VISTA - They were too young to fully understand what their mother was doing when she went into the garage, but they knew it was bad.

"Don't go in the garage," they sometimes would plea to their mother, Cebrina Alcaraz. Heartbroken, Alcaraz would turn a deaf ear and turn away from her children, too weak to escape the dark pull that was leading her away.

"I'd just tell them to pray for me," she said, remembering what she told her children as she shut the door behind her.

Inside the garage of her Vista home, Alcaraz smoked methamphetamine. By then, the drug she once had used while partying with friends had lost its allure. She didn't want to use anymore, but she didn't know how to quit the highly addictive stimulant. "It got to the point to where it was all I could think about," she said. "I couldn't wait until I could go into the garage and take another hit."

Meth already had cost her a good job, but even that wasn't enough to lure her away from the drug. It would take losing something far greater to finally open her eyes to what was at stake.

Jan. 10, 2006. A Tuesday. Eleven a.m.

Alcaraz recites the date and time precisely, as though recalling a historical moment that changed the world. She already had taken her oldest children to school and was parked in the driveway with her youngest, Uba, about to drive to a hardware store to buy a part for a routine home repair when the police cars arrived.

They had come for her husband, Jonathan, who was in violation of parole because he had not enrolled in a drug-treatment program he had agreed to attend.

"This whole time, I didn't think I was going to be arrested," Alcaraz said.

But when drugs were found in the home, officers contacted the county Drug Endangered Children program, which sent someone to the house.

What happened next is a violent blur for Alcaraz, who still sobs when talking about it. The program worker wanted her to sign some papers, and Alcaraz refused.

"She asked me hand over my daughter, and I said no," she said. "I tried to run."

The worker grabbed Uba from Alcaraz's arms. There was a struggle, and Alcaraz admits she became combative. The next moment, Alcaraz was face-down on the ground, an officer's knee on her back.

"I thought about my kids and everything I was going to lose," she said.

As she lie on the ground with her mind recalling the years of drug use that had led to that moment, one other thought consumed her.

"I'm through."

The road down

Sitting in her Vista apartment, preparing for the holidays by decorating a Christmas tree with her children, the ordeal seems a lifetime ago.

The worst day of her life has become a day she could not have lived without.

"I honestly believe if I hadn't been arrested, I'd still be out there messing around," she said.

Her slide into drug addiction was not a nightmare of dysfunction, abuse and homelessness. Up to her two weeks in jail last year, Alcaraz had never been arrested. She was an addict, but always had her children. While she lost at least one job, she always had a roof over her head.

But she knew it would end badly, as it had for her parents, both heroin addicts. Her father, who died of cancer 10 years ago, had spent time in prison for drug possession, she said.

"He was in and out of prison from before I was born," she said.

Her mother, who died of a drug overdose in 1985, was in prison when Alcaraz first began using methamphetamine, she said.

Why didn't she heed these warning signs about drug abuse?

"I was just young and stupid," Alcaraz said.

She had smoked pot and drank a little as a teenager, but she did not try meth until she was 20, she said, when it was offered to her from a man she had known back when the two attended Alta Vista High School together.

"I'd be able to stay up for a couple of days," she remembered about her early days of using the drug. "I had a lot of energy. I could clean and go on forever."

After snorting it for about four times a week for a few months, Alcaraz said the energy was replaced by paranoia.

"I locked myself in my room and thought everybody was out to get me," she said. "I swore the room was bugged."

Barricaded inside a room and with her aunt outside the door trying to coax her into eating, Alcaraz began to realize that she couldn't handle the drug. She moved in with her aunt in San Marcos to get away from the drug environment around her.

"I didn't want to use drugs anymore," she said.

But Alcaraz said she had a wild streak at the time. Despite a move to and from El Paso, Texas, and stretches of sobriety that lasted up to two years, she eventually fell back in with her old crowd and began using meth again.

In 1991, she married her boyfriend, Jonathan. Their first child, Elias, was born 16 years ago, and Alcaraz said she began three straight years of sobriety.

Her husband, however, did use, she said. When he was arrested for drug use, Alcaraz said, she reconnected with her own friends and relapsed.

"I just wanted to drink and snort crystal and be a mom sometime," she said. "I knew it was wrong."

Alcaraz said 1998 was a low point. A mother of three by then, she was working as a health unit secretary at a hospital and earning decent money, but was irresponsible. She said she was fired just three months into the job for repeatedly being late or absent.

It was a wake-up call, she said, but one that didn't last. Her cycle of sobriety and relapse continued until that January day in 2006 when police arrived at her home.

The road back

"I remember I was walking home from school and a lady told me to get in the car," Alcaraz's son Jonathan, 10, said about the day his mother was arrested. He saw Uba crying in the back seat of the woman's car and got inside.

The five children were sent to foster care.

"It was weird being in foster care, because I didn't know the people, but they got us clothes while we were there, and toys," Jonathan said.

The court later allowed Alcaraz's in-laws to take their grandchildren in, and while she was relieved her children were with family members, she said she also was surprised by how strictly her in-laws followed the court's rule to allow her only one hour a week to visit.

Those days were frustrating and heartbreaking for Alcaraz. The visits were awkward, she said, and her children seemed distant.

But in fact the roughest part was behind them, and they now had a chance to truly bond.

"She wasn't really there," Jonathan said about the days when his mother was still using. "She wasn't really with us."

Alcaraz also admits that at times she was there physically for her children, but not always emotionally.

The family has wrestled with those issues at counseling sessions that were required as part of the reunification plan.

"There's a lot of support out there," she said.

She said she found the strength to stay sober through her faith and a 12-step program, and she learned that she was not alone through group counseling sessions.

"I know there were a lot of other women there who battled with meth," she said. "I didn't know there were so many."

On Sept. 19, 2006, another date she easily remembers, Alcaraz regained custody of Uba. One month later she regained custody of Elias, Adriana, Ricky and Jonathan.

Alcaraz filed for divorce in June 2006, and her ex-husband is serving a seven-year prison term. She completed her court-ordered programs in February of this year, and the drug-using friends from her past are out of her life, she said. Alcaraz now works as a phlebotomist and hopes to buy her own home in the near future.

"I want my kids to grow up and thrive and have a good life," she said. "All I can now do is put my best foot forward and show them the right way."

- Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.

'Meth' on TV

• On TV: "Crystal Darkness," a 30-minute documentary on methamphetamine addiction, airs at 7 tonight on KOCT Channels 18 and 19, Time-Warner Cable Channel 13, KPBS Channel 11, KUSI Channel 9, KGTV Channel 10 and Channel 4 San Diego. It airs in Spanish at 6:30 tonight on Azteca America, Channels 12 and 15.

At 7:30 tonight, KPBS will air "Methamphetamine: From the Streets of San Diego," an investigation into the local history of the drug. At 8 p.m., the station will show, "Meth Next Door, an Envision Special," which includes a piece on Vista resident Cebrina Alcaraz, whose story appears (RIGHT or LEFT) in today's North County Times. At 8:30 p.m., KPBS will air the "Frontline" special, "The Meth Epidemic," about the rise of methamphetamine across the nation.

• Online at nctimes.com:

Go to nctimes.com to chat from 6 to 7 tonight with NCT reporter Gary Warth, who has led our groundbreaking coverage on the toll of meth addiction.

• In person: An airing of "Crystal Darkness" at 7 tonight at the Bread of Life Rescue Mission, 1919 Apple St., Oceanside, is to be followed by a "town-hall" meeting to discuss drug treatment resources and other issues. The Spanish version of the show will be shown at 6:30 tonight at North Inland Community Prevention Program, 818 E. Alvarado St., in Fallbrook.