He helped others battle their addiction. In the end, he couldn’t help himself.

Click here to view original web page at www.ydr.com

District Attorney Dave Sunday speaks about why people must focus on the heroin epidemic in York County. He said 80 percent of crime in the county is connected to drug activity.

The evening of April 29, a Wednesday, Jon Mundis was texting with his mother.

He was making plans for his daughter’s seventh birthday, coming up at the end of May, and told his mother that his gift was going to be tickets to a Lindsey Stirling concert at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia. His daughter, Willow Marie, loves Stirling and her high-energy videos that mix dance, hip-hop, electronic dance music and classical violin. The show is scheduled for August, and whether it would go on or fall victim to the coronavirus pandemic is not known. Maybe by August, he thought, things would be better.

He also talked about plans to take Willow and her mother to Disney World next year when, hopefully, the pandemic ebbed. He had fond memories of his trips to Disney World as a kid and wanted to give his daughter those same memories.

At about 11 p.m., he signed off.

The next day, he was gone.

He saved lives

Jon Izaak Mundis struggled with addiction for more than a decade. He had been to rehab a number of times, his mother, Nina Kottcamp-Long, said. He had been in and out of York County Prison on a variety of relatively minor offenses.

Addiction had taken over his life, but he fought back. He had worked, for a time, as a drug and alcohol counselor at a rehab in York. He was well known in the recovery community, a person whom others could reach out to when they struggled with staying clean.

He saved lives.

On April 30, he lost his. He was 30 years old.

His mother is not sure what happened that caused him to relapse, or whether anything happened at all. She believes, though, that the lockdown ordered to combat the coronavirus may have contributed, that the isolation and loneliness may have triggered it. She doesn’t know. It could have been something else, as Jon struggled with depression at times.

“The truth is,” she said, “we don’t know.”

An energetic kid

Jon was born on Dec. 11, 1989, one of three children; he has twin sisters. His father, John Mundis, who worked as a machinist for a company in Maryland, was an adventurous man, enjoying motorcycle trips and roller coasters and SCUBA diving. He was described as a giving man, a person always there to help friends and family.

Related: Addiction in a pandemic: Recovery home owners see increase relapse, financial hardships

More: She lost the fathers of her children. Now, she's gone, too, the victim of a drug overdose

Jon took after his father. A cousin recalled the family once went out to dinner at a buffet restaurant and Jon noticed a man sitting by himself and grew concerned. The man shouldn’t have to eat alone, and he told his family that they should invite him to their table, his mother recalled.

Jon was an energetic kid and loved sports. They had a family rule that he could go out for any sports team he wanted, but if he found he didn’t like it, he’d still have to finish the season. He tried wrestling and football for a season. He was athletic and agile and fearless, his mother said, loving rock climbing. He could do flips and walk on his hands, his mother said.

He also liked performing, acting in theater productions and doing magic tricks.

He found himself when he tried gymnastics, his mother said. He trained and competed at Prestige Gym in Lancaster and was good at it, the pommel horse, parallel bars and the rings being his favorite events.

“He enjoyed it,” his mother said. “He felt strong and he felt accomplished doing gymnastics.”

His instructor, a former All-American gymnast named Mike Bartley, believed he was scholarship material, but to achieve that he would have to commit to training four nights a week. He didn’t want to do it, but he continued to compete, even though, he later told his mother, he had been harassed by other kids at school.

He studied commercial art at York Tech, graduating in 2008.

The summer before his senior year, when he was 17, he was in a bad car accident. Both of his legs were broken. His right arm above the elbow was damaged and required a skin graft. That ended his gymnastics career.

While he was recovering from those injuries, his doctors prescribed oxycontin to manage his pain. He continued to use the drug when he returned to school, buying it from classmates who got the medication out of their parents’ medicine cabinets, his mother said.

“At that point,” Nina said, “that’s when he had a problem.”

In July 2008, he moved to California to pursue work in commercial art.

He went broke and moved back to York in six months, moving in with his father in West York. (His parents had divorced.) He was working, but now and then, he would ask his father or his mother for 20 bucks for gas. His parents talked about it and wondered what was going on.

Then, he was arrested for stealing scrap metal, and he wound up in York County Prison.

“That was the first we realized we had a problem,” Nina said.

He went to through the courts and as a matter of his probation, entered rehab. His parents took out lines of credit to pay for it. He struggled with recovery, but after getting clean, he got a job at Colonial House and started taking classes at HACC, studying human services. He became a counselor at the rehab, earning his certification to help others.

Then, his father got sick, pancreatic cancer. He stayed sober while his dad fought cancer and remained in recovery even after his father died on March 10, 2016.

'One of the best friends I ever had'

One of his clients at Colonial House was Matt Walukonis.

Walukonis was a physician in Berks County and ended up at Colonial House in 2016 after being ordered to do so after violating his probation imposed after a DUI conviction.

“I came into Colonial House with a massive ego,” Walukonis said. “I thought I knew what was right for me.”

Jon set him straight. “What he told me is when it comes to putting down drugs and alcohol, I couldn’t do it by myself,” Walukonis said. “He told me he could help me. He was the first person who ever got me to believe that, no matter what, I have to keep my recovery first.”

He said, “At that point in time, I couldn’t help myself, and he was there.”

Jon, he said, “would do absolutely anything to help other people, even if it meant taking time from helping himself. He would stop whatever he was doing and do anything to help you.”

Jon became a good friend, he said. “It was impossible not to like Jon,” he said. “He had a contagious laugh. He was the kind of guy you could go out to lunch with and sit there for two hours and just (talk about anything).

“He is one of the best friends I ever had.”

Two weeks before Walukonis completed rehab, Jon’s maternal grandmother was dying and Jon took it hard and relapsed. Within two weeks, he was back in York County Prison, arrested on some old charges.

He was gone for a year.

About 18 months ago, after Jon went to rehab again, Walukonis saw him at a meeting. Jon walked up to him and said, “Hey, Bubba, remember me?”

The hugged and Jon asked Walukonis to be his sponsor. Walukonis was honored.

“You know,” he told Jon, “you’ve done so much to help me, so maybe it’s my turn to help you.”

For Walukonis, now practicing medicine in Red Lion and operating several recovery houses in central Pennsylvania, Jon’s death was hard to take.

“I can never thank him enough for all that he’s done for me,” he said. “It didn’t have to be this way. It just didn’t. How the hell did it end this way?”

'Everybody thought he was doing OK'

In January, after leaving a recovery house, Jon moved into an apartment on West Market Street with a roommate, their bedrooms at opposite ends of a hallway and both with their own bathrooms. Jon was working for a moving company.

At about that time, he was diagnosed with depression and prescribed an anti-depressant. In February, he told his mother that he was reducing his dosage. She was concerned – one of Jon’s sisters, a psychotherapist, said when it comes to changing that medication, you have to be careful. When the COVID-19 lockdown began, he was working less. But he seemed to be doing well.

“Everybody thought he was doing OK,” Nina said, “until he was found.”

The night before he died, after texting with his mother, Jon’s roommate saw him in the kitchen eating some spaghetti at about 11 p.m. He told his roommate that his stomach was upset and the pasta calmed it.

The next morning, his roommate got up and went to work. He didn’t see Jon and assumed that he had gone to work. When he got home that evening, his roommate didn’t see Jon. He went to check on him and found him in his bathtub, a syringe found in his bedroom. He tried to administer Narcan, but it was too late.

The coroner told his mother that he had been dead for at least 10 hours when he was found.

{ The York Daily Record's coverage of coronavirus is being provided for free to our readers. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing at ydr.com/subscribe. }

'One bad choice can be your last choice'

“I wish I could go into my son’s head and know what he was thinking. But I can’t,” Nina said. “I know my son did not expect to die.”

Nina has been active with Not One More and takes solace that her son’s death may help others. She hosted a memorial service on Zoom, and many in attendance were Jon’s friends from the recovery community, people he had helped find life after addiction. His mother told them, “Take this tragedy and use it as a catalyst for your own recovery. Just know that one bad choice can be your last choice.”

She also takes solace that in his short time on this planet, her son touched a lot of people’s lives.

He was there for his friends during their darkest hours, they said. He was always a phone call away for anyone who needed his help. He was there to make someone laugh even when there was nothing to laugh about, they said. He was, one said, “a beautiful soul.”

One said, “I knew this man and his struggles. I always thought he was stronger than his disease, but I guess we all know that no one is.”

To help Jon's daughter

Jon's family has established a fund for his daughter's education. To contribute, go to www.ugift529.com and type in the code B8M-389. Memorial contributions may also be made to the York chapter of Not One More.

Resources for those struggling with addiction

Pennsylvania Recovery Organizations Alliance has a list of online recovery support resources.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a general service website that they encourage people to use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some AA groups are taking advantage of ZOOM, Google Hangouts or conference calls to have meetings.

Narcotics Anonymous has issued a statement suggesting that groups temporarily stop common practices like hugging, shaking hands or offering refreshments. They also said that groups can do online meetings, but that is up to each group. Area groups can be found on the na.org website.

The Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services lists these mental health resources in PA:

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
• Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio: 1-888-628-9454
• Crisis Text Line: Text "PA" to 741-741
• Veteran Crisis Line: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
• Disaster Distress Helpline: 1-800-985-5990
• Pennsylvania's Get Help Now hotline is a confidential, 24/7 treatment and information service for those with drug and alcohol problems. The number is 1-800-662-HELP.
• Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services has a support and referral helpline those struggling with anxiety and other emotions due to the COVID-19 emergency. To access the toll-free helpline, call 1-855-284-2494. For TTY, dial 724-631-5600.

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at 717-771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.