'Narcan Should Be Like Band-Aids' Says Long Island Mom Who Lost Son To Fentanyl Overdose

OLD FIELD, NY — Three years ago, grieving mother Carole Trottere who lost her only son, Alex Sutton, to fentanyl poisoning, began a journey to help save lives from drug addiction.

She started simple by hosting a small gathering at her son's favorite pizzeria in Stony Brook, giving out free slices in exchange for training in how to reverse opiate overdoses by administering Naloxone, which is more commonly referred to by its brand name, Narcan.

From that day, her journey continued, expanding into drug addiction awareness advocacy.

She later started a program with Suffolk police where families and friends can decorate purple rocks for awareness with the names of those they lost, along with training in Narcan from officers at local farmers' markets. In spring, she banded with other advocacy groups on the installation of wind phones at local parks, a gesture that would allow grieving people to commune with nature, listening to wind on the other end of a phone, as they mourn their losses.

This fall, she and the groups hosted a march to the sea, to highlight the victims of drug overdose.

If she wasn't busy enough, she's planning another day of free slices with Narcan training at Station Pizza in Stony Brook on Nov. 3.

Her advocacy days are always emotional, she says.

And Nov. 3 will be like every other — a day that won't go by without her crying, but she feels that every time she puts a Narcan kit in someone's hand, she is helping save a life.

"You certainly hope they won't have to use it, but what if they are in the right place and time where they could save someone's life?" asked Trottere, an Old Field resident. "So I do get satisfaction."

"There's not a lot of clean answers right to this problem," she said. "There's no simple answers to this problem, but at least the Narcan keeps someone breathing, and hopefully they get help. They get a second chance."

She would have given anything to have been able to have a second chance with Alex.

The 30-year-old was living with her in Old Field, and he had been doing well. He was a welder and had just landed a big a job in Illinois for a big manufacturer before he died at a friend's apartment in Nassau County in April 2018.

If there had been a Narcan kit near Alex the morning he died, he might have been saved.

"But by the time the [Emergency Medical Technicians] got there, it was too late," she said. "There should be Narcan kits in everybody's home today. It should be like a box of Band-aids."

"It doesn't always have to be for their family," Trottere said. "You know, a lot of people, when we meet people out in public, they'll go, 'No, no — I don't need that in my family.' But what if you save someone else's life? You know? You could be in the grocery store, you could be on the train, you could be in a public place."

Trottere keeps a kit on her keychain.

She made it herself by poking a hole in the kit's container.

Instead of the keychain hand sanitizer popularized in the COVID-19 pandemic, she keeps a vial of Narcan close by. She keeps another in her purse. The kits are just in case because to her the scenario of a drug overdose could unfold anytime or anywhere.

It is something that everyone should have, she says.

"It certainly is nice to think that there's people at the ready that could save somebody," she said.

For her next project, Trottere is working on getting Narcan boxes placed around the county.
With the boxes in place, residents could just open the box and get a Narcan kit out.
There is a similar program upstate in Broome County.

"I was talking to someone that did it up there, and it has really cut down on the overdoses," she said.

Last year in Suffolk, there were 463 overdoses, which was a drop from the previous year of 524 deaths, and in Nassau, the numbers dropped from 250 to 209 and some say the proliferation of Narcan has helped, according to a Newsday story.

Trottere said there has been a lot of publicity that overdoses are down but she explained that over 100,000 people in the U.S. died, and she doesn't know how anyone can say, "That is good news."

"We still have so far to go and to keep this a priority," she said, adding that drug overdose is the number one cause of death between 18 and 45 years old. "We need to keep this a priority, the fact that maybe there was a slight drop recently, you also have to take into consideration, right now, in Suffolk, I think there's something like 192 pending cases which haven't been determined yet. So I wouldn't jump the gun saying, 'We're on the right track.'"

"We have still have a lot of work to do," she said.

In his lifetime, Alex often visited Station Pizza for a Buffalo Chicken slice.

That should have continued.

Instead of handing out birthday cake on what would have been his 37th birthday, Trottere will be handing out pizza along with three-minute Narcan training.

"It's just the plain slice with a small drink," she said. "But when Alex's friends come — usually several of his friends always stop by — they have the buffalo slice in his honor."

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW:

Who: Carole Trottere, Suffolk County Police Department
What: Free pizza and a small soda with Narcan training
When: Nov. 3, noon to 4 p.m.
Where: Station Pizza is located at 1099 North Country Road in Stony Brook.
Why: Drug addiction awareness in memory of Alex Sutton

For more information, call 631-275-5277.