Missing Her Last Chance Addict Killed 2 Weeks After Missing Ride To Seattle Rehab Center

Tina Langford wanted to escape crack cocaine and a bad relationship. Her getaway car waited at the curb.

But Langford arrived too late, a few minutes after the counselor who begged her to enter drug treatment gave up and drove to Seattle alone.

Two weeks later, on Saturday, Langford lost any chance of escape. Police found her shot in the head. Her boyfriend is charged with murder.

“Tina’s favorite words were, `You hang around a barber shop long enough and you’re gonna get a haircut,”’ said her sister, Donna Langford. “And that’s what she did.”

Tina Langford hung around the barber shop off and on for several years. Once, she managed to stay away from crack for three years. Recently, she put almost two years between herself and the drug.

Friends said Langford, 29, longed for sobriety. But, perhaps even more, she longed to provide a family for her little girl, Keyana.

When Gary Quarles, Keyana’s father, wanted back into their lives after a stint in prison, Langford decided to give it a try.

Last Memorial Day weekend, despite pleas from friends, Langford moved out of a residential treatment center, the Isabella House in Browne’s Addition, and into Quarles’ home.

For a while, she stayed clean. When Langford placed Keyana in foster care on June 30, friends realized she’d relapsed.

“He did it first, then brought it home to her,” said Donna Langford.

Soon after, Langford began showing up at Isabella House, the treatment center, with swollen eyes and a bruised face.

High on crack, the two fought and hit each other.

“There were several instances of violence,” said Marilyn Bordner, the center’s director. “She was getting beat up, as was Gary. She’d come to my office a couple of times crying and saying, `I’m so afraid.”’

On July 16, Langford was arrested after Quarles said she pointed a handgun at him and threatened to kill him. But police decided Quarles was “making it up,” and released her, said police Sgt. Jim Lundgren.

Quarles was arrested Aug. 4 on charges of delivery of a controlled substance. The more he smoked crack, the more violent he became, said Donna Langford. He tried to make up for beatings with roses and jewelry.

Quarles was mentally abusive as well, comparing Langford, a large woman, with slender dancers on MTV. “He commented on how he wished she looked like them and wasn’t the fat pig she was,” said Yvonne Guerin, a therapist who tried to help Langford stay off crack.

“She’d smack him upside the head sometimes, but a woman can only take so much.”

Quarles urged Langford to stay away from her relatives, accusing them of trying to fix her up with another man, said Donna Langford.

Gradually, she distanced herself

from friends. Guerin, who usually heard from Langford nearly every day, didn’t get a call for two weeks.

Bordner is accustomed to seeing addicts relapse before getting their lives under control. She hoped Langford, usually friendly and strongspirited, would recover and make a home for Keyana and her three older children, who have been in foster care for several years.

But Langford’s most recent relapse frightened her.

“I remember telling her I had a lot of fear she wouldn’t make it this time,” Bordner said. “I’d say, `Tina, my fear is that one of the two of you is going to die.”’

Bordner thought she’d won when she reserved a bed for Langford at a Seattle treatment program.

But Langford didn’t show up for the ride to Seattle, and four hours after they were scheduled to leave, Bordner drove away.

“She really, truly wanted to put her life together. She really did. I just missed her by a few minutes,” said Bordner. “She told me she’d go next time I went.”

But then, on Saturday morning, Bordner got a call that Langford was dead. Police said Quarles was standing outside a house at S1126 Coeur d’Alene Street when he shot her through a window. Neighbors suspect drugs were being sold from the house because of constant traffic.

A woman preparing to leave at the time, about 4:35 a.m., told Donna Langford that Quarles ordered the victim to let him inside. When she didn’t immediately open the door, Quarles fired.

The witness hid under a sink, then heard Langford say, “Why did you do this, Gary?”

Police, acting on a tip, arrested Quarles soon afterward at the Red Top Motel, E7217 Trent. He is in the Spokane County Jail on a charge of first-degree murder.

Last shot at treatment declined