On October 24, 2016, on her Facebook page, Jamie Allison wrote “Death is only a shot away…” Less than two weeks later she died from an overdose of heroin and fentanyl.
Allison, 26, was one of a record number of people who died of a drug overdose in Milwaukee County in 2016.
She’s a statistic, one line on a Medical Examiner’s spreadsheet listing the 343 drug deaths in Milwaukee County in last year. She’s also the central figure in a tragedy that tore apart a family and left behind a three-year-old daughter.
Allison was a typical kid, good and kind, according to her parents. In pictures, a smile seems permanently etched on her face. Her friends often took her up on her offers to watch their children, whom she had a knack for getting along with. It seemed she would do almost anything for anybody.
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Her undoing was her inability to pull herself from a five-year battle with addiction, a fight that ended on the kitchen floor of a West Allis house last November.
At 3:30 a.m. that day, a housemate found her sitting on the toilet with a syringe in her arm and barely breathing.
He tried CPR, but to no avail, according to the medical examiner’s report.
Another person brought in the drug Narcan, which is used revive people who have overdosed on narcotics. They gave her two or three Narcan injections.
When she didn’t respond, they put her in the shower and doused her with cold water.
Finally, they called 911. Paramedics performed CPR for 30 minutes. She could not be revived.
Police were familiar with Allison and the house where she died. They had been called there for overdoses several times before.
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Allison’s drug life began towards the end of her sophomore year at Ozaukee High School with pot and the wrong group of kids, according to her parents Dwaine and Debbie Allison.
They’ve been married for thirty years. With two older children, Allison was their first child together.
Throughout her remaining high school years, Allison’s marijuana use surged so much her parents were surprised she managed to graduate. She chose to forgo furthering her education in favor of recreational drug use.
By age 20, she turned to pills.
Eventually, Allison craved a stronger high; when the pills and the pot were no longer enough, she chose heroin.
In 2012, Debbie, confronted her daughter about her heroin use. After all, the tell-tale signs of an addict were there: a change in demeanor, a sudden need for cash.
She became a shoplifter, but quickly learned that the fastest and easiest way to get cash was through a pawn shop. She began swiping her parents belongings, including guns, jewelry and precious family heirlooms. Virtually no item of value was left untouched.
She even stole from her parents’ friends, destroying 20-year-old relationships. At one point, she managed to empty the contents of her mother’s safe, though the key stayed in Debbie’s purse, a fact her mother didn’t discover until later.
“Everything we had she stole,” said Dwaine. “Stuff she could sell quick.”
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The Allisons remained unaware of their missing items until a police officer came to their home. In his hands were pictures of items she had taken from the house. Among the stolen items was Dwaine’s grandfather’s ring, an irreplaceable family memento that they had to buy back from the pawn shop. The cop’s visit gave them a reality check and forced them to take inventory of their house.
Debbie discovered her safe, once filled with precious irreplaceable items, had been emptied. Jewelry given to her over the years by Dwaine for anniversaries, birthdays and other special occasions had vanished. Luckily, one of the few items remaining was her grandmother’s ring.
Confronted by her mother about the thefts, Allison merely laughed it off.
Over the course of her addiction, Debbie and Dwaine would grow accustomed to Jamie’s indifference and eventually her absence. She no longer had her friendly and caring demeanor.
To top it off, Allison was never arrested for her thefts, in exchange she started working with the police to help them catch other addicts who pawned stolen items.
Sick of her endless thievery and the disruption of their home, Debbie and Dwaine kicked Allison out of the house.
“She destroyed a lot,” Debbie said.
In defiance and desperate for a place to live, Allison moved in with her grandparents. According to her parents, while there she wove a tale of hardship placing herself as the victim. She claimed that they loved their other children more, that they didn’t help her when she needed it, that they never gave her the opportunity to go to college.
But her parents said they did a lot. They sent her to rehab twice on their insurance; they offered her a place to stay, they drove her everywhere. They even helped pay for three separate cars only for Allison to lose them after taking out title loans to buy more drugs.
Dwaine would drive her to rehab classes and pick her up at the end of the day. Later he found out she would check herself in, ditch, get high and make it back in time for pick up.
For a year, Dwaine refused to talk to his in-laws; the tension was too great. If his mother-in-law came over, he would hide in his bedroom or leave the house altogether. Gone were the days when he watched football or races with his father-in-law. Debbie didn’t talk to her mother for months.
Months after Allison’s death her grandmother discovered needles hidden around the garage, under the lawnmower and on top of window sills. Only then did she understand just how strong her granddaughter’s addiction was, Debbie said.
“What the addicts don’t understand is what they’re doing to other people…financially, physically, emotionally,” said Dwaine.
Her heroin abuse had become her whole life, even coming before her own daughter.
Addisyn, now three and a half years old, was born in the midst of her mother’s addiction. Her father who now is sober, struggled with cocaine and alcohol addiction.
Three months short of giving birth, Allison stopped doing heroin, and several hours after delivering Addisyn, picked it up again. The dealer came straight to the hospital room, and Addisyn went home with her grandparents.
For three and a half months, Dwaine didn’t leave the house because he was too busy taking care of Addisyn and re-acclimating to life with a newborn. To Debbie, it felt like they were starting over.
They are not alone. Around the country, thousands of grandparents now are taking care of their grandchildren because of the opioid epidemic, including many who share their experiences of Facebook support groups.
The Allisons have friends who are raising twin grandchildren because of drugs.
Even when Addisyn went on to live with Allison, Debbie and Dwaine helped raise her. They were constantly worried about Addisyn, especially once she began crawling and the risk of getting pricked by a needle grew bigger.
And their worry was not without reason. There had been nights when Addisyn stayed in her car seat all night as Allison got high. Other times she had been left with a friend, most likely a stranger. By agreeing to watch Addisyn whenever Allison asked, Debbie at least knew where she was and that she was safe, though sometimes that meant she would leave the girl with them for days.
“[She would] just disappear on us,” Debbie said.
Debbie recalled receiving a phone call one day from a girl who said Addisyn was in her care. They arranged to meet at CVS drug store and on the way there, she passed Allison pulling down her grandparent’s garage door.
On another occasion, Allison, in a fit of hysteria, almost threw Addisyn. She had been angry that the father, now sober, had come to retrieve his items from her house accompanied by Dwaine and Debbie. As she went to throw Addisyn, Dwaine grabbed the baby. In retaliation, Jamie locked herself in her room, scratched and grabbed at her neck and called the cops citing her father as the abuser.
Police arrested Dwaine for domestic abuse and he spent the night in jail.
The charges were dropped. When Dwaine confronted Allison about it, she laughed.
“I love my daughter, but I didn’t like her,” Dwaine said.
In April 2015, with approval from Addisyn’s parents, Debbie and Dwaine began to apply for guardianship. From that point forward, Allison officially no longer was allowed in the house and Debbie and Dwaine began a tumultuous journey through the foster care system.
During this time, Allison was allowed scheduled visits with her daughter. Sometimes she wouldn’t show; other times she’d come high or with a boyfriend or she’d arrive late. Occasionally she’d become belligerent and her visiting rights were reduced.
Eventually, after more than a year of going to court, parenting classes and two different caseworkers, Debbie and Dwaine were approved for guardianship in October, 2016.
Allison vowed to get better for her daughter; she attempted rehab and tried to get the strength to overcome her illness.
She went to Rogers Memorial four times, twice of which she was kicked out after detoxing. Since she had state insurance, she wasn’t allowed to stay for more than several days. Another time she went to Meta House, but went AWOL and was kicked out.
In between her stints at rehab, her encounters with the police increased, resulting in more arrests and court dates.
“At some point this person needs to be locked up,” Debbie said.
After one overdose incident where she found herself in the hospital, Debbie told Allison’s probation agent where she was. Allison was locked up for ninety days, but upon her release she wasn’t admitted directly to rehab due to a lack of vacancies. An issue, Debbie believes, cost her her life.
In the end, Allison wasn’t admitted to full time rehab and only was permitted to attend day sessions. Her parents said they believe had she been sent straight to rehab from jail, she might have stood a chance.
Her cause of death was listed as an accidental overdose of heroin and fentanyl, an often illegally made opioid that is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and that can be mixed in as a heroin substitute. Allison knew was it was dangerous.
Allison’s final Facebook post was a shout out to her mother, thanking her for everything she had done, for loving her despite her faults and for taking care of her granddaughter. Allison died days later, two days before her mother’s birthday.