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Dana Plato: Diff'rent Strokes
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The next day, Plato and Menchaca were returning to California, hoping to revive her stagnant career. The couple stopped at Menchaca's mother's home in Moore, Oklahoma (coincidentally, the birthplace of another Diff'rent Strokes cast member, Danny Cooksey) for a Mother's Day visit. Plato went to lie down inside her recreational vehicle parked outside the house and subsequently died of an overdose from Vanadom (Soma) and Vicodin. Her death at age 34 was eventually ruled a suicide. Subsequently both Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges, who remained friends with Plato after Diff'rent Strokes, have said they did not believe she intended to kill herself, and that they believe it was an accidental overdose.
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The next day, Plato and Menchaca were returning to California, hoping to revive her stagnant career. The couple stopped at Menchaca's mother's home in Moore, Oklahoma (coincidentally, the birthplace of her Diff'rent Strokes co-star, Danny Cooksey) for a Mother's Day visit, five days after large swaths of Moore and surrounding areas in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area were devastated by F4 and F5 tornadoes in the Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak. Plato went to lie down inside her recreational vehicle parked outside the house and subsequently died of an overdose from Vanadom (Soma) and Vicodin. Her death at age 34 was eventually ruled a suicide. However, both Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges, both of whom remained friends with Plato after Diff'rent Strokes ended, have said they do not believe she intended to kill herself.
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After leaving Diff'rent Strokes in 1984, Plato attempted to establish herself as a serious actress, but found it difficult to step out of the long shadows cast by her sitcom career. After her child was born, she had breast implants and appeared in a 1989 Playboy pictorial, but her career remained in the doldrums. She started taking roles in such B-movies as Bikini Beach Race and Lethal Cowboy, while more respectable roles eluded her. [5]
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As a teenager, Plato costarred as good-girl Kimberly Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes. The offscreen woes of she and her two costars, Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges, served as fodder for last week's NBC made-for-TV movie, Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Diff'rent Strokes. According to Media Life, the show averaged just 4 million viewers, and dragged NBC down to a fifth-place finish for the night, behind ABC, CBS, Fox and the Spanish-language Univision.
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At the age of 20, Dana was excited to learn that she was expecting a child, which was not allowed under her Diff'rent Stroke's contract. Consequently, she found herself not only ousted from her role on a popular sitcom but was eventually, in effect, blacklisted in the entertainment industry. Much to her dismay, the actress and entertainer that she'd been most of her young life was abruptly discounted and all her gold stars reneged.
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In 1999 she and Robert Menchaca , her fiancé, were returning to California following Plato's appearance on the Howard Stern show, hoping to revive her stagnant career. They stopped at Menchaca's mother's home in Moore, Oklahoma for a Mother's Day visit. She died there of an overdose from Vanadom (carisoprodol) and Vicodin (hydrocodone). Her death was subsequently ruled a suicide . Coincidentally, Moore, Oklahama is the birthplace of Danny Cooksey who played red-headed scamp , Sam, on later seasons of Diff'rent Strokes .
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