At times, Stephanie Michelle Brown tried to appear tough on the outside.

But those who knew the 17-year-old Wyandotte girl said she mostly was just seeking attention - and love.

The girl who'd be the first to scream at you if you crossed her is the same girl who'd sit for hours watching movies and reading books about the Holocaust because she was so fascinated with history.

Peace symbols adorn her small pink bedroom, as do a pile of jewelry and numerous hair care items. A blanket containing handwritten messages from classmates lies on her bed, along with a doll.

Journals, where she poured out her innermost thoughts and fears, used to be in her bedroom, but are now stored away by the family for safekeeping.

When times were good, the teen was an "amazing spirit," said her mother, Melisa Haines. But when times were bad, her mom said, it was best to leave the girl alone.

"Everyone tried to help, but Steph beat to her own drum," Haines said.

It was during those down times that the teen sometimes turned to drugs.

Brown would use for a few days and then push the drugs away. But she always knew where she could get them if the urge hit her.

That temptation apparently was too strong earlier this month. And the drugs she took were way too strong for her body.

Brown was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor of the Moonlight Motel in Melvindale shortly before 4 a.m. March 16.

Her pupils were dilated and there was blood around her mouth. Though she had a faint pulse at the time, she was pronounced dead a few minutes later at Oakwood Hospital & Medical Center in Dearborn. Results of an autopsy are pending to determine the cause of death.

A 22-year-old woman who was in the room with Brown said the two drank vodka, snorted cocaine, smoked marijuana, took Ecstasy tablets and possibly consumed heroin. Police are still investigating.

Two days after burying their young loved one, Brown's family sat down Saturday afternoon with The News-Herald Newspapers for an hourlong interview - not to seek sympathy or to make excuses for the choices Brown made, but instead to share her story in hopes of helping someone else in a similar situation.

"I just don't want any more kids to die," Haines said, clutching a picture of her daughter and often breaking down in tears. "There are no words for how bad it hurts. I love our baby, and now she is gone. We don't want this to happen any more. It's so hard. I just want it to stop. I want to reach as many people as I can.

"I want the whole world to know Stephanie's name, to see her face and the hurt that the drugs caused. We wanted to get that across at her funeral. It's such a struggle. Drugs are not worth it. ... Our Steph is gone, but if we can reach others, it'd mean the world to us. Even if it's just one person. Our one person, we can't get back."

Just as any mother is protective of her children, Haines, 34, has had an extremely hard time dealing with her daughter's death, knowing what some people might be thinking.

"She was just like every other kid around here," Haines said. "She wasn't a needle-pushing drug addict. She was like every other kid, lying to her parents and doing stupid things. She wasn't a junkie. I don't want people to get the wrong idea of my baby. She wasn't some lost little girl out on the street."

Haines said she knew that her daughter smoked marijuana, but wasn't aware that she had progressed to some harder drugs.

With autopsy and toxicology reports pending, Haines said she isn't convinced that her daughter did the magnitude of drugs that the woman who was with her at the time is alleging.

"There's so much more I wish I could say, but it's an ongoing investigation," Haines said. "But trust me. The truth will come out. ... All we want to do is help. Stephanie is gone. Let's learn from her mistakes. We won't rest until there is justice."

Having to get up for work at 5:30 a.m., Haines went to bed in the early evening hours of March 15. When she awoke the next morning, she went to check on her daughter and discovered she wasn't there.

Hours later, a police officer knocking on her door changed her life forever.

"She snuck out, and this is what happened," Haines said. "I don't want people to think she wasn't loved or was allowed to be out on the streets at all hours of the night. She wasn't just let out to do whatever she wanted.

"I just don't want the wrong image out there of my daughter. That sickens me. She had a spirit about her. Every family has problems. We're no different than any other family."

That's one message Haines said she intends to champion in her daughter's memory.

"We had just put a deposit down for her to go to Baker College," Haines said. "She had a future ahead of her. If drugs can do this to my little girl right under my own watch, it can happen to anyone. It's not a game. ...

"There are a lot of people who use drugs that are good people. They are just lost. ... Stephanie didn't mean for this to happen. Stephanie didn't want this to happen. None of us did."

Over the years, Haines said, she had tried to convince her daughter to give up using all drugs. She even sent the teen to Texas for a while to live with her aunt. Professional help was never sought, however.

"We tried different things," Haines said. "My baby girl isn't someone who needed to go in because she had needle marks. There were no outward marks that things had progressed past marijuana."

Looking back is never easy to do, but Matthew Haines, 36, said he now regrets not doing more to help his stepdaughter.

"Sometimes these problems are too big to fix on your own and you need to get help," he said.

"But you hear the horror stories of kids getting into the (legal) system and never being able to get out. It's a big question mark. Do we call the police on our daughter and have her have a record for the rest of her life? ... Obviously, we would rather have her sitting in jail right now."

Since the teen's death, several of her friends have begun feeling guilty, wondering if they could have done anything or said anything that would have changed the deadly outcome, Matthew Haines said. He doesn't believe they could have.

"Her high school friends are good kids," he said. "It's nobody's fault. There's 100 people who could have done something different had they only known."

Lisa McCranie, Brown's older sister, agreed.

"It's pointless to think about that," she said. "When any accident happens ... you start feeling guilty. It comes from you being upset. But doing that takes your eyes off her, and she's the important one to keep in mind."

McCranie, who hung out with many of the same people her sister did, has been blunt with them over the last few days - especially those who now admit to having used drugs with Brown.

"I think if we keep shoving it in their faces, they will eventually get it," McCranie said. "They need to feel the pain while it's fresh and, hopefully, learn from it. ... Hopefully, this will stick in their heads that there are reactions for every decision you make in your entire life. Stuff like this is real. It's important not to forget."

McCranie, 19, said she hopes to go to Roosevelt High School in Wyandotte, where her sister was set to graduate in June, and speak to the students so they can see the reality and the finality of using drugs.

"We just want other kids to know that it's not anything to mess around with," she said. "These kids are trying to drown their problems into oblivion. It's not safe. It's not smart. It's not something that should be an alternative. They need more people to talk to and to trust. So many of these kids feel lonely and turn to drugs.

"My sister felt there was no one for her. ... We need to always tell each other how much we love each other. We need to provide kids with a shoulder. A lot of them turn to drugs because they don't know where else to turn."

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