no evidence of other drug use.<\/p>\n
Don and Gwen Hooton needed to know why their son died.<\/p>\n
The Plano police officers who responded to the 911 call found the first clues. Hidden behind a stereo on Taylor\u2019s desk was an American flag do-rag wrapped around two vials of clear liquid with Spanish-language labels \u2014 anabolic steroids manufactured in Mexico.<\/p>\n
As the ambulance bearing Taylor\u2019s body pulled away from the house, a detective gently inquired: \u201cMr. Hooton, did you know your son was taking steroids?\u201d<\/p>\n
There was something in the tone of his voice, or maybe it was the way he asked the question, that struck Don, a 55-year-old Hewlett Packard executive.<\/p>\n
The detective seemed to be suggesting that steroids had something to do with Taylor\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Taylor, a pitcher on the Plano West baseball team, had told his parents a few weeks earlier that he had used the banned muscle-building drugs but had quit. He had become depressed after going off steroids and even more worried about the way he looked. He had told his girlfriend, Emily Parker, that he wanted to start using them again.<\/p>\n
As Taylor\u2019s stunned friends gathered around the family in the days following his suicide, Don asked questions. Where did Taylor get the stuff? How many kids were doing it? What did the Plano West coaches and school administrators do to prevent it?<\/p>\n
The Hootons didn\u2019t have to push for answers. The belief that steroids caused Taylor\u2019s depression and suicide unleashed an confessional outpouring.<\/p>\n
The teens described how dozens of kids they knew were using steroids and who was selling them. A friend named Dustin Barnes stood by Taylor\u2019s coffin during the visitation and explained how local dealers went to Mexico to get the steroids that the Plano West boys were buying.<\/p>\n
But there were limits to the truth-telling: No one came clean about their own steroid use.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to deny it,\u201d said Mark Gomez, Taylor\u2019s close friend and baseball teammate. \u201cI couldn\u2019t tell them that I had been [using steroids with Taylor]. They knew what it did to Taylor. They were already going through so much, I didn\u2019t want to say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shocked by what he heard, Don read everything he could find on steroids. He learned about the warning signs \u2014 the irritability and the mood swings, the rages and the depression, the acne on the back and the facial bloating, all evident in Taylor\u2019s final months.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy God, this is exactly what happened here!\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cHow could all of this have gone on and we not know what we were looking at?\u201d<\/p>\n
He e-mailed and phoned experts, including Dr. Gary Wadler, an adviser to the World Anti-Doping Agency. He found studies that further convinced him that teen steroid use was an overlooked problem.<\/p>\n
But Don heard a different story from police, Plano West coaches, administrators, and school district officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey assured me that a steroid problem didn\u2019t exist in Plano schools,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Just a few years earlier, Plano had drawn unwanted attention because of a series of teen heroin deaths. Suggestions of a link between Taylor Hooton\u2019s suicide and steroids hinted at another embarrassing drug scandal in the affluent community \u2014 an uncomfortable thought for police, school officials, and community leaders.<\/p>\n
Undeterred, Don proposed a partnership with school officials to spread the word in the Dallas area about the dangers of teen steroid use.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought if I didn\u2019t know this, then our coaches and school officials might not know this, and if we could share this with them, then things could change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The idea had come to him the evening before Taylor\u2019s funeral. Standing on the funeral home porch, Don told his Sunday school director how clueless he and his wife had been about the signs of steroid use.<\/p>\n
He thought back to the idle chatter among parents in the stands at Plano West baseball games. Sometimes they would comment on the sudden muscularity of a team member and joke about steroid use. They would snicker, ignorant of what steroids could do to young bodies and minds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know any better,\u201d he said. \u201cJust like 99 percent of parents out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plano school administrators agreed to allow Don to organize steroid awareness seminars at the district\u2019s three senior high schools.<\/p>\n
More than 300 people attended the first one, at Plano West in September 2003, two months after Taylor\u2019s suicide. Many of Taylor\u2019s friends listened tearfully as Don and other speakers explained the dangers of steroids. Principal Phil Saviano \u201ccould not have been any more sympathetic or nicer,\u201d Don said.<\/p>\n
But the reaction was much less receptive at the other schools, where coaches and students didn\u2019t know Taylor.<\/p>\n
The seminar at Plano Senior High that November drew a crowd about half the size of the one at Plano West. Some of the coaches sat sullenly, with arms folded. One fell asleep, said Tom Parker, the father of Taylor\u2019s girlfriend.<\/p>\n
A Plano Senior High football player told Don afterward that his coach hadn\u2019t told the team about the event.<\/p>\n
On the eve of the Plano Senior High seminar, The Dallas Morning News published a story about Don\u2019s fledgling campaign. Dr. Wadler urged the grieving father to continue talking about Taylor\u2019s death to put a human face on steroid abuse. And he passed Don\u2019s name to a New York Times reporter.<\/p>\n
The Times published a story the day before Thanksgiving. Two days later, a producer for CBS\u2019 60 Minutes phoned Don to set in motion a story about Taylor\u2019s steroid use and suicide.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, the Taylor Hooton tragedy was getting the sort of national attention that Plano school officials and coaches had hoped to avoid.<\/p>\n
The spotlight sharpened the differences between the Hootons and Plano high school coaches and administrators. Taylor\u2019s baseball coach, Blake Boydston, told The Times that he ranked steroids \u201cat the bottom of the list\u201d of problems the school faced.<\/p>\n
Mike Hughes, the Plano West athletic director and head football coach, echoed that skepticism. \u201cI have been in the district 21 years, and I have not known of a kid that was on steroids,\u201d Mr. Hughes told The Times, a comment he has since repeated to The News.<\/p>\n
Don believed that school officials were trying to minimize or maybe even cover up the problem.<\/p>\n
Plano coaches and school officials felt that Don was blaming them for a problem that he and his wife should have spotted.<\/p>\n
On 60 Minutes in March 2004, Don went on the attack. He accused Plano coaches and school officials of ignoring the issue.<\/p>\n
A few days later, fewer than 50 people turned out at Plano East Senior High for Don\u2019s final seminar in the district. Don believes school officials and coaches encouraged a boycott.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took it as though someone was saying this was just a Plano problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThey missed the whole point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plano school officials declined to respond specifically to his criticism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s enough been said about that,\u201d said district Superintendent Doug Otto. \u201cIt\u2019s a tragic event, and I feel so sorry for them, and I appreciate their efforts to make the whole issue more of a front-burner issue for schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
He credited the Hootons with \u201cprodding us into becoming more proactive.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Don was beginning a public campaign against steroids in those first few months after his son\u2019s death, he also was pursuing a more private crusade. He wanted his son\u2019s dealer punished.<\/p>\n
A few days after Taylor\u2019s suicide, Don searched his son\u2019s room for anything the police might have missed. He found a foil packet of Clomid tablets, a female fertility drug Taylor had been taking to boost his body\u2019s production of testosterone. Steroid users commonly take the drug between cycles to ease their declines in size and athletic performance.<\/p>\n
On the back of the foil pack was a name written in black felt-tip pen. It was the first name of Taylor\u2019s alleged steroid dealer.<\/p>\n
In their conversations with the Hootons, Taylor\u2019s friends had identified the Frisco youth as one of the dealers who had sold steroids to Taylor and other Plano West students. The impressively muscled son of a wealthy couple, the youth met Taylor through his younger brother, a Frisco High School athlete who now plays college sports.<\/p>\n
Don passed the youth\u2019s name, the packet of Clomid and several needles and syringes to Plano narcotics Detective Chris Jones. During a visit to the Hootons\u2019 house a couple of weeks after Taylor\u2019s death, the detective asked to see the teen\u2019s bedroom. Don took him upstairs, through the door from which Taylor had hanged himself.<\/p>\n
Detective Jones lay down on the bed, trying to imagine where a teenager might hide a stash of drugs. He looked under the mattress. He sifted through drawers of clothes that Don had already searched. He evenshook bottles of water and opened them, sniffing to detect whether Taylor had dissolved drugs in the clear liquid.<\/p>\n
Detective Jones explained to Don that he needed more than the word of Taylor\u2019s friends that they had bought steroids from an individual. The law requires physical evidence, and that meant catching the Frisco teenager possessing or selling steroids.<\/p>\n
The detective quickly ran into obstacles. The youth lived in an exclusive gated community, which made surveillance difficult. Efforts to set up a steroid buy fizzled when an undercover officer was called away to fulfill a military commitment, Don said.<\/p>\n
The Frisco youth already had other legal problems.<\/p>\n
On July 8, 2003, a week before Taylor\u2019s suicide, Tamara Moran had interrupted a burglary at her Plano house when she came home for lunch. The burglars were “scary huge” teenagers who had sped away in a white Chevy sport utility vehicle. Based on Ms. Moran\u2019s description, her teenage son, Michael, immediately suspected a guy he knew in Frisco who was into bodybuilding and sold steroids.<\/p>\n
It was the youth who had been identified as Taylor\u2019s steroid dealer.<\/p>\n
Michael had ridden in the youth\u2019s SUV, a 16th birthday present from his parents, while listening to the vehicle\u2019s $3,000 stereo. He had seen steroids transform his 6-foot-3-inch friend “from being muscular to being huge.”<\/p>\n
Michael, a former competitive gymnast, had also witnessed the youth arranging steroid deals. They would be having lunch at Wendy\u2019s, and the youth\u2019s cellphone would be ringing constantly. Sometimes he would have three customers on hold as he arranged meetings in parking lots around Plano. Other customers would drive to where he was.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019d go out to his car, somebody would get in with him and get out in say, 15 seconds, 30 seconds,\u201d said Michael, who was sentenced to three months probation last December after pleading guilty to possession of ketamine, a drug with hallucinogenic effects. \u201cAnd then he\u2019d come back in. I knew what was going on. It got to where he couldn\u2019t hang out \u2014 he was driving all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
On July 16, 2003, facing an arrest warrant for the Plano burglary, the Frisco youth surrendered to the Collin County sheriff. That same day, the county medical examiner conducted Taylor Hooton\u2019s autopsy.<\/p>\n
Police briefly investigated whether Taylor was the Frisco youth\u2019s accomplice in the burglary but determined that Taylor had been with his family on vacation in England at the time<\/p>\n
The Frisco youth has never faced charges in the Hooton case. Police said the investigation \u201cis not closed, but it is inactive pending the development of any further leads or information.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of 2004, Plano school officials, coaches and police had put the questions about steroid use in their community behind them.<\/p>\n
But Don Hooton was just getting started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PLANO \u2013 In early July 2003, Taylor Hooton seemed to be breaking free from the anger and depression that had dominated his months of anabolic steroid use. Crammed into the back seat of the family\u2019s rented Rover sedan, the teenager kept his parents and older brother and sister laughing at his wisecracks as they drove […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"yoast_head":"\n