THE TRAGEDY OF DANA PLATO

Dana Plato was born under the name Dana Michelle Strain in Maywood, California on November 7, 1964.  A sixteen year old unwed mother with an eighteen month old child was putting a strain on Linda Strain.  And since Linda Strain was an unwed teenage mother of two children and she could barely afford to pay for the care of her first child, Dana Michelle Strain was put in an orphanage. 
And as I'm lost in thought in the pouring rain, here are some photos of Dana Plato.  Florine "Kay" Plato adopted Dana Strain and she was renamed Dana Plato.  A stage mother right from the very start, Dana Plato was already doing one hundred commercials by the age of seven.  Next came film and television.  The most famous role was Diff'rent Strokes and guest appearances in it's spin off series The Facts of Life.  Dana Plato was in training to be in the Olympic figure skating team, but an appearance on the Gong Show as a game show contestant  lead to her being casted as Kimberly Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes.  Dana Plato did other films such as Return to Boggy Creek, The Exorcist II:  The Heritic (Uncredited).   Dana Plato became an alcoholic and a drug addict while acting as a series regular cast member in Diff'rent Strokes which lead to her being kicked off the show for it's last two seasons.  She acted in the death porn horror film video game Night Trap.  She got arrested for armed robbery to pay for her drug habit.  She married Lanny Lambert on April 24, 1984 and divorced him on March 1990.  The marriage produced one child named Tyler Edward.  Tyler Edward shot himself in the head in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 6, 2010.  Scleroderma took away the life of Florine "Kay" Plato on January 2, 1988.  Dana Plato was so desperate to stay employed in Hollywood while her acting career was taking a nosedive that she posed for Playboy Magazine.  She was arrested and jailed again for faking a doctors perscription for drugs to get stoned on.  Dana Plato became engaged to her business manager Robert Menchaca.  While living in a recreational vehicle parked outside Robert Menchaca's mother's house, Dana Plato overdosed on drugs and died from a drug overdose on May 8, 1999.  The drugs that she overdosed and died while taking was vanadom and Lortab.  Dana Plato's death was ruled as a suicide.