For Schiavoni running mate, crisis all in the family
Ohio’s opioid epidemic is so extensive that it’s struck the families of at least two of those seeking statewide office.
Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination, months ago revealed that her sons have struggled with addiction. Then on Wednesday night, Stephanie Dodd told an audience in Nelsonville that her sister died of an overdose in December.
Dodd, a member of the Ohio Board of Education from Buckeye Lake, is running for lieutenant governor on a ticket with state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-Boardman. She described the struggles of her sister, Kristian Wilson, in an interview Thursday.
Wilson first got pain pills in 1996, when she tore an ACL as a high-school basketball player in Zanesville. It didn’t seem like a problem. She went on to lead a seemingly normal life.
“Ten years ago, she called me and said she had lost her job,” Dodd said. “She was a traveling nurse and she was caught stealing pain pills.”
Wilson avoided jail time but lost her professional license and began a long, often-secret struggle.
“She said she had stopped taking pills and I thought she was fine,” Dodd said. “But I’ve done a lot of research and that’s not how this works.”
Wilson got a job with her sister’s help.
“She ended up losing that job and I never got the whole reason why,” Dodd said. “There are a lot of lies. A lot of secrets. A lot of hiding of things.”
Then Wilson got pregnant and moved in with her parents.
About two years ago, her mother found a hypodermic needle and what appeared to be heroin in her car, which Wilson had borrowed the day before. Dodd still seems amazed that her sister, a medical professional, was desperate enough to use illicit, intravenous drugs.
Last June, she overdosed and was found by her 4-year-old daughter. The sheriff’s office made it to the house in time to revive her.
As she had before, Wilson enrolled in an outpatient recovery program. There wasn’t an available bed at an inpatient facility, Dodd said.
Wilson completed the 72-day program and, at a family cookout in October, she seemed to be doing OK.
“She said she was doing really well,” Dodd said. “I can tell she was looking for that approval from me.”
But then on Dec. 4, after Dodd had joined Schiavoni’s campaign, she got the call. Wilson’s step-grandfather had found her dead in a bed at his home. The opioid fentanyl was found in her bloodstream.
Her daughter’s fifth birthday was three days away.
“We literally had to plan a funeral and a birthday party at the same time,” Dodd said.
Dodd said her family’s experience has helped her appreciate the depth and complexity of the opioid crisis — from helping families with funeral expenses to helping schools with kids who have been hit by the crisis.
“We have some teachers who are Googling to try to figure out how to help because they’re so overwhelmed,” she said.
Dodd said she’d like to see a more comprehensive, coordinated approach to the crisis at the education department and across state government.
“Just doing something here or doing something there is not at the end of the day going to be an effective way to end this,” she said.