Mother says rockers got Leif Garrett into drugs

LOS ANGELES — Former teen idol Leif Garrett is hooked on heroin, his mother says — and she blames hard-partying rock 'n' roll legends like the Rolling Stones for steering her son toward drugs.

"Leif idolized rock stars ... that whole life of rock 'n' roll and drugs ... the Rolling Stones. He figured if they could do it, so could he," Garrett's distraught mother, Carolyn Stellar, said Wednesday.

With his trademark shag hairdo and bell-bottom pants, the doe-eyed actor/singer was a mainstay on teen magazine covers in the 1970s.

Garrett appeared in dozens of films and TV shows, including the 1969 box-office hit "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," and he topped record charts with his covers of two oldies, "Runaround Sue" and "Surfin' USA." The heartthrob even dated future "Desperate Housewives" star Nicollette Sheridan for a few years in the early '80s.

Now 44, pale and stick-thin, Garrett was busted Saturday when he allegedly tried to board an L.A. subway train without paying. Police officers said they found heroin in his clothes when they searched him. It was his third heroin-related arrest since 2001, court records show.

As Stellar awaited her son's arraignment Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the anguished mom said she prays he can get help.

"He needs rehab. This is a disease. Prison can't help him," she said.

Garrett, who sported a bloody gash on the bridge of his nose, pleaded not guilty to a heroin possession charge. Commissioner Melissa Widdifield revoked his probation for an earlier drug offense, ordered him held without bail and urged him to enter a tough rehab program.