PORTLAND, Ore. -- The pictures are as American and innocent as those found in any family’s scrap book. A young Kevin Stoll poses with a white bunny, then at camp with a summer shirt and later in a football uniform.

KGW photo

Kevin Stoll as shown in a photo from his family.

He grew up in Harlingen, Texas where his father Dennis is still a prominent dentist.

 Slideshow: Photos of Kevin Stoll growing up

From the pictures it looked as if the future opened up a bright, wide road of opportunity.

But it was not to be. Heroin took this life.

Kevin Stoll died in a Portland after ingesting cocaine and then a half hour later, using what was likely his first injection of heroin.

“It was a fast ride down,” his father told KGW reporter Pat Dooris over the phone.

His death March 26th, 2008, “was a complete shock,” said Dr. Stoll.

But unfortunately, his drug use was not.

Dr. Stoll believes Kevin started experimenting with alcohol around the age of 12 or 13. He believes it affected his son’s brain.

Dr. Stoll now notices the similarities between his son and those profiled in the show “Intervention.” They start early and often can not stop he told me.

Kevin Stoll grew into a big man, 6-foot-5 inches tall; big enough to be recruited by several college football teams, his father said. But after playing from the age of 8 until 18, he’d had enough.

Along the way Kevin found enough trouble with alcohol and drugs to go to treatment. His father says he successfully completed a 12-step program through Alcoholics Anonymous and was even a sponsor who helped others stay sober.

“He helped many, many people,” Dennis Stoll said.

Stoll moved to Portland in the summer of 2006. He’d just gotten out of rehab and after care, according to his father.

“Why he picked Portland, I’ll never know,” he said.

But he did know his son had a heart for street children and that he was working with Camp Fire USA at their downtown Portland Office.

Dennis Stoll believes his son stayed clean until February 1st, 2008. Then he began slipping back into the control of drugs and alcohol.

Kevin Stoll ended up at Hooper’s Detox in Portland, where police believe he met someone who told him about a heroin connection.

His father says Stoll stayed in detox from March 10th thru the 15th. It was a Saturday, two days before St. Patrick’s Day. That night at his NW 20th and Lovejoy apartment, he apparently couldn’t beat the haunting call of the drug.

The Medical Examiner told Dennis Stoll his son had taken cocaine about a half hour before his death. It was Kevin’s historic drug of choice.

But when he added heroin on top of the cocaine it created a toxic potion his body could not survive.

In the quiet of the night of March 15th or early morning March 16th, a life that once held such innocence and promise, ended.

Kevin Stoll died at the age of 28.

Heroin took another life in Portland.