For the second year in a row, families gathered on Walden’ East Main Street with lighted candles to pierce the darkness of drug addiction.
International Overdose Awareness Day is observed each year on August 31. On that date a year ago, a makeshift memorial was created next to a footbridge that crosses the Tin Brook. On a chainlink fence at the site are hundreds of padlocks, each representing a life lost to drugs.
Those lives were remembered Wednesday at the second annual Walden Overdose Awareness Day ceremony that featured stories from survivors, a reading of names of loved ones lost to drugs and the lighting of candles. It was organized by Jodi Nicoli, herself a survivor, with help from community partners like Hope Not Handcuffs, the Resource Recovery Center of Orange County and Catholic Charities.
“This is our community, from the Village of Walden to all of you,” Mayor John Ramos told the gathering. “This is your home and will continue to be your home. We will keep the lights on forever.”
Walden Village Trustee Patricia Maher acknowledged the padlocks.
“It’s a place of remembrance,” she said, “and a place of awareness.” She later added “together we are stronger, together we will make a difference.”
One of the more dramatic survival stories came from Faith Moore. Today she is the Executive Director of the Orange County Rural Development Advisory Corporation, but her journey to this place and time passed through addiction, despair and prison.
“My family has suffered trauma for the first 27 1/2 years of my life,” Moore said.
It began in 2001, when she received pain pills and quickly became addicted, soon mixing cocaine with the pain pills.
“A few years later I was introduced to crack,” she continued.
It soon became a $1000-per-day crack habit.
“By the absolute grace of God,” I sold crack to an undercover cop,” she said.
On Oct. 27, 2006, she was sentenced to ten months in prison, a sentence that ended exactly 15 years to the day, on August 31, 2007 - her mother’s birthday.
“I want you all to know there is hope,” she said. “And there is life after addition.”