well thank you so much for being here today I know we're here for a topic that is we don't want to be here for and it's it's unfortunately it's a topic that is becoming all too prevalent in this country and that is losing our loved ones to fenel poisonings and I appreciate you being here I know you're a strong advocate for against fenel and for families and I'm just grateful you'll take that you're taking the time to come talk to us today and and share some of your feelings with us um first of all are you how many kids do you have uh well I always like to say I have two children uh one is in heaven and one is here I have my daughter Leah she is um 32 years old and uh Jacob passed at 31 now Jacob was he younger or older than was older older than Leah and tell us a little bit about tell everybody a little bit about Jacob and and and what happened with Jacob so Jacob was he was a funloving spirit he loved to uh play tennis ride his bike in the El tour to Tucson hike go watch boxing events in uh Las Vegas he was dabbling in drugs from what I understand and uh so the day that he had gotten a hold of the fentanyl he had used cocaine and um I was out shopping for him buying him a pillow and I had seen a backpack back and so I called to his phone and I was going to find out if he wanted that backpack so I didn't get an answer and I thought well he's just sleeping got a call about 10 minutes later from my brother-in-law who said he was unresponsive so I had everything in my hand I just threw it at the door of the store and I just flew to my car I was like praying and just like I'd never made it from one place to another so fast so I get there and I see about six paramedics working on him and um it was in May so it was warm out and I was just like screaming and praying and just begging God you know to not let him die but I kind of had a feeling that cuz he was unresponsive and they didn't get a heartbeat that it was highly possible he wasn't going to survive they send me to this room and we all know when you go into that room that it's not good news so I go into the room and I said he didn't make it and sure enough uh they said he didn't survive um so I go in and he's warm still warm to the touch and he's got his shorts and his T-shirt while he's has his tubes in his mouth and there's nothing worse than seeing your kid you know he's he's passed away and it's just all so so surreal you know when you think about it it's just surreal having been not in the same circumstance but having been through losing a loved one it's just it is surreal it still feels so cloudy like it's almost like a dream you have a dream and then you keep wanting to wake up and hope that there is a dream that it wasn't true and it's uh I I know that feeling of and I think people that have are in your same uh place where they lost a loved one to something like this understand exactly that feeling of that fog that comes in and sets in and it does and and there's no other pain like a child uh losing a child I lost my mother exactly 30 days prior to my son's death so I was she died April 30th and he died May 30th so it was that was that was surreal thank you and I've never really grieved for her it just kind of just hits you as you're like what yeah I have to deal with two so close together this is just too much for me but you know his his death took precedence over you know my grief for my mother and it still honestly has but I think by advocating that is what helps me deal with my grief he would if he were alive today he would say to me Mom you know keep doing what you're doing he didn't die in vain like none of our kids right most of the parents out there are trying to help spread the word um to try and help save a life and that's what our our mission is and then it's just it's not one or two people it's thousands across the United States I know that what we talked about was most people don't realize that fentanyl is in a drug that they're taking for example your son with the cocaine didn't realize there was feny in it and I think a lot of the feny poisonings our are from people that don't realize fenel was in the product they were consuming that exactly in that drug they were consuming so when did you figure out when did you guys kind of dawn on you that this was a fenal poisoning well what I thought initially was he had been drinking and I thought he was just drunk he rolled off his bed he had hit some Granite that was on the floor and I thought well that's how he he passed away he hit his head and it hit him in the right spot but another mom she messaged me on Facebook and she said you know private check chat she said you know my son died from uh a fake Percocet with had Fentanyl and that was couple months before Jake passed so she put the bug in my ear about possibility of it being fentol I had an idea but I didn't know for sure until I received the the corner uh report and so he had alcohol car Fentanyl and Fentanyl and cocaine in his system so he had four different things in his system but um you know he wasn't a know drug user and I know this because he had had a blood test um to give blood prior a couple months prior he had no drugs in his system so I think possibly the more of a recreation well that and I think the death my mother's death probably you know it it affected him and he was using it more plus the girl he was with and the girls that I think he chose to be around were were drug users now car fenel most people fenel is 100 times more powerful than morphine and times more powerful than heroin and then car fenel is I don't know 50 times or 100 times more powerful than fenel so to have both of those in there is it's a lot yeah I have to be at make peace with it and just say you know what Jacob is he's okay he's in God's hands he's with my husband and my mom and my dad and and his other we still stuck down here and we're stuck here and I know that when it's my time he will greet me you know that's a great way to look at these that's the only way can look at without driving myself and I think that gets what gives you so much strength you know as you're I think the approach when we lost our kids we had a decision to make it's either you can focus on just the loss and the pain of it or you can understand that there was nothing you could do to change it and that moving forward how we looked at things our attitude and and our our what we did moving forward was really what going to Define us and so we chose to more embrace it and try to stop other families from having to lose a loved one like we did and I know that's kind of the approach you've taken tell us some of the things that you you have done that you're involved in what is it you can do and maybe even maybe even encourage some other people out there what they can do so um Rachel's Angels um is doing bill Billboards right now and they do them across the United States um Jacob was featured on one in temp the whole month of January and um actually he's going to be on another one in Tucson which is where we need it because we're so close to the border and so that's one huge way to get this information out there right of what's going on in the United States so they're going to be doing um talking about the border so that's Rachel's Angels Rachel's angels can people donate to them as well yes they can yes which will help pay for these Billboards because they're not cheap either yes no and parents I'm glad you said that because parents we we all pay out of our own Pockets um to get these Billboards up we don't mind to do that because we want people to understand what this is doing it's devastating the United States and something has to be done uh because otherwise we're getting rid of this generation of of children this is the Opium Wars of 200 years ago um which crippled the dynasty of China now I almost view it as just like you you've got China providing the cartels these precursors and the and the fenel and then they are taking it and putting it into our Market whether it's in the show fenel powder feny pills and also feny that's going into all of the drugs so that they can increase the dictability right from the get-go so thank you for addressing that because I think most people don't want to say that they they feel you know they're a little bit reluctant to say it but the truth is the truth it is the truth and it's a weapon of mass destruction and and it's uh you know uh drad homicide people always tell me oh it's overdose no it's not overdose an overdose is when you shoot too much heroin in your arm that's you know you know that you could overdose from it it's no different than me giving you a cup of coffee with arsenic we've always dealt in L profession with people who are addicted to drugs cocaine heroin and you'll see somebody that can smoke crack or use cocaine for 20 years yes you weren't seeing a whole ton of people drug people who were addicted to drugs for 20 30 years weren't dying until fenel was introduced for the most part yeah exactly it's like a plane load they say of people going down per day who shares some of the responsibility of of really um I guess introducing this type of drugs and fenel into our societies well the borders we can't just let you know these people come in with all these lethal drugs and kill our kids we have to do something about it it's just an open faucet is what it is the fact that the cartel hasn't changed the way they do business they're actually even becoming more aggressive tells you that we're not even we're not affecting their their business model by 10 to 15% if we were they would change their business but they're not they're actually becoming nowadays we'll just see they'll throw it in a duffel bag in the back seat we do need stronger penalties against the drug dealers we do because if we if we send that message to them maybe they'll say oh gosh I don't want to I'm you know maybe they'll switch off to something else and just say I I don't want to go to prison for for doing this I mean they I don't think they really they don't have a conscience so I would just say something has to be done I know there are several um laws uh that they're trying to or bills they're trying to pass um but sadly I'm not sure why they they're stopped why sometimes they don't pass them because you as you know the Ashley Dunn act has been try they've tried to get it through several times what I think the legislators need to do is I think they need to go and really educate themselves because they I've seen them ask questions about fentanyl they don't know a lot about it have you heard of xylazine oh yes yeah heard for those of you don't know xylazine is another type of synthetic opioid however there is no approved human use where fentanyl has approved human use as xylazine does not it is horse tranquilizer zero approved uses for human consumption and it is more powerful than fenel but impervious to things like Narcan or nxone yes speaking on Narcan you or nxone you need to have that everybody needs to have a box in their medicine cabinet um but what I run into is resistance like people I don't need that well here's the thing your grandchild could get into your prescription uh drug an opiate and and um you know get poisoned with it so you you could administer the lockone and save their life so it's always good to have it it's no different than my me carrying my EpiPen as far as I'm concerned and I give boxes of it away all the time we tell everybody you have to assume that every drug you take no matter what it is has feny in it at this point if you're buying it off the street the chances of it having feny are probably close to 100% uh we still feel very um energized and we feel like this is something we need to be doing is out there speaking on behalf and for the families who lose loved on I agree and it can happen to anybody uh fenol does not discriminate it doesn't care if you're rich poor educated not it doesn't care of your ethnicity um um Robert Dao's grandson yeah just died recently from uh a fake pill and I want to thank you for speaking in front of the legislature because I've heard you speak a few times and you're very effective and you know I I appreciate that you uh want to help save lives because you you you get it not everybody gets it and I think people need to be more educated like you are well thank you thank you for everything you do I do it for you I do it for all the families out there I I think it's important enough and if I can save one I know you probably feel the same way if we can save one person it's worth every bit of effort we go through and and hopefully it memorializes the losses that we've sustained you know the we can do something for uh our our loved ones by Saving somebody else so I agree and I wanted to also touch on Snapchat um a lot of the kids are getting their pills um on Snapchat Snapchat is huge and I know several people who have lost their kids from buying a pill on Snapchat um and also doesn't stop them from doing that on Facebook or Instagram um and so I know I would love to see social media platforms held accountable yes because they can take away your political voice but then they tell you they can't take away pornography child sexual abuse material or people selling drugs openly on their their platforms something has to be done because there's a lot of vulnerable kids out there that they just think oh they're or and the parents need to watch they need to keep monitor what their kids are doing ultimately humans are going to make their own choices and right we can't control that pie of it but we can certainly do the best we can to educate and and be part of our children's lives and do as much as we can and in the end it's their decision it's their decisions uh unfortunately sometimes but uh thank you so much for being here thank you for sorry for your loss and I'm thank you for being here thank you thank you and you want to hold that up real quick yes where's Jake just a reminder um forever 31 and please hopefully you've learned something today and you can take some lessons home from Teresa and da and just for everything you you guys do to to be voices for against fenel so thank you thank you for being a voice and thank you for continuing to help save lives because without people like you um we wouldn't get the word out because we can only do so much but you're you're such a great voice and so thank you for doing everything you're doing and I'm again again I'm sorry for your loss thank you