Thing of Beauty

This is part two of a two-part article. To read part one, click here.

By this point, her parents knew of her heroin use, and her mother was trying to convince her to seek help. Gia moved home briefly, but left again when Kathleen discovered that she had stolen some of her jewelry, including her wedding ring from her first marriage. So Kathleen and Henry Sperr went to a magistrate, who offered to issue a warrant for Gia's arrest as a way to force her into rehab. "It was the only suggestion that made any sense," Kathleen says. "Any other authority I talked to told me to wash my hands of her. Nobody wanted to touch a heroin addict. I wanted to get her committed, but because of her age and the fact that she was out of my household, I could have gone through the legal process and spent all this money and she could be out on the street again in 24 hours." The judge issued the warrant but Gia was never actively pursued. When she returned home in December of 1981, her mother decided not to turn her in. She seemed to be getting her life together and resumed modeling again in February of 1982, shuttling from Richboro to New York.

That spring, she made another of her partial comebacks, returning to the business with a new determination to use her modeling career as a steppingstone to TV commercials and acting. She took fewer print jobs and went to advertising agencies to compete for work in campaigns for Hanes panty hose, Don Q. rum and Silkience shampoo. On March 5th, as she noted in her Elite datebook, John Belushi died; they hadn't been friendly, but he was certainly a part of her rock/drug world and his death served to further scare her straight. In April she did the taping for the 20-20 segment on modeling, which she hoped would accelerate the process by which anonymously beautiful models become household names. And, to complete her transition to a new life, she decided to rent a new apartment in New York before flying to California for a weeklong German catalog shooting. But the trip to Los Angeles did not go well. "The other models seem to resent me," she wrote in her datebook. "Is it jealousy or [are] all girls just like that . . . I get the feeling a few of them would like to pull my hair out. Why don't I get those feelings toward other girls ... sometimes they say things that are quite nasty and rude. I think it is a terrible part of the human race, a real flaw. I thought we were all suppose to love one another . . ."

As she flew back to New York after the job she wrote, " ... here I sit ... feeling very set apart from the other humans but I am finally really starting to dig being different. Maybe I am discovering who I am. Or maybe I'm just stoned again. Ha Ha Ha Ha ... "

In May, Gia required surgery on her hand, because she had injected herself in the same place so many times that there was an open, infected tunnel leading into her vein. After the surgery, she still modeled sporadically, but her moods were swinging wildly. Over the next few months, things fell apart again. She walked out on shootings, fell asleep during jobs and refused to get help or even admit that she had a problem.

By the time the 20-20 program finally aired, it was more of a sad joke in the industry than a boost for Gia's career. She was in the process of being blacklisted from her agency and even Scavullo — the last photographer whose sessions she could be counted on to show up for — knew that she couldn't work. The door would always be left open for her, and she would periodically call in at Elite or the Scavullo studio to say she was still alive and hoping to come back soon. But by 1983, New York was over for her.