From the SALINA JOURNAL newspaper--INHALANTS RULED LIFE OF OREGON NATIVE WHO DIED HOMELESS HERE - The death Tuesday of Valerie Robertson was the final chapter of a life that had been ripped apart by a 30-year addiction. The 45-year-old Robertson's addiction was not to cocaine, crack, or heroin. She was hooked on inhalants - legal substances available at any drug or department store. Her family members, many of whom live in The Dalles, Ore., for decades had tried to break her addiction. But in one evening, in a car parked in the 100 block of South Kansas, the homeless woman's lifelong struggle ended. "She was a beautiful girl; she was just self-destructive," said Robertson's sister, Laura Crause. "When she wasn't on it, she was actually a good person." Crause said The Dalles police told her mother, Patricia Boyd, Tuesday night that Robertson had died. Her cremated remains will be sent to her family in Oregon, who will have a private memorial service. The police told Boyd that Robertson had been found with a bag containing an inhalant. Salina Police Lt. Mike Sweeney said three one-gallon containers of toulene, a clear solvent used as paint thinner, were found in the car. One of the containers was empty, the others were full. Sweeney could not confirm Robertson's cause of death until the autopsy report was received from the Wichita Forensics Science Center. "We have to wait until the results of that come back," Sweeney said. SHE WANTED TO GET CLEAN According to Crause, her sister began using inhalants as a teen-ager, after running away from home with a much older man who also used inhalants. Robertson did not graduate from high school and spent the next 30 years bouncing from town to town, all the while calling her family, Crause said. "She would call just higher than a kite," she said. "We all tried helping her. We all took her in because she wanted to get clean." But Robertson never managed to kick her habit, despite two six-month jail sentences and numerous run-ins with police. Crause said her sister lived in such towns as Jacksonville, Fla.; Montgomery, Ala.; Los Angeles; and Flagstaff, Ariz. Robertson had spent the past five or six years in Salina. Her sister said she worked at a dry cleaner when she first moved to town. Crause said Robertson had been arrested 200 to 300 times over the years, but Saline County and Salina Municipal Court records show Robertson was convicted of crimes only twice in Salina. In September 1999, she pleaded no contest to a charge of trespassing, and in December 1999, she pleaded guilty to being an intoxicated pedestrian. Sweeney said the police department could not release records of any other contacts with Robertson. Crause said that her sister was never sent to a drug rehabilitation program. "They'll send them away for crack or cocaine, but with inhalants there's nothing they can do," she said. Because most substances used as inhalants aren't illegal, police officers' hands are often tied in dealing with people such as Robertson, Sweeney confirmed. Crause said that her sister had four children, all of who were put up for adoption. Robertson was married twice. She earned her General Educational Development degree 20 years ago during her second prison sentence in Orville, Calif. AN INEXPENSIVE, QUICK HIGH Cindy Markel, clinical director at the Central Kansas Foundation for Alcohol and Chemical Dependency, 1805 S. Ohio, said inhalants are popular because they are inexpensive, easy to get and produce a quick high. Gasoline, paint thinner and correction fluid are among the hundreds of substances than can be used as inhalants, Market said. "It's so accessible and cheap," she said. "It's a pretty instant high, almost knocks a person out. It's a real intense feeling that doesn't last very long." Inhalant users are at risk for death through suffocation - huffing (using inhalants) cuts off the oxygen supply to the brain and body, Market said. The main, nonfatal risk of huffing is brain damage, Market said. She has seen teen-agers with severe problems in school who had used inhalants for only a couple of years. "It is one of the most danger our drugs in terms of the brain damage that is caused," Market said. "It's hard to believe (Robertson) would be able to function after 30 years of doing it." According to survey figures from the Salina Area Prevention Partnership, almost 13 percent of public school students from sixth grade to 12th grade have used inhalants. The area survey was taken in December. In an recent Journal story, Steve Henoch, project director of the Prevention Partnership, said three people in north-central Kansas have died in the past six years from inhalants; note was from Salina. Crause, who has four children of her own, said she wanted to use her sister's death to help educate students in her area. "It's something that needs to be out there," she said. "If I can keep one person from even trying it, I can feel I've accomplished something." Crause said that her family was saddened, but not overwhelmed, by Robertson's death. "I'm actually OK because I know she's in a better place," Crause said. "It had to have been a miserable life."