Drug Crisis Hits Home At Illinois Paper p. 9

By: Mark Fitzgerald

In his death, 37-year-old Bob Green confronted the
Northwest Herald with a series of hard questions sp.

TO HIS CO-WORKERS at the Northwest Herald, Crystal Lake, Ill., reporter Bob Green was shy and something of a loner.
On the job, they knew, he was a hard worker, generating tons of copy, never missing a deadline and eagerly volunteering for overtime.
After hours, colleagues were a lot sketchier about Green.
They knew he liked to drink. A lot.
And he, apparently, had some money problems.
But New Year's Eve, Herald journalists learned that there was another Bob Green.
This one was found dead in a pool of bloody vomit surrounded by remnants of a crack cocaine and heroin binge.
This Green had been living in a home that local police had under surveillance as a "crack house."
This Green ? it became clear in the days and weeks after his death from a drug overdose ? feared violent retribution from drug pushers yet returned to them for their wares again and again even as he recognized that cocaine and heroin were destroying him.
And in his death, Green, 37, confronted his paper with a series of hard questions.
How could his colleagues have been ignorant of his sordid double life? Had he been trying to reach out to them for help?
And ? having covered the growth of drug use in McHenry County, 40 miles northwest of Chicago ? what would the Herald tell the community about the death of its reporter?
At first, the paper simply published a small, low-key article about the death, mentioning a police investigation but noting that an autopsy had not yet officially established the cause.
Editor Mark Sweetwood, however, said the paper quickly determined to do more ? especially because Green's death haunted the staff.
"Over the weekend and at the funeral, people started exchanging stories
. . . and realized that a lot of people knew something that raised questions or concerns," Sweetwood said in a telephone interview.
Green, for example, had inquired ? on behalf of "a friend" ? about drug rehabilitation. He also had been caught going through a colleague's home medicine cabinet. And he owned handguns.
"Everyone had a piece of the guilt trip," Sweetwood said.