Cocaine The aftermath

Fifteen years before she died, a drunken April Jackson-Reynolds had sped a Chevrolet pickup recklessly along a stretch of Highway 9 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Walking along the shoulder was Lauren Berglund, a 20-year-old San Lorenzo Valley High grad who worked at a doughnut shop and wanted to become a nurse. Jackson-Reynolds pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter in Berglund’s death before a judge sentenced her to 10 years in prison. At her sentencing, she apologized to the young woman’s friends and family.

After serving her sentence, Jackson-Reynolds started her life over in San Francisco. But she fought familiar demons, not only addiction to alcohol and drugs but post-traumatic stress disorder and a major depressive disorder. She moved into the Ritz Hotel, a city-funded SRO in the heart of the Tenderloin, with her partner.

When she went into cardiac arrest in her third-floor room that Monday, paramedics were called. They got her heart started again, but she suffered a massive brain injury. As the final hours of one of the worst weeks of the city’s overdose crisis ticked away, she died at California Pacific Medical Center.

On March 18, 11 days after his death, Ioan Pop’s family held a service at a Folsom funeral home. It was livestreamed so his parents could watch in his Romanian homeland. They sang, played music and spoke about Pop, who lay in a white casket. One relative encouraged guests to sow seeds that will flower. Those would be lessons from Pop’s death. “For Ioan, the planting season is over,” the man said. “There’s no more planting. What he planted, that’s what he’ll reap.” He explained how Pop had immigrated for a better life: “People die in America, just like they die in Romania. No difference.”

Charlie Altarac’s mother, Susan, said her family held a funeral for him in Massachusetts, but due to finances and distance she was unable to attend. She has half of her son’s ashes and is deciding how to memorialize him. She may sponsor a park bench with his name on it. It’s hard talking about her son, she said. “If it can help somebody else,” she said, “that’s why I’m doing it.”

On March 24, the Terrys buried John’s cremated remains at their South Carolina parish after a funeral Mass. They remain frustrated. The couple said they’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get help for their son, but couldn’t find effective dual-diagnosis care to treat both his mental illness and his drug addiction. “Let’s be frank, a lot of people can’t afford what we have done,” William Terry said. “They dealt with the drugs, but not the mental illness. It was so extremely frustrating that we couldn’t find definitive medical care for him.”

At the time of his death, John Terry was two weeks away from finally clearing a felony arrest from his record through diversion to Behavioral Health Court. Weeks later, his parents made sure to tune into the court’s graduation ceremony, broadcast over Zoom from the San Francisco Hall of Justice. They listened as their son’s name was called.

Kristen Buchanan’s mom still keeps her son’s ashes in her room. She can’t find the strength to plan his service. “I still haven’t done anything,” she said. “I can’t do that because I didn’t see him. I didn’t lay eyes on him. Touch him. I can’t have that closure that most people get. I don’t remember what he looked like.”

On Sept. 29, Tony Lawson’s toddler son, Jordan, counted the scoops as they transferred his father’s ashes into an urn. The next day, at a park near White Bear Lake, friends and family held a celebration of life. They wrote messages on helium-filled balloons with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups — Lawson’s favorite candy — tied to each. Jordan wrote, “I love you dad.”

As they let go, the attendees yelled, “We love you, Tony!” The balloons soared into the clear, warm, breezy sky. His son shrieked, “Mine’s gonna get to my dad first!”