Her daughter recently left a drug treatment program before completion, causing her mother to fear the worst.
Ashley Marie Castro (Photo courtesy of family)HOPATCONG - The minute Margaret Castro-Saavedra saw her sister waiting outside her house Friday night, she said she knew:
Her daughter was dead.
Her assumption was correct. Police had identified the body found Wednesday afternoon on the median of Route 22 in Somerset County as that of Ashley M. Castro, 29.
Police told the family the body had no signs of trauma and that they suspected a drug overdose, Castro-Saavedra said.
She said she assumes their suspicions will be borne out, given her daughter's long, tortuous battle with drug addiction.
"I knew this day would come sometime," Castro-Saavedra said Saturday morning outside her house. Her daughter had recently bolted from a drug rehabilitation program after a five-month stint - another one of her countless attempts to break free from heroin, she said.
"Things were going great. She looked good, she seemed good. The next moment she was gone," she said. "She just up and left one day with one of the other clients."
Castro-Saavedra said she sought and was granted temporary custody last fall of Ashley's toddler, now a month shy of turning two years old.
The child's father, Ashley's fiance, died last September of a heart attack brought on by an infection, Castro-Saavedra said.
Castro-Saavedra said her daughter went to St. Michael's School in neighboring Netcong, then attended Pope John High School in Sparta briefly before convincing her mother to let her switch to Hopatcong High School. She graduated in 2006.
News accounts show Castro was arrested twice, once in 2007, a second time in 2009, charged with minor theft in both incidents.
Castro-Saavedra estimated her daughter had cycled through as many as 10 stints of drug rehab treatment over the years. Most didn't help, she said.
"Put it in the paper: Twenty-eight day rehabs don't work," she said. No sooner do patients emerge from the physical effects of withdrawal than they are discharged, she said.
This last rehab stay had made her a bit more hopeful, however, Castro-Saavedra said. She reasoned that her daughter had stuck with it for five months, and that she had an adorable little girl as an incentive to finally stay clean.
When the rehab program notified her that Castro had abruptly departed, however, she said she knew enough to fear the worst.
Still, when she heard news reports that a body had been found on a highway median in Somerset County, it never occurred to her it might be her daughter, she said.
Identification of the body took longer than usual because her daughter had no purse or ID on her when she died, Castro-Saavedra said. Police told her they eventually found her identity from fingerprints that were in the system.
From those records, they contacted a rehab facility she attended five years ago. Records there listed an aunt - the mother's sister - as a family contact, so that's who police called, Castro-Saavedra said.
It fell to that aunt to deliver the news.
"It's an absolute terrible, terrible thing, these drugs," Castro-Saavedra said as she readied to go to the funeral home to make arrangements. "It's a rough road. You can only do so much."
Kathleen O'Brien may be reached at kobrien@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @OBrienLedger. Find NJ.com on Facebook.