A grieving father whose teenage daughter died of an overdose in downtown Vancouver last week is speaking out to share her heartbreaking story.
Adriana Falcon’s body was found alone in a West End apartment the morning of Sept. 16. She was just 15 years old.
Her dad Rick Falcon received the news from her mother.
“We didn’t want to believe it,” he told CTV News through tears. “It was the phone call we were dreading. I just thought we’d made it through the clouds.”
Rick had been trying to rescue Adriana for years, always fearing the night she wouldn’t come home.
Her nightmare began when she was 13 years old and was sexually assaulted at a party. The trauma sent her life spiraling out of control, and she turned to alcohol and hard drugs.
Despite all she’d been through, Adriana was described by her family as bubbly and outgoing – a young woman who was full of life and liked to make other people happy.
The troubled teen even seemed to have turned a corner in her substance abuse struggles in the weeks leading up to her death.
“She was clean, she was happy, she was wanting to start school again,” Rick said. “We’d thought we’d made it through and we were really proud of her.”
But she suddenly started pulling away again, and soon ended up hanging out with wrong people once more.
“I think she felt like she just could have one last hurrah before school started,” her dad said.
Friends told Rick the night Adriana died, a man they described as a “creep” kept giving her meth.
Toxicology tests revealed fatal levels of the drug in Adriana’s system, as well as some heroin, Rick said.
The father believes her addiction could have been tackled earlier, and Adriana may still be alive, if she had attended detox. But the teenager didn’t want to go, and the family was powerless to force her.
Rick wants to see B.C. adopt legislation like Alberta's, where children under 18 years old can be sent into treatment with a court order.
“What I would like to see is [for] certain high-risk teens that meet a criteria, that there is a mandatory treatment available for them, so they’re not being found in the streets or in parks.”
In B.C., treatment can only be mandatory under certain conditions. A judge can order it as part of a youth’s sentence or under the Mental Health Act. People can also be admitted to a facility if they pose a danger to themselves or others.
Provincial officials told CTV News it's widely agreed that the best way to tackle addiction is through voluntary, not mandatory detox treatment.
Rick Falcon would like to connect with any parents struggling with addicted teens. He can be reached by email here.
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Mi-Jung Lee
