TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) It was a Tuesday afternoon, two months into the pandemic, when Theresa Guerrero got the call from her brother-in-law: Her son, Jacob, had been found unresponsive. She was standing in the middle of a Ross store in south Tucson picking out a pillow he’d asked for, throwing it to the floor as she raced toward the exit.
TUCSON â It was a Tuesday afternoon, two months into the pandemic, when Theresa Guerrero got the call from her brother-in-law: Her son, Jacob, had been found unresponsive.
She was standing in the middle of a Ross store in south Tucson picking out a pillow heâd asked for, throwing it to the floor as she raced toward the exit.
Jacob was a cyclist, a tennis player â a trusting, good man â but heâd grown lethargic of late and quit pursuing his active lifestyle. The pandemic only made things worse.
Heâd been working as a Postmates driver for a couple of months. One day, his mother saw straws in his car and wondered whether he was using cocaine. But when she confronted Jacob, he brushed her off.
Advertisement: “They finally let me in and directed me to sit down in a small room off to the side, and I instantly knew he was dead,” she said. “I couldn’t even call a priest in, so I prayed over him myself.” At the age of 31, Jacob died of a fentanyl overdose. It was laced in cocaine he took that morning before a friend dropped him back home around 6 a.m. He was alive for about half the day, Guerrero thinks now – half a day to find and save him, wasted on a pillow she never bought.
An epidemic overshadowed
13 min read After her parents died in the 1981 disaster, Lisa Lawlor became known as the âStardust babyâ, and became an unwitting receptacle for the grief and anger of others
When she was 17-months-old, Lisa Lawlorâs parents Maureen and Francis left her at home in Finglas with a babysitter, so they could have a rare night out. The date was February 13th, 1981, the night before Valentineâs Day. Lisa was recovering from a slight cough, and her mother was worried about leaving her, but Francis was persuasive. He had got tickets from a friend to a disco in Artane.
The disco was at the Stardust. Lisaâs parents â like 46 other young people who went out that night â never came home.