Walt Volkenannt was just a big kid. Thirty years old, and he had not grown up. Think of him as one of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan.

He had friends. By all accounts, these friends were more mature than Walt. Of course, they were young, and I am not suggesting they were models of responsibility, but they were much more responsible than Walt. That fact gave Walt's parents some hope.

Last December, Walt nearly died from a heroin overdose. 

His parents, Walter and Donna, were shocked. That is, the reality of heroin shocked them. Their only son had always been afraid of needles. Besides, you think of heroin and junkies, you think of miserable people living in squalor. Walt was very much the product of the upper middle class. His family lives in St. Peters. They have a weekend place in Osage County.

So when their son was hospitalized about a year ago, they were stunned. Heroin? Then again, it didn't come totally out of the blue. In 1999, Walt had gone into drug rehab. His folks had gone to Europe, and when they came back, some stuff in their house was missing. The sort of stuff you could sell or hock. Walter and Donna figured somebody from his new crowd - they were trouble - must have taken the stuff. Don't bring those kids around anymore, Walter had told his son.

By the way, that was a sign. Their son's old friends had quit coming around. Walt's folks didn't like his new friends. They figured they were druggies. More than just pot, too. But what else? Maybe pills. That's what Walter and Donna would have said.

At any rate, Walt went into rehab. He seemed positive about it. He completed the program.

Still, he didn't have much going on in his life. He had not been a super-motivated kid, and that was continuing into his early adulthood. He had done OK in high school at Fort Zumwalt South. His big thing in his teen years was skateboarding. After high school, he worked at this and that, but nothing serious. His dad finally challenged him to get off the sofa. Either get a full-time job, or get a part-time job and go back to school, or move out. Walt joined the Army.

That was not what his dad had expected. Walt did not complete his hitch in the Army. He was injured and was given a general discharge.

After the Army, he remained adrift. Then there was the business with the missing stuff, and the drug rehab. That seemed to work - except his old friends, the ones his folks liked, never did come back. And even though he was working, he never seemed to have any money. Then he got picked up for shoplifting.

So when he had that overdose last December, his parents were shocked, but they weren't. It's easy to look back and see that things were spiraling out of control, but then there was this - Walt had not really changed. He had remained fun-loving, and nice. Smiling and laughing. It was not what Walter and Donna would expect from a junkie.

He spent five days in intensive care and then almost two months at a VA hospital, and when he finally came home, he was in a wheelchair. He had very nearly died.

That overdose and near-death experience seemed to change everything. For one, his old friends rallied around him. He was with the good kids again. Also, he seemed to have more resolve about working. He got two jobs. He worked at a steam table at an Italian restaurant, and he worked for a siding company. He seldom went out at night, and when he did, he was with his old friends.

In October, he went to the Paul McCartney concert at Savvis Center. Walt called his mother from the concert. "Listen," he said, and she heard McCartney singing "Yesterday." It was, Walt knew, one of his mother's favorites.

Sixteen days ago, Walt died of a heroin overdose. Who knows why he went back to the stuff? It was not from lack of love.

His parents buried him at their place in Osage County. It is, they say, a peaceful spot.

E-mail: bmclellan@post-dispatch.com