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.

Medical Examiner’s records from 2002 indicate that no such deaths occurred that year among those younger than 15.

But in 2016, three one-year-old’s died of drug overdoses in the county. A two-year-old and a nine-year-old also were among the dead.

The drug scene changed dramatically over that decade and a half. In 2002, there were 109 drug deaths and oldest person to die that year was 62.

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By 2016, the total number of deaths hit 343 and the oldest person was 93.

And opioids, including prescription pills such as oxycodone, as well as heroin and illegally made fentanyl showed up repeatedly in toxicology reports.

Two of the one-year-olds died from oxycodone and one died from methadone. Both drugs are opioids.

The one-year-olds include:

Cataleya Wimberly who was wearing a onesie and a diaper when she was found unresponsive in a garbage-ridden North Side flat on Feb. 16. She died of a methadone overdose. Paramedics spent 20 minutes trying to revive her, including giving her five shots of epinephrine.

Josiah Rainey, who was found unresponsive while in bed with his aunt on May 1. The Medical Examiner’s report quoted the boy’s mother as saying that his aunt had a prescription for oxycodone.

Jake Stemwell was found in the bedroom of his grandparents by his grandmother on Sept. 12. He too died from oxycodone.

One was a homeless man. He had spruced up the place and invited a pretty, but emotionally troubled 26-year-woman to stay there.

She was Francheska Hernandez. Raised in Puerto Rico, she came to Milwaukee to live with her grandfather. Last August, she died of an overdose of heroin, cocaine and the powerful opioid, fentanyl. She was one of 343 people to die of a drug overdose in Milwaukee County last year.

Hernandez was a known prostitute and drug user, according to the medical examiner’s report. She worked on the corner of 21st and Greenfield Avenue and abused prescription medications, heroin, cocaine, and crack.

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A few weeks before her death, she was on the balcony of a home pulling her hair and making bird noises when police arrived, according to a police report. The occupants of the house said they didn’t know Hernandez.

To her mother, Brenda Vazquez, Hernandez “was my princess.” Vazquez only speaks Spanish and her words were translated.

“She was a good person,” Vazquez said. “She expressed her feelings beautifully. The only thing is that since she was a kid she had a problem with using pills. That’s how it all began.”

When family problems developed in Puerto Rico, including her mother’s admitted use of drugs, Hernandez and a sister came to Milwaukee to live with their grandparents.

At the age of six, Hernandez was diagnosed with ADD, which made it hard for her to learn in school. A psychiatrist prescribed Ritalin. After that, she was dependent on pills. Ritalin turned into marijuana, marijuana turned into cocaine.

She also lost custody of her own children.

“She always did what she wanted,” Vazquez said. “She never did what I told her to do. Even when I was a good role model and maintained sobriety. We all suffered because of her sickness because addiction is a disease.”

Hernandez’s children were first in foster care with a Brazilian family until her grandfather gained custody. She was granted supervised visits with her children, so she could not live with her grandfather. That is when Hernandez took to the streets.

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Hernandez’s aunt Izelisse lived in Milwaukee at the time. Izelisse’s last interaction with Hernandez was a week prior to her death. Hernandez appeared high at Izelisse’s home with an unknown man. When Hernandez began yelling, Izelisse asked her to leave, according to the medical examiner’s report.

Hernandez’s younger sister, Yaritza, is happy her sister’s story is being told.

“Thank you for choosing the case of my sister,” said Yaritza. “I hope that with all this will create awareness in the young.”

Little was known about the homeless man who fixed up the boarded up house.

He was not identified by name in the medical examiner’s report. He told police he had “popped” the rear door and cleaned up the house with the idea of living there. He also told Hernandez about the house.

The two were the only ones to use it.

The first floor was mostly empty except for a couch.

On Aug. 5 last year, the homeless man found her body on the second floor of house. An uncapped needle was next to her. Scattered clothes and several empty baggies were found in the room with other items, including syringes.

The man cried and he slapped her in the face in an attempt to wake her before contacting the neighbors to call 911.

He said he didn’t understand why the friend would do that. He wondered if there was something he could have done to stop it, Warm said.

Perhaps, that’s why Bleksley started using heroin three weeks later.
On May 11th, 2016, Warm came home from work and found Bleksley in his Shorewood house sitting cross legged on the floor with a needle in his hand. He wasn’t breathing. He had thrown up on himself.

Warm was terrified. She couldn’t feel a pulse. She started chest compressions. She called his family.

She continued chest compressions until his father and younger sister arrived. While Bleksley’s sister called 911, Warm administered the drug Narcan, which can revive people who have overdosed on opioids. It didn’t work.

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The official cause of death, according to the medical examiner, was an accidental overdose of heroin; the powerful, and often illicitly made opioid, fentanyl; and the tranquilizer, alprazolam.

For users of heroin and other opioids, Narcan is a last resort to prevent an overdose death. It can be injected or administered as nasal spray. If given earlier enough, it can quickly revive someone who took too much.

When someone takes too much heroin or some other opioid such as Oxycontin, the muscles that control breathing can relax so much that the person stops breathing.

Narcan, also known as naloxone, works by occupying receptors on brain cells that are affected by opioids.

Paramedics not only are using it more, but are finding they have to give larger doses to counter the effects of more powerful drugs such as fentanyl.

“I’ve seen people who were unresponsive who, once the Narcan is administered, can have a conversation like we’re having right now,” said Deputy Milwaukee Fire Chief Steven Riegg.

Narcan was administered by the Milwaukee Fire Department more than 1,000 times between January and the beginning of November last year — more than 3 times a day on average.

But the drug is not always effective such as when a person’s heart already has stopped.

Last year, a 36-year-old man was passed out from a fentanyl overdose on a county bus. He had labored breathing when firefighters arrived so they administered Narcan, but he could not be resuscitated.

And not all drug users are happy about getting Narcan because it cuts off the euphoric effect of the opioid.

“They are very angry at us for taking away their high,” Riegg said.

Other times they just are curious about how much Narcan was needed.

Milwaukee Fire Lt. Aaron Kriel recalled the case of a man they revived earlier this year on the South Side.

“He actually asked how much we gave him,” he said. “He was surprised it took so much. Some of these people are repeats.”

Less than 24 hours later, her father found her in bed, dead from an overdose of the narcotic painkiller methadone.

By the time 2016 ended, 343 people died from drug overdoses — more than from car accidents and homicides combined and more than three times the total in 2002.

Among the dead were three 1-year-olds, one who died of a methadone overdose, and two from the narcotic painkiller oxycodone. A 93-year-old woman died from a combination of methadone and the prescription sedative temazepam, which treats insomnia.

In 2002, when 109 people died from drug overdoses, the oldest was 62; the youngest, 15.

In 2016, three drugs turned up over and over again in toxicology tests: heroin was found in 148 cases; cocaine in 85; and fentanyl, a powerful and often illegally made opioid, in 97 cases.

Alcohol was a part of the deadly mix in 76 instances.

With brand names such as Xanax and Valium, anti-anxiety drugs known as benzodiazepines showed up in 99 cases. Both alcohol and benzodiazepines suppress the central nervous system, and if taken in large enough amounts or with opioids, can cause a person to stop breathing.

“Basically, none of us saw this coming, both in terms of volume and the new drugs involved,” said Chief Medical Examiner Brian Peterson.

The deaths occurred in apartments and homes, on the street and in hospitals in almost every neighborhood in the county.

They happened on a Milwaukee County bus on the South Side; on the sidewalk in front of a Kopp’s Frozen Custard in Greenfield; in a gas station bathroom on the Northwest Side; and in a basement storage unit of a West Allis apartment complex.

A 20-year-old man, his body still warm, was found in the driver’s seat of his car in the parking lot of a McDonald’s on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side. He apparently passed out so quickly after taking fentanyl and a tranquilizer, that his McDonald’s bag and a soda still were in his lap and his keys were in his right hand.

Only three more affluent communities – Whitefish Bay, Fox Point and River Hills – did not log an overdose death in 2016.

Most of the county’s overdoses were caused by opioids mixed with other drugs.

Years ago, the deaths mostly involved cocaine and heroin, Peterson said. Then, in 1995, the painkiller Oxycontin arrived on the scene, sparking an epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse.

Today, fentanyl, much of which is made illegally and is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, is the cause of many of the deaths. The drug often is mixed in with heroin, sometimes without the user’s knowledge.

Arif James Weiss, 26, had a history of prescription painkiller and heroin abuse, but it was fentanyl that killed him on Sept. 4 last year in his Wisconsin Ave. apartment.

AJ, as he was known, thought he was taking heroin, said his mother, Holly Nerone. But the medical examiner determined it was fentanyl.

“They can throw whatever the hell they want in these drugs to try and hook people or give them a better high,” his mother said. “It’s almost impossible to ever bring someone to justice for it.”

Fifteen years ago, in 2002, fentanyl was just starting to show up in toxicology tests. It was found in only 3 of the 109 overdose deaths that year, according to medical examiner’s records.

Before the emergence of fentanyl, heroin use surged, both nationally and in Milwaukee County.

A study this month in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found a big increase in heroin use between 2001-2002 and 2012-2013.

Data from Milwaukee County mirrors that trend. Deaths involving heroin increased from 15 percent of all drug deaths in 2002 to 43 percent in 2016.

During that 14-year period, when deaths from all drugs more than tripled, heroin and fentanyl led the way.

While the bodies go to the Medical Examiner’s office, the Milwaukee Fire Department attends to both the dead and the near-dead. Last year, paramedics administered the life-saving, opioid overdose drug, Narcan, to more than 1,000 people.

“We go on an overdose every day,” said Lt. Aaron Kriel, a paramedic with MED-7, the busiest paramedic unit in Milwaukee.

Nearly a third of all deaths investigated by the Medical Examiner’s office involved drugs in
2016.

Milwaukee County has one of the few Medical Examiner offices in Wisconsin that has a toxicology center in the same building. From blood, vitreous fluid in the eye, and other organ samples, a toxicologist can determine what drugs were taken and if alcohol was involved.

Why is this happening?

Peterson says it’s a collision of several factors: over-prescription of opioids, regulations emphasizing more pain control to make patients happy and the rise of illegal and cheap fentanyl.

This story was done using a Medical Examiner’s database of the 343 drug overdose cases in 2016. A similar database from 2002 also was analyzed.

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Of the 343 overdoses, 58 were pronounced dead at a hospital, with the majority ending up at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center on W. Oklahoma Ave. and S. 27th St.

In about 80 percent of the cases, the user never made it a hospital.

Many of the victims were from middle class or poorer areas with 31% of the cases occurring in Milwaukee County suburbs.

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Sixty-eight percent of the victims were male, and 68 percent were white.

Sixty-three percent of the cases (216) were mixed-drug intoxication, meaning two or more drugs were found in the body of the deceased. Alcohol is counted as a drug when it’s involved in an overdose death. It played a deadly role in 76 of the cases. Heroin was involved in 43 percent of the cases.

“I have cases with four, five, six different drugs,” said deputy medical examiner Wieslawa Tlomak.

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Fentanyl, which was involved in 28 percent of deaths, is cheap to produce and many times more powerful than heroin. If the user doesn’t know that, he or she may get an opioid dose that is much stronger and more deadly than what they expected.

In 2002, the drug only was found in three deaths, less than 3 percent of the total.

Two of the drugs involved in last year’s overdose deaths — methadone and buprenorphine — also are used to treat opioid addiction.

In one case, a 30-year-old woman took cocaine – a stimulant- fentanyl and heroin, both depressants, and then added alcohol to the mix.

In another, a 34-year-old Greenfield mother of four died of a combination of oxycodone, amphetamine and benzodiazepine. She was revived by paramedics in the field and taken to St. Luke’s Medical Center where her heart stopped again. She again was resuscitated, but died at the hospital.

Paramedics are trying to fight the “opioid tsunami” with the prescription antidote Narcan (naloxone).

Narcan can be requested by users from their doctor or from several community health organizations in the city.

But it doesn’t always work.

On March 2 last year, a 36-year-old man was passed out on a county bus. He had labored breathing when firefighters arrived, so they administered Narcan as a nasal spray, but he could not be resuscitated. He died of a fentanyl overdose.

And sometimes users just don’t want it because it interferes with the euphoric effect of the opioid they took.

“They are very angry at us for taking away their high,” said Deputy Chief Steven Riegg.

Even more Narcan may be needed this year. Overdose deaths are on pace to exceed last year’s record, said Karen Domagalski, operations manager at the Medical Examiner’s office.

As of May 11, the county was on pace for 390 deaths, she said.

This story was written by Jordan Garcia, with contributions from Brandon Anderegg, Jenna Gaidosh, Dwayne Lee, Christina Luick, and Amanda Watter.