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An energetic artist met a classic junkie's end
Thursday, April 13, 2000
The day before Thanksgiving, Faye Tibe got a call from her son saying he would be home for Christmas.
"My sweet little Mama," he called her, which he had been saying ever since he outgrew her. Tibe couldn't wait to see him again.
Two days later, the phone rang in the middle of the night, startling her from sleep. It was a stranger's voice, from Seattle, giving her terrible news. Her son was dead.
Creative and energetic, funny and affectionate, John Bigley liked to dye his hair vibrant hues of red and white. He adorned himself with tribal tattoos and piercings. He had a graphic arts degree from Florida, worked as a tattoo artist, taught snowboarding at Steven's Pass.
But he died a classic junkie's death.
Someone robbed him while he lay dying in his cramped University District studio. Someone also tried to save him by putting bags of ice on his armpits -- a common street method of reviving an overdose victim.
By the time investigators arrived, the ice had melted into dirty pools. Bigley's CD player, gun and tattoo equipment were gone. His pockets had been turned inside out.
"That's how my son's life ended," Tibe said recently in a cracked whisper.
She knew her son struggled with heroin, but she didn't know the depths of his addiction until she retrieved his leather-bound journal. The entries chronicled his angst and self-hatred over his habit, which had begun earlier that year.
"I (blew it) again today," he wrote, day after day. "I need to get it together."
In May 1998, Bigley and his wife divorced, and she got their two daughters. He let a friend stay in his apartment, and the friend ripped him off. His colleagues at Atomic Garden Tattoo said he often came to work depressed.
When he visited his mom in Corpus Christi, Texas, she knew he was sick. They sat on her bed, and he confessed he had been doing heroin but insisted he was quitting.
A few months later, he called her in the throes of withdrawal, crying, vomiting and begging for help.
"He was so sick. He said, 'Mom, I'm strung out; I'm afraid. I don't want to die. Help me.'"
She stayed on the phone with him most of the night, then sent him a plane ticket so he could see her. He died before he could make it.
"I miss everything about my son. I miss him every day, every night," Tibe said. "When I wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing I think is John's dead. Sometimes that's all I ever think: John's dead."
Last September, she celebrated what would have been his 28th birthday by placing a bouquet of roses next to his ashes on the mantel.
"I said 'I'm going to be happy,'" she said. "I told him, 'Your birthday was the happiest day of my whole life, son.'"
John Bigley
Died Nov. 27, 1998
Age 27
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