Happy Valley

That's me hanging with my most precious gift,

my daughter, Maron.

I guess I'm a cross between a single dad and a single mom,

and I have been for some time now.

I'm privileged, I'm blessed, I'm responsible, I'm happy.

God, I love her.

She's the only little girl that I know

that, while playing dress-up,

wore my baseball cleats as high heels.

Where's her mother?

Well, it took making this movie to really answer that question.

I don't know,

but maybe every community, on some level,

resembles Happy Valley.

And the prescription was for, like, 10 of these Lortab.

So 10 pain pills.

And so I thought, "Well, you know what?

The guy just writes it with a pen.

We'll just get a pen,

and we'll just change the prescription, " you know?

And he's like, "What do you mean?

We can't write another one," you know?

So my buddy goes, "Well, let's just do this."

He took out his pen, and he's got the actual prescription.

Where it says at the bottom, "Dispense 10,"

he takes the 10, and he changes the 1 to a 7.

So instead of getting 10, it was 70 Lortab... 7. 5.

And it looked horrible.

'Cause the 10 was, like, straight up, you know?

And usually a 7 is kind of at an angle.

And so it was this... like an upside down "L" for the 10.

I mean, it was horrible. Anybody could...

So I'm going, "You got to be kidding me.

We take this in,

I mean, instantly you're gonna get caught."

He goes, "No. This will work."

So I said, "Well, you got to be careful where you take it."

So we literally shopped around to find a pharmacy

where it would be the lowest risk of getting caught.

And so we went down,

and there was a pharmacy in Mapleton that we found.

We went in there, and there was this lady

that was 104 if she was... I'm not kidding.

She actually, I think, started pharmacies in the United States.

She's the first pharmacy in Utah.

He goes in there with this stupid prescription.

It looked horrible.

This lady... I don't think she could see.

She goes, "Okay, well, youse want to wait a few minutes."

Oh, that's quite a few pain pills."

I was out in the car just sweating, waiting.

He was in there for a quite a while.

I thought, "He got caught."

I'm just waiting for something to happen.

All of a sudden I see the front door's opened.

He comes out going, " I told you! She's so old, she..."

And he got 70 Lor...

And that was the start of this whole ridiculous thing.

So if you were to look at your history...

How many drugs have you taken? Do you know?

I've probably eaten your weight in pain pills.

That's a lot.

Well, you're not a small man.

And I'm just gonna say, from this standpoint,

don't be afraid to miss a meal here and there.

But no.

And that's just a health issue more than anything.

I mean, I remember that one time you and I were in Vegas.

You about killed me

when I stepped in front of you at the buffet line.

There's no need for that, Ron.

There's plenty for everybody. That's what it is... a buffet.

I've lived here most of my life.

And there's a lot of things I like about it.

I've traveled around quite a bit, but I've always come back.

I feel like it's a safe place to raise my children.

It's a close-knit community. Our neighborhood is great.

It just has a good feel to it. Good atmosphere.

Utah's a beautiful state.

A really nice place to come to.

As they say, "The best snow on earth."

I'm not Mormon, but I like the values of the LDS religion.

I like it a lot.

Mostly because of the nature, you know?

We got the mountains 10 minutes away, the lake 2 minutes away.

It's a good place to live.

You know, it's really clean, really nice.

It's a whole lot different than back home.

Well, I would say that it goes back

to when they first came across the Plains and got here.

They wanted to build a utopian society,

which is really, really wonderful,

and it's the dream of every person on the planet to do so.

But the problem is,

is in creating the Z CMI and doing all of that,

they were isolated from the rest of the world for so long that,

generation after generation,

they created and defined their own culture.

Utah definitely has a closed mind-set.

Definitely.

Very set in their ways.

And it's this way or no way.

The alcohol laws here are just outrageously crazy.

- They make no sense. - How do they work?

I mean, such as, you know, you can walk into a bar

and you can't even buy a pitcher here anymore

unless you have more than three people in your group.

I can drink as much...

I drink a pitcher of beer,

and to me it's like drinking a regular beer to a small guy.

We're sheltered, but I'm not naive enough to say

that we have no drugs, we have no gangs,

that we don't have our issues.

We were the first black family in our neighborhood.

And, I mean, seriously,

the kids would come over to look at us, you know?

And the little boy asked my little brother,

"Doesn't that wash off?"

I do think that there's a problem with denial

with the drug use that happens here.

I grew up here.

I've gone through the school system.

I also teach in Las Vegas.

And I think the big difference is

people down there are willing to face and admit

that there's a lot of things going on around them,

where here sometimes, I think,

people don't want to believe that their community

could have a problem with that kind of stuff.

And therein lies a lot of what the problem is, in all honesty.

It comes to mind that there is a significant problem

and that a lot of people are pretending not to know

that there is a problem.

There's a part of me that wants to say that

there's no way it can happen

because of our religious beliefs and the way we raise our kids.

Yeah, there is an issue with denial in terms of drug abuse.

And it's really hard, especially in our culture,

especially with our religious beliefs,

how that's looked down upon, that kind of...

It's really hard for people, I'm sure,

that deal with drug-abuse issues,

because they don't know how to overcome it,

and they don't know where to go.

They don't want to talk about it

because they feel embarrassed or guilty.

Well, to be honest with you,

I just got released from jail today, okay?

I was in jail on a marijuana charge.

And that was two years ago, and I just avoided it till now.

While I was in there,

I saw major heroin and cocaine withdrawals

from probably 40 inmates there.

So I would definitely say that's a major influence now.

The methadone, the heroin, the OxyContins.

It is... That's the thing.

It's a pill thing. It's not your normal street.

So that's one of the difficulties.

And I think there's a part of Utah County that wants to say,

"No. That doesn't exist."

The reality of it is, it's horrible here.

Horrible.

Let's see.

This is still Christmas Day.

I had the digital camera, so I took this picture.

Right after I took that picture,

I saw this little quirk of a smile.

These pictures are all taken Christmas Day 2004.

That would be...

...the last Christmas before she died.

When she was little, it was just like a rope tied to her.

And everywhere Mom went, Amelia went.

And...

I don't know that she ever got over that.

She always understood...

We never had battles or fights or anything.

We always just, as Michael said, we just got along beautifully.

She got her driver's license.

We wanted to go buy... She wanted to get a car.

So we started going car shopping.

Well, the car she liked was a little Mazda Protege,

and it had a 5- speed transmission.

And teaching her how to drive a manual transmission

was an experience.

It took us probably a week or two

to get where she was really comfortable

and felt good about it.

- What? - Two days.

And I was the one who taught her how to drive with a stick shift.

Yes. She caught on very quickly.

But the thing that was interesting is,

she wrecked that car.

We met in ninth grade.

And we actually... I remember meeting her.

We were in French class.

And we were...

We ended up becoming partners for something.

I forgot what it was.

But we just loved each other right from the start.

If one of us were walking down the hallway,