"John Belushi's ghost is coming," a student whispered, creating a noisy buzz among her classmates as they gathered for assembly Friday at Hollywood High School.
A dark-haired woman, once one of the most notorious people in Los Angeles, began her spiel:
"It was March 5, 1982, when I got into a world of trouble. John Belushi was found dead at the Chateau Marmont, and how I got there was by a long circuitous route.
"I had been a walking dead person. I don't want that to happen . . . to any of you," said Cathy Evelyn Smith, the woman who witnesses said injected drugs into Belushi during the comedian's final binge.
Nearly a decade after she was released from prison and deported for her role in Belushi's death, Smith returned to Los Angeles to confront her demons.
Now 50, Smith says she has been clean and sober for six years, working as a legal secretary in her hometown in Canada.
Recently, Smith won a temporary visa from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which relented on its zero-tolerance policy toward convicted drug offenders, granting her request to visit on humanitarian grounds.
After Belushi's death, Smith was the most sought-after interview in Hollywood. But she spent her week here in relative obscurity, pushing a nonprofit organization called Forward Step, which seeks to teach values to school-age youngsters that will help them to resist drugs and life's other pitfalls.
Officials with Forward Step and people who have known her for years believe that Smith has some hard-learned lessons to share about the less glamorous side of the drug lifestyle.
The recent overdose death of actor Chris Farley, another "Saturday Night Live" alum who idolized Belushi, showed Smith she still has a message to get out, she said.
"Take charge. Take responsibility. Be accountable. Keep one eye on the horizon." She added that the path she was on leads to "an early grave, an institution, a dumpster. That's where you end up."
Friends suggested that Smith petition the INS for permission to travel to Los Angeles. She was stunned when the agency granted the visa, no questions asked.
For Smith, a former roadie and backup singer, the journey has brought back a tangle of surprisingly powerful emotions and memories--not all of them good.
"It's really cathartic in a way," she said during an interview, smoking a cigarette--the one vice she still allows herself. "It leaves me vulnerable to a lot of things I thought I'd taken care of."
