Ted Helseth had moved from Florida to his father's home near Williamsburg a couple years ago after he was fired from his job, stole from his girlfriend and could no longer afford the rent.

His struggles followed him to Virginia: He was in and out of jail the last two years on charges of assault, grand larceny and probation violation.

Addiction was the root cause of his problems, and heroin was his drug of choice. But when he was released from jail on probation in June and agreed to live in a sober house in Henrico County, it seemed to his girlfriend that for the first time, he truly wanted to get clean.

Just more than a week after Helseth entered the McShin Foundation's recovery program, he tested positive for cocaine and morphine and was told he had to leave the home because he also refused to be searched for drugs.

Two days later, Helseth's body was found on the side of the road in a rural area of Chesterfield County. He was 26, dead of an overdose.

"The system that was trying to help him crumbled," said Helseth's mother, Danelle Ryan.

Helseth's death highlights gaps in the treatment and care of the many addicts who remain under court-ordered supervision but are living in unregulated recovery homes. His mother's pleas for changes and the Richmond Times-Dispatch's attention to the case have led the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences to take action. The group has scheduled a vote in September to create a uniform policy for what operators of sober homes should do when someone relapses.

Also in September, officials with Virginia's behavioral health agency have invited operators of sober homes in Virginia to a meeting to discuss ways to increase the accountability of the recovery home industry. At the national level, some states have passed laws requiring treatment centers and hospitals to refer patients only to certified recovery homes.

Michael Zohab, a grant coordinator for the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, said sober homes are crucial for the treatment of some addicts and that the operators of those homes do good work.

"We have a great need for more confidence in recovery housing," said Zohab, a former longtime Richmond police captain who also founded a nonprofit group that helps addicts find a recovery program.

Ryan believes her son might be alive if he hadn't had to leave the sober house late on the night of Friday, June 22, without somewhere safe to go. She thinks McShin staff should have immediately notified Helseth's probation officer that he had failed a drug screen and was on the street so he could have been put in jail.

Representatives of McShin — a nonprofit organization that operates eight sober houses and one apartment building with a total of 180 beds in the Richmond area — said Helseth was acting in a way that could have put other residents at risk of deadly relapse. If an addict like Helseth is intent on getting high, they said, nothing will stop him.

McShin's president, John Shinholser, said the organization's employees told Helseth they would meet with him three days later, on Monday, June 25, to see about getting him back into one of McShin's recovery homes. The McShin staff said they didn't contact Helseth's probation officer after he had to leave the home because it was a Friday night and they believed they couldn't reach anyone from the probation office on a weekend.

Shinholser and other operators of recovery homes in Virginia said state probation and parole offices should have a 24-hour service through which the operators can report that an addict is back on the street, in hopes that a probation officer could have police pick the person up as quickly as possible and take him to jail.

"That would solve a lot of problems right there," Shinholser said. "That's the best way to deal with this, catch them in the middle of the run."

Helseth's probation officer could not be reached for comment for this article, and a probation supervisor in Williamsburg referred a reporter's questions to Lisa Kinney, spokeswoman with the Virginia Department of Corrections. Attempts to reach Kinney by phone were unsuccessful, and she did not respond to emails seeking comment on Helseth's case and the availability of probation officers on nights and weekends.