Debra Pack remembers what Josh Westbrook said the last time she saw him alive. He had come to see her on his birthday, Sept. 22, and he was struggling with life, as he often was.

"He said, 'People look at me, and they think I'm a druggie. That's not who I am,'" she remembers. "It broke my heart."

So who was he? His friends say he was a young man who needed help but turned to the wrong places for answers.

Joshua Dean Westbrook was born Sept. 22, 1979, in Missouri, the son of Susan Smith and Mickey Nichols. He had a younger brother, Jesse, and a younger sister, Candice, who was adopted at birth. His father was in and out of jail all his life. His mother died when he was 5.

The state took custody of the children, and he was placed in the home of Robert and Tami Westbrook, an Albany couple. They became his legal guardians and he used the Westbrook name, though he was not legally adopted.

It was when he was about 15 that Josh started getting in trouble. He dropped out of South Albany High School in his sophomore year, according to his guardian, Tami Irish, formerly Tami Westbrook.

Irish said he alienated himself from the family. He went to live with Debra Pack and her family, who also tried to help him. But he started getting in trouble with drugs and alcohol and running afoul of the law.

His name first started showing up in the Linn County Jail's arrest logs in 1996. That summer he was charged with unlawful entry into a motor vehicle and with being a minor in possession of alcohol and tobacco. He was also charged with possessing a small amount of marijuana.

From 1996 to 2003, he got into trouble with the law more than a dozen times, on charges such as trespassing, criminal mischief, driving under the influence, driving while suspended, giving false information to police and possessing marijuana.

He was referred to Serenity Lane, a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center, in November 1998 and served a couple of brief stints in jail.

His cousin Amy Gutierrez said he lived with both her and her sister off and on and left his possessions with them, including an entire box of keys.

"He had a love of keys," she said.

Gutierrez and Pack both said that he was known to steal cars at times.

"We all do things wrong," Gutierrez said. "Some people steal, some people lie. Josh stole cars sometimes. It was his way of survival."

An Albany woman named Rachelle Freeman had a run-in with him about a year and a half ago. She says he showed up at her house asking for her brother-in-law, who was an acquaintance of his. She let him into the house to use the bathroom, and she says that while he was there, he stole her husband's wallet and then tried to use their credit cards to buy jewelry at Heritage Mall.

"He preyed on the kindness of other people," Freeman said. "That's the kind of person he was."

Gutierrez said that Josh used methamphetamine and alcohol to escape memories of the past and that he tried unsuccessfully to get clean.

"He was sad when he was high, because he felt like he was disappointing someone," Gutierrez said. "But he also felt sad when he was sober."

Pack believes that if Josh had been able to find a healthy way to deal with his past, things could have turned around.

"He was a wonderful kid," she said. "Yes, he did stupid things, he did the drugs, but if you saw how much he was hurting … Some people can get by it, or get past it, but he never did. At least I know Josh is at peace now."

Reporter Sean Wolfe contributed to this story.