SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Theresa DelRegno channels love and grief into the rambling pink roses, purple coneflowers and bright hydrangeas that fill her yard. The plants reward her with their brilliance, transforming the property into an oasis of color and life.

Theresa and Victor DelRegno’s son, Andrew, died in 2002 after taking OxyContin recreationally. “This isn’t just for Andrew. This is for all the victims and their families and all the people who don’t know they’re going to become victims,” Victor says of his plan to testify.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

Theresa has found solace in the rich Matunuck soil since her son Andrew died in 2002 at the age of 20 after taking the painkiller OxyContin during a night out with college friends.

“It’s how I work out all the thoughts that aren’t good,” she says. “The plants live and they die and they live.”

Her husband, Victor, an admitted type-A personality, focuses on learning everything he can about the drug that killed their son. He trolls the Internet, corresponds with other grieving parents and shares their family’s story.

“I am consumed by this,” he says, his brown eyes peering intently through glasses. “This isn’t just for Andrew. This is for all the victims and their families and all the people who don’t know they’re going to become victims.”

Today he will face the men he holds responsible for his son’s death in federal court in Virginia. He will address U.S. District Judge James Jones at the sentencing of three former and current executives of Purdue Pharma, the maker of the controversial painkiller OxyContin, and urge that they serve time in jail.

“They knew they had kryptonite,” he says of the drug he refers to as “heroin in a pill.”

The Purdue Frederick Co., an affiliate of Purdue Pharma, and the executives pleaded guilty in May to criminal charges that the company misled health-care providers by falsely promoting and marketing OxyContin as less addictive than other narcotic pain medicine. Purdue Pharma agreed to pay more than $630 million in criminal and civil penalties in the plea deal reached with the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Purdue chief executive officer, Michael Friedman, general counsel Howard Udell and former chief medical officer Paul Goldenheim pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of misbranding OxyContin. They agreed to pay a total of $34.5 million in fines, but do not face jail time, under the agreement.

Victor DelRegno, 59, a retired business executive, will be one of about a dozen witnesses making statements at a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court for Western Virginia, a court official said.

“I think it is an opportunity to make people aware of the dangers of the drug and the dangers of greed,” Theresa says. “It can’t always be about money.”

OxyContin is a potent time-release narcotic used to treat moderate to severe pain. Introduced in the mid-1990s, the company initially contended that it was less likely to be abused because it took effect over a long period of time. Users discovered that crushing or chewing the pills deactivated their time-release properties, and that inhaling or injecting the powder produced a euphoric high.

Prosecutors link its rampant abuse to escalating crime and increased drug-related deaths. It has been associated with high-profile addictions such as conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy.

A 2005 national survey on drug use showed that more than 3.4 million people reported having used OxyContin recreationally, with the highest percentage of users — 1.6 million — 18 to 25 years of age.

Purdue spokesman James W. Heins declined to comment on the DelRegnos’ remarks, but he offered: “We do not believe that our promotion of OxyContin to health-care professionals has resulted in injury to anyone, and the government’s court papers do not make any such allegation.”

The criminal charges against Purdue Pharma were brought by federal prosecutors on behalf of states nationwide, including Rhode Island. One of a slew of cases the company has faced, it resulted from a six-year investigation into Purdue Pharma’s marketing strategies. It targets promotions from 1996 until Purdue Pharma dropped claims of the drug’s reduced risk, in 2001.

OxyContin brought in more than $1 billion a year for Purdue Pharma during this period.

Beryl Kenyon, spokeswoman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, would not disclose what Rhode Island’s share of the settlement would be.

The DelRegnos, who occasionally summered in Rhode Island, moved from Sudbury, Mass., to Vermont when Andrew was a teenager. An enthusiastic snowboarder, he was a junior at St. Michael’s College and was preparing to spend the spring term in Italy before he died.

The DelRegnos have not pieced together the events that led up to a Vermont state policeman knocking on their door in Killington early Sept. 26, 2002, to tell them Andrew had died of an apparent overdose. His parents spoke with him the night before and knew he was going out with friends, but those friends have been reluctant to talk. They know from an autopsy that he drank beer and had 100 milligrams of OxyContin in his system. The pills often come in 20, 40, and 80 milligrams.

“We miss him terribly and we forgive him,” Victor says. “But we’ll never understand how he could have done something like that, yet know he didn’t understand how lethal it is.”

For Victor, Andrew’s death shattered his conception of their family. He and his wife moved full-time to Matunuck shortly after his death because they could not bear to be in Vermont.

“I thought we were the Cleavers,” he says. Theresa was a stay-at-home mom to Andrew and his five siblings; the children attended Catholic religion classes; the family took vacations to Disney World. “Drugs weren’t in our lives.”

Theresa tells of a loyal, generous, kind young man who preferred the scuffed shoes and a worn Burton baseball cap the family now keeps in a closet downstairs to the new clothes she would buy.

“I used to say about Andrew ‘I must have done something right,’ ” she says.

While Victor’s faith has cracked and he hasn’t been to church since, Theresa’s has deepened. “I have to believe there is a God, and He’s surrounding my son with love,” she says.

Victor’s anger ricochets from the drug company to former New York City Mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, who represented the executives in reaching the plea deal.

“We don’t want to see money and power and Giuliani get these guys a slap on the wrist,” he says.

He rehearses his statement, reading handwritten notes. He can’t wait to look the executives in the eye.

He acknowledges that Andrew made a bad decision, by his own choice, and paid with his life. But he and his wife are convinced that if the drug had not been portrayed as “safe,” it would not have been as widely available and would have been far less likely to fall into Andrew’s hands. They say they are not interested in suing the company themselves, but they want the executives to do time — a prospect that could leave the plea agreement in shambles.

“What should the true cost for justice be?” Victor asks. “I know that if roles were reversed and they lost a loved one to OxyContin, they would want more than a company check written to pay a fine. They would want justice.”

In addition to serving prison time, Victor says, he would like the men to spend part of their sentence at a detox center and be ordered to attend funerals and visit the morgue.

“Maybe they should go to the morgue and see the family and see the body,” he says.

But he has promised his wife and their children that after today, he will try hard to move on.

“They want their mom and dad back,” he says. “There’s been a lot of pain.”

kmulvane@projo.com