Fentanyl robbed Sarah Cherney and the world of her son, Mario Perez III.
She believes he took what he thought was oxycodone or heroin.
“I will never know for sure,” Cherney said before softly repeating, “I’ll never know for sure.”
“But what I do know is that if it wasn’t for fentanyl, my son would still be alive,” Cherney said, her voice strong again. “Fentanyl kills addicts and non-addicts. It does not discriminate.
“Since Mario’s passing, there is a palpable feeling of emptiness, as if there’s something that you could feel was here in this world and now it’s not. It goes beyond grief.”
He died on Feb. 22, 2022. He was 28 years old.
“I was still in denial until the very end because drug addiction did not look like my son,” Cherney said.
For the first time, Cherney shared about her family’s loss during a fentanyl awareness presentation titled “Pills That Kill,” hosted by the Santa Maria Police Department and the Santa Maria-Bonita School District on Tuesday night.
‘Scourge of Fentanyl’
About 150 people, including community leaders, parents and students, attended the event held in the Allan Hancock College Boyd Concert Hall.
There were presentations by representatives of Santa Barbara County Behavioral Wellness and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.
“The scourge of fentanyl has cast a dark shadow over our communities, claiming lives and leaving devastation in its wake,” Santa Maria-Bonita School District Superintendent Darren McDuffie said. “But today, we gather not in despair but in determination.
“Today, we come together to shine a light on this epidemic to raise awareness and to ignite change.”
Melissa Wilkins, division chief of alcohol and drug programs for the county’s Behavioral Wellness Department, spoke about fentanyl increasingly involved in overdose deaths in the county.
The synthetic opioid is extremely potent and can be lethal in small amounts.
In 2017, there were 12 deaths attributed to fentanyl across the county.
“Since then, the number has continued to increase,” Wilkins said.
By 2022, the number hit 115 but fell to 112 in 2023, a slight decrease she still views as “a glimmer of good news.”
Illicit fentanyl can be mixed into other drugs or made to look like another type of pill. Potency also can vary per pill.
“The reality is, and what I tell my kids is, you don’t know what you’re getting. If you’re getting any sort of substance from anyone, you don’t know what’s in it and you don’t know how much of it could be fentanyl versus something else,” Wilkins said, adding that illegal fentanyl is cheap to manufacture.
Epidemic Doesn’t Discriminate
The opioid epidemic affects people from all walks of life, according to Undersheriff Craig Bonner.
“It is impacting all of our various communities in Santa Barbara County,” he said.
Overdose deaths historically rose and fell, but have only climbed in recent years. The number of opioid-related deaths hit 164 in 2022 and 228 in 2023.
“There is no indication that these numbers are going down, and that was a red flag that we started seeing ramping up around 2020,” Bonner said.
“Over the past two years, the number of overdose deaths has far exceeded the combined number of all other unnatural deaths in Santa Barbara County. That’s all the homicides, it’s all the suicides, and it’s all the traffic deaths combined, and the overdose deaths has exceeded it.”
He provided a sneak peek of a report prepared by the Sheriff’s Office and Behavioral Wellness with the full presentation planned for Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Supervisors.
Bonner said communities need a balanced, full-spectrum approach to combat the opioid epidemic using education, treatment, harm reduction and deterrence.
The number of overdose deaths among younger users has declined, but Bonner cautioned the crowd.
“We just had a 16-year-old overdose on fentanyl and die a couple weeks ago. You can’t take for granted that because it’s declining we don’t have to worry about this or businesses don’t,” he said.
“It is still a problem out in our communities. People are still dying every week. Week in, week out, we’re seeing three to four and sometimes it has spiked as high as six or seven per week that we’re losing in our community.”
The North County had more reported fentanyl overdoses in 2021 and 2022, but last year the greatest growth occurred in the cities of Santa Barbara and Goleta, Bonner said.
Lifesaving Resources Available
The opioid-overdose-reversal medication naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, is available for free from several providers in Santa Barbara County who want to get the lifesaving resource into the hands of community members.
Naloxone nasal spray is available for free at Sheriff’s Office substations or by mail by filling out the online form here at opioidsafetysb.org.
“This is another way to keep people alive. It’s not a solution, but it can keep people alive,” Wilkins said.
It’s also available to correctional officers and jail inmates in hopes of preventing deaths.
Additionally, the county hands out test kits for users to check if a pill contains fentanyl, in hopes of preventing deaths.
A Mother’s Miracle
Cherney said she gave birth to Mario just one week before her 16th birthday and recalled how the baby changed her life.
An athletic kid, he found his true love in skateboarding, his mom said, adding that “he found peace soaring through the air.”
Before Solvang had its own skate park, which he helped lobby for, she would drive her son and his friends to Santa Maria and Lompoc to skate.
Cherney said her son was addicted to marijuana and opioids, but she wasn’t aware of any fentanyl use. He had periods of sobriety after bouts of using illicit drugs, but held jobs, met his responsibilities, and generally didn’t appear to have an addiction, she said.
In hindsight, Tuesday’s presentations about symptoms seemed all too familiar — “all the signs were there,” she said.
His commitment to getting clean led him to research treatment options covered under his insurance, obtain a doctor’s appointment for a referral, and wait out his turn because of the facility’s waiting list.
“This is how desperate he was to get sober,” she said.
He completed a two-week program and seemingly turned his life around, holding down a job that allowed him to work in his beloved outdoors.
However, he didn’t show up at work one day, and a relative checked his home and found him dead, Cherney said.
She only learned of her son’s fentanyl use from the autopsy results, and discovered from a Coroner’s Bureau member that of the six or seven death notifications to be made that day, only Mario had 100% fentanyl in his system. The other six or seven had fentanyl mixed with another drug.
After her son’s death, she heard from people Mario knew and how much he meant to them.
“The world lost a kind, loving, influential energy and force. He did so much for so many,” she said. “We will cherish Mario’s memory and life forever. Mario will always remain my miracle.”