Lincolnshire Mom Works To Turn Tragedy Into Triumph With Non-Profit

LINCOLNSHIRE, IL — There are days when Michele Pyster sits by her daughter’s grave and just talks, promising as she has in the past that, although her girl may be gone from this earth, her legacy will live on with purpose.

Jada Altschul was just 22 when she and her boyfriend both died of overdoses from cocaine laced with fentanyl in June of 2021. Jada, who had come to Michele out of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services just before her 4th birthday, had encountered her share of demons over her short lifetime, but together she and her mother had always talked about the day that everything would finally work out.

But the phone call the 52-year-old Lincolnshire mother of two feared might come one day — despite hoping it never would — delivered the news that Jada was gone. For eight months afterward, Pyster kept the news of how Jada died from everyone, allowing rumors to circulate on social media.

For the longest time, Pyster was not willing to set the record straight because of the stigma that parents who lose children to drug addiction often face. But then the speculation, including rumors that Jada had taken her own life, got to be too much.

Bound to not only tell her truth but also Jada’s, Pyster is now determined to make good on the promise that she made to her daughter. Pyster, who also has an 18-year-old adopted daughter, Jasmine, recently launched Jada’s Journey, a not-for-profit organization that assists parents with navigating a system that can often be unforgiving and at times, impossible to deal with as she continues to turn tragedy into triumph.

For all of Jada's troubles, her mother chooses to think of the good that came out of her and that will continue to do so for years to come.

"She was a wonderful, talented girl who had a future ahead of her," Pyster told Patch this week. "And I feel the system failed her more than anything else. She was a beautiful, normal teenager who had a future ... Jada did not choose this. She was born with this in her system."

She added: "I want her name not to be forgotten and I want her to be part of the solution."

Jada’s Journey is designed to help families dealing with addiction and mental illness cope and to provide them with financial assistance in seeking treatment for those family members who need it. But for Pyster, Jada’s Journey has also become her own pathway after years of frustration of watching her daughter pass from one treatment program to another after what seemed like an ordinary suburban upbringing.

According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, 91,977 people died from drug overdoses in the United States in 2020. In Illinois, opioid overdoses grew by 33 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to state health issues as 2,944 overdoses took place across the state.

While the tears still come and Pyster continues to struggle at times with the issues that at times consumed her daughter’s life, she is now committed to helping others find the happy ending to a story that she always hoped for with Jada, but that never came.

Jada had come to Pyster having already experienced drugs. Pyster said that Jada’s biological parents were both heroin addicts and at one point as a toddler, had ingested valium and had lived in a car before entering the foster care system. While in utero, Jada was found to have had drugs in her system, her mother said.

But after coming to live with Pyster, who fostered her for a year before the adoption became official, Jada settled into a busy childhood. She became involved in a large extended family and filled her days with gymnastics, dance, Girl Scouts and other typical activities that allowed her to enjoy a fulfilled childhood.

Michele noticed that in time, Jada developed some ADHD tendencies and anxiety, and became a bit of a “tornado” that was constantly exerting a lot of energy. She found a happy place in overnight summer camps and made friends and showed all the signs of a normal life — a far cry from the existence she had known as a toddler.

But at some point, Pyster said Jada began to find trouble and began to travel down a dangerous path. As a teen, Jada started to make bad choices with the people she associated with and found herself hanging around with a bad crowd.

“No matter what we did,” Pyster said, “she kept looking for the dark side.”

Jada eventually found it. She started, like many teens, experimenting with pot. In school, Jada proved to be an intelligent student who tested well, which limited the number of services for special educational programs at Stevenson High School. Despite her intelligence, Jada kept spiraling and spending time with other students who found trouble. She started dating a boy who introduced Jada to more drugs, Pyster said, which introduced her to more people who were chasing after the same vices.

No matter what Pyster tried to straighten her daughter out, it backfired. Jada entered her first drug treatment program in high school, which led to time spent in in-patient programs and psych wards. Pyster said things eventually reached a point when she knew she couldn’t continue to face her daughter’s issues alone.

Together, Jada’s family decided to give her a second chance. Jada was accepted as a student at Illinois State, which Pyster hoped would launch her into a place where she could chase her dreams and escape the dark side that had dominated her high school career.

Pyster prayed that a change of scenery would provide Jada with a new chapter. Instead, she found more trouble at ISU. Pyster said Jada was arrested on campus for giving out ADHD medication within her first month of college, which triggered another journey down a dark road.

Jada stopped attending classes and ignored the programs that had been set up for her by counselors to help her succeed in college. She remained in school but ended up flunking out. At the same time, she made contact with her biological family on social media after relatives found Jada on Facebook right before she left for school.

Jada returned home and went in and out of treatment programs, Pyster said. Still on probation from her arrest, Jada bounced from program to program. Jada’s biological father, whom she had never met, died from a drug overdose, Pyster said, which again sent Jada spiraling.

“Everything kept happening,” Pyster said.

The trips to treatment programs proved to be one revolving door after another until Jada turned 18 and aged out of the system. Conflicted, Pyster made the difficult choice not to allow Jada back into her home. Jada went to live with Pyster’s sister for a bit as Pyster attempted to keep her other adopted daughter — who is six years younger than Jada — shielded from everything going on while keeping them both safe.

Jada bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend as her spiraling lifestyle continued with one bad decision after another. Deep down, Pyster could tell her daughter wanted to change, but in each instance, the demons won.

From the start, social workers had warned Jada’s new family about biological family’s history. But from the day Jada came to live with her, Pyster instead saw a beautiful little girl who showed no outside evidence of a background involving drugs.

Pyster used to tell Jada she was allergic to alcohol to prevent her from experimenting. But other drugs ended up taking over, which never let go of Jada until she overdosed. Jada admitted to her mother that she was self-medicating to try and cope.

Jada had been through a host of medications during her treatment stays and at one point, a medical professional came out and told Pyster that it was his belief that no medication would actually help her. So instead, Jada followed her own path.

“She knew where she came from,” Pyster said. “I would discuss that with her to try to understand that she couldn’t just try drugs because of the genetics. I think she understood, but I think there was just such an inner struggle.”

She added: “It was just this struggle with her. I don’t know if it was an identity thing, but then addiction really took over her.”

Pyster tried to remain positive that eventually, something would take hold of her daughter that wasn’t drug related. She and Jada would talk about the future and how her skills and ambition could create a happier life. Jada began working with people with disabilities and found a niche in providing empathy and care to others while she struggled with cope with her own issues.

She had trained as a lifeguard at a summer camp and flourished in roles in which she could help others all while not finding ways to help herself. Even when Pyster said Jada was strung out on drugs, she would call her mother and apologize and plead with her to think that none of this was Pyster’s fault.

But at the same time, she would also add a caveat: “I just like the way crack makes me feel,” Jada told Pyster.

Pyster also struggled to find help. There was nothing in the system that could help Jada, especially after she became an adult. Pyster said that she pleaded with DFCS officials for help, fearful that both Jada and herself were in danger if drugs got a strong enough hold on her daughter.

She said DFCS officials said there was nothing that they could do and that there was no place to put Jada for treatment. Her frustration with a broken system is now a big part of the mission of Jada’s Journey, which is striving to help families avoid some of the pitfalls that Physter has dealt with over the years during the journey with her daughter.

“When I was in that and consumed by that (system), it’s a very dark place as a parent,” Pyster told Patch. “Do you want to kick your child out who you adopted? No. Of course you don’t. But you’re in this situation and there is no help and there’s no facilities. There are therapists, but there is no place for a child that is 18 years old to go. …that is a huge problem.”

In the year since Jada died, Pyster has begun to put the pieces together. While she continues to cope with grief and frustration, her bigger mission has become one of helping others in Jada’s name. In those moments by Jada’s graveside, Pyster feels the emotional pull of feeling like there is nothing she can do anymore to help her daughter, but she can help others.

A million ideas swam in her head. She wonders what change she can bring to a broken system. She wonders how Jada’s Journey can provide financial assistance to those who need it that are struggling secretly with a child dealing with drug addiction or are dealing with mental health issues.

Jada dealt with both at once, which complicated treatment options, Pyster said. But her daughter’s struggles also gave Pyster with a roadmap to help others navigate the system, which is now why she hopes she can get her not-for-profit off the ground.

“You’re in a grieving process that is never-ending because you’ve lost that child that you had,” Pyster said of her thought process to turn tragedy into triumph. “You’re trying to navigate a system that you’re so consumed in, and you’re consumed just trying to get through the day dealing with your child wondering when you’re going to get that phone call.”

Pyster said she picked up her phone every time it rang in the final years of Jada’s life. Many times, it was a number she didn’t recognize. Sometimes, it was Jada calling from a friend’s phone. Sometimes, it was someone alerting Pyster that Jada was in trouble again. But each time it wasn't the phone call Pyster feared most, she could breathe a sigh of relief.

But then the news eventually came.

Since getting that phone call herself more than a year ago, Pyster is slowly moving on, committed to create a legacy that she is still working through in determining how she wants Jada to be remembered. It’s a complicated process, she admits, but one that she knows that can help provide help and support for many families who may not yet be ready to admit publicly what they’re going through.

Now, she is trying to provide the assistance that she wishes she would have sought out while in the midst of everything with Jada, knowing how far even a little help can go. Now, after having conversations with Jada about how good of a story they would have to share once Jada emerged from the dark side, Pyster knows there is a story to be told even though it won’t have the ending they wanted.

But now, Pyster realizes it can produce a happy ending for someone else.

“I want to make (Jada’s Journey) bigger than me and when I’m gone, I want it to remain,” Pyster told Patch. “We are going to make this good and we are going to help other families. What I went through was awful and unimaginable but there’s no many people – many more than anyone is talking about — that have also experienced it.”

She added: "But I don't want other families to go through what Jada went through and she would be very happy with what we're doing now."