KENTUCKY Vs. FLORIDA: A Case Study

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L EXINGTO N WWW.KENTUCKY.COM KENTUCKY VS. FLORIDA | TIME: 3:30 P.M. | TV: CBS-27 | SPORTS, D1 CAN CATS DO IT AGAIN? John Clay discovers a football town OCTOBER 20, 2007 | SATUR DAY | UK has something to prove to skeptics BLUEGRASS EDITION 50¢ 1 WELL-WISHERS DROP IN Coach’s house stays busy A NEW DAWN? A Kentucky mother’s struggle through drug court NOWHERE ELSE TO GO By Amy Wilson awilson1@herald-leader.com In these heady days for University of Kentucky football, Karen Brooks, wife of coach Rich, reports she’s running the Brooks Bed-and-Breakfast. “I have had most of the beds filled all football season,” says Karen. “I get one group out on Sunday, and another arrives the next week. Some…show more content…
“How does that … match up with his public See POLITICS, A11 ABOUT DAWN’S STORY By Mary Meehan mmeehan1@herald-leader.com Dawn Nicole Smith gets $20 for selling an old red Nissan, the same car that took her to jail so long ago. Of that last $20 for her family of six, $6.19 goes for 12 cans of Miller Lite for her mother, Brenda Raines. It’s Valentine’s Day 2006, and before the night is over, Dawn buys another 12-pack. Dawn, 23, has been making daily beer runs for her mom in Nicholasville. If drug court knew, she’d be out of the program. She says sometimes she does it because she sees Brenda cry and shake after going too long without a cold one. Sometimes, she admits, the beer makes her mom a little easier to handle. But not today. By 7 p.m., Brenda’s eyes are red from the drinking, and dark and dead from stress. She hasn’t been out of the house for two weeks. Not since her husband, Larry Raines, went to jail on a charge of incest. The green towel in her hand is covered with rust-colored stains, and droplets from a nosebleed trickle like a line of angry ants down the front of her once-white nightgown. Sitting on the couch, she swings from happy to sappy to angry as if someone…show more content…
Brenda has wavering views on the situation. Sometimes she’s mad at Larry. Sometimes she blames the prosecutor, defending her daughter and husband as willing adults engaged in something that might be morally questionable but not legally wrong. Lately, she’s taken the position that Dawn, because she took $500 to have sex with Larry, is little more than a whore. She’s willing, she says, to tell a jury that if asked. THE SLIDE CONTINUES And the slide that started a year before with that offer of $500 continues. Dawn gets a job at KFC, but it doesn’t last long. Heavily pregnant, she can’t find another. The car she is driving, some old blue bomb, is abandoned outside the drug testing office. She’s walking several miles a day to the drug court office because people who are unemployed or not in school have to put in hours cleaning up the place. Finally, in July 2006, Dawn uses drugs and knows she will get caught. She makes up a half-hearted story but, truly, she’s tired. Tired of being a failure. Tired of not being able to do enough for her mom or her kids. Tired of hurting and of hurting other people. Getting away for a while, even if it is to

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