Not just ‘a big city issue’: Stevens County raises community awareness of opioid overdoses

Parents in rural Stevens County want their kids to trust the emergency helicopters transporting overdose victims to the closest hospital in Spokane.

“What do you think about what the helicopter does?” Aimee Aguayo asked her three school-age children. “It saves people’s lives. Right? Get you to the hospital real quick.”

A helicopter landing was part of a community awareness event Tuesday at Lakeside Middle School – part of the Nine Mile Falls School District that is the better part of an hour away from Spokane.

“The idea is just to have resources for families and community members to go to address what we know is a growing problem, obviously within our community – in the region,” district superintendent Jeff Baerwald said.

Speaking at the event, Spokane police officer and drug recognition coordinator Mike Thomas said those living in rural communities cannot “bury their heads in the sand” to the opioid crisis.

“People think they are in these remote areas that aren’t affected. ‘This is a big town problem, big city issue,’ they say. And that is not actually the case,” Thomas said. “To believe that this is not what happens in small communities, it’s ludicrous.”

Besides the landing of the emergency helicopter, the event included booths for the Washington Poison Center, the Spokane Regional Health District, Multicare Deaconess Hospital and others.

According to Stevens County Fire Chief Mike Bucy, it is important for the community to be aware of the helicopters in case of emergency.

“Spokane is a 40-minute drive even with lights and sirens on. You can save 30 minutes of transport. That can make a world of difference,” Bucy said.

Aguayo said she wants to protect her kids by making them prepared for opioid overdoses that may occur in the community.

“I think it’s good for them to get to see the helicopter, so it’s not something they’d be afraid of. Hopefully, they’d never have to encounter one, but if they do, they’ll know what it is and what its purpose is, and they’ll feel comfortable with it, which I think makes them safer.”

Ten-year-old fifth-grader Jessie Aguayo said seeing the helicopter land was “really cool” and they were excited to “go up and touch all the buttons.”

Bill Vavau’s young son echoed these sentiments while bobbing up and down and pulling his father closer to the landed aircraft.

“I came because he likes helicopters,” Vavau said with a sheepish grin.

Still, Vavau hoped to sign his family up for Life Flight, a nonprofit critical care transport service in the Pacific Northwest.

“We want to be protected if something ever happens. We live so far away from everything,” he said.

Baerwald said he has not seen increasing drug use in the schools yet, but there is increasing drug use and overdose in the community.

By holding events like this, he hopes to prevent the students under his care from making bad decisions with lifelong consequences.

“I think about myself as a young man and how I felt I was invincible,” he said. “But as you age, you realize some of the life choices that you may have made, you were lucky to make it through and it could have gone another way.”