07/01/2025
I originally posted this last summer at this time, when the heat was so high outdoors, but I'm posting it again in hopes that it might help shift some perspectives, and maybe, just maybe, save someone's life.
I ask that you look at this photo of my own teenage son, Henry, who became very painfully addicted to drugs while he was in high school, and who easily could be that dirty young man (who may very well actually only be a teenager, as my son Henry was when he died after a brutal drug-related beating and an opioid overdose) you fail to try to help if you see him lying on the ground somewhere.
This photo of Henry was taken on our neighbors' front porch not that long before he died. But if you had passed Henry on the streets of Knoxville, the city where we live, in the very final months of his brief life, he wouldn't have looked like this. He would have been much thinner, and his hair would have been matted and dirty. He likely would have been in filthy clothing, and possibly wrapped in the red blanket from his bed at home with his initials monogrammed in the corner - he took that blanket everywhere with him in those last months.
And if you had seen my child in the final few months of his life, he very well might have been passed out and possibly in the process of dying of an overdose on the sidewalk or in a park in your neighborhood or anywhere in our community.
I spent every single night in those final months of Henry's life after he turned 18 and relapsed, from the time I got off work each day until I could no longer drive safely due to exhaustion at two or three in the morning driving all over Knoxville and far into rural areas of Knox County, walking around homeless encampments passing out photos of him and begging others for help (so many homeless women hugged me tightly and promised they would do all they could to help find him), following up tips from other teenagers and other young people with drug addictions who bravely identified drug dealers' houses where I would pound on the doors and beg whomever would answer to please help me find my very sick child.
I repeatedly (meaning multiple times a week) called local law enforcement in both the city and county, as well as the local prosecutor's office during this period, and I offered to give them vast amounts of very specific info I was discovering about drug activity in our community, hoping they would help me.
I BEGGED these agencies to arrest my son during those awful final months. I called and begged them over and over. I assured them he was likely to have drugs on him, and could certainly provide them with all kinds of important information about drug activity taking place in Knoxville and Knox County, particularly drug activity where adults were introducing and then dealing drugs to local teens out of the home of a very affluent and politically well connected family in a very expensive west Knoxville neighborhood.
I coukdn't get anyone to do anything.
When Henry would come home during those terrible last few months, our whole family worked as hard as we could to nurse and care for him, and love on him, and get him back into treatment (he had just spent almost an entire year in inpatient treatment in NC and Montana before returning home, and relapsing almost immediately.), but because he had *just* turned eighteen, we had lost the legal ability to insist that he immediately enter a hospital, where he clearly needed to be.
So please remember that that the human being you step over or drive past or disdainfully walk around while muttering about the damn drug addicts and homeless people in Knoxville and Knox County or your own community is someone's child, and that person's mother or father may be spending every free second they aren't at work doing nothing but searching for their desperately ill and confused child.
Please do the right thing. Don't just step over or walk around or drive past someone lying on the ground, obviously either unconscious or nearly unconscious - particularly during this time of year in this searing summer heat.
Only a few minutes can mean the difference between life and death for someone passed out in this heat, suffering from an overdose of drugs and/or alcohol. First responders will arrive quickly, but only if you call immediately, and convey a sense of real urgency that someone's life is at imminent risk.
Please, please call 911 if you see someone, anyone, lying outside in this heat, even if they look like they might "just" be passed out from drugs or alcohol. Please, as a mother, I ask that you always do what you would hope someone would do if that person on the ground were your own child.
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Today, not for the first time, I drove past someone lying prone on the side of a Knoxville street with people walking past (and almost over the person) without stopping to help, or really even looking down.
I called an ambulance immediately, and I waited with the person until the ambulance got there. I didn’t do this because I’m a better or kinder person. I did it because I learned in the worst way possible how critical it is for anyone suffering a drug overdose to get medical assistance as quickly as possible. No one called an ambulance for my addicted child when he was suffering a fatal drug overdose for at least seventeen hours. If an ambulance had been called in time, he would not have suffered the brain damage that killed him.
I know that in a nation full of towns and cities with so many mentally ill, addicted, and homeless people, it’s easy to become hardened to the sight of someone lying on the ground. “Maybe he’s just asleep,” you may think. Or maybe you even believe that it’s wrong to call 911 when you suspect that someone may be under the influence of drugs because you don’t want to get that person in trouble.
But I beg of you: if you wouldn’t want your own child lying still or barely moving on the ground on the side of a street or behind a building or in the middle of the sidewalk or at a party while people just walked over and around them, or just drove past your child without calling for help, please don’t let anyone else’s child just lie there either. Summon help right away.
And again, please consider the additional factor of this heat outside right now. Don't let anyone lie outside, appearing to be asleep, unconscious, or barely conscious in this terrible summer heat.
*****
I've made this post public, and I hope you will consider sharing it. I believe that when folks perhaps understand in a more personal way that the human beings that they see lying on the ground in this heat all over their own communities are someone's child, brother, sister, or other loved one, and the person reading this considers what they would want someone to do if they saw their own child lying unconscious or nearly unconscious on the street, sidewalk , behind a building, in a park or anywhere else, perhaps they will better understand that EVERY human being in very obvious medical distress deserves the call to 911 needed to save their lives before it's too late.
Because as long as there is life, there is hope.
~ Katie, Henry's mama
