43
THE RUINS OF ADDICTION
YOUNGSTOWN
David Fox meant to make it to the funeral home to pay his respects to his friend Donny LoGiudice, the 28-year-old Boardman man who died April 2 of a heroin overdose.
David never showed up.
Hours after the calling hours ended April 11, David, too, was dead from an overdose.
Like Donny’s parents, Donald and Lorie LoGiudice, David’s family wrote in his obituary the reason for his death: “David’s life came to unexpected end on Saturday, April 11, 2015. He had an ongoing disease of addiction that took him from us and this world too soon.”
Woven throughout the obituary that paints a picture of an intelligent man who served in the Navy and was father to a son who was 10 at the time of David’s death, are traces of the disease that killed him: “He was an amazing man whose potential was cut short due to this epidemic that strengthens every day. His disease of addiction did not define who he was deep inside. ... He was a beautiful soul,” his family wrote.
His loved ones – mother, Becky Fox, of Youngstown; father and stepmother, Robert Fox and Linda Dauber, of Austintown; and former girlfriend, Stefany Nussbaumer, of Struthers – shared David’s story with The Vindicator in hopes that it would raise awareness about drug addiction in the Mahoning Valley community.
“HE WAS A GOOD KID”
Surrounded by portraits of David arranged neatly on the kitchen table at her snug West Side home, Becky Fox recalls her son in fond, yet regretful, terms.
“He was a leader. He was a good kid. He was the type of boy that didn’t even have to open a book to pass. He was that intelligent, that smart,” she said.
David grew up in that same house. His parents divorced when he was 12.
He went to Chaney High School but didn’t graduate. His parents say he was remarkably intelligent, but far from studious.
Later, he earned his GED, got married, joined the Navy and had a son, Dylan, all in quick succession. After a few years of service, he was honorably discharged and moved back to Youngstown.
Unknown to his family at the time, David had begun a deadly transition: from a teenager known to cut school and party – not unheard-of behavior for many kids at that age – to an intravenous drug user.
David’s parents learned of his problem about seven years ago, they say. Even then, however, they didn’t realize the extent of it.
“It really threw me when I found out he was doing heroin, because David had an [aversion to] needles. If he’d see one, he’d go into a panic attack,” said his father, Robert Fox, speaking from his Austintown home.
“David had a telltale sign when he was doing that. His nose would turn red, and he would be the busiest person on Earth – and be doing nothing,” Robert said.
Becky believes David began using drugs intravenously when he was in his early 20s. His marriage yielded a son, and Becky has had custody of him since he was 18 months old.
David tried many times to get clean. His addiction brought him in and out of rehab, jail and even to prison for several months, according to his family.
Court records show a series of arrests for David, such as a 2011 conviction for receiving stolen property. In 2013, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison, with credit for 169 days for time served, after being charged with two counts of possession of heroin, a fifth-degree felony. The prison sentence came after he flunked out of drug court.
Those years were filled with highs and lows. The best times, his loved ones seem to agree, came when he fell in love.
“I HAD TO LOVE HIM FROM A DISTANCE”
David met Stefany Nussbaumer at the beginning of 2012. At the time, they both were going through the Mahoning County Drug Court program.
“When you’re in drug court, the van picks you up and transports you downtown to the courthouse where you do drug court every Wednesday,” Nussbaumer said, sitting with Becky about two months after David’s death.
“We met in the van, locked eyes, and it was over with,” she said.
Six months later, David and Stefany were living together and working on their recovery.
She remembers their relationship as erratic – full of love, but also of intense stress.
The best parts, she said, were when they got to be normal.
“Just hanging out at home. Going out to eat. Going to meetings. Having a home together. Me supporting him in all of his ups and down,” she said. “Going to school together. Having the kids together at the house. ... So much. There was so much good even though it was so dark.”
The darkness, however, eventually consumed the light.
“I kicked him out,” Nussbaumer said. “I had to start loving him from a distance.”
When she got the call about David’s death a few months later, the two weren’t on speaking terms. She turned her phone off a few days earlier after an argument with him.
THE CALL
It’s a call that loved ones of an addict fear, one for which they brace themselves but can never be prepared.
For Becky, it came the night of April 11. Her resigned, matter-of-fact tone crumbles as she recalls it.
“I was out in Warren when I got a phone call from his friend,” she said. “So I rushed down to the hospital when I got the phone call, and I just got in there and he had already passed.
The Mahoning County Coroner’s Office has not yet released any information about David’s death.
“But,” said Becky, her voice breaking, “we knew.”
THE CRISIS
The most up-to-date information from the Ohio Department of Health, released in May, indicates drug overdoses, particularly from opiates, are reaching record levels.
Between 2012 and 2013, overdose deaths rose by 10.2 percent, from 1,914 deaths to 2,110.
Of those deaths, opiates such as heroin and painkillers accounted for more than 70 percent of them.
Here in the Mahoning Valley, the situation is no different. In fact, residents of Mahoning and Trumbull counties died from overdoses at a higher rate than the state average between 2008 and 2013.
The opiate problem, which local law-enforcement officials say began to reach acute levels about six years ago, isn’t likely to subside anytime soon.
“My opinion is, a lot of times the deaths seem to come in groups, and we don’t know if that’s because there’s a specific type of heroin coming through,” said Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene.
“I’m not going to say it’s died down, because it hasn’t died down. We’re doing everything we can to combat it,” he said.
“It’s a continuing fight. Obviously, the heroin right now is our No. 1 problem that we’re trying to deal with the most because it’s taking lives so quickly and abruptly.”
SAND IN A BOTTLE
Today, David’s loved ones are moving past the initial shock of his death.
“I have one day at a time. And I try to take it as best as I can, because life shows up every day,” Nussbaumer said. “I’m grieving, and David is a person I’m never going to forget.”
For her and Becky both, there’s a measure of relief.
“I can’t lie, I sleep better at night. ... Knowing that he’s safe, and I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Becky said.
It’s the little things that keep the pain fresh.
“We talked every day. Whether it was screaming or yelling. Whether it was ‘No, no, stop.’ ‘I love you’ was one thing I said every day, no matter what,” Becky said. “We talked all the time, and I miss that.”
For Robert, the pain washes over him when he sits down to use his computer and sees a picture of David that he keeps on his desktop.
“I’m getting over the point of being angry about it. It’s more, now, missing him. Knowing that we had all these plans, and none of them are going to happen,” he said.
Before David died, Robert was planning to get a tattoo of a fox on his arm – because of the family name, he and David had always loved the animal.
Now, David’s name, birth date and day of death are etched permanently on his father’s arm beneath the animal.
Becky says she put David’s cause of death in the obituary because she wants the community to become more aware of the area’s addiction epidemic.
When she sat down to talk about her son, she placed tiny, glass bottles next to pictures of David. She held one in her hands as she spoke.
It contained her son’s ashes, and she planned to give those bottles to his friends.
“[It’s] just for them to look and say, if they’re having a bad day, or they’re just too high – just pick that up, look at it and say, ‘That’s David. That’s what could happen to me,’” she said.
“Hopefully they’ll say, ‘I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be a bunch of sand in a bottle.’”