michelle (misha) nardone
(1990 - 2008)

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General Details

Name:	Ms michelle (misha) nardone
Nick Name:	Misha
Gender:	Female
Age:	17 years old
Lived:	Sunday, 9 September 1990 - Tuesday, 13 May 2008

My Story

Beloved Michelle Nicole Nardone(misha)

Michelle Nardone embraced her work as a slaughterhouse victim at a Halloween haunted house in Wading River, where every fall her bloodcurdling scream echoed through the dark fantasy.

The job suited the teenager from Rocky Point, who preferred her nickname, Misha. Her propensity for the edgy is displayed on her bedroom walls, where intricately drawn butterflies float among scrawled slogans and song lyrics, some whimsical, some profane. Mounted near the bed is a cross made of two hacksaws.

Since their daughter's death in May from an apparent heroin overdose, Misha Nardone's parents have labored to understand what happened. They feel Misha's death might have been prevented if those who knew her friends, parents, counselors had somehow shared information. The couple avoids looking through an album of photos collected after her death. In image after image, Misha's green eyes look out in an intense but remote stare.

"That's exactly the look she would always give us," said her mother, Lauren, holding a portrait drawn of her 17-year-old daughter. "You could never tell what she was thinking."

The eyes hid a lot. After the family moved from Selden to Rocky Point when she was 13, she became moody and erratic, her parents say. She began cutting her skin, hiding the scars with clothing or armbands. More than once, Misha punched a hole in the wall. There were explosive fights with her parents, visits by police, and an attempt to end her own life.

Misha began smoking pot and drinking with friends in middle school. As a freshman at Rocky Point High, she was caught with ground-up prescription pills. Before that year was done, she was forced to transfer to a Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services school in Bellport. For a time, Misha attended an afternoon outpatient program and later entered an inpatient facility at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital. The problems persisted.

Over the next two years, Misha befriended kids from treatment groups she felt were, like her, struggling at the fringes, Lauren said. Some made their way to Misha's home. "Michelle would talk to them all night, and they'd feel better," she said. "She was drawn to these kids who didn't have a lot of other people helping them."

Over the last six months or so, Misha seemed to improve. She took more interest in her appearance, and she made the honor roll. She was affectionate with her 6-year-old brother. But among the good news were signs of trouble. In February, she told a school counselor that she'd tried heroin. She complained of fatigue, sometimes sleeping 15 hours at a stretch. Her eyes were red, and she complained of nausea. But drug tests she agreed to take came back clean, and she "was a good actress," Lauren said. "I think now she was living a double life."

On May 30, Misha went on a school trip to a water park, then shopping with her mother. After work, she drove up to her house about 10:40 p.m. then left again. She returned in the early morning hours, waking her mother to ask for help getting up the next day.

Late the next morning, Lauren found her daughter in an upstairs bedroom, dead.

Today, Nick and Lauren struggle to understand Misha's life and death. "If you could have put all the pieces together with what we knew and what the counselors knew and what [her friends] knew and these other people knew, I really believe she'd be alive today," said Nick, an electrician with the Long Island Rail Road.

His tone swings between remorse, anger and admiration. "She was a unique person. She wasn't a conformist she hated conformity," he said. "She wasn't a fearful person, or I guess her fears were well hidden."

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Biography

Fathers Name:	Nicholas Nardone
Mothers Name:	Laurne Nardone
Siblings Names:	Brian Nardone
Country of Birth:	USA
Country of Residence:	USA
City of Residence:	Rocky Point
Marital Status:	Single