After two Park City teens died in 2016 from overdoses of a synthetic opioid called “pink” or “pinky,” public officials and the community mobilized to address substance use disorders and mental health issues.
The first Summit County Mental Wellness Strategic Plan was created to deal with needs across the spectrum and improve prevention work. CONNECT Summit County was formed by community members to match people to resources and eventually included educational programs and support groups.
And the Mental Health Alliance brought together dozens of stakeholders to work on a unified approach to the challenges facing the community.
“It changed the entire community,” said Aaron Newman, Summit County Health Department director of behavioral health. “It was a galvanizing incident in our community that really made us take a step back and look at what are all the issues in our entire behavioral health system here in Summit County, not just the opioid and the drugs, but also mental health.”
The case came back in the spotlight recently with a guilty plea to an unrelated offense by Colin Andrew Shapard, now 22, who investigators say supplied the two teens with pink, a powder called U-47700 that was legal then.
Shapard, 15 at the time, pleaded guilty in juvenile court to a misdemeanor of reckless endangerment and was sentenced to probation and drug treatment.
In the current case, Shapard admitted mailing numerous pills made of the synthetic opioid fentanyl in 2022 to an 18-year-old Park City resident, who survived a near-fatal overdose after taking them. He is scheduled to be sentenced April 4 in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City on one count of distribution of a controlled substance that resulted in serious bodily injury under a plea agreement that calls for a 20-year prison system.
Progress through partnerships
Under the mental wellness plan, drug and mental health issues are addressed collectively by the community because they are too big for any one agency to take on, Newman said.
“It really has to be that partnership between our private clinicians, our government offices and our nonprofits,” he said.
Among other steps taken, the Health Department has created a mobile crisis outreach team, or MCOT, that responds to people who are having a crisis due to a mental health diagnosis or drug use.
In addition, the department uses funds from a multi-state settlement paid by pharmaceutical companies to end thousands of lawsuits accusing them of fueling an opioid addiction crisis to provide detoxification services for jail inmates, Newman said.
There has been a consistent decrease in the number of suicides in the community since 2016, he said. Among other factors, Newman attributes the drop to more discussions about mental health and substance use; free QPR classes that show people how to recognize the warning signs of a suicide crisis and how to question, persuade and refer someone to help; and a push to get the SafeUT app, a crisis chat line that connects people to licensed counselors, on everyone’s phone.
Every two years, the Health Department asks community members to complete a mental health assessment to help identify gaps in services and needed improvements.
Suit vs. police, school district
Robert Ainsworth, the father of one of the teens who passed away, alleges police and school district officials mishandled the 2016 situation. He said numerous official records and quotes in news articles show they knew two days before the deaths that pinky was lethal and at least 20 students, including his son Ryan, had been in contact with the substance and believed it was safe because it was not illegal then.
“These documents quote police specifically directed others who knew about Ryan’s exposure to pinky at school while Ryan was still alive from notifying me or notifying the other parents or the hospital that about 20 students were all in danger of death,” Ainsworth said.
The documents also show officials did not search the school, students or their lockers as required under hazardous materials procedures, he said. In addition, press releases about the deaths contained lies and misleading statements about officials’ knowledge of students’ exposure to pinky, he claimed.
The allegations were included in a lawsuit filed by Ainsworth in 2019 against the Park City Police Department, the school district and some of their employees.
U.S. District Judge Howard Nielson dismissed the suit in 2021, ruling the facts alleged did not establish a constitutional violation and the individuals named as defendants had qualified immunity because it was not established they had violated a federal or constitutional right.
Nielsen’s ruling said “perhaps school officials could and should have done more” to prevent Ryan’s overdose and death and at least some of the alleged actions by the police may have increased his vulnerability to the danger of pinky, but their actions did not violate the due process clause.
The Police Department and the Park City School District declined to comment on whether the deaths changed how they address these types of cases.
An emailed statement from the school district said, “To revisit this story from 2016 yet again continues to bring pain to those families who were involved. With the incident itself happening in the first days of school that year, the staff truly were heroic in the face of this tragedy.”
A wake-up call
Park City Mayor Nann Worel, who was a City Council member in 2016, said the loss of the boys was heartbreaking.
“I don’t know that it was a surprise that drugs were being used here, but it was a real wake-up call because there’s been a lot of lip service to improving mental health services, especially teens,” she said.
She added, “When you look at the mental health services that were available at the time that happened and the services that are available now today, it’s light years. We still have a way to go, but we’ve come a long way.”
CONNECT shut down in September to let bigger organizations that started similar programs continue the work.
The organizations include the Christian Center of Park City, Holy Cross Ministries, Jewish Family Services, Latino Behavioral Health Services, People’s Health Clinic, Live Like Sam and Peace House. The Park City Community Foundation and the Katz Amsterdam Foundation help fund the groups.
How to save a life
State Sen. Jen Plumb, D-Salt Lake City, a pediatric emergency medicine physician, is working to prevent drug deaths by training community members on how to administer naloxone, which can reverse an opiate overdose if administered quickly.
Plumb, who is a founder and the medical director of Utah Nalaxone, holds online seminars to train non-medical people about what an overdose looks like and how to give the shots. Participants receive kits with two doses of naloxone and two syringes, along with a bumper sticker that says, “I Have Naloxone In Case Of Overdose.”
Plumb noted fentanyl is cheap and widely available and added it’s concerning that people, especially youths, can buy drugs online.
“We need people to know that if you acquire a pill from outside of a pharmacy, you can assume it’s fentanyl and that doesn’t just mean a sleeping pill or a pain pill,” she said. “You have to be educated if you want to stay alive.
Her organization has received reports that from 2015 through 2023, naloxone was used more than 10,200 times to save a life. Plumb said the number of people saved is unknown because some have gotten shots multiple times.
More people could be carrying the overdose reversal drug soon. The Biden-Harris administration on March 13 issued the White House Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose, a call to organizations and businesses to commit to training employees on the medications and increasing access to them. The administration noted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved a naloxone nasal spray for the emergency treatment of an opioid overdose in July.
More potent drugs
At Wasatch Crest, a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center with facilities in Heber and Park City, clients are trained in administrating the drugs so they can help friends and family if the need arises once they graduate from the program and transition back into their lives. They also can help themselves if they have a setback and overdose.
The center’s founder, Jim Huffman, said some people start using drugs in a “relatively naïve or innocent way.”
“Nobody wakes up on a Tuesday and thinks, ‘I think I’ll try heroin today’ or ‘I think I’ll become addicted to opioids today.’ It’s typically a situation of circumstances and that road leads you to a place that you never thought your life would lead to,” said Huffman, who’s been in recovery for almost 17 years.
Dealers are mixing fentanyl with other drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, to increase their potency and produce the same quantity less expensively, which has led to an increase in overdoses and overdose deaths, he said.
Because of that increase, there is more discussion in the media and community about the related issues of substance use disorder, mental health and suicide, Huffman said.
More than 50% of suicides overall and more than 70% of adolescent suicides are associated with drug and alcohol use, according to Wasatch Crest.
After becoming aware someone is struggling, the next step is to find treatment, Huffman said. Wasatch Crest is working with agencies, employers and organizations to help them have more immediate access to resources for those who need them, he said.
The center has separate residential programs for women and men and mixed-gender outpatient treatment. In addition, the center holds a free family and friend support group for anyone with loved ones struggling with substance use and virtual meetings are held weekly and run by a member of the center’s clinical team.
Lucky to be alive
A former Wasatch Crest client who asked to be anonymous said he did not understand how dangerous opioids were when he began taking them in his late teens. He quickly became addicted and also was drinking heavily, he said.
“I partied incredibly hard and I’m lucky to be alive,” he said.
The client, who works in the mental health field, said there has been a shift in seeing addiction and alcoholism as a disease, not as a moral defect, especially with youth.
More prevention through interventions that support the overall well being and mental health of youths are needed, he said. If they start using drugs and drinking when they’re young, “the addiction pathways get reinforced so quickly, so fast, and they’re really hard to reverse.”
He decided to go into treatment after a decade because “I really wanted to live a fruitful life where I contributed to this world, and I was truly my best self.” Another driving factor was he did not want to put his mother through more pain.
The client now has been in recovery for nearly eight years and credits Alcoholics Anonymous as a factor in his success. He said 12-step programs such as AA and Narcotics Anonymous are effective in helping people stay sober.
If you or someone you know is in suicidal crisis or emotional distress, free and confidential support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling 988. https://988lifeline.org/