It wasn't Cassandra Gregoire standing in front of a West Coast Express train on Monday. According to Capt. Kathie Chiu, it was Gregoire's crystal meth addiction that stepped out onto the tracks that cold morning.

The Salvation Army officer and pastor met Gregoire a year ago. The young woman was standing outside the centre looking distraught.

"She was just standing there and she had this really fretful look on her face so I stopped to talk to her, to ask her what was wrong."

Chiu said Gregoire didn't look like "your typically street-entrenched person," she was clean, well kept.

But when she spoke, Chiu knew there was something terribly wrong with the woman.

"She sounded almost like she wasn't in her right mind. Not in a psychosis, but the way she was talking about her addiction, she was almost giving it a personality."

Gregoire told Chiu she had children, she had a life before crystal meth took over. She needed help, she told Chiu, who was willing to give it.

"I don't want to do this...I've wasted my whole life, it's ruined my whole life," the young mother said.

It was after that first meeting Gregoire began attending Sunday worship. She wanted to change her life, get back on track, Chiu said.

"She had a life, she had children. She lost everything because she made a really stupid choice."

Every Sunday following the sermon at Mountain View Community Church, Chiu offers up a call for prayer. One Sunday, Gregoire stood up and asked God for help.

"She came up and knelt down at the front. She wanted a change in her life. She wanted God to help her.

"I knelt with her and put my arm around her and together we prayed."

Gregoire made it to rehab twice, but both times was unable to complete the program and abandon the drug. She was in transitional housing for awhile, but always fell back into the trap of crystal meth.

On Monday she stopped fighting, said Chiu, who is speaking out because she wants people to understand that this was not just suicide - it was desperation borne out of addiction.

"She just couldn't get free of it. She really wanted to get clean; she really wanted a life. She must have really given in to the hopelessness of it all."

The only way Chiu can find solace in the woman's death is through knowing that she is no longer suffering.

"She's in a place where there is no more pain, no more mental health issues, no more addiction."

But Chiu said clients deciding to end their struggles via suicide is an all-too-real threat.

"It's in all our minds, but nobody wants to face it."

Maple Ridge Mayor Gord Robson said he too is struggling to come to grips with what happened.

Robson said he knew Gregoire and was devastated by the news of her death.

"It hurts all the more because we were so close to saving her."

Gregoire's death, he added, is just one more reason this province needs treatment beds on demand for crystal methamphetamine addicts.

"We're losing them every week," he said. "This is a perfect example of why we need those beds and we need them now."

Gregoire, he concluded, "is one of dozens.

"We need to recognize how bad this problem is."