Darcy Patterson, the force behind the advocacy organization Wake Up Nevada seeking to stop opioid overdose, has a collage of mementoes and pictures on her bedroom walls, honoring her late daughter.
“Kirsten was a beautiful young lady, very smart, very witty, funny, great smile,” Patterson told us during a recent visit of her apartment in northwest Reno.
“She got involved with substances when she was a freshman in high school, and it progressed to the point where she was eventually using heroin, and she died of an overdose in 2017,” she said. “She died in Idlewild Park in her car by herself. It was her birthday that day. She was an incredibly special person, and she deserved to have a full life, which was cut short. She was raped in her freshman year, which she never really recovered from. She had some mental health issues, which almost always goes hand in hand with substance use. I knew she was using, but I didn't know what at that time, and I didn't have resources, which was really difficult. A lot of times I was calling the police to come and get her, and, you know, they didn't know what to do with her. And then, when she was missing, I would have someone looking for her, or I'd put her in a facility to try and get some help for her.”
Her daughter started going in and out of rehab, treatment, and counseling, but her addiction remained. She would buy other people’s prescriptions, and then when she had less money she started using heroin which was cheaper and easier to find. “It was available no matter what age you were, it was available at school, it was available in the street. You could get it anywhere,” Patterson said.
Through her ordeals, Kirsten remained close to her little brother, who was ten years younger than her, played volleyball, taught herself guitar, and helped others in the community who she met in rehab.
“She was always helping other women and children in those programs,” Patterson said, who decided to carry on her spirit, after she died.
Outside her apartment, visitors are welcomed with tributes to Kirsten.
At first Patterson helped with a group called Addict’s Mom organizing a local event called Lights of Hope, and then in 2020 created Wake Up Nevada. After an initial grant, which included putting up billboards across town, she’s now revamping the website, and focusing on giving out Narcan and fentanyl test strips in the community, “so that we can save others from overdose and prevent another family from being where I'm at, a mom and or a dad or family, and also just to get the awareness out there that this is happening. It can happen to anyone,” she said.
The Narcan and fentanyl test strips have been funded through The Center for the Application of Substance Abuse Technologies at UNR. Patterson also collaborates with Black Wall Street Reno, Victory Outreach, Tu Casa Latina and Good Shepherd’s Clothes Closet, joining up for events and distribution efforts.
“Narcan is really the only thing that's going to save you from an overdose,” she explained. “Many things have fentanyl in them right now. And if they don't, you should assume there is fentanyl in them and have Narcan, which reverses the overdose. What we're trying to do is flood the market here in town. So it's everywhere, because it happens everywhere. It happens at the grocery store and the Taco Bell. We have Narcan boxes throughout our cities.”
With other groups, Patterson has refurbished old newspaper stands to turn them into Narcan donation spots.
“It's free to the public,” she said. “They're centrally placed. Then we have community partnerships like Reno Behavioral Health care that is sponsoring one of our Narcan boxes. It needs to be out there because if it's not there and they don't have access to it, they'll die. There's no question. It's an immediate death. Someone cannot get recovery unless they're alive, I know that sounds cliche, but it's absolutely true. Some people say, ‘well, you're keeping them alive. Well, yeah, we are so that they can maybe eventually get recovery.’”
Patterson is working to get even more spots for Narcan boxes, including in local parks. This fall, she also is trying to set up peer to peer sessions in local high schools.
Patterson said this work is crucial as attention on opioid overdoses and addiction has waned, despite the continued urgency. “People don't see it on the front page. That’s what I'm trying to get out there, so that it should be on the front page. We're losing, they say at least 300 to 600 people a day in the US just from overdoses of any sort.”
In the meantime, she is willing to help anyone in the community, from parents to addicts, friends, relatives and siblings. “They can always contact me. I have many resources that I can get them in touch with,” she said.
She gets direct feedback from unhoused populations when they see her distributing Narcan. “We see people who have made huge recoveries and if they were not saved, who knows? It's a passion of mine and I love the people on the streets. They are so positive about what we're doing. They're telling us, thank you for putting this out here. Thank you for what you do. And it's a blessing to me.”
Patterson is doing her unpaid volunteer advocacy and support while working two jobs. A former labor and delivery nurse at St. Mary’s she shifted to endoscopy, while also starting work recently as a hospice nurse.
She gets ideas from other groups, such as serving on the board for the Santa Barbara based initiative SafeLaunch, which has as its mission to prevent adolescent exposure to alcohol and other drugs.
“I need to be doing something for others,” she said. “That's just my way and that really brings me a lot of happiness and peace and knowing that I'm doing something for others, but I'm also doing something for Kirsten and my family.”
She credits her son who just graduated high school and will be going to UNR this fall to study mechanical engineering with keeping her going, as well as her faith.
“There were a lot of times where I was really down and I thought, well, I really don't want to do this. I don't want to go on, not that I would maybe have killed myself, but I really felt like, you know, there were some really down times. But, I knew I had him and I'm in it for him. So I was the one that needed to take care of him and provide. And so I did. And he's a great supporter of what I do.”
Several of the pictures on the walls of her home are of her two children smiling together.
“She's very proud,” Patterson said of her late daughter. “She gives me signs. Some people believe in them, some people don't. I know she gives me signs that she's proud.”