(uplifting music) - [Announcer] This is a special presentation of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

This program is presented by Riverside Recovery, Central Florida Behavioral Health Network, and Drug Free America.

(background chatter) (intense music) - [Phone Operator] 911.

What's the location of your emergency?

- [Narrator] No drug is safe right now.

People who are taking drugs and not knowing that Fentanyl is laced within them are dying.

- [News Anchor 1] It seems like these drug traffickers are targeting a younger audience.

- [News Anchor 2] What appeared to be Oxycodone, Adderall, Percocet, Xanax, or maybe cocaine, actually contained Fentanyl.

- [News Anchor 3] Seizing thousands of Fentanyl pills on Wednesday hidden inside some candy boxes.

- [News Anchor 4] Then a message on their daughter's cell phone, showing she ordered what she thought were Xanax pills.

The mother says they were laced with Fentanyl.

- [News Anchor 5] It's cheap and drug dealers are putting it in everything.

- [Witness] Many people are ODing on Fentanyl without even knowing they're taking Fentanyl.

(EKG beeping) (flat-lining) - I used to watch the TV program with the mother with an 8 x 10 and saying, you know, "My child died," and I did.

And I would say, "Oh, that's so awful.

That's so awful."

But repeatedly that, you know, it became almost routine.

I'm gonna use the word routine, that you would see a mother on the TV news, but you never think it's gonna be me.

That I'll stand and hold an 8 x 10 and say, you know, "This is my child that it happened to."

You know, that's not gonna happen in Sarasota Manatee County.

Oh no, you don't think we are in this little bedroom community that we have that that stuff is here, and it's here.

And if it's here, it's everywhere.

(ominous music) And it's only a matter of time before it's you.

- This is a game changer in terms of drugs that I've seen in almost 40 years in law enforcement.

- People that are being exposed to this are members of our community.

- Overdose calls of people that I grew up with that I knew, that I just probably had spoken to, and now I'm at their home, and they're deceased on the floor from Fentanyl.

- Fentanyl comes in everything you can imagine from where it looks like candy as a pressed pill to they're selling it as cocaine.

- I can tell you as law enforcement, we are proactively stopping people on a daily basis with Fentanyl.

- Something I never thought a million years I'd be going through, I never thought that any of my kids would pass away, and I thought he was gonna eventually settle down, get married, and have kids.

- And we know that there's a group of people who try it for the first time and die.

- Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, and it's 100 times stronger than morphine.

So like in my 34 year career, I've not seen any other drug that's had the devastating consequences that Fentanyl has.

And then adding other derivatives to that has made it even more dangerous.

Significant amount of folks have overdosed and died here in Sarasota counties.

You're hard pressed to find a community that hasn't dealt with Fentanyl.

- It's here, it's in the city, it's in the county, it's in the state, it's in the country.

Let's address it.

- Fentanyl specifically works a little bit more quickly than some of our other pain relieving medications.

So it's a very common medication to receive in the emergency department in procedural areas, because it has a very fast onset of action.

And so if somebody comes in, let's say, with a traumatic injury, Fentanyl's gonna be one of the better ways to provide pain relief to that patient quicker than some of the other medications that we have.

- When you're talking about the fake pills, this may be the base of the pyramid of those that may be used on a weekend basis or find that they're in a social situation where they may not know what they are.

And remember, we're at the end of the tunnel.

So what we can say for sure is that many people every single day in our community use Fentanyl.

- For the most part, their intention was not to use Fentanyl, so it's an accidental overdose.

- You have the potential of someone in school who may be taking a pill from someone they know, but what they don't realize is if they're laced with Fentanyl, potentially lead to your death.

- I am Nicolette's mother, she was my youngest.

This is my oldest, this is my middle, and Nicolette Rico was my baby.

We always just refer to her as the baby, because it was just Brittany, Matthew, and the baby, because then she got 12 and 16 and 18 and 20 and 24 and just stuck.

She was always the baby.

The world, for people like that, it's a dangerous place out there.

- It's an important story to tell that it could be anybody, how your world can just be turned upside down in like the blink of an eye.

- I'm Elaine Finn, I a mother of three boys, Sean, Kevin, and Tommy.

He was always an outgoing boy.

He always thrived in any sport that he was in, whether it was Little League, T-ball, soccer, basketball, he thrived in every sport that he did.

And he was very outgoing and to me, he just loved life, and he had a lot of friends and he had a beautiful smile and he was a great brother to Tommy and Kevin, and he was just the perfect son.

It was at age 22 when I noticed that there was a problem.

Something was not right.

And I would ask him, "Are you okay?"

He'd always tell me, "Mom, I'm fine, I'm fine.

Don't worry about me, I'm fine."

I'm like, "No, I can tell something's wrong."

- I think it started with the Xanax, just trying maybe a couple Xanax and not realizing that he has a problem and continuing to almost eat them like candies, kind of clouded his mind to make him feel as if he didn't have a problem mentally, physically, and stuff like that.

He was really good with, you know, understanding Bitcoin and the dark web and finding those websites that allow for shipping of drug purchases.

I know one time I saw his Xanax bottle, and it was from Mexico or from some Spanish company, 'cause it was, you know, Spanish pharmacy all over it.

- Because Fentanyl is inexpensive, cheap, and it doesn't take up a lot of space, it has kind of become the drug for a lot of the cartel.

A small amount is so potent, not compared to like other drugs.

I mean, we're talking granulars.

That's how potent this drug is.

It's just for their bottom line, it makes more sense.

- Countries like China send a lot of the precursors to Fentanyl to Mexico.

The cartels get involved, and then once it crosses the border, but we have these interstate corridors that the drug is certainly distributed in and travels on, and Florida's the third most populated state in the country, right?

So we have, there's a demand for that here, unfortunately.

And a lot of that makes its way into Atlanta and then south, primarily into Bradington and then into Sarasota County from what we can tell.

This is a deadly drug.

In many cases it does kill people, and sometimes it's killed people who have taken it for the first and only time.

- When is enough is enough?

Hundreds of thousand people are dying every year from Fentanyl.

It needs a stop.

- The misconception is that, you know, oh, they're a drug abuser or they have used drugs a long time, and it doesn't have to be that.

It could be their first time or their first and last time, unfortunately, because the Fentanyl that took Nicolette's life, it was given to her from a friend.

She was mourning the death of my mother just not even a week before.

And that would help her with mourning.

And in that Fentanyl pill was seven nanograms per liter of Fentanyl and two is deadly to a man.

So more than three times the lethal amount of Fentanyl was found in her body.

She thought it was a Xanax and it wasn't.

It was just pure Fentanyl.

- They make Xanax or Adderall identical right in these fake pills.

And then they lace them with the Fentanyl.

And the reasons they do this is so that people can carry 'em on their person.

And if they're ever stopped by law enforcement, they would say, "Hey, let see your prescription bottle."

Here it is.

They look at it for certain numbers that are on Xanax bars, we call 'em on Adderall, so that we can look 'em up.

If you took an Adderall, a fake one next to a real one, you would never know the difference.

They're actually dealing that Adderall, they're actually selling that Adderall, which isn't really Adderall, it's Fentanyl.

- A lot of times this comes across our border looking like children's candy.

In a worst case scenario, in some cases it's actually stamped similar to a legally prescribed narcotic.

So this is the one drug I would say, if you don't know what you're ingesting in your body, and it looks like a piece of candy or it looks like a pill, and you didn't get it directly from your practitioner or from your pharmacist, you should not take that.

- If you come across someone who you believe has been exposed to Fentanyl or another opioid and has overdosed, I think the best thing you can do first and foremost is to summon EMS, call 911 and get professionals to the scene so that though they can ultimately perform the necessary resuscitation measures.

- If they have somebody with them, we're fortunate enough in the city of Sarasota that our fire department is so close, and they have Narcan that usually they can administer Narcan and prevent it from being a fatal overdose.

But if they're not with anybody and nobody sees them overdosing, nobody's there to seek help.

So if they're not found in a reasonable amount of time before their body shuts down, that's when we get a fatality out of it.

- So yeah, me and Sean lived together for about four years or so.

- Four years.

- So a good majority of the time when he was struggling.

When I checked up on him to say goodnight is whenever I found him ultimately slumped over.

- Unresponsive.

It was, Kevin did CPR on him while his girlfriend Taylor was on the phone with the paramedics to instruct him on how to help him.

And it was too late.

He was already gone.

- Yeah.

Yeah, unfortunately, when I saw, I knew there's- - He was already gone.

It was nothing that Kevin could have done.

- Yeah.

But yeah, from then, I kind of flipped him over and realized the CPR wasn't working on the bed, kind of rolled him over onto the ground and then continued CPR while he yelled at Taylor to, to call 911 for me, basically.

We didn't need the confirmation.

I didn't need the confirmation, you know, it wasn't confirmed yet.

He wasn't pronounced dead yet.

They were still working on him inside.

And I called Tom and was like, "Hey man, I need you to go wake up our mom.

I think Sean's dead."

- It was just so weird, 'cause I mean, I'm so detached from like, everything.

I was just, I've been playing my games for such a long time, you know, I'm just sitting in my chair doing nothing all day.

I mean, I just, you know, I picked up the phone and you know, Kevin told me what happened, and I didn't even, you know, I don't know how to react, how you're supposed to react and that sort of thing.

So, you know, went to Mom's room, and I think I even just said something like as bland as like, "Hey, I think Kevin has something he needs to say to you, or something like that."

I don't know how to say that.

- That's what he said, yeah.

But I had a feeling that something was wrong, 'cause Kevin would never call me after midnight unless there was something wrong.

And as soon as Kevin was frantic on the phone, and I didn't believe him, I didn't wanna believe him, I said, "No, he's not, he's not dead."

And then hung up, and we left right away to go to the apartment.

And saw the ambulances and the police officers were there.

And I still didn't believe it until we got to the apartment.

And the first thing when the officers told me was, "Sorry about your loss."

- Once they do the autopsy, and we found out, you know, the reasoning is it kind of like hurts because man, this person had a problem and has ran into a drug that takes no prisoners.

- What we're seeing now, Fentanyl, Carfentanil, Remifentanyl, Sufentanyl, all of these more advanced, ultra potent opioids, it only takes one exposure to have an unfortunately fatal outcome.

- I got a phone call from a friend of hers, a girlfriend of hers that had talked to Nicolette that day, but when she said she was using drugs to mourn my mother, I immediately became concerned.

And then I called her sister- - About 8:30, I'm walking outta Walmart with the kids.

She goes, "Oh, can you go check on your sister?"

I got the kids.

So I'd be taking my three boys who are eight, six, and two, you know, drag 'em all the way down there.

And I said, "There really better be something wrong."

I think I jokingly said, "I'm gonna kill her if there's nothing wrong with her."

Jokingly, not even- - Yeah.

- Thinking and just jokingly saying it.

Her roommate, one of her roommates, I said, "Can you please let me in?"

I said, "My mother's on the phone," and of course she's speaking up.

And I said, "She's worried."

So he opens the door and lets me in and I climb the stairs, and I open the bedroom door, and she's sitting there like somebody sleeping with her hands kind of to her chest.

And I said, "Sissy," I said, "Mom wants me to check on you."

And I reached out, I had touched her and she was cold.

I said, "Mom, I gotta go.

You gotta call."

I go "What?

I gotta go."

And I said, automatically started CPR not thinking anything was wrong.

And I was screaming and begging someone to call 911.

I didn't wanna stop, just hoping that there was something, something there.

And not realizing that there was nothing there.

When the paramedics came, he said she's cold, and she's been gone, and to stop and I needed to leave.

So I go downstairs and of course, my kids are in the car.

I can't even look at them.

I can't even, you know, they had just lost an auntie.

And I just literally sat there on the ground crying, because I knew I had to call my mother back and tell her that her baby was gone.

So I remember making the phone call to Matthew and begging him to go to mom immediately.

- The scream (voice breaking) Brian was already in bed, like, we were going to bed.

I just was like, no, no!

Like, and it was just like from a, from deep down, like you can't.

Like I could in my like happiest day, I could just think about that moment, and it would make me cry because- - I remember the screaming that, you know, you don't think you could scream like that.

It's guttural, it's animal.

It's begging, it's cries, screaming, pounding.

My children have to learn, I have to learn with them that our lives are never going to be the same without Nicolette.

We have a homicide detective currently working on her case.

I'm suspecting that one of her so-called friends online, or it could have been even somebody she went to school with, we're not sure yet, gave her the pill, or sold her the pill.

And so we are hoping that we can find that individual and put a stop to it for the next family that may come across somebody that has these types of pills that kill instantly.

- The message is also out there to those that are dealing this poison.

We're looking for you, we're coming for you.

And we will enforce the law.

We have a very good working relationship with our state attorney in these, you know, homicide or attempted homicide cases.

We've got some good criminal sanctions and put those folks away.

And of course, every dealer that you put away that's dealing that poison helps with the problem as well.

When you step back and take an overall look at the overdoses and the deaths, it really goes across the spectrum from teenagers all the way to folks in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s in some cases.

And even below the age of 20, there are teens and infants and toddlers.

We recently had a death of a 3-year-old here who came into contact with Fentanyl that was left by a family member.

So it really knows no bounds in terms of age.

- It's just one time.

And I wish I could scream that, you know, as loudly as I can.

- What I would say to the public is, let's get ahead of it, right?

We have Narcan available to us now over the counter.

It's available in CVS, Walgreens, Publix, you can carry it in your purse, your gym bag.

And really, it's almost for like self protection.

- I was even like looking up like, how much is Narcan in case someone's going into university or something like that to keep it on me so I can hopefully, you know, help someone from not experiencing that.

- Just as simple as, you know, you pull it out, you put it on somebody's thigh or onto their arm somewhere, you can inject that in there, kind of like an EpiPen if you will.

And that many times we'll reverse the effects that you see from Fentanyl.

But we've deployed hundreds of these capsules of Narcan and saved dozens and dozens of lives.

And yes, we have gone back and administered it to several folks in several houses multiple times.

But it has saved a lot of lives, you know, and at first blush people say, "Well, folks are dealing with this stuff and they're poisoning their own body."

But you have to remember, you can use this on that 3-year-old that I mentioned before on a family member or somebody that inadvertently came in contact with it or ingested something that they didn't know what it was.

And all human life has value, right?

So we should be trying to save those folks and then, you know, teach them about the dangers of it.

When they come outta the addiction recovery pod, most of those folks graduate and have a very good understanding and are successful.

But a lot of times you have to go back, and you have to use that Narcan over and over.

- They're humans, they're are brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, children of friends that we know.

And so they are humans that deserve appropriate treatment for the disease state that they have.

If you don't carry Naloxone, calling 911 is, you know, certainly the best thing that you can do.

And they will certainly be able to help walk you through the treatment process for somebody, checking a pulse, checking to see if they're breathing, those types of activities - With the Good Samaritan Act, people can seek for medical attention without worrying about having to get in trouble.

That way we don't have those people overdosing and dying.

- If one person, just one person is saved, this is one person.

- Not only do the parents have to be involved, not only do the schools have to be involved, but the police should be involved as well.

And the sheriff's office should be involved as well.

And I think we're starting to take that torch and we're starting to push on a little bit.

- Please don't do it, please stop, or you'll probably end up ODing later.

Then we are coming in to try to pick up the pieces and then your family members are gonna come try to pick up the pieces.

- Your life can change just like that.

That might be the last party you ever go to.

And if you make it through that night, the addiction to that drug may be so strong that every party thereafter, you need that pill.

You need that pill until your life is totally destroyed.

- Everybody is maybe only one or two degrees of separation away from someone who has used these drugs or knows somebody in their peer group who has used these drugs.

They've been offered these drugs.

We all have to be aware and involved and do what we can to support.

- It just made me realize how precious those moments were.

Like, you know, or even sending me happy birthday, ask me to mini golf or bowling.

Most of the time I would just keep, you know, just keep playing video games like nothing's going on.

And I still do that pretty much.

I still play video games, but you know, it made me realize just how important each of those like, those little moments and those little checkups and everything of just wanting to be there for someone.

- When we went, most recently when running, we met in the park and we both were in our cars or talk on the phone the whole way there and it started torrential down pouring.

We said, "Why don't we just go and run in the rain?"

And she's like, "I mean, I'm down."

I got outta the car.

We just running, running in the rain.

So it was like, you know, just laughing.

And then we'd stop and be like, oh my gosh, this is just so beautiful.

Just water and and the rain coming down laughing and laughing and laughing, laughing.

- This is not a problem that one sheriff or one chief of police or one jurisdiction is gonna solve.

We're all gonna have to come together.

- It could be 1, it could be 10,000, but if we're saving one person's life doing this, then this is well worth the little bit of time that we're putting into it right now.

- So it makes me not want to take everything for granted for sure.

You know, it just makes you realize that it could be tomorrow where you never know.

- But we dream about her every day.

- But I think we all just want her back.

(soft piano music continuing) (music ending) - [Announcer] This program is presented by Riverside Recovery, Central Florida Behavioral Health Network, and Drug Free America.

(uplifting music) (music ending)