September 25, 2020 at 1:21 p.m.
Narcan costs to be covered in honor of LAPD response
Narcan costs to be covered in honor of LAPD response
Lakes Area Police have a reliable inventory of packaged Narcan now, thanks to the parents of a young man whose life was ended by opioids way too soon.
Michele and Jerry Hein wanted to honor Lakes Area Officer Tom Haller for his reassuring presence, during the most devastating day of their lives two months ago; so the couple has offered to cover Narcan expenses for the department.
When their 23-year-old son Tyler succumbed to an opioid laced with fentanyl in July 2020, it was Haller who arrived at the family lakehome in Lindstrom.
“A few days after Tyler died, Jerry and I decided to donate to Lakes Area Police in honor of Officer Haller,” said Michele, Tyler’s mom.
“Officer Haller was so kind and willing to sit and talk through it all, she said.
Haller has been with Lakes Area Police since 2003.
The Heins are still working on a larger effort, potentially a spiritual facility or a healing center to be somewhere people who aren’t living the life they want, can get help from addiction. If you are moved to help make this happen, the Hein Family has a fund at Lake Elmo Bank, P.O. Box 857, Lake Elmo, MN 55042 and make donations payable to Tyler Hein Memorial Fund.
Tyler was in recovery for painkiller addiction at the time of the O.D. “He was doing everything he was supposed to do,” Michele said.
The former Marine Corps member and certified EMT had previously overdosed in January 2020 and again in March. Both times he was administered Narcan, and he got his second chance, twice.
By July though, he’d collected himself and was four months into working the program and participating in virtual meetings nightly. Covid-19 measures limited addiction counseling sessions to via the Internet and while his parents don’t blame covid-19 for getting in the way, it was a factor.
Maybe if Tyler could have connected better with support people, physically and personally.
Maybe if he could have had a place to go and feel like he had some control.
Maybe if this wasn’t such an artificial impersonal world we’re currently forced to function in.
Tyler was into yoga, he was working a full-time job, fishing with his dad again, and being present with family and friends. His mom said. “Our family had hope again.”
Three days before he died, a fishing photo arrived on Michele’s phone. “First of the day...” Tyler’s message proclaimed.
Tyler and street drugs that were surely laced with fentanyl, found each other while he was healing from a couple of badly smashed bones sustained in a skateboarding crash September 2019. Docs would only prescribe a couple pills at a time because Tyler had a history, his mom explained. In 2017 he had broken the bone around his eye and one arm.
Chief Schlumbohm says the dealers mix the fentanyl (and often meth as well) into the opioids to produce a superior altered state, and attract customers. “They are not pharmacists,” he continued. “They don’t get the proportions right they don’t know (the user’s) weight or metabolism and they really don’t know what the ingredients are, their effects or interactions. Fentanyl is so potent it is super easy to overdose,” Schlumbohm concluded.
The Heins are still fighting back their pain. But it helps talking and making the public aware, they explained. They want people to be very aware of the deadly nature of addiction and how hard it can be to get free. Jerry told the Lakes Area Police Commission recently when the Heins presented their first Narcan donation, that Tyler, was a three sport student and played in the concert orchestra, and he was “a hell of a young man.”
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