The BulleTin • Sunday, March 13, 2022 A7
Victims of the opioid crisis
Facing Purdue brings pain, closure
BY JENNIFER PELTZ AND GEOFF MULVIHILL • associated Press
N
EW YORK — Kara Trainor composed herself, looked into a camera and began to speak to the drugmakers she holds responsible for two decades of suffering that has
extended from her to a son born dependent on opioids.
Three members of the family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma watched silently or listened to the virtual court hearing as Trainor described giving birth to a
baby who rapidly plunged into withdrawal — “the screaming will haunt you for the rest of your life” — and what it’s been like to raise him. At 11, he still uses a sippy cup and diapers.
Trainor and others who have
suffered from or lost relatives
to opioid addiction had waited
years for this moment: a direct,
if virtual, confrontation with
members of the Sackler family
in court over the consequences
of the painkiller that made them
a fortune while helping fuel a
deadly drug epidemic. The op-
portunity finally came for about
two dozen victims or their rela-
tives at an extraordinary bank-
ruptcy court hearing Thursday.
Some emerged exhausted,
others angry, others relieved, and
all unsure whether the Sacklers,
who weren’t allowed to respond
during the session, had been
moved. Still, several people who
gave statements said they valued
being able to speak for their lost
loved ones and show solidarity,
and that they had gotten a grain
of resolution.
“I can feel, as a mother, that
my son was seen and heard by
the family,” said Trainor, of Ka-
lamazoo, Michigan, who got an
OxyContin prescription at 21
and soon became addicted. She’s
now 40, in recovery and working
with others who struggle with
drug abuse.
“It’s going to be part of my
healing and part of a closure of
20 years,” she said, “finally being
able to be heard.”
The hearing, highly unusual
for U.S. Bankruptcy Court, was
suggested by a mediator who
helped broker a potential settle-
ment of thousands of lawsuits
against Purdue. If it wins final
approval, the deal will generate
$10 billion or more to fight ad-
diction and overdoses, with the
Sacklers chipping in as much as
$6 billion in exchange for pro-
tection from civil lawsuits. Up to
149,000 people who have strug-
gled with addiction or who lost
loved ones to it are due to split
$750 million under the settle-
ment.
One after another, victims
logged in from Hawaii to New
Hampshire on Thursday with ac-
counts of surgeries and illnesses
that led to OxyContin prescrip-
tions, followed by dependency,
despair, rounds of drug-abuse
treatment, personal and financial
ruin and, all too often, death by
overdose or suicide.
Vitaly Pinkusov described
waking up to find his 32-year-
old wife’s body cold in their bed.
Kristy Nelson played a recording
of her frantic 911 call reporting
Contract
Continued from A1
On Friday, the executive
board of AFSCME Local 3997
sent an open letter to county
commissioners asking that it
“rectify this obvious inequity.”
“We are aware you have
awarded special privileges in
the form of an additional 2%
salary adjustment to the De-
schutes County Sheriff Em-
ployees Association,” the letter
says. “This is in direct oppo-
sition to the position that was
maintained during AFSCME
bargaining less than a year ago;
that AFSCME-represented
employees could not receive a
benefit that differed from other
contracts. Our membership
has faced unprecedented crises
in the last several years, includ-
ing providing quality services
during a pandemic. AFSCME
represented employees are in-
tensely aware of this show of
contempt for our hard work.”
Big spending
Being agreeable to the de-
mands of his union represents
an about-face for Sheriff Nel-
son, who’s quarreled with the
union in the past.
Nelson’s spokesman, Sgt.
Jayson Janes, declined to speak
by phone with The Bulletin
and only responded to some
questions in writing.
DeBone and Adair are re-
liable votes for Nelson. Adair
Seth Wenig/aP
Dede Yoder looks at a photo of her son, Chris Yoder, after making a statement during a hearing March 10 in New York. People
who lost loved ones or years of their own lives to opioid addiction are getting their first and perhaps only chance to confront
members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma. Thursday’s virtual court hearing is being run by a
U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge.
Tiffinee Scott shows photographs to reporters, including one of the many pill bot-
tles her daughter had accumulated before her death, after making a statement
during a hearing March 10 in New York. Scott said “After Tiarra’s passing, I col-
lected countless pill bottles — filling a king size bed in a bag.”
that her son was unresponsive.
Stephanie Lubinski recounted
how her husband went into their
basement and shot himself in the
chest.
Former Purdue president and
board chairman Richard Sackler
listened by phone, a sore point
for some victims who found it
disrespectful that he didn’t face
them. His son, David Sackler,
and another family member,
Theresa Sackler, appeared on
camera, appearing attentive but
took time while explaining her
vote on the contract to praise
Nelson’s recent $2 million pur-
chase of more than two dozen
vehicles, primarily full-size
trucks, that will allow every pa-
trol deputy a take-home car.
“I know it was a rather large
purchase but I think that it was
important in today’s world,”
she said. “I think that the mes-
sage to our community is that
they’re working for us and
they’re out there.”
The new sheriff’s office con-
tract contains three conditions
considered especially attractive
to staff:
• Lowering the earliest al-
lowable retirement eligibility
from 30 years of service to 25.
• A new promotion “step”
for all job classifications at the
office.
With nearly every county
job, there are six pay steps on
the way to a position’s max-
imum allowable salary. The
new sheriff’s office contract
adds a seventh step, allowing
all sheriff’s office employees a
chance to receive an additional
raise of up to 5%.
• For all staff, a cost of living
raise of 3.5%, plus, for sworn
deputies, an additional 2%
wage adjustment.
Cost of living adjustments
are applied each year to every
county position to help keep
wages in line with rising costs
of living in Deschutes County.
The range is generally no lower
showing little reaction.
“They just sat there, alone but
stone-faced, and never changed
their expression, never,” a frus-
trated Lubinski of Blaine, Min-
nesota, said afterward.
The Sacklers have never un-
equivocally apologized. They re-
leased a statement last week say-
ing they had acted lawfully but
“regret” that OxyContin “unex-
pectedly became part of an opi-
oid crisis that has brought grief
and loss to far too many families
and communities.”
OxyContin, a pioneering ex-
tended-release prescription
painkiller, hit the market in
1996, while Purdue and other
drug companies funded efforts
to suggest that prescribers con-
sider opioids for a wider range of
pain conditions than previously
thought appropriate. Purdue as-
serted that far fewer than 1% of
people prescribed opioids devel-
oped addictions, though there
weren’t rigorous studies to sup-
port the claim.
Waves of fatal opioid over-
doses followed, from prescrip-
tion drugs, heroin, and most
recently fentanyl and similar
drugs. Purdue documents made
public in lawsuits appear to show
family members at times down-
playing the crisis.
Tiffinee Scott asked the Sack-
lers whether they had ever re-
vived one of their children from
an overdose, as she did for her
daughter before finally losing her
to an overdose at age 28. Tiarra
Renee Brown-Lewis had been
prescribed OxyContin for sickle
cell disease pain, the mother
said.
“Shame on you,” she told the
Sacklers, though she said later
that she hadn’t expected a re-
Joe Kline/Bulletin file photo
Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson
than 1.5% and no higher than
3.5%.
Funding for the 2% wage ad-
justment will come from the
sheriff’s budget, which is pri-
marily funded by two levies, a
countywide jail levy and a rural
patrol levy, plus, for more than
a decade, a $3 million allot-
ment from the county’s tran-
sient room tax.
The rural patrol levy is set at
a rate below what’s allowable
in state law, meaning the com-
mission could ask voters to in-
crease it.
Commissioner Tony
DeBone said it’s voters who
should be thanked for the wage
adjustment, for passing the ru-
ral patrol tax.
“We have the money to do
this,” DeBone said. “It was a
vote of the people that put us
in this spot to be able to fund
this.”
Chang countered that the
sheriff’s office only has room
in its budget because of the $3
million in hotel tax funds. And
last year, Nelson came to the
commission to ask for an ad-
ditional $300,000 in transient
room tax to address a shortfall
in his budget.
Sheriff’s spokesman Jayson
Janes told The Bulletin the of-
fice is looking at getting more
of the transient room tax in-
stead of increasing the rural
patrol tax rate in the future.
Countywide staffing problems
The county commission
has heard increasingly over
the past year from department
heads facing stark realities.
In the past three weeks alone,
they’ve heard from the plan-
ning department, behavioral
health and 911. Other hard-
hit divisions are said to be fi-
nance, administration and fair-
grounds.
At the planning department,
aka Community Development,
a 13% vacancy rate this fiscal
year coincides with a major
influx of new residents as well
as design and land-use appli-
cations.
Director of Community
Development Peter Gutowski
came to the commission to ask
for higher pay for an adminis-
trative assistant. He described
difficulty finding qualified
planners and building inspec-
tors and warned the county
could become a bottleneck in
the land-use process, impeding
the addition of adding critically
needed new housing.
On Feb. 23, Janice Garceau,
head of the county behavioral
health department, told com-
missioners a staffing shortfall
has kept the Stabilization Cen-
ter from quickly responding to
people in mental health crisis.
Last year, the commission
approved one-time bonuses in
an effort to retain crisis mental
health workers, considered one
of the biggest staffing needs at
the county.
Those bonuses have not yet
proved effective, according to
Kathleen Hinman, director of
county human resources.
“Our vacancy rate has been
action from people she sees as
heartless. To her, the point of the
session was the impact of the
families’ unity and their joint
message.
“For once, we felt to have a
sense of power over privilege, as
it pertains to the Sacklers,” she
said.
After her 21-year-old son,
Chris Yoder, died from an over-
dose, Dede Yoder used to swear
at the Sacklers as she drove by
Purdue’s headquarters in Stam-
ford, Connecticut, near her Nor-
walk home. She’s felt vindicated
by the bankruptcy case and pub-
lic scrutiny of the Sacklers.
“Being part of this court re-
cord is very important, and my
son’s story being part of the re-
cord,” she said after making her
statement during the hearing.
Ryan Hampton of Las Vegas
found “a level of catharsis” in
testifying Thursday about the
years of addiction, overdoses and
periods of homelessness he en-
dured after a knee injury. But it
bothered him that victims and
their relatives were delivering a
message that, in his view, should
come from authorities.
Like several of those who tes-
tified, he wants the Sacklers to be
criminally charged. There’s no
sign that will happen, although
seven U.S. senators last month
asked the Department of Justice
to consider it. Purdue Pharma,
meanwhile, has twice pleaded
guilty to criminal charges.
Cheryl Juaire, meanwhile, is
looking ahead to the potential
for money to flow to addiction
treatment programs and “start
to heal this country.” Juaire, of
Marlborough, Massachusetts,
lost two adult sons, Corey Mer-
rill and Sean Merrill, who died
just last June.
Jill Cichowicz, who lost her
twin brother, Scott Zebrowski,
hopes that Thursday’s uncom-
monly personal hearing “sets the
tone for future companies, and
they understand the ramifica-
tions of their actions.”
For a long time, she had
thought about what she might
say to the Sacklers if she ever got
the chance.
“And then, when you’re ac-
tually in the room facing them,
eye-to-eye, you’re not as angry.
You’re hurt,” said Cichowicz, of
Richmond, Virginia. “It was a
sense of closure, but in the same
sense, I’m still suffering, being
hurt by their actions.”
higher than usual and the
number of applications per re-
cruitment has been declining
since 2019,” Hinman told The
Bulletin. “It doesn’t appear to
be getting worse, but we aren’t
seeing great improvement ei-
ther.”
The county is now involved
in labor negotiations with the
employees of Deschutes 911,
which is dealing with a 16%
vacancy rate. The union has al-
ready asked for the 2% wage ad-
justment in its negotiations, 911
director Sara Crosswhite said
during Wednesday’s meeting.
With the sheriff’s office re-
ceiving a 2% bonus wage ad-
justment, AFSCME Local 3997
will certainly use the fact in its
next bargaining, according to
Oregon AFSCME representa-
tive Brenda Johnson.
AFSCME Local 3997’s new
contract features a new way to
calculate cost of living adjust-
ments, which is considered a
win for the union.
“Our last bargaining session
with Deschutes County was
a hard-fought battle,” John-
son said. “Now with the Sher-
iff’s Department receiving a
2% COLA, this can be ... used
in our next bargaining. This
would be a great motivator for
our membership to see any
discrepancies in the way one
local is treated compared to
another local.”
e
Reporter: 541-383-0325,
gandrews@bendbulletin.com