From the NY POST

November 18, 2002 -- It was a sadly classic case of too much too soon.
Gia, a supermodel at the age of 17, was the poster girl for cruelly shattered dreams that cost her her life at the age of 26.

As friends, family, fans and the fashion world today mark the 16th anniversary of her death, a chilling documentary has just been completed that serves as a stark morality play for those tempted to live a young life that is fast and furious.

Titled "The Self-Destruction of Gia," the film presents an incredible portrait of how a beautiful and successful model could fall so far, so hard.

"I just kind of knew somewhere inside of me that she would not live a long life. That girl was spared nothing, and AIDS literally ate her alive," said her mother, Kathy Sperr, who points to the deadly insatiable demand for reckless heroin consumption that triggered the AIDS virus.

In this new, blunt look at one of the highest-paid models at the time, Gia's drug therapist, Robert Hilton, talks of finding her in a Lower East Side shooting gallery dressed in an exotic nightgown after coming from a fashion shoot.

She was nodding off in an abandoned building on Rivington Street surrounded by other heroin addicts using communal needles.

"Even among addicts, Gia's appetite for heroin was extraordinary - the addicts were amazed that such a little girl could go down there with that much money, buy that much heroin and do it all and not die. There were weekends when she would go down there and spend $2,500 on heroin," Hilton said.

Famous fashion photographer Scavulo, who put her on countless covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan magazines, tells the camera, "It's a very sad, sad tragic story."

The documentary was shot, produced and directed by brother and sister team J.J. Martarano and Geraldine Martin.

"The story of Gia Marie Carangi was up until 1986, when she died, the most unfathomable tragedy," Martarano said.

"Together with her mother, we have formed the Gia Carangi Foundation, and we have our own Web site, www.thegiacarangifoundation.org. Our aim is to help awareness and prevention."

Gia traveled to New York's fashion world from Philadelphia when she was 17, and Scavulo knew she had the stuff that fashion queens are made of.

"She came here with great drive and ambition to be the best. And she was," Martarano said.

But in the fashion world, which chews you up and spits you out, be careful what you pray for.