Of new life
Memoir credits 2 cops with her turnaround
FOR DANA Brown, the Lower East Side in the 1990s was a slow, heroin-infused slog filled with bouts of homelessness, hookups with strangers for cash, snorting coke in dingy bathrooms and waking up next to dead junkies — until two determined NYPD cops made it their mission to rescue her.
Now, more than two decades later, Brown is sober, a mother of five and ministers to drug addicts in Greenville, N.C. — and has put down all of her experiences on the streets of New York in a gritty, heart-wrenching memoir entitled “Desperate for a Fix.”
“It was very cathartic to take that part of my life and write it down,” Brown said about her self-published work. “When you use drugs, it just numbs you and you don’t think about what’s happening. When I was writing it was shocking to think that was really me.”
Brown was amazed about how quickly all the dirty details came back, from the smell of the chemicals in the dirty bathrooms she found herself in to her favorite drug spot — where the items on the shelves were so old you could write your name in the layer of dust that covered them.
But two bright spots during her time in New York were NYPD Detectives CHARLES RUPPMANN/DAILY NEWS William Burns and William Foley. After receiving a panicked cold call from Brown’s father, the two detectives made it their mission to pull her from the abyss. They spent their off days looking for Brown, dealing with her legal problems, and getting her into Daytop Village — the first step to her recovery.
Burns said helping Brown through her recovery revitalized his faith in himself — and his job.
“God works in strange ways and as long as I was still on the NYPD, I never ignored a ringing telephone ever again!” he joked.
“She’s one of the lucky ones,” Foley said. “We just gave her some support, she did all of the hard work in getting sober.”
The two detectives were named Daily News “Heroes of the Month” in June 1998 for saving Brown.
Brown hopes her book will “open people’s eyes to addiction.”
“Desperate for a Fix” can be purchased on Amazon.com