Earlier this month, the Oregon Health Authority announced plans to offer free naloxone to middle and high schools throughout Oregon. In Oregon City schools, naloxone is already available. The district has also hosted public awareness events about fentanyl and counterfeit pills.
Michele Stroh is a board member of the Oregon City School District. She’s rallied behind these efforts, she says, to help keep students safe. Her son died from fentanyl poisoning in 2020. And she hopes that young people continue to receive education about these issues. Stroh joins us with more on what she’d like to see from schools in Oregon.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Earlier this month, the Oregon Health Authority announced plans to offer the overdose reversing drug naloxone for free to middle and high schools throughout the state. That’s something Oregon City schools are already doing. The district has also hosted public awareness events about fentanyl and counterfeit pills. Michele Stroh is a board member of the Oregon City School District. She has rallied behind these efforts to help keep students safe and to prevent other families from experiencing what her family experienced. Her son Keaton died in 2020 after taking a fentanyl pill that he thought was oxycodone. Michele Stroh joins us now. Thanks very much for joining us.
Michele Stroh: Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
Miller: When you think of Keaton now, what are some of the happy memories that come to mind?
Stroh: Keaton had the best smile. He was the kid that would walk into a room and make everybody feel like they were meant to be there. He just had an energy that resounded with everyone. And he was everybody’s friend. That’s what we put on his grave marker, he’s everybody’s friend. There was nobody that he ever excluded on anything.
Miller: How did he become addicted to painkillers?
Stroh: Growing up with multiple sports, he was quite the athlete. He had a few concussions in football, he had some track injuries. At that time oxy was just given out for every ailment. I remember as a parent asking the doctor, “does he really need an oxy, or is Tylenol okay?” And they’re like, “oh, no, it’s been proven it’s safe and effective and it’s non-addictive, it’ll be just fine.” And we didn’t realize until further in his young adult life how much he enjoyed the high he got from oxy.
Miller: I understand actually from the GoFundMe after he died, you wrote that he had a non-fatal overdose, a near death experience in 2018. What were the year and a half or so after that like for him and for your family?
Stroh: Oh, gosh, that near death overdose, that was my first true awakening. Even though I was the mom that was so involved with my kids’ lives. I volunteered for everything. I stayed home with them, I raised them. Getting that phone call and walking into the hospital, not even knowing what was going on, and having doctors look at you like you’re stupid. And I’m like what happened? Why is my son here? They did the whole honors walk, they did his death quilt, they did everything. And I remember thinking, what happened? How can you go from “my kid’s at a sleepover” to “we need to turn your son off of life support.” And I remember just the pure panic, and finally asking the doctor, “what did he take?” And he had taken oxy, he had taken cocaine, he had taken Xanax, and he had cannabis from pot brownies, and he had alcohol. So a whole concoction. His body was as close to death as he’s ever seen. And we went ahead and put our lives public, because we wanted people to understand what’s happening with these youth. And I asked the doctor for 24 hours. I said “He’s a Marine and he’s in the best prime shape of his life. Just give him 24 hours. Can you just give me 24 hours to process what’s going on?”
And during that week at Portland Prov, we got our miracle. That doctor came back to me and he said “if you believe in God, you got your miracle. And if you don’t believe in God, you just won the lottery.” From that moment on, we sent him to the best treatment centers outside of Oregon because we couldn’t get treatment in Oregon. So he went down to California. And I remember having my first experience with addiction treatment. And I honestly thought that he would go through treatment and come home and be just fine. You go to treatment and you’re fine. And that wasn’t the truth. I wish they would have been more truthful to the families. Basically, our family got put on the addiction roller coaster. Keaton spent the next 18 months in and out of rehab.
When COVID hit, his last rehab shut down in California. And I remember them saying we have to send them home. And I was just thinking, “this is the worst scenario possible.” And we flew him home, and I just watched him disappear. There was nothing I could do. Finally, I just begged him to come home. I said, “just come home.” And he did. He came home and he said, “I need help mom. I need a treatment center.” And we started calling all sorts of places trying to find things that were open during COVID. And we detoxed him, and he was sober. He was set to go back to treatment on July 23rd of 2020. I found him dead on July 21st.
Miller: The language you use is very specific. You say that he died of fentanyl poisoning. You don’t use the word overdose. What’s the distinction for you?
Stroh: So in the fentanyl awareness groups there’s two different distinctions. Overdose indicates that you’ve taken too much of a product. When Keaton was given the three pills from his friend, he took one pill because he knew that one pill wouldn’t cause an overdose. He’s not taking too much of oxy. He took one.
What the kids aren’t realizing is we call it fentanyl poisoning because it was death by deception. He did not get the product that he was given.
Miller: Last month, we talked to a woman named Ellen Wirshup who’s also working to get naloxone in businesses and schools, in anybody’s hands who wants it or, and can use it. She told us that sometimes she gets a positive response and then other times it’s negative. She said this “there are many people who do not want it, do not want to talk about it, do not want their kids to have it, don’t want their kids to know what it is or how to use it.”
What’s your strategy for breaking through, specifically with parents who are in a similar place where, for a variety of reasons, that they don’t want this not only to be available to their kids, but for their kids to be aware of something like naloxone?
Stroh: I think it’s just fear of the whole drug stigma. I’ve learned so much in going through my life with Keaton. And I’m thankful for that. Before all this, I didn’t know anything either. We knew meth was bad because they locked up Sudafed from us. But oxy was a given. It was like it was a standard prescription. And so with the addition of fentanyl taking over our state, at this point, we can’t be naive anymore. And we’re trying to explain to our students and to parents that you don’t know which friend is coming to your house that might be looking for somebody and they’re going through your medicine cabinet. And so we’re asking them to take the extra steps. If you’re not gonna use your medication, do the drug turn-in sites, drop them off or get a lockbox. Kids are curious. We have never been able to stop curiosity. But fentanyl made that curiosity lethal.
Miller: What kinds of lessons do you want students to be getting in schools? And at what age do you want them to begin?
Stroh: I am all for starting this in elementary, having the conversations around what is out in the real world. Don’t take any items from people that aren’t your parents or the doctor, that you didn’t get from the pharmacy. I think we just became so complacent before fentanyl, that somebody had a backache, “hey, I have a couple of these left over. Do you want them?” “Oh, I have this medication left over. Do you want it?” We can’t do that anymore. It needs to be so real in what we are showing our students and our children that there are rules in medications, and that medication is for that particular person.
As far as teaching the students, as they get into junior high, having the Narcan, I tell students that I speak to, if you were at a party and you see people doing pills or partaking in drugs, and you see people having these symptoms of an overdose or a fentanyl poisoning, you need to be calling 911. Have these parents role play with their students and say if you’re in a situation, we have the good Samaritan law in Oregon that is going to protect you.
Miller: What is the role playing that you are encouraging parents to have with their kids, or telling kids to practice?
Stroh: Role play either getting out of trying something due to peer pressure, or if they are at a situation where they are the bystander and they’re watching it, to be the leader to make the phone call to 911.
Miller: How receptive has the Oregon City School District been? And I should say again, you’re a member of the school board, a citizen leader of the district. But at the administration level, how receptive have they been to your efforts over the last couple of years?
Stroh: They have been fantastic. We decided to go public with Keaton’s story because I felt that if, as involved as I was and I wasn’t aware of the fentanyl and the dangers and the lethality of it, how are they supposed to know? If we don’t share what happened, how do you learn? And so I presented my story to the school board and I said “I would like to be proactive in our district.” Meaning, I don’t want to wait for the first accident to happen in our school before we do something. And the school nurses jumped on it. Oregon City Together, our nonprofit for education, jumped on it. My fellow school board members were all in agreeance. And we knocked out policy, we got policy passed. We had a couple hundred teachers and staff jump up immediately to sign up to learn how to administer Narcan, to recognize signs in students that could potentially be an overdose poisoning and overdose symptoms. And each year, as we open up that enrollment for training, more people are jumping on to learn.
My whole thing is I can’t look at another parent in our district and say, “I wish I would have known better and I wish I would have done something.” I want to be the parent that says, “I did know better. And now I’m going to teach you so you don’t have to live this nightmare that our family has.”
Miller: Do you know if naloxone has been used inside Oregon City schools since it’s become available over the last year and a half?
Stroh: It has not. And I’m very thankful for that. When legislation just passed that they want education to happen, we didn’t wait for the deadline. We immediately, last May, held assemblies in all of our junior highs and our high school and all of our charter schools on fentanyl awareness. And then we also hosted an interactive parent night where we had representatives from our local police department and from the DEA and from behavioral health come talk to our parents.
Miller: What would you say directly to parents right now, who say, “my kid is a good kid and wouldn’t try this.”
Stroh: There is no such thing as just being a good kid. Keaton was a great kid. Keaton was a Marine. Keaton was top of his class. Keaton was an athlete. Keaton got very curious. And I would rather say not to say, “my kid would never,” because that’s when it’s gonna happen. Have the conversation. Don’t come at them and say, “I don’t want you to do this.” Have the conversation about it. You can go to the fentanyl awareness walls on Facebook and you can see all of the faces of everyday teenagers that we have lost since this epidemic started happening. And it’s truly heartbreaking. These are amazing children.
Miller: Michele Stroh, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate it.
Stroh: Thank you.
Miller: Michele Stroh is a board member for the Oregon City School District. Her son Keaton died from fentanyl poisoning in 2020.
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