Word: cracking
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...such competition, Ron Rogers, 31, and his wife Lucinda narrowly missed out on a $249,900, four-bedroom house in Orange County last summer because other prospective buyers beat him to the sign-up sheet. Rogers, an information officer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now has a crack at one of 19 new homes available this week. But the price of the model he wanted has jumped to $315,900, so he is aiming for a three-bedroom, $289,900 unit...
...problem of pregnant crack-addicted women is relatively recent, and programs aimed at treating them are scarce. Thomas, a counselor to ex- offenders in Oakland for eleven years, had no model when she began her program in December 1987. But with the dramatic increase of crack-contaminated infants, she did not wait for someone else to show the way. "There was a void in the system," she explains. "People who needed help the most were being ignored." Thomas received her inspiration from the ex-offender mothers she had worked with, who fought to turn their lives around. Her plans received...
...four years since crack hit U.S. streets like hard rain, hospitals have experienced an epidemic of sick, undersized newborns. Crack affects the fetus by constricting the baby's blood vessels and restricting passage of nutrients and oxygen. Even one "hit" can cause fetal damage. At Oakland's Highland General Hospital, doctors say about 18% of some 2,400 births in 1988 were crack-afflicted babies...
...after welfare checks arrive in her East Oakland, Calif., neighborhood, Minnie Thomas sees the ghosts of mothers shuffling in the winter chill. They are emaciated from crack-cocaine binges, and their hair is wrapped in rags to hide patches where clumps have fallen out. Thomas sees them glance at the children draped carelessly on their hips, then down at the sidewalk. "A woman's eyes are a window to her soul," she says. "Those eyes tell you clear as day that they've blown their check on crack...
Nestled in a tidy, working-class area just three miles away is Mandela House, a residential program founded by Thomas over a year ago for crack- addicted pregnant women. In a cozy five-bedroom home that smells of baby powder and food cooking on the stove, fingers that recently clutched glass crack pipes now rest upon distended bellies. From a back room floats the sound of a baby's cry and a soft, throaty voice singing, "Runaway child, runnin' wild, / . . . go back home where you belong./ You're lost in the great big city...