Actress Dana Plato, who starred on the TV sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes," died of an apparent drug overdose at the home of her fianc , Robert Menchaca, in Moore, Okla., on Sat., May 8. Plato has a 14-year-old son, Tyler Lambert, of Tulsa, Okla., from a previous marriage.
The troubled television star had been involved in various run-ins with the law since her series was canceled in the mid-'80s.
Plato was arrested in 1991 for robbing a Las Vegas video store, and a year later, received an additional five years' probation for forging Valium prescriptions. The lethal cocktail she ingested last Saturday contained Valium and the painkiller Loritab.
Performers on the ill-fated NBC sitcom seem to have been plagued with personal problems. "Diff'rent Strokes" co-star Todd Bridges has been arrested several times and was acquitted in 1990 of charges of assault with a deadly weapon in the near-fatal shooting of an L.A. narcotics dealer; and actor Gary Coleman recently pleaded "no-contest" to charges that he punched an autograph-seeker in the eye.