“We’ve grown up with this family,” Brodland said, adding she’s lived in the same house, across the street, for 34 years. “I watched them get into drugs and spiral downward.”

She said years ago she was close to that family. Linda Lomnick, the grandmother, asked her to take her grandson, Chris Buck Jr., now 23, and granddaughter Jane, 12, not her real name, to church and have them baptized since that family also was born and raised Catholic.

“They’d live with us if we weren’t across the street” from parents Jodi and Chris Buck Sr., Brodland said, adding Children’s Protective Services would not allow it because of the close proximity.

Instead, she said Chris Jr. became an addict himself while Jane was taken away from her parents and went to live with foster parents. They loved Jane so much they wanted to adopt her. But when another foster child of theirs took an inoperable antique gun out in public the foster kids were taken away from them.

Jane now is living with an uncle in Spokane. “She’s a trooper,” Brodland said.

Brodland knows firsthand about problems drug addiction can cause. She ended up adopting her own granddaughter, who is 11.

“We adopted our granddaughter because of a drug situation. Her dad, our son, used heroin. It’s almost impossible to be free of that hideous drug,” she said.

Because of her closeness and compassion for the situation, Brodland said she looks at addicts living on the streets differently than most people.

“I see someone’s son her daughter,” she said.

Because her granddaughter lived with her since she was a toddler, Brodland said Jane was always at their house.

“They would go to church every Sunday and sing in the choir,” she said. “They were nicknamed salt and pepper.”

When she lived with the foster parents, they would let Jane come over. “We’re trying to keep that bond,” she said.

Even now they are trying to connect with the uncle.

“He doesn’t know us, and he may not want her to connect with the old neighborhood,” Brodland said.

Brodland said both Jane and Chris Jr. were taken out of school after the third grade because their mom didn’t want to hassle with it. Brodland said she tried to get CPS involved but Jodi just said the kids were being home-schooled.

They weren’t. So Brodland said she bought some home-school educational materials, and Jane and her granddaughter would “play” school when they were together.

Of Jane, Brodland said, “She’s smart,” adding she has caught up in learning with the foster parents and now with her uncle.

The Brodlands send their own granddaughter to a private Catholic school.

“We tried to protect her in all of this as best we could,” Brodland said. “It makes us sick that she can’t go out and rollerblade or ride a bike.”

Brodland said she feels sad not only for Jane, but also for her older brother. It was the only house he’s ever lived in, and he was kicked out when it was boarded up March 31, and now he’s homeless. He came by their house the night before.

She said she and her husband Loren offered once again to pay to get him treatment.

“He declined our help,” she said. “You can’t force him, but I wish I could.”

She said the only time she’s seen him sober in recent years was after getting out of a stint in jail.

“He was all excited, but just went to using again,” she said. “He never had a chance.”

“Now he just stares at the floor, so defeated,” she continued. “He’s a victim who grew up to be a perpetrator.”

Brodland is upset with the kids’ mom.

“I’m so mad at Jodi,” she said, adding she started using drugs at 13. “Drugs were more important than her own children. Jodi was never able to break free from drugs, and she didn’t want to.”

Brodland also said she was mad at Jodi’s mom, Lomnick, who died of a heart attack in 2012 and left the house to Jodi.

“She enabled her (Jodi) for years,” Brodland said.

While upset and sad about the family, Brodland said she is happy for her neighborhood.

“They took two dead bodies out of that house,” she said, adding that cars were broken into, and there was always drug traffic in and out of the house with 26 drug raids there just in the past year.

“It’s been horrible for the neighborhood,” she said. “I watched this family be destroyed by drugs.”