Seventeen magazine's March issue features the sad story of Sarah Rinaldi, 17, who died last year after overdosing on prescription drugs. Sarah's mother appeared live on TODAY to talk about her daughter and how she's helping raise awareness to help other teens and their parents to help prevent other drug-related tragedies.

Here is Seventeen's story, by Ben Montgomery:

Around 12:15 a.m. on Friday, June 30, 2006, Sarah Rinaldi, 17, and her friend Julia Hultz, 19, used fake IDs to get into Club Prana, a popular bar in Tampa, Florida. Wearing identical outfits—a white spaghetti-strap top and a denim miniskirt—the girls got vodka drinks and hit the dance floor.

While at the club, Sarah took one and a half Xanax pills. They stayed there until 3 a.m., when they headed to Julia’s apartment. But by the time they got there, Sarah had passed out, and her boyfriend, Nick Palmer, 20, had to carry her up three flights of stairs. Julia thought she’d be okay. She’d seen Sarah like that before—she’d sleep it off, and the next day they would talk and laugh about their wild night. So Julia just assumed Sarah would be okay, and she helped Nick put Sarah into her bed. But less than 24 hours later, Sarah was dead.

Losing control
Growing up in Tampa, Sarah lived with both of her parents until they divorced when she was 9. She moved in with her father, the president of a local printing company, and stayed with him until she turned 14. Then she decided to try living with her mother, Julie Rinaldi, who was a few miles away. Soon after moving in with her mom, Sarah started hanging out with a group of kids who skipped school and smoked pot.

One day in the spring of 2003, Ms. Rinaldi got a phone call from a school official who told her that Sarah had skipped her classes. “Where were you?” Ms. Rinaldi demanded to know when she got home that evening. “Just hanging out,” Sarah responded. Her mom didn’t believe her—and Sarah finally admitted she’d been smoking pot. “You’re not to leave this house again without my permission!” Ms. Rinaldi yelled. But Sarah just laughed and walked out the front door.

Growing problem
Sarah continued rebelling—and trying new drugs. At a house party a few months later, she took someone else’s Xanax—a prescription drug used to treat anxiety—to get high. She told her friends that it made her less stressed out. By early 2004, her use of a variety of drugs had gotten even worse. It was so bad that Ms. Rinaldi decided to leave Tampa to get Sarah away from her friends, who she thought were a bad influence. They moved to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where Ms. Rinaldi had a close friend.

But that summer Sarah was once again hanging out with kids who took drugs—and coming home high. Ms. Rinaldi discovered that Sarah was using cocaine and decided to check her into rehab. Sarah went willingly—yet once she was there, she begged to leave. But her mom forced her to stay for treatment. At first it seemed to have worked. After the two-and-a-half-week program ended, Sarah was clean, and they moved back to Tampa to be near family. But her recovery was short-lived: Soon she was hanging out with the same friends.

Several months later Sarah again began taking Xanax that wasn’t prescribed to her, telling her friends that the drug helped clear her mind. Then she met a guy who enabled her habit: In the spring of 2006, when she was 17, Sarah began dating Nick Palmer, who she’d met at a party. Nick told her that he was a premed student at the University of South Florida. “I thought she had met a really good guy,” Ms. Rinaldi says.

But it turned out that Nick wasn’t in college—and he was the one giving Sarah prescription drugs, like Xanax and OxyContin. “Nick would basically give her whatever she wanted,” says one of her best friends. So Sarah started taking more pills, often mixing different drugs. Her grades started to slide, and although her mom drove her to Wharton High School every day during the spring semester, Sarah missed 22 out of 45 days of school, spending the time sleeping and getting high. Her friends kept warning her to slow down. “I would say to her, ‘One day you’re going to end up dead or in jail,’” says her friend Mireille Fernandez, 20. “She’d say, ‘I’m fine.’ She just loved partying and taking pills.”

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