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"Nikki's mother tells of that fatal night"

Source: Pottsville Republican/Evening Herald Newspaper
By: Maria Herne

In that moment, Carol Tassone's world fell apart.

It was in the early morning hours of Oct. 13 when she discovered her daughter, Nicole, lying on the floor and looked upon her lifeless face.

"At that moment, I suddenly became part of some awful fraternity of parents who have lost a child," she said. "If, by telling my story, I can save one child's life and save one parent from having to experience that pain, then I'll know that Nikki's death was not in vain."

Nicole Elizabeth Tassone, the only daughter of Brian E. and Carol L. Tassone, 208 S. Second St., Pottsville, was only 17 when she died, the victim of a lethal overdose of methadone.

Police allege the girl was given the drugs by a friend, Amber L. Blickley, 18, of Pottsville, between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. the night of Oct. 12-13. Blickley has been charged with possession and delivery of a controlled substance, a felony.

"The police tell me, 'Get on with your life, Mrs. Tassone'," Carol said in a recent interview, angrily recalling an investigator's words. "Get on with my life. How can I?

"There is no closure here. My daughter is dead, and the people who gave her this poison are still out there, on the streets, maybe luring some other kid to their death."

It has been almost two months since Nikki died, but for her family, the brutal reality of her sudden passing is still as fresh and raw, as if it happened only yesterday.

Carol Tassone sits at the table in the comfortable, sunny kitchen of her three-story vintage home. There are family photographs: baby pictures, school pictures and family pictures all showing a smiling, pretty child with an enviable mane of dark, flowing hair and captivating dark brown eyes.

As a little girl, Nicole smiles toothily, grinning widely for the camera. But as a teen-ager, her smile is as closed and mysterious as the Mona Lisa - a smile that she self-consciously adopted to hede the braces on her teeth.

"She was supposed to have finally gotten them off a week after she died," Carol wistfully remembers. "She was really excited about that."

More than 500 people packed Nikki's funeral at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Pottsville, to say goodbye to the girl who they had known and loved.

In the following weeks, the effusive outpouring of support that came by mail and by phone were a comfort to the family.

*Extended family mourns
Nikki Tassone was a much loved child from a large, close-knit family; she was a daughter, a granddaughter, a great-granddaughter, a niece, a cousin.

At Pottsville Area High School, she was remembered as a favorite student, a trusted teammate and a loyal friend.

"We're a very close family," Carol said. "I just don't know what I would do without my family and friends right now. I just wouldn't be able to make it."

Nikki was a paradox - quiet and sensitive one minute; joking and clowning the next.

She was also witty and gregarious. She had a determined edge to her, striving for excellence when she took on a challenge. She was an athlete, a poet and a music lover. She loved shopping, cooking and decorating her room.

In so many ways, she was a typical teen-age girl.

But some who know her only from the sketchy news accounts of the tragedy provided by police formed their own conclusions about Nikki Tassone and her family.

"It's a small town," Carol said. "Sometimes people can be cruel. I try not to let it bother me, but sometimes I just break down and cry."

Crying and praying have become a daily form of therapy for Carol, Brian and their family.

"Thanksgiving was a nightmare," Carol says. "Christmas will be worse."

*A cheerless season
This holiday season will be a stark contrast to past years in the Tassone house, which usually overflows with friends and family - "at least 50 to 60 people" - and a banquet of food.

The feast is usually followed by a night of music and merriment, with Carol at her prized baby grand Baldwin leading a sing-along or playing DJ with her state-of-the-art karaoke system.

"When she got older, Nikki would say, 'Oh Mom, that's so corny,' but she loved it as much as the rest of us," Carol laughs.

"This table - and all the countertops - would be just covered, I mean covered, with desserts," remembers Vickie Fisher, Carol's cousin, part of the family's support system during the ordeal. "Those were good times."

Carol credits her religion with keeping her sane, but she admits there are very dark days when she questions why her child - "the one who the sun rose and set on in our house" - was taken from her.

"This was not a child whose parents didn't care about her and love her," she said. "She had rules, she had a curfew. We tried to do all the right things as parents. Why did this happen?"

A popular girl, Nikki had a large circle of friends, but things changed a few months ago, when she fell in with a new group.

Worried their daughter might have been exposed to drugs, they confronted Nikki. After one heated argument, she agreed to take a urine test to prove that she wasn't taking drugs, her mother said. The lab tests came back clean.

"We just wanted to trust her," Carol said.

On that fatal night
On that fatal night, Carol was lying on the couch in the living room, suffering from pneumonia and a 104-degree fever.

Nikki came home about 9 p.m. and called out to report that she was in for the night. Two friends were with her and the three went downstairs to hang out and play pool.

Carol and Brian had transformed their basement into a recreation room, complete with a refrigerator stocked with cold cuts, soda and snacks - a secure haven for Nikki to spend time with friends.

Or so they thought.

"I felt that if I kept her close to me, kept her at home, nothing bad would happen to her," Carol said.

According to the mother, the girls sneaked Robert C. Davis, 22, into the house through a basement entrance. Police later found two empty beer bottles in the basement; Davis has been charged with supplying alcohol to minors.

"We didn't allow drinking in the house and we didn't allow our daughter to drink," she said.

Carol could hear the teens talking and laughing, music playing and the click of the pool balls - typical sounds when Nikki and her friends got together.

About 11 p.m., she called down the stairs that it was time for Nikki to go to bed, time for everybody to go home.

Nikki came upstairs to say goodnight to her mother.

"She just didn't look right," Carol recalls. "I asked her what she had been doing, and she told me she had drank a few beers. I got mad and told her we would talk about it in the morning."

It was the last time Carol would ever see her daughter alive.

The pills take hold
No one will ever really know what transpired that night, but at some point, Nikki took the pills and began to feel sick.

Blickley and Davis left, but the third friend stayed.

While Nikki was saying goodnight to her mother, the girlfriend quietly crept upstairs to the girl's bedroom. A short time later, Nikki began to feel the full effect of the drugs and suddenly became violently ill.

According to Carol, the girlfriend would later tell police that Nikki "kept saying, over and over, 'Get my mommy, something's wrong'." When police asked her why she didn't call for help, the girl replied, "We didn't know she was gonna die."

The next morning - as she did every morning - Carol went upstairs to wake her daughter for school, calling out "Good morning, sweetheart," as she opened the door.

The words died in her throat when she saw the girlfriend asleep in her daughter's bed and Nikki lying face down on the floor.

"In my heart, I will always believe that Nikki was murdered," Carol angrily asserts. "She was no angel, and yes she did put those pills in her mouth, but my daughter was no junkie; she obviously didn't know anything about what she was taking, or she would have never taken a dose that would have killed her. She made a stupid mistake, but she didn't deserve to die like that."

Nikki's presence lives
Carol and her husband, a building contractor who works part of the week in New York, are in the process of restoring their home, which was built in 1872. There are drop cloths and paint and woodworking tools scattered throughout the house - except in the "family areas," the living room and dining room, and Nikki's room.

"We did those rooms first," she points out. "You can tell where our priorities are."

For Carol, it seems that Nikki's presence is everywhere.

There's a 350-gallon saltwater aquarium near the foyer that Nikki diligently attended to every night.

"Every night, she would feed the fish, clean the tank off, take care of it," Carol said. "This was her baby. She loved it."

On the stairs to Nikki's room, Snuggles and Tessie, the family's little Pekingese dogs, scamper around Carol's feet. Snuggles sniffs the air hopefully and wags his tail.

"It's so sad, how they wait for her to come home from school," Carol remarks.

Nikki's clothes still hang in the closet, her favorite tie-dyed T-shirts share space with a cherished cashmere sweater, a present from her doting dad on one of their many shopping sprees together.

Her meticulously polished shoes are lined up in a row; Carol laughs when she remembers how Nikki's friends would tease her daughter about her obsession with keeping her sneakers white and unscuffed.

Books and magazines are neatly stacked near an impressive collection of compact discs, musical tastes ranging from classical to classic rock.

Her dresser drawers contain mementos and pages of poetry; the top is covered with trinkets and souvenirs from family vacations, all carefully arranged in their designated places of honor.

The trophies in her closet chronicle two years of basketball and eight years of karate. The athletic young woman was a starter on the Lady Tide basketball team and a junior purple belt in Tae Kwan Do.

On a bookshelf is a jade green vase containing Nicole Elizabeth Tassone's remains.

"Maybe some day, we'll pack all her things up and put everything away," the mother says softly, as she closes the door. "But not just yet."

Site Map
Article: Teen Girl Charged In Death By Drugs		Article: Methadone Claims First Victim Here
Article: Police: Methadone Prescribed Legally, Stolen From Medicine Cabinet		Article: Nikki's Mother Tells Of That Fatal Night
Article: Plea Deal Sought In Teen's Death		Article: Search For Justice An Individual Quest
Coming Soon: What is Methadone?		Community Youth Center In Memory Of: Nicole E. Tassone
Lights In The Darkness Candle Light Vigil		Coming Soon: Updates
Read The Guestbook Sign The Guestbook E-mail: NikkiMemorial@yahoo.com		Click onto the graphic above to learn more about drug abuse.

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