Parents aren’t taught how to mourn their children.
That’s because it goes against the natural order of things. We’re brought into this world expecting to die after our parents do.
Death is inevitable, we know this, but we can quell the fear of that inevitability with the expectation of who will outlive who.
So, what do you do when reality defies this expectation?
Turns out there’s a lot of mothers in Colorado trying to figure that one out.
There’s a tragic throughline through each story you’ll hear in this limited series, Lethal - each mother lost their child to fentanyl poisoning.
Some of their kids were habitual users, others hardly ever did drugs. But all had their lives taken by one of the most potent drugs circulating around the country.
On episode 1, you heard the story of Sabrina Jankowski and her late son, Joey. Joey was 24-years-old, someone who loved life and the people he shared it with. He wasn’t an addict, but liked to experiment with drugs from time to time. He died from cocaine laced with fentanyl and benzodiazepines.
On this episode, you’ll hear from Elaine Lopez. She lost her daughter, Tiyana, to fentanyl poisoning.
Listen:
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lethal ep 2 script Jackie Sedley
A trigger warning for this first episode of a new series right here on listener-supported KGNU. There’s discussion of drug use and abuse, overdoses and death.
A few fast facts on fentanyl:
- It’s a synthetic opioid, and MUCH more potent than naturally-occurring opioids like morphine or codeine.
- It’s 50 times stronger than heroin, and 100 times stronger than morphine.
- 2 milligrams of fentanyl is considered a lethal dose. That looks like 10-15 grains of table salt.
- It’s often unintentionally taken – sellers cut drugs like cocaine and Percocet with fentanyl to cut costs.
- Fentanyl often kills people that you wouldn’t “typically” consider at-risk for an opioid-related death.
- Now, possessing between one to four grams of a fentanyl compound is considered a Level 4 drug felony, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and up to two years of probation. Possessing 1 gram or less of fentanyl, or a fentanyl compound, is still a Level 1 drug misdemeanor.
- More facts on fentanyl
Many of the mothers you’ll hear from in this series want stricter penalties for those who possess and sell fentanyl. Others want to see the person or people who sold their kids fentanyl put behind bars. Regardless of what the individual path to healing looks like, each mother is searching for justice.
Resources:
Where to get Naloxone (commonly known as Narcan) in Colorado
Where to get fentanyl testing strips in Colorado:
Where to get support in Colorado for addiction:
Transcript:
Jackie Sedley: Hey everyone. I’m Jackie Sedley.
A trigger warning as we enter the second episode of Lethal a series right here on listener supported KGNU. There’s discussion of drug use and abuse in this episode, as well as overdoses and death. So keep that in mind as you enter the episode, and feel free to come back in 30 minutes or so if that content isn’t suitable for you right now.
You are tuned into episode two of Lethal, a limited series that’s premiered right here on KGNU. I’m Jackie Sedley. Lethal tells the stories of seven bereaved mothers finding their footing and doing all they can to make sure their children aren’t lost to the past. There’s a through line through each story you’ll hear, each mother lost their child to fentanyl poisoning.
Some of their kids were habitual users while others hardly ever did drugs, but all had their lives taken by one of the most potent drugs circulating around the country. I listed some fast facts on fentanyl last time, and I’ll continue to remind listeners of them every episode. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and much more potent than naturally occurring opioids like morphine or codeine.
It’s 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a lethal dose that looks like 10 to 15 grains of table salt. It’s often unintentionally taken. Sellers cut drugs like cocaine and Percocet with fentanyl to cut costs, and that can often lead to the death of those that you wouldn’t typically consider at risk for an opioid-related death.
Last episode, you heard the story of Sabrina Jankowski and her late late son Joey. Joey was 24 years old, someone who loved life and the people he shared it with. He wasn’t an addict but liked to experiment with drugs from time to time. Joey died from cocaine laced with fentanyl and benzodiazepines.
Today you’ll hear from Elaine Lopez. She lost her daughter Tiyana to fentanyl poisoning.
***
Sedley: Elaine Lopez joins the Zoom call that we’re scheduled to meet in from her driver’s side of her car. She’s a busy woman, but I can tell quickly that she’ll do anything to take the time to talk about her daughter, Tiyana. She starts to tell me how talented Tiyana was, how smart she was.
Elaine Lopez: My daughter, she loved complimenting people.
She loved to make people laugh. She had a little bit of fear in her at times, but usually she was very strong and could kind of overcome anything that was, you know, intimidating I guess. She was able to push past her fears and just move forward in the things she wanted to do, even if it kind of made her freeze a little bit, she didn’t stay there.
She had a lot of aspirations and a lot of ability to do anything really she put her mind to.
Sedley: Tiyana was also a mother of a little boy. He was four when she passed away back in October of 2022. She was 29 years old. Elaine is his permanent guardian now.
Lopez: And we see a lot of her in him. His smile, his smile. Yeah. So she left us with him at least.
Sedley: Tiyana’s childhood sounded far from easy. For one, she was sexually assaulted when she was in high school. Back then, Elaine tried desperately to help her daughter. She wanted the kid who hurt her to be held responsible so he wouldn’t hurt other girls.
On top of that, Tiyana’s dad, Elaine’s eventual ex-husband, was abusive and was known to lean on alcohol and drugs. But even with all of that, Tiyana went through the motions of high school and made it to graduation. Then she met someone, a guy, and moved to Nebraska with him.
Lopez: And I think that he was taking pain pills for some injury that he had.
And also he was not a very good guy. He was, according to what she told me, kind of abusive and we were kind of against it anyway ’cause there was something about him that the family didn’t really like.
Sedley: She eventually decided to leave her abusive partner in Nebraska and move back to Denver. But she brought her new addiction to pain pills with her. Then she found heroin.
Lopez: And we didn’t know that she was doing it until she ended up getting pregnant with her son. We found out she was doing certain things. And so it finally hit me that, what is going on with my daughter? Why is she doing this? So I asked her to let me see her arms, and that’s when I saw it and my mom and I kind of teamed up together to put her into a program.
I didn’t know very much about the addiction to heroin. I just was yelling at her to stop doing it. But I realized when we took her to the hospital and we started working with her, getting her into a program. That it’s not that easy. They can’t just stop.
Sedley: Tiyana’s program was through Addiction Research and Treatment Services in Denver, also referred to by the acronym ARTS.
There staff started giving her methadone a medication used to treat opioid use disorder and sometimes pain relief. Elaine tells me that she quickly felt dissatisfied with the treatment program.
Lopez: To me, I felt like that program was only giving methadone. I mean, she had the ability to take a few classes, but they didn’t really push it.
They didn’t push the counseling. They just, you know, go get your methadone every day. I was her main support taking her and they had an opportunity to really teach me ’cause I was wanting to learn. They could have done way more, not just give the methadone. Slowly she started seeing her dad and she had her son and she started taking her son to see her dad.
And I don’t know if she started meeting some of his friends, which he was still in his own addiction and I believe that’s when he started trying the mess and the fentanyl is through him.
Sedley: At this point Tiyana’s son was also on methadone. When he was born, he was showing signs of addiction. As babies often do when the person carrying the child uses substances while pregnant.
Elaine found out her daughter was using fentanyl when it showed up on her lab tests at the ARTS program. Her test also showed signs of meth.
Lopez: So the doctor gave her some Narcan, but he didn’t explain anything about fentanyl to me. He didn’t tell me the dangers, he didn’t say anything. He just gave her a prescription to Narcan.
And so I was just like, “What is this stuff? I was barely learning about the heroin. Now I’m having to learn about meth and fentanyl. What is fentanyl?” I was, you know, kind of clueless.
Sedley: It was around this time that Elaine decided to take her grandson.
Lopez: ‘Cause he was only three. And I said, I’m just gonna take my grandson because I’m worried that she’s gonna have him in a place where it’s dangerous.
So I went ahead and called child protection and she voluntarily gave him to me. During that time, I was keeping him safe, but I was still connected to her and trying to help her find rehab homes and trying to help her. So she would come to the house sometimes and then leave, and it was becoming really hard.
Sedley: The pandemic hit and isolation closed in on Tiyana. We know that the trials and tribulations of COVID-19 made people’s mental health worse across the board. Fentanyl related deaths spiked during the pandemic. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of synthetic opioid related deaths, primarily due to fentanyl poisoning increased by 56% in 2020 compared to the year before.
While Tiyana did not legally overdose that year, she did stop going to her ARTS program and started spending time with people who were doing and supplying her with fentanyl. She wasn’t seeing her son or her mother as much either.
Lopez: She just started getting worse. So 2020, 2021I was still trying to help her get into a rehab home.
She would sometimes say, yes, I wanna go, and then she would say, no, I don’t wanna go. Sometimes she would come to the house just really mean, and then in 2022, I think that’s when she started being gone longer and I couldn’t find her. And that’s when I think I started just losing her more, excuse me.
I would take her to the hospital and some of the hospitals just wouldn’t help. They would just not really even care. And then there were some that did care. So it was a battle. It was back and forth and I was just losing my hair and I was struggling, you know, not knowing what to do. I was also trying to do an involuntary commitment and they needed a lot of information.
They needed, Is she a harm to herself? Is she a harm to the community? Is she not taking care of herself? It was like this long email that I had to keep showing proof and it still, it really didn’t go anywhere.
Sedley: Elaine tells me that she kept getting recommendations for different doctors and different hospitals to take Tiyana to.
Lopez: So, you know, it was kind of like, okay, well how am I supposed to go find her and take her to this hospital that you’re telling me to take her to? And it’s just really hard on the person, the mom, or whoever is trying to support the person that you’re trying to save.
Sedley: I can see in Elaine’s eyes how hard she must have been trying at this time to help her daughter. She tells me she wishes she had the right to force her daughter into rehab. She says, while she understands that Tiyana was an adult, she clearly didn’t have the desire to take care of herself. Elaine wishes she could have made that decision for her.
She went through so many iterations of trying to find her daughter on the streets, going long stretches without any word from Tiyana. In 2022, which Elaine says was the hardest year, she finally found the spot where her daughter was spending a lot of her time.
Lopez: She was on like Federal and 55th, where there’s a lot of drugs and a lot of people just hanging out.
So she decided she wanted to be in locations where it’s easy to find a drug because that drug, that fentanyl it’s like a quick high and you just want it right away. She would experience the withdrawals immediately and there was nothing to, I mean, the drug is faster than anything else, so she was addicted to the blue pills.
Sedley: These blue pills she’s referring to are counterfeit Percocet, which are often laced with fentanyl.
Lopez: And so it was very hard. I found her and I tried to get her to come home. And she came home with me and then she started getting the withdrawals and I said, Tiyana, let me take you to the doctor.
And she just wanted to go back and so the police finally arrested her and took her. She had a couple of like misdemeanor warrants for missing court. And, you know, then she would just go back to the drugs.
Sedley: In October, 2022, Tiyana spent time in a couple different county jails.
As soon as she was released, she went back to Federal and 55th. The spot Elaine found her earlier that year.
Lopez: I was a mess because I was trying to pick her up and I was hoping to get her into an inpatient rehab, not an outpatient an inpatient rehab. We came to my house and they told me that she was gone.
Then I had to just deal with everything. Trying to figure out, you know, what do you mean?
Sedley: Tiyana Lopez died on October 18th, 2022 of a fentanyl overdose. She was 29 years old. The last time Elaine spoke to Tiyana was about two weeks before she passed. She called her mom from jail.
***
If you’re just now joining us, you are tuned into episode two of Lethal, a series that’s premiered right here on listener supported KGNU. Lethal tells the story of seven bereaved mothers finding their footing and doing what they can to find their own versions of justice after their children died of fentanyl poisoning.
This episode, you’re hearing the story of Tiyana Lopez, who died from fentanyl poisoning, told by her mother Elaine Lopez. We’ll go back to that conversation between me and Elaine right now.
***
Much like other mothers you’ll hear from in this series. Elaine immediately tried to take matters into her own hands. She wanted to find the person or people who sold her daughter the fentanyl that killed her.
Lopez: First, they said that there was no investigation. So I started going down there and doing my own like investigation, going, talking to people, trying to figure out what happened, who she was with.
I have names and I told the police, I told the detective. But I really don’t have anything, I think solid enough to say this is the person who gave it to her. So that’s where I was left with. Because I had names and I gave it to the detective, but I really didn’t have anything solid. I called the DEA and asked what I can do, who I can talk to, how we can change this.
It’s getting so bad. So that’s where I’m at now, just trying my best to learn more and get information out.
Sedley: I ask Elaine what justice would look like for her at this point, nearly two and a half years after her daughter’s death. She still wants the people or person who sold Tiyana the fentanyl to be held accountable, even if they didn’t mean to give Tiyana a lethal dose.
Lopez: It could have been accidental or it could have been intentional. It could have been someone knowing that they are giving her a lethal dose and that they’re trying to get rid of her. But also I learned that it could have been because she was in jail, her tolerance wasn’t as high. And that could’ve done it also because she might’ve just thought that she could take the amount that she was taking before.
And that whole jail thing, I think lasted about a week. She was away from that fentanyl for about a week. It’s hard to figure out which one is the dealer and which one is the doer. I get it. But even if you were to take someone in that has the fentanyl on them and they’re just doing it, they’re not selling it.
Still, you’re kind of saving them because they’re in jail. And even if, you know, they could put together something where they identify this person is an addict, they can’t even go a couple hours without it. They’re having withdrawals. Let’s start helping them get off of this stuff ’cause a lot of the people, they got locked up and it started from jail that they started working on their sobriety.
They started working on their recoveries. I was kind of glad that she went to jail ’cause that was my hope. Okay good she’s not on the street anymore, she’s in jail. Even though that’s not someplace you want your child to be, but at least they’re not on the street and they’re not doing the drug. You know.
Sedley: Of Elaine’s many wishes for the future, one of her highest priority hopes is that medical providers start taking fentanyl more seriously.
Lopez: I want to see that they are educated enough to know that it’s not just any addiction. This is fentanyl. This fentanyl can kill this person. So it goes to another level of emergency, something higher level, so that they don’t just release them off the street.
They shouldn’t just treat ’em like, it’s just any old thing. It’s not like it’s marijuana. It’s not like, even if it’s cocaine, it’s not like even heroin. I don’t think people are dying. Or we’re dying off of heroin, like they’re dying from this fentanyl. So the level needs to go higher in the emergency area that they would keep them, they would treat them, they would contact a loved one, and that they would not release them unless someone comes and picks them up, and that they would maybe even have some form of connection to a rehab.
I don’t think my daughter knew the dangers that fentanyl could kill you. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. So maybe she didn’t know. Maybe a lot of people didn’t, you know, they think, oh, well I’m not taking too much. I’m only doing one pill. Well, excuse me, but one pill could kill, you know? So I think the awareness, when they go to the hospital, have a conversation and really explain and give them all the resources, and then wait, do not release them, wait until a loved one comes and picks them up.
Sedley: Elaine also tells me she thinks stigma played a huge role in the death of her daughter. She says people spend more time judging those struggling with addiction and not enough time developing ways to help them. She wants people to understand that those with addiction are not lost causes.
They deserve resources just like anyone else struggling. They deserve just as much support at the medical and governmental level.
Lopez: It’s emotional, it’s mental. Don’t reject them. This could be you. This could be you. You know, just like someone who lost their house. I don’t think we should ever become a nation where we just keep on going with our life and, oh, poor them.
They need to just go away. But actually having programs who are specialized in addiction and seeing that this is not something they want, this is not someplace that they wanna be, but this drug kind of attaches to you that you feel like you can’t even live without it. So it’s mental, it’s emotional, it’s physical, and we need to learn more about this addiction.
I don’t think it’s like any other addiction this fentanyl is worse than morphine. I mean, it’s stronger. So it puts you in a place of like feeling really good, so the pain is gone and that includes the mental distress or whatever. I’ve never taken it, I never want to, but I think it makes you feel very happy.
So, you know, getting rid of that, I don’t know how that can happen, but I know it happens because there are people in recovery and some of them were on, you know, fentanyl, so it’s not a loss cause. More programs, more hospitals, more rehab places, more people. We can just be a little bit more caring and not just willing to reject, push them away and forget about the problem, you know?
Sedley: Elaine talks about Tiyana a lot with her grandson, even though he was young when she died. He remembers her. Elaine took him to counseling at Judi’s House shortly after she died, which specializes in helping children and families work through grief.
Lopez: He does ask about his mom. I haven’t came to a place where I feel like I can explain it because he’s only six.
He at first was creating his own reason why she died. So I kind of touched it a little bit, like your mom was making bad choices or something like that.I haven’t explained the whole drugs thing to him. I feel like I still have time. He’s still young, but my relationship with him is great.
You know, he had a lot of anger and I’ve had him since he was three, so I think it wasn’t like drastic. So it was like he was seeing his mom less unfortunately, and me more. So it kind of slowly got him used to being with me more often. And when he saw his mom in the casket, he just said, it’s okay, mom. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. So he was okay the way he handled it. We were all kind of surprised that he was saying, it’s okay, mom. And he put flowers in her casket and yeah, I think he’s doing good, you know. It’ll come a time when I, of course, explained to him the dangers of drugs and all of that.
Sedley: Elaine says she’s found support and community with other mothers who have lost loved ones to fentanyl poisoning. Her anger led her to them. She was contacting the DEA constantly and they connected her with Andrea, the leader of Facing Fentanyl, a support and advocacy group that a lot of the mothers you’ll hear from belong to. She also joined a lot of Facebook groups.
Lopez: Of course, my family, they sat with me and they were willing also to share my anger and hear my determination to do something. But no one really, except for my mom, I think she kind of connected with me. But it was more of the people on Facebook who had lost their children and Andrea’s group and other groups that are connecting and doing things and realizing there’s so many.
They’re researching and they’re creating nonprofits and they’re putting up billboards and they’re connecting to their city officials and things like that. Sometimes it gets a little depressing to see all of these families losing their children, but I think our team that we’re working on, we have a, a pretty strong group of moms that are saying, we’re gonna do whatever we have to do.
Even if we’re doing it crying our eyes out, we’re still gonna do it.
Sedley: Thank you to Elaine Lopez, to her late daughter Tiyana, and to Tiyana’s son. Elaine made it clear that she wasn’t familiar with addiction before her daughter started struggling. But now after her daughter’s passing, she’s much more educated. She’s come to understand that trauma can be a foundation for addiction.
We can all benefit from learning more about substance use and abuse. Education helps erase stigma. Which can lead to the amplification of resources for those that are struggling. Information can also help you, help your loved ones and potentially yourself. I’m going to keep reminding listeners that I don’t want this series to scare anyone straight.
I personally don’t believe in abstinence as a practical solution to overdoses, but I do think it’s crucial we stay informed, prepared, and realistic about the dangerous drug use poses. Even recreationally, even one time.
It’s also so important to remember that this can happen to anyone.
Fentanyl is just as likely to kill habitual drug users as it is to kill first-time experimenters. Tiyana could have been your kid.
I don’t want this series to scare anyone straight.
I personally don’t believe in abstinence as a practical solution to overdoses, but I do think it’s crucial we stay informed, prepared, and realistic about the dangers drug use poses, even recreationally, even one time. You can find links to resources, including where to get testing strips, where to get the lifesaving nasal spray Narcan, and how to get support if you or someone you know is experiencing addiction at kgu.org. The next episode of Lethal will be coming to KGNU’s airwaves soon, so stay tuned.
Until then, stay well and stay educated. I am Jackie Sedley. Thanks for listening.
