Empty Promises

put her down a lot. She was on edge and she lost her spark. She was very guarded around him.”
    Daniels recalled one night when he visited the Hagels and they played the board game Balderdash with Jami and Steve. “It wasn’t a fun evening…. Steve kept calling Jami useless and stupid for the way she played.”
    Jami had always loved M&M’s. Judy Hagel usually kept a bowl of the multicolored candies on the table when company came over. “Jami would go to pick them up, and Steve said, ‘You put those back. You put those back!’ And she would put them back in the dish. [He was concerned] that she would gain weight.”
    Because the Hagels had always included their four children not only in holidays but also in bowling, cards, dancing, and, of course, softball, they tried to include Steve, too. Judy bowled on a team with Steve and Jami. Bowling was one sport he was interested in.
    Jami’s brothers and their girlfriends often went places with Jami and Steve. Rich Hagel’s girlfriend, Timarie, whom he dated for ten years, remembered what an effort it was to plan an evening or a trip with Steve. Rich was one of Jami’s twin brothers and he was protective of her. “She and Rich were very close,” Timarie said. She described Jami as “fun, sweet, nice, and caring.
    “We met Steve when they came up from California,” Timarie recalled. “We tried to hang out with them. We went to Lake Chelan with them and we tried to go out to the movies, but we always ended up trying to find cocaine for Steve instead.”
    It wasn’t just the drunk driving, reckless driving, and burglaries that drew police attention to Steve. Cocaine was what drove him and made him lose control: cocaine and alcohol and sex and card rooms and power. Anyone who accepted an invitation to go on a trip or to double-date with Steve and Jami learned that much of their time would be spent in a frenzied search for a dealer when Steve ran out of cocaine. There was no question of talking to him about it; he always wanted more. Jami learned early on that if she could hold back at least some of his coke supply, Steve wouldn’t spiral completely out of control. But he soon figured out she was hiding some of his stash.
    “If he didn’t get all of it from her,” Timarie explained, “he’d yell at her and pester her until there was a huge fight.”
    Steve’s mother, Sherri, often loaned her vacation home on Lake Chelan to Steve. Timarie remembered one trip to the lake, a four-hour journey across Snoqualmie Pass from Seattle, when Steve’s addiction ruined the weekend. He drank from two-liter bottles of Coors beer as he drove the winding roads of the mountain pass. He refused to let either Jami or Timarie take over the wheel. Despite his intoxication, they arrived at the luxurious cabin safely, only to have another fight when Steve accused Jami of once again hiding cocaine from him. He stormed out of the lakefront residence and walked to the small downtown section of Chelan, threatening to catch a bus back to Seattle.
    “Rich went to get him and brought him back to the lake,” Timarie said. The Hagels’ sons tried to hide a good many of Jami’s activities from their parents. The elder Hagels already felt bad enough. Jami’s brothers hoped she might still free herself from Steve. In the end, however, Steve’s persuasive powers drew her brothers into the world of drugs, although they never got in as deep as he did.
    “The next day, Steve’s mother arrived and he stopped his tantrums about finding more cocaine. Steve could put on a good act for his mother, who naturally didn’t approve of his drug use. She put him through drug rehabilitation programs, but none of them took. Since his mother could be a significant source of money for him, Steve often fooled her. Despite his frequent arrests and the numerous charges against him, Steve spent comparatively little time in jail and slid free of most of the consequences of his lifestyle. He laughed at the justice system, bragging to Rich Hagel once that “The first two DWIs are the hardest, and after that, they lose you [in the system].”
    Steve certainly had the experience to comment on that. Between May 1982 and January 2000, Steve racked up twenty-one arrests in Washington State alone, and there was a steady exacerbation of the seriousness of the charges against him. Many of his confrontations with police resulted in fines or probation. He was the consummate rich kid who always ended up avoiding