PHOTO CAPTION: Frank and Mary Feeley outside their former residence at 75A Tibbets Town Way that was ravaged by fire.

It has been a bad year for the Feeley family.
On Feb. 20, a fire that originated in a lighting and ventilation fixture in the bathroom at their home at 75A Tibbets Town Way in the Mishawum Park housing development drove them along with three other families from their homes. A fire report listed the cause of the ignition as “failure of equipment or a heat source,” and a firefighter told 24-year-old Frank Feeley and his wife, 24-year-old Mary Feeley, the fire might have been burning in the ceiling wall of their bathroom for two days before the blaze claimed their home.
One week earlier, Frank said he had notified the property manager after he heard a loud noise coming from the fixture, but an inspection turned up nothing. And to make matters worse, the Feeleys didn’t have renters’ insurance to cover the nearly $54,000 in personal losses that the fire caused.
Frank and Mary, along with their three children — Frankie, 7, Dylan, 5, and Eugene, 4 — moved in with Frank’s mother on Hancock Street following the fire. Frank said that he was unaware that Peabody Properties Inc., which manages Mishawum Park, would cover the cost of their room and board until he spoke with a neighbor who was also displaced by the fire. Following this revelation, the Feeleys relocated to the Holiday Inn in Somerville.
Meanwhile, Frank said management wouldn’t allow them to retrieve what remained of their belongings from their home, including Mary’s wedding ring. Frank said Peabody Properties changed the locks and denied the family entrance to the apartment because it was designated a construction zone. As of last week, Frank said no work has been done to the unit and the windows were still boarded up.
The Feeleys’ stay at the Holiday Inn also proved to be a frustrating experience. Sometimes the keys to the their room didn’t work and the family was left to wonder whether Peabody Properties would still cover the cost of their lodging, Frank said. In addition, Frank said he was forced to abandon his business, F & F Roofing, to care for his children.
On April 12, Peabody Properties informed the Feeleys that another unit had opened up in Mishawum Park at 22A Tibbets Town Way. Frank said he was pressured into signing a lease and the family was scheduled to moved into the unit on April 20. Upon their arrival, Frank said he was immediately struck by a strong odor that he likened to cat urine. Then things got worse.
Dead cockroaches littered the apartment — a sight that sent his children running away in tears. When Frank contacted the property manager, he said she told them that there couldn’t be any insects because the unit had recently been fumigated. At this point, Frank admittedly lost his cool.
The following day, Frank met with the property manager and an exterminator at the unit. (Frank claims that the property manager entered the apartment to clean up the roach carcasses even after he specifically forbade her from doing so). After the exterminator applied a substance similar in appearance to calking throughout the house, he informed Frank that the problem was solved. Frank wasn’t so confident and returned to his mother’s house.
When Frank and his brother-in-law returned to the apartment, they saw roaches scrambling into a vent in the bathroom. Later that day, Frank said a 5-year-old girl who lived in the unit next door stopped by and offered to help his son kill the roaches.
“It’s fun. We do it all the time,” she told Frank’s son
On April 25, the Inspectional Services Department inspected the unit at 22A Tibbets Town Way. An ISD report obtained by the Patriot-Bridge stated evidence of a cockroach infestation within the dwelling unit and carcasses were found on interior sills of living room windows, the stairwell and the linen closet shelf. The report mandated that the situation be rectified within 14 days.
ISD spokesperson Lisa Timberlake said the agency has cited Mishawum Park for two other insect violations since January 2006.
An April 27 statement from Doreen Bushahia, director of resident services for Peabody Properties stated, “The Mishawum Park Tenants Association, the owners of Mishawum Park, and Peabody Properties, the management company for Mishawum Park, worked together to accommodate the impacted families… It is anticipated that the four units affected by the fire will be fully rehabbed within approximately 90 days. Representatives of the Mishawum Park Tenants Association and Peabody Properties management staff remain in contact with the families and are working with them to address any related concerns.”
Today, the Feeleys refuse to return to the unit at 27A Tibbets Town Way and are still living at his mother’s house. Frank said the experience has traumatized his children so much that he is considering counseling for them,
“I’ve expressed to [Peabody Properties] how much they’re hurting the kids,” he said. “They have no clothes, toys, nothing. They need a place to stay.”

For the second time in six weeks, Allston Street residents were forced from their homes after the malfunction of an NStar power cable caused a carbon monoxide leak.
Shortly after noon on Friday, NStar notified the Boston Fire Department of a burning smell at 19 Allston St. Two other Allston Street residences reported power outages to NStar shortly afterwards. Approximately 30 minutes later, Ladder 9, the Boston Fire chief, two hazardous materials technicians and a police officer arrived at the scene and conducted an air quality test that indicated elevated levels of carbon monoxide. No injuries were reported, but four Allston Street residences were temporarily left without power and the occupants of 19 Allston St. were evacuated from their home. As of Tuesday afternoon, residents of 19 Allston St. were still unable to return home because carbon monoxide levels in the basement were still dangerously high, said NStar spokesman Mike Durand.
“We have never experienced carbon monoxide staying around this long before,” Durand said.
Duarnd said since carbon monoxide levels in the basement weren’t dropping, the city and NStar began excavating the section of the street between 17 and 23 Allston St. Residents were notified by phone that the street would be closed during the day due to construction. Since the removal of the blacktop, carbon monoxide levels have dropped considerably, Durand said.
According to Durand, the cause of the malfunction is still unknown. NStar began replacing the underground cable that serves Allston Street last fall and the project was completed Friday afternoon following the incident. Oddly enough, Durand said the malfunction occurred in the only remaining old section of the power cable, although the section of the cable that serves 19 Allston St. had already been replaced.
“It’s possible that [carbon monoxide] found it’s way into the home where the old cable was,” Durand said, adding that another possibility was that the gas seeped into the home through the ground.
Meanwhile, NStar has hired a geologist to find the source of the carbon monoxide and the best way to continue venting it, Durand said.
Six weeks earlier, on March 17, an underground NStar cable caught fire, causing carbon monoxide to leak into several Allston Street homes and temporarily leaving 25 residents in the area without power. One firefighter on the scene told a resident that he could have succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning had she remained in the house for 10 more minutes, said Shirley Foley, one of the Allston Street residents forced from her home that day due to high carbon monoxide levels.
In this incident, Boston Fire spokesman Steve MacDonald determined that the plastic coating on a power cable caught fire and emitted carbon monoxide, which traveled horizontally along voids in the wires and seeped into homes through utility jacks. Since the ground was frozen at the time, the power chord was the path of least resistance, he said.
Regardless of the cause, Foley said last week’s carbon monoxide scare is even more reason for alarm.
“It’s the second time it’s happened in less than two months,” Foley said. “It’s very unsettling to think without any warning, you could have carbon monoxide released into your house by NStar equipment.”

PHOTO CAPTION: Johnny Hickey beneath the Tobin Bridge.
PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Ritter

Johnny Hickey hopes to bring “OxyMorons,” the semi-autobiographical screenplay he wrote about drug abuse in Charlestown, to the big screen, but he nearly didn’t live to see this dream come true.
In November 2003, Hickey was hit in the back of the head with a brick and fell 80 feet after being thrown from a cliff in Quincy. It was retribution for a melee that erupted between Hickey’s friends and another group the previous night. When he awoke from a coma at Boston medical Center seven days later, he had a dislocated hip, a separated pelvic bone and 170 staples going up his left leg. Many of his internal organs were also ruptured.
The prognosis wasn’t good. Doctors told him he was lucky to be alive but that he would likely never walk again. Hickey began praying and soon taught himself to walk again. When Hickey was discharged from the hospital shortly before Christmas, he was determined to turn his life around and avoid the perils of drugs and violence that landed him in this situation.
Born in 1978, Hickey was raised in the Bunker Hill housing development and attended Charlestown High School until his senior year when his mother moved to Gloucester. This is where his troubles began. At Gloucester High, he was prone to fighting and soon dropped out of school.
In 1997, Hickey returned to Charlestown to live with his cousin. By this time, Hickey had moved on to more serious crimes including assault and battery, armed robbery and drug dealing.
“I was getting in trouble all the time,” he said. “It started a vicious cycle of going to jail.”
Between the ages of 18 and 21, Hickey began very active in the rave culture and got heavily into drugs. His substances of choice included ecstasy, ketamine, LSD and angel dust. He was also bouncing from house to house to avoid a number of small criminal charges that were hanging over him.
“I wasn’t grounded,” he said. “Rather than facing the problem, I just ran from it.”
On Dec. 20, 2000, Hickey’s luck ran out. He was arrested in Lynn on a number of charges including possession of a firearm, possession of a Class B substance (ecstasy) and possession of counterfeit currency. (Counterfeit money was commonplace in the rave scene because it was easy to pass off on someone who was under the influence and it was hard to detect with the incessant strobe lights, he said). Hickey was sentenced to two and a half years at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Middleton.
Hickey was able to pull some strings through some of his connections and was transferred to a minimum-security facility in Lawrence. In 2001, after serving six months of his sentence, he escaped from jail and returned to the rave scene.
It wasn’t long before authorities caught up with Hickey in Montpelier, Vt., and he was sent back to Essex County Correctional Facility. Hickey was given an addition six months on his sentence for his escape. “It was like all the time I had done up until this point got erased,” he said.
When Hickey was released in July 2003, the rave culture was dead, and he instead turned to using and selling OxyContin. Four months later, the fateful night in Quincy took place.
In February 2004, Hickey was regaining his strength after the fall when detectives arrived at his home. They informed Hickey that there had been a mistake and he still had six months left in his sentence. Again, Hickey returned to jail. Back in Middleton, Hickey struck up a friendship with his cellmate, and together, they made a pact to steer clear of drugs and live good lives upon their release.
In May 2004, Hickey was released after a lawyer friend was able to get the remainder of his sentence squashed. He went to work at Boston’s Comedy Connection as a bouncer where he met the likes of Frank Santorelli (who plays Georgie on “The Sopranos”) and Charlestown comedian Tony V.
Also upon his release, Hickey started dating a Gloucester girl, Josephine Gusamano. The two are still together and now have a 6-month-old daughter, Jaylee Hickey.
Last summer, Hickey left the Comedy Connection and began booking comedians on his own. Through Santorelli, he landed a role in “Sides,” an upcoming dark comedy about a mobster who dreams of becoming a stage actor. Hickey will also appear in two independent horror films, “Roid Rage” and “Spanish Fly.”
But it is “OxyMorons” that Hickey is most passionate about these days. He developed the story during one of his many jail stints and hopes to start filming in the fall at Charlestown locales including the Bunker Hill housing development and St. Catherine of Siena Church. Besides writing the screenplay, Hickey will also star in the film.
And while the $250,000 that Hickey hopes to raise to produce the film sounds ambitious, a fundraiser for the movie at the Comedy Connection on Sunday that featured several big-name acts including Tony V. and Santorelli drew 300 people and netted $5,000. He has also signed on South Boston filmmaker Jay Giannoni to direct.
“I’m going to get it done one way or another,” Hickey said. “It’s going to be as authentic to Charlestown as it can possibly be.”
Johnny Hickey can reached via email at johnnyhickey@yahoo.com.

Through a partnership between Charlestown Against Drugs, MissionSafe Charlestown and an aspiring local filmmaker, several at-risk youth will learn the ropes of the movie business and get the chance to appear in an upcoming film.
Hickey, a Charlestown native who wrote and will star in “OxyMorons,” a film that examines Charlestown’s drug abuse problem, approached CHAD recently in the hope of offering acting lessons to provide for at-risk youth. CHAD agreed to underwrite acting lessons for six to eight members of MissionSafe Charlestown, a program for at-risk youth. Angela Perry of Boston Casting has agreed to provide acting lessons for the would-be movie stars at a discounted rate.
Hickey said the youths who are ultimately selected would get the opportunity to witness the entire production of “OxyMorons” and possibly appear in the film. For those who aren’t inclined to act, Hickey said they could learn about direction, camera work or other aspects of the movie-making process.
“I’m going to take them along for the whole journey,” Hickey said. “It might turn into something really great for these kids.”
There is one stipulation, however: All the kids will be subject to drug testing. “If they want to do this, they have to stay clean,” Hickey said.
Anne Carrabino, director of programming and directing for MissionSafe Charlestown, believes that the experience will help open dialogue with the kids concerning drugs.
“It will be interesting for them to reflect on and talk about their experience dealing with drugs in Charlestown, whether it’s personally or within their community or schools,” Carrabino said.
CHAD Chairman Peter Looney hopes this opportunity might also lead to bigger things for the youths involved.
“Getting at-risk kids working behind the scenes and in front of the camera can be quite an experience and might change their lives,” Looney said. “The more doors we open for them, the more opportunities they have to go on and have successful lives.”