WELLINGTON — Tears welled in the eyes of Wellington Schools Superintendent Dennis Mock while describing losing his nephew to a drug overdose to a crowd gathered to learn about the dangers of heroin Thursday.
Mock said in his early years as a principal he got a call from his sister in Las Vegas at 2 a.m. asking him to take her troubled son and let him live with him.
Worried about what would happen to his career if his nephew came to live with him and ended up dealing drugs in the school, Mock said no.
Two months later, his nephew was dead, he said.
The point of the story and others shared at the Patricia Lindley Center for the Performing Arts was that people and families struggling with addiction need all the help they can get if lives are to be saved.
“If they’re asking for help, help them,” Mock told a crowd of about 200 people.
KRISTIN BAUER | CHRONICLE PAARI state representative Nicole Walmsley speaks about her long battle with addiction during a heroin town hall meeting, in Wellington, on Thursday night, May 5.
Nicole Walmsley, a former heroin addict who now works with police to help people get into recovery programs, said she was genetically predisposed to addiction. She said her addiction was triggered when she had surgery after giving birth to her first child at age 19.
The doctor, she said, gave her a pain pill that began a spiral into drugs that eventually ended with her being arrested 18 times and being twice convicted of felony charges.
“I sold my morals; I sold my soul,” Walmsley said.
She said when she finally felt the fire of fentanyl, a painkiller more powerful than heroin, burning through her veins as she overdosed in Youngstown, she knew she needed to get help.
Walmsley said she went to her probation officer and later a judge and begged them to lock her in prison so she couldn’t get any more drugs. She said in Ohio the only way to get into a good treatment program is to be a convicted felon and even then it’s not always possible.
Walmsley now works with the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative and other programs to help those who want to get clean.
“I want to make treatment just as easy to get into as the emergency room,” she said.
Wellington police Lt. Jeff Shelton said anyone looking to get off heroin can walk into the Wellington Police Department and officers will help, but if he finds someone shooting heroin in a car parked in an alley, he’s going to make an arrest.
KRISTIN BAUER | CHRONICLE Wellington Police Lt. Jeff Shelton speaks during a heroin town hall meeting on Thursday night, May 5.
“What everyone needs to understand is that an addict is a human, all they did is take a wrong turn as they were walking down the road,” he said.
Jay Eastman, a funeral director in the village, echoed those sentiments as he described helping families bury seven people who died from drug overdoses in the past six months.
“No matter who you are or how you die, the loss is the same,” Eastman said.
Those attending heard just how wrenching it was to lose a loved one to opioid addiction as they watched a documentary created by Wellington’s own Hunter Prunty and his cousin, Evan Prunty, that looked at heroin use in Indiana and Ohio.
KRISTIN BAUER | CHRONICLE Cousins Evan (LEFT) and Hunter Prunty speak about their documentary project, “Heroin, More Than a Drug,” during a heroin town hall meeting held in Wellington, on Thursday night, May 5.
“It’s like a one-way trip to the coroner’s office,” the brother of a man who died after five days in a coma caused by an overdose said in the film, “Heroin: More Than a Drug.”
In the documentary Lorain County Coroner Dr. Stephen Evans said the drug affects every level of society, even though people will sometimes say that the death of an addict isn’t a big deal.
“That’s not a drug addict, that’s someone’s brother, that’s someone’s sister, that’s someone’s father, that’s someone’s mother,” Evans said.
In terms of the scope of the problem, Ashland County Prosecutor Christopher Tunnell, who also appeared in the documentary, said that he reviewed all of the cases his office dealt with in a year. He determined that 46 percent of the cases filed in Ashland County were opiate-related.
The Rev. Jeff Braden, pastor of Penfield Community Church, spoke for the religious community at the event, calling on people to come together to combat heroin and save lives.
“There’s some evil out there, friends,” Braden said. “Heroin’s evil, and we need to fight it.”
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