Family of 28-year-old heroin OD victim from Boardman hopes others can learn from his story

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

For five years, Lorie LoGiudice waited in painful anticipation for a phone call.

She prayed with all her might that the call would never come, but she knew in the pit of her stomach that it most likely would.

When it came last week, she still wasn’t ready.

“I kept screaming into the phone, ‘I can save him! I can save him!’” LoGiudice said, as she softly ran her fingers across the green-stoned Boardman High School class ring that she recently began wearing.

The call was from her

ex-husband, Donald LoGiudice, and the news was that their son, Donny, was dead from an overdose of laced heroin some six weeks from his 29th birthday. The ring was Donny’s.

The pain was fresh in Donald and Lorie’s eyes as they accepted condolences from friends and acquaintances Sunday during activities at Martini Brothers in downtown Youngstown, where a fundraising celebration of Donny’s life took place.

“The monster was so big,” Donald said of Donny’s

addiction to heroin. “He tried several times, but he just couldn’t get it off his back.”

Friends remembered Donny as a fun-loving man who brought joy to people’s lives, in spite of the drug-

addiction demon that tortured his own.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.