On an outing with family to Central Market, Linda Cruz sensed a souring of her husband's mood.

She saw Reynaldo Cruz looking around, and when he stopped on Penn Square, Linda's heart sank. She realized he was no longer thinking about chicken corn soup or gummy candy by the pound. She knew he had picked up the scent of heroin.

"What's he doing?" Linda's sister-in-law asked.

"He's scoping," Linda said with despair. "He's going to hit pay dirt soon."

Newly moved to Gordonville, Linda had hoped a new place and a new start would be the impetus Rey needed to become a new man.

Maybe in small-town Lancaster County, 100 miles from the robust drug markets of Vineland, N.J., that Rey had frequented since he was a teen, he would break free from the enslaving white powder and be the kind of husband, father and provider she knew he wanted to be.

But that day nine years ago on Penn Square, Linda's hopes were dashed. Instead of continuing to Central Market, Rey stopped near the Civil War monument and scanned the scene. In the face of a passer-by he recognized the telltale look of a hard-core addict.

Rey then headed off alone, east on King Street, south on Ann. He went on to find out the only thing about Lancaster that mattered to him: It had heroin.

Linda was left with a choice. She could give up on Rey and walk out. Again and again her family pleaded with her to do just that, for her sake and her children's sake.

Linda's other option was to stay the course and try to find a treatment program that would save Rey.

Linda wasn't naive about heroin addiction, having assiduously researched the topic after the shock of discovering the man she loved was using. She knew the odds were stacked against anyone trying to beat opiates. But Linda decided if Rey was willing to do the work, she would stay by his side.

A woman of faith, Linda chose to believe a miracle was possible. As it turned out, she might have been right.

•••

Rey, known on the street as "Tily," lived hard and cheated death more than once, most spectacularly when he was 16. A New Jersey dealer hired the teen to rob a New York City drug house. The plan worked. Rey gained entry, pulled out two .38-caliber handguns and had everyone undress. He left with the drug stash and $36,000.

Six days later, as a passenger in a car parked at 138th Street and Brook Avenue in the South Bronx, Rey found himself set up. A car pulled beside him, the driver in his car fled, and two men fired wildly at Rey. Hit in the belly, the back and scalp, Rey managed to drive nine blocks to Lincoln Hospital before crashing into poles at the entrance.

After the shooting, Rey became known as "Bulletproof Tily."

Linda, who is about five years older than Rey and grew up on the outskirts of Vineland, knew almost nothing about the dangerous side of Rey but surmised he hadn't had it easy.

The youngest of five, Rey was reared in urban badlands: Passaic, N.J.; Harrisburg; the underbelly of Vineland. He didn't experience childhood so much as a world of hurt. At an age when other boys were playing with Hot Wheels and Star Wars action figures, 8-year-old Rey was given a bag of drugs and told to take it to the man on the corner. With the money dealers gave him for shuttling cash and drugs, Rey bought his friends candy.

Because he grew up where drug use was the norm, Rey fell, almost inevitably, into addiction's clutches. It was on his 12th birthday, at the coaxing of a cousin, that Rey used heroin for the first time.

"He hit me" with a needle, Rey said, and it was instant euphoria. "When I did that bag, I forgot everything, the chaos. Everything was gone. It was my beach, my island. I didn't wake up (the next day) with a craving, but I woke up thinking I can't wait until I do it again, because it was good."

It was when Rey was on the cusp of his teen years that his path and Linda's crossed. She was 17 and a friend of Rey's older sister. Linda often visited the Cruz household, and Rey was attracted to her warmth and genuineness. He came to think of her as a big sister, one who actually took an interest in him. Although Rey had girlfriends and sold drugs, he hid those interests when he was talking with Linda. On the street, he was Tily. With her, he was Rey.

When Rey was 14 or 15 and Linda was almost 20, Rey's mother asked Linda to take him in, keep him out of trouble and get him back in school. Linda tried to keep after him for a few weeks, but Rey was untamable. Detention in a juvenile facility only slowed him down. He'd get out and go back to the action.

Only when he became an adult did the justice system lower the boom. At 18, Rey walked into Garden State Youth Correctional Facility. By the time he walked out, he was 25.

Those seven and one-half years behind bars changed Rey in two ways: He came out wanting nothing more to do with selling drugs; he also came out longing for an end to being lonely.

On returning to Vineland, Rey sought out Linda. His timing was perfect because Linda was in the midst of ending a bad marriage. Linda discovered she had feelings for Rey, and what had been a friendship turned to romance and a committed relationship, with Rey pledging to support Linda and taking on two and then three jobs.

But Rey's secret addiction unraveled his intentions.

"One day he would be on top of the world. The next he would be miserable," Linda said. "When I was about 6 months pregnant, I started noticing (Rey's) weight loss, the grogginess, the running, the hiding. I went to his sister and said, 'What's with him?' She was like, 'Didn't you know?'

"Didn't I know what?"

" 'He's using. He's at it again.' "

The news shook Linda's world. She was alarmed at what Rey's addiction might mean for their future and the future of their soon-to-be-born son. She also was furious at Rey for deceiving her.

Linda chose, however — as she would choose again and again in years to come — to stand by Rey as long as recovery remained a possibility and he vowed to work at it. She went on to marry Rey and to build a marriage on a hope he could beat heroin. That hope would be tested.

Rey, as an adult, didn't use heroin to escape life. He used it to stave off the agony of withdrawal. A morning without drugs to inject was an ordeal of feverish sweats, stiffness, burning, bone-deep aches and nausea leading to vomiting acid from an empty stomach.

He sought to push a needle into a vein and feel a pain-relieving glow surge through his weary body and momentarily sate his craving. Rey knew he would have a couple of good hours, time to go to work or to spend with his kids. And then the sickness would begin to fall over him once more and he'd retreat to the bathroom to shoot his next fix, as long as he had been able to obtain it.

Rey needed 12, 13, 14 fixes a day — at $10 a hit — to keep the sickness at bay. He suffered, and he despaired in seeing how he made Linda suffer.

Because Linda controlled the family finances, Rey, when he wasn't working, had to ask her for money to support his habit.

"I would tell him to leave the room" when he needed cash, Linda said. "I would lock the door and put something underneath the door to make sure he couldn't see where I hid the money."

At times Rey grew so desperate for cash that he went behind Linda's back, took a game system or other household item and sold it on the street for a quick buck.

Shame came to define Rey. He abhorred the track marks extending the length of both arms. He was depressed at having to inject himself again and again. He was horrified when his preschool-aged son discovered needles in a bike pouch and tried to stab his younger brother.

Rey prayed for a miracle like what happened to a friend who woke up and wasn't sick.

"I would be poking myself in the bathroom, crying and praying, 'Please, God, please cure me like that,' " Rey said. " 'I'm tired. Why do I got to keep suffering?' "

But there were no miracles. Linda sought rehab programs for Rey, and he'd sign himself in. Relapse inevitably followed.

Rey returned to heroin after a three-month stay at faith-based Teen Challenge near Pittsburgh. He returned to heroin after stays at a White Deer Run facility, at Nuestra Clinica, Bowling Green Brandywine, Maryville rehab in New Jersey and other programs. He'd return to the same programs and try again, always with the same result.

Twenty-one times Rey entered treatment. Twenty-one times he relapsed.

"You name the program, I took him there," Linda said. "The one thing I always told my husband: As long as there is breath, there is hope. Did he use that day? Yes. But every day was an opportunity."

Linda believed it was a chronic sickness, not maliciousness, that drove Rey to do bad things. She took pity on him just as she would on anyone suffering from a debilitating illness.

"I would sit there and think, If this was my last day with him, how would I spend the day?" Linda said. "Would I fight with him? Would I yell at him? If he did die (from an overdose), he could go knowing someone did truly love him. Somebody did everything they could, even going beyond the call of duty, to help. That's pretty much what made me stick it out. Besides the fact I love him. I love him to death. He's my world."

•••

In April 2008, Rey, 36, and Linda Cruz, 41, residents of the 300 block of Beaver Street, experienced a turning point. Rey started taking a daily dose of methadone, a synthetic narcotic that deadens his brain's hard-wired craving for heroin and squelches the sickness and pain that drove him to do whatever it took to get a fix.

Now a middle-aged man, Rey is finding it's possible to wake up feeling normal and not be consumed by the scramble for cash and drugs.

Linda put aside her bias against methadone — trading one drug for another seemed wrong to her — but she was at the point she couldn't go on.

"I was ready to give up," she said. "I wasn't asking for a divorce, but I didn't want to be with him, either. Every day there was a lie. Every day something was missing."

Rey's first 30-mg. dose of methadone at Addiction Recovery Systems off Rohrerstown Road had no effect. Rey continued to shoot heroin that day. The second day he downed 40 mgs of the pink liquid. He still needed to shoot dope.

But at 70 mgs, Rey found he wasn't craving heroin or getting sick without it. He made sure he got to the clinic each morning at 5, when it opened, to down his dose, which rose to 160 mgs.

And each day he stayed clean.

He would come home, make breakfast and play with the kids, Rey Jr., 11, Isaac, 9, and Eliana, 6. Some days he walked to Linda's workplace, not to pester her for $10, but to simply say, "I love you," and then go.

"For the first time in our marriage, we could plan to do something," Linda said. "We went out to eat because food started to interest Rey. For Isaac's (8th) birthday that year, we went camping for the weekend. Just to be able to wake up and have him not asking me for the money, not having him passively-aggressively doing things, it was wonderful. All because of this little bit of liquid. This little bottle holds my family vacations, my sanity, my trust."

Adam Kegley, head of Addiction Recovery Systems, which treats 370 patients at its Lancaster facility, said that while Rey is a model patient, relapse remains a possibility.

"All the time, people (treated with methadone) become normal, and they get their lives back," Kegley said. "But they remain patients. They're not cured. There is no cure. But with the proper clinical attention, you can keep the disease in remission."

On a Wednesday morning, six methadone patients took seats around a table in a conference room at the ARS offices for a weekly support group meeting.

Rey, a compact, bearded man wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and a snug knit cap, stood and welcomed everyone. He and 46-year-old Joey Shaeffer, also in recovery, saw the need for mutual support, and the clinic agreed to make the room available for the new group's weekly meetings.

Rey moderated the discussion around the table, letting people share as much or as little as they felt comfortable doing. One woman described how she no longer suffered from depression after she started on methadone. A young man talked about tapering off an anti-anxiety medication.

"I'm proud of you, dawg," Rey said. "You come a long way."

Few have come further than Rey.

Back home, as his children played Wii, Rey's thoughts were on the future. He wants to earn a graduate-equivalency degree and become a barber.

Linda said methadone has freed Rey to work on personal issues long covered up by addiction.

"He still struggles," Linda said. But in those struggles, she sees growth.

And her hope is Rey finds opportunities to encourage suffering addicts and the people who love them.

"I always tell Rey, 'Your life wasn't coincidence,' " Linda said. "'Everything has a reason behind it. I think it's important that you share and give people hope.' "

jhawkes@lnpnews.com