GRANDVILLE, Mich. – Patricia Johnston wishes she could go back to 2002 and do something to stop Jim Gahan, her ex-husband, from injecting steroids into Corey, their then 13-year-old son.

“But I had no idea at the time,” said the lifelong Grandville resident Tuesday after a Sports Illustrated report on her family’s shocking story was released on the magazine’s Web site and in this week’s print edition.

Gahan was sentenced Jan. 7 in Tampa, Fla., to six years in a federal prison. He is reportedly the first parent convicted of providing steroids to his child.

Corey, by age 12, was one of the world’s top in-line skaters in his age group. He had the victories from Michigan and abroad to prove it.

His father, who had a shared-custody agreement for the first seven years of his divorce from Johnston, wanted to move Corey from the Grand Rapids area to Ocala, Fla., a hotbed for the growing sport.

“If I could go back, I wouldn’t have been so flexible with letting Corey go to Florida,” Johnston said. “I would have insisted he stay here, grow up here, stay in school.”

Corey, 18, is estranged from his father. He has been living with his mother in Grandville for the past year.

“Jim (Gahan) wanted the best coaches and chances for him to be the best, and I let Corey decide,” said Johnston, who has remarried and works as a hairdresser.

“He was 12, he loved to skate. He wanted to go. I look back, and I know he could have skated here. The sad thing is – he was already a champion when this all started.”

Now, Corey guards his privacy, answers questions with as few words as possible and works at a department store he declined to name. He agreed to cooperate when Sports Illustrated came calling only because he thought the story might help others.

“Maybe it can help some people in the same kind of situation,” he said Tuesday.

Corey said he put up with the needles and injections of B-12 vitamins, human growth hormone and steroids in the from of synthetic testosterone because he was told by his father and others it would make him bigger and better.

“I was 13,” he said. “I did what I was told.”

The Sports Illustrated story, written by Luis Fernando Llosa and L. Jon Wertheim, outlines Jim Gahan’s involvement with a convicted Florida coach and bodybuilder, as well as a convicted steroid dealer who posed as a doctor.

It describes Corey’s climb to become a national champion in three distances of in-line competition and his record-setting dabble in speedskating.

Also part of the story are the drug tests he failed after competitions at age 15 and, later, his two-year suspension from competition and the forfeit of results dating back to 2004, as recommended by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

Wertheim said Tuesday the Gahan case came to the magazine’s attention as the reporters worked on other stories about steroids. They found a sign-in sheet from the phony doctor’s office in which Corey’s name appears between the names of Randy Paffo, better known as wrestler “Macho Man Randy Savage,” and the late Brian Adams, a wrestler called “Crush.”

Patricia said Corey was a victim of her ex-husband, and her son has not been a problem since moving home.

“He’s private, but a great kid, and it’s been great to have him around,” she said. “We don’t talk much about what happened. Corey wants to move forward. I want to help him move forward.”

Corey, who, at age 18, weighs 15 pounds less than he did at 15, said he has not had any lingering health problems from the steroid abuse and feels great.

He was home-schooled in Florida and said he has a high school diploma. College is a possibility, but he hasn’t made up his mind.

Corey also has not ruled out a return to skating. He said he watched speedskating in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, on television with some regret.

He saw former in-line stars Apolo Anton Ohno and Chad Hedrick on the U.S. speedskating team, as well as Kimberly Derrick, who he remembered from his in-line skating days in the Grand Rapids area.

“I thought about it,” he said. “(The steroids) made me bigger and faster, but I wonder what I could have done without them.”