164 people died of overdoses in Centre County over the past decade. How they’re being remembered
Some of the people remembered Wednesday at the foot of the Centre County Courthouse steps were described as everything from educated to pretty to a “go-getter.”
One was a blue-collar worker and a father of an 8-year-old daughter. He went to rehab twice and was adamant he did not want to die.
But he, like the others who left indelible marks on their loved ones, died of a drug overdose in Centre County. They aren’t the only ones.
The county has lost 164 people over the past decade to an overdose, data from the Centre County Heroin and Opioid Prevention and Education Initiative showed. Twenty-two people died of an overdose in 2022; there have been five such deaths this year, Centre County Coroner Scott Sayers said.
Those who delivered emotional statements Wednesday did not dwell on what led to their loved ones’ death. Instead, each chose to remember what they did when they lived.
“We went through hell with him,” Melissa Grove said of her grandson who died of an overdose in January 2021. “I wouldn’t want any other parent or grandparent or aunt to ever go through what we went through with him, but I’d love to have him back. Unfortunately, I can’t.”
Dustin Taylor, 28, was a computer wiz, Grove said. Breaking them down and putting them back together was as routine to him as tying his shoes.
He first went hunting when he was 12 years old, a rite of passage for many in central Pennsylvania. He shot a deer, returned home and cried to his mom. That was the only deer Taylor ever shot.
He never hunted again.
“He gave such good hugs,” Grove said. “He’s wrap his arms around you and the whole world was OK again.”
Trouble followed through his adult years, including drug use and a conviction Grove said led to three years in federal prison. He was released in December 2020.
Less than three weeks later, he died in Bellefonte.
“I’d love to grab him, hug him, kiss him and then shake the heck out of him,” Grove said. “... I’ll never understand it and I know his mom won’t. She’ll never understand it either. He made a difference. He made a difference to me.”
About three dozen people attended the annual candlelight ceremony, including the county’s three commissioners, its district attorney and officers from the Bellefonte and Spring Township police departments.
AppleGate Recovery offered free Narcan, an opioid-overdose antidote often carried by first responders and caregivers for people with heroin addiction. The medication can be obtained through a prescription from a doctor or by using the standing order issued by Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of Health and Physician General.
States that enacted laws to make it easier for people to access naloxone and protected people who reported overdoses from being arrested reported a 14% decrease in overdose deaths, according to a 2018 study in the Addictive Behaviors journal.
That could mean fewer children grow up without a parent alongside them, like the 8-year-old that — 16 years after losing her dad — is set to get married later this year.
“I’m a firm believer that substance use is just a very small part of a person’s world. There is so much more about the person — their hopes, their dreams, their love for others. The list goes on and on,” Centre County Correctional Facility Deputy Warden Danielle Minarchick said. “Unfortunately, while actively using, their substance use becomes bigger than life. It consumes them and for some that small part of their world takes the last breath from their lungs.”
