‘It takes our children:’ Family mourns overdose death

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Tim Hahn @etnhahn

Jan 26, 2020 at 12:10 AM

Erie County’s 2019 drug-related deaths are down from record year in 2017. Wesleyville mother, daughters push for change.

Tanner Rodgers lives on in the dimes his mother collects.

“I find dimes constantly,” Tammy Jo Rodgers said, chuckling and shaking her head through tears. “I find dimes everywhere, and I pick them up.”

She believes the coins she collects are a sign that Tanner, her youngest child and only son, is still there, making his presence felt as the family he left behind continues working through their grief.

Tanner Rodgers died at 22, the victim of a drug overdose.

He died Oct. 28, 2018, one of 82 people in Erie County whose deaths were drug-related that year, according to the Erie County Coroner’s Office. The drug deaths numbers for 2019 are not yet official but are expected to be similar to the numbers from 2018.

Rodgers and her two daughters are reminded of his death daily in the necklaces they wear, which feature vials containing some of Tanner’s ashes; the personalized tattoos created in his memory that adorn their forearms; and the dimes Rodgers picks up around their Wesleyville home.

They received another painful reminder in late December, when the Wesleyville Police Department filed felony and misdemeanor drug charges against 23-year-old Mark A. Manson Jr. in connection with Tanner’s death. Manson is scheduled to appear in court for his preliminary hearing later this month.

Tammy Jo Rodgers said once everything related to the police investigation into Tanner’s death is done, she will probably allow herself to grieve more, “for the loss of my future son.” But she said she’s grateful that she had him for 22� years, and that she has so many photos and memories to remind her of the many things they did together as a family.

“We’ve been waiting for this whole thing to be over so we can do more advocacy work,” said Tanner’s oldest sister, Tiffany Keith. “This is just the start of it.”

The family wants to help those affected by drugs and drug addiction. They are sharing their story to let people know how a drug death affects those left behind, and they want people to understand that the problem touches those of all ages, races, backgrounds and economic levels.

“We want to make sure that people know it’s an addiction, it’s a disease,” Rodgers said.

“I think it takes our children, it takes who they are from you,” she said.

Battle rages on

The number of drug-related deaths in Erie County in 2019 is expected to be close to 2018’s total, once all of the final reports are in. Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook said on Tuesday that there were 77 confirmed drug-related deaths last year, but he was still awaiting reports on investigations into at least five other deaths suspected of involving drugs.

It will mark the second consecutive year that the county’s drug-related deaths have dropped by about one-third from a record-124 drug-related deaths in 2017. A spike in opioid-related overdoses and deaths nationwide that year led to the declaration of a nationwide public health emergency.

David Sanner, director of the Erie County Office of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, said he was hoping that the number of local drug-related deaths in 2019 would have been a little lower. But he said his office and other agencies have been working “incredibly hard” to combat drug addiction and curb the numbers of drug overdoses and deaths, and they will have to remain just as vigilant in “doing whatever we can.”

Those efforts include the “warm handoff” program, in which trained personnel meet patients at the hospital following an overdose to offer an assessment and treatment help; the distribution of Narcan, an opioid overdose-reversal drug, to first responders and community members; public awareness campaigns; and, most recently, an intensive case-management program that allows staff to follow people through treatment much longer and to help with other needs that might have previously prevented them from completing their treatment programs, Sanner said.

The Erie County Drug Task Force also continues its work in trying to eradicate drug dealing, District Attorney Jack Daneri said. Though the focus has been on heroin and fentanyl the past few years, a case could be made that one of the factors in the decline of overdose deaths has been what investigators have seen as a switch by users from heroin and fentanyl to methamphetamine, Daneri said. Methamphetamine is less likely to cause an overdose death on its own.

“We continue to come across these overdose deaths, and it doesn’t matter what the drug is, and we treat them as homicide cases and treat the scenes as such,” Daneri said.

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that played a role in a little more than half of Erie County’s drug deaths in 2017 and in 62 percent of them in 2018, according to information Cook released previously.

Tanner Rodgers died of acute fentanyl toxicity, Cook said. He ruled the death as accidental.

Cook said though he did not have final data from the 2019 drug deaths, fentanyl is still playing a prominent role in them. But his office is seeing more methamphetamine in the systems of drug death victims.

“We’re not seeing a lot of methamphetamine deaths, but are seeing more with methamphetamine on board,” Cook said.

Sanner said his office is seeing a shift from people who come to the office from opioid use to the use of stimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine. He said he believes it comes down to the availability of substances in the community.

The past two meetings of the Erie County Overdose Awareness Task Force, which Sanner noted had changed its name from the Heroin Overdose Community Awareness Task Force, addressed the recent rise of methamphetamine and the best treatment strategies for people coming into the system, he said.

Mourning a loss

Tanner Rodgers died in the upstairs of the family’s home, at a time when Tammy Jo Rodgers said her “albatross” was making great strides in his young life.

A high school dropout at 16, Tanner had gone back to school at 19 and earned his diploma. He had gotten his driver’s license and had a job at a convenience store. He was attending Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and was pursuing a degree with plans to become a social worker. He talked about going into private practice and moving to California, Rodgers said.

“The kid had 13 friends die from heroin overdoses within a year and a half and he said, ‘Mom, I can’t stay here, it’s too hard.’ So he wanted to move,” she said.

Tanner was going into social work for drug addiction, to be able to counsel people, Rodgers said.

“You hear that so many times with people who are addicted, that they had a good heart. And I think ultimately that was his downfall, because I can fast-forward to when he was 21 or 22, trying to take care of his friends and help them with their addiction until he fell victim,” Rodgers said.

Tanner’s drug use was a bit of a mystery to his mother and two sisters.

Rodgers said he had smoked marijuana, and dabbled in Vicodin while in his teens, before he started with fentanyl patches with another person.

She said she learned from a friend of Tanner’s in the spring before Tanner died that he was “into some stuff,” which she believes was heroin.

“At that point, I stepped up,” said Rodgers, who began living with her son and put him on random urine tests.

She said she believes her son, who had some “depression issues,” was introduced to the drug at a time when he was in one of his “really depressive episodes.”

“And that’s what eventually hooked my son,” Rodgers said.

Two days before Tanner died, Rodgers said she was taking him to work and confronted him about his drug use and told him the family could get him into rehab. He denied being an addict, she said.

“Neighbors never would have guessed. No one would have guessed,” Rodgers said.

Tiffany Keith said she was angry after her brother’s death.

Keith was angry that he had used the drugs that caused his death, and angry that someone introduced them to him. She said she was almost angry at Tanner’s funeral when she learned of all of the people whose lives he had touched, most of whom she did not know.

Keith said she did not have that relationship with Tanner, but it was growing when he died.

“When he found out he was going to be an uncle, he was ecstatic,” she said.

Road to recovery

Tanner’s other sister, Kristen Rodgers, found her brother on the morning of Oct. 28, 2018. She said it’s still hard to see the flashing lights on police cars and ambulances, and she can still feel the panic she felt that day.

“But it has also given me more compassion and understanding than I could ever expect out of a situation like this for the people who are struggling with these addictions,” she said. “You never know what their situation is.”

Tammy Jo Rodgers said when she starts getting angry and “I want to really hate,” she reminds herself that mothers don’t give birth hoping that their children are drug addicts or criminals, or suffer from depression or commit suicide.

“So I try to keep thinking ... don’t blame (people). I blame the disease,” she said.

In October, Tanner’s family and friends marked the one-year anniversary of his death with a celebration of life. They made a wreath and bouquets out of the dried flowers from his funeral and cooked all of his favorite foods.

“So we try to remember him with love and laughter,” Rodgers said. “To worry about what could have been, it’s not going to help us.”

Rodgers said she is comforted in knowing that, since her son’s death, two of his friends who were also users have gotten clean.

“So I got two. So maybe we can start something,” she said.

Tim Hahn can be reached at 870-1731 or by email. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ETNhahn.