PORT ANGELES — When asked what she would say to invite someone to Port Angeles’ first Overdose Awareness Vigil and walk tonight, Julia Keegan does not hesitate.
“It’s going to be a very peaceful walk, a time for healing,” said Keegan, who daily sees addiction’s effects on her community.
A nurse at the Clallam County jail, she has long wanted to hold a vigil for and with people hurt by drug abuse.
Today is International Overdose Awareness Day, with events to be held across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Gathering today
Here, the gathering will start at 7:30 p.m. in the parking lot at Civic Field, Fourth and Race streets.
Keegan, along with fellow volunteers in the Port Angeles Citizen Action Network — PA CAN — will hand out candles and ribbons while network leader Angie Gooding and Port Angeles Deputy Mayor Patrick Downie give short speeches.
Then today’s vigil will become a walk: up Race Street toward Olympic Medical Center’s emergency room, where all too many overdose victims go.
Because of the construction work going on around it, the walkers will skirt the hospital, turning east on Front Street, north on Washington Street and east again on Georgiana Street to Georgiana Park.
At the park near the Chambers-Georgiana intersection, walkers will be invited to speak.
Speakers invited
Recovering addicts, people who have lost a loved one to drug addiction and others who know someone who is struggling will be welcome to share their thoughts.
This is optional, of course.
“We are just there for everybody . . . to let them know we care,” Keegan said.
Gwendolyn Hullette, a member of PA CAN and a co-organizer of today’s vigil, extended an invitation to any parent who has lost a child to addiction.
“There tends to be a lot of shame,” she said.
“When it comes to overdose, parents are embarrassed. They think, ‘If only I had done this or done that. I should have been stricter.’
“We want to remove that stigma and allow them to mourn.
“The rest of the community is mourning.”
Opiod addiction
Heroin, methamphetamine and opioids — including prescription drugs such as Oxycodone — are ravaging communities all over the nation.
Clallam County suffers from a worsening trend, according to Dr. Jeanette Stehr-Green, the county’s interim health officer.
She cites figures from the state, which are reported for three-year blocks such as 2012-14.
Hospitalizations
During that period, opioid-related hospitalizations numbered 559 in Clallam County and 131 in Jefferson County.
That was up from 343 in Clallam and 82 in Jefferson during the period from 2009 to 2011.
The number of deaths has risen slightly in Clallam while dipping in Jefferson.
In the 2012-14 reporting period, 29 people in Clallam County lost their lives to opioids.
In Jefferson County, seven died of opioid-related causes including overdose.
During the 2009-11 reporting period, 28 Clallam County residents died; in Jefferson, there were nine lost.
Higher death rate
In both North Olympic Peninsula counties, the death rate from opioids is higher than the state’s: Across Washington, the rate is 8.4 lost per 100,000 in population; in Clallam County, the rate is 13.4, while in Jefferson, it is 9.7.
The Overdose Awareness Vigil, Hullette said, is an effort to defy those statistics.
She and the other organizers have made signs to carry on the walk, placards that read “Not One More,” as in not one more parent burying a child.
“This is a labor of love and hope,” said Hullette.
Keegan, for her part, saluted PA CAN for putting together today’s event in a fairly short time.
The network, which held its first public meeting in late June, is a subgroup of Revitalize Port Angeles, the grass-roots organization that describes its many projects on www.RevitalizePortAngeles.org.
“Everybody has come out of the woodwork to pitch in,” Keegan said.
Volunteers from Oxford House, a network of homes for recovering addicts, will join the walk, as will Pastor Joe DeScala of the Mended Church of Port Angeles (www.wearemended.org).
DeScala will offer a few words at Georgiana Park before the walkers make the loop back to Civic Field.
“I too have lost a dear friend to overdose,” he said, “and I know the need for comfort and remembering a loved one.”
PA CAN can be found on Facebook as well as on Revitalize Port Angeles’ website.
Its next meeting, like the others before, is open to all Port Angeles residents concerned about the community’s drug problem.
The session will be held at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, in the Board of Commissioners’ meeting room at the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St.
Keegan’s message to people in or out of the group: “We’re in this together. Nobody is alone.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
