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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A mother’s nightmare: Facing the harsh reality of an opioid addiction

By Taylor Nadauld Moscow-Pullman Daily News

It was just this past Christmas when 43-year-old Shayne Holt beamed a smile at the camera, sitting on an extravagant-looking chair at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane as he waited to eat an equally extravagant holiday dinner.

At her massive house overlooking Coeur d’Alene Lake, Holt’s mother, Leslee Hoover, recalled Shayne’s childhood on Tuesday, remembering him as a blessing – a perfect baby.

“I desperately wanted him,” Hoover said with tears in her eyes.

It had been just less than three weeks since her son had died from an opioid overdose on Jan. 27.

Hoover once told a drug counselor at a rehabilitation facility her son visited that she feared burying him. Now, she is on a crusade to make sure no one must face the fear that has become a reality for her family.

It was a tragedy that was unthinkable to Hoover when Shayne was a child. He and his younger sister, Aubree, attended St. Mary’s School, a Catholic school in Moscow. As a child, he participated in typical childhood activities – swimming, Tee ball, Boy Scouts and mowing lawns. He was popular with his friends in St. John, Wash., where he attended high school, and Hoover called him an excellent student, especially bright in terms of technology.

“He’s kind of a geek … he just loved it,” Hoover said.

Shayne graduated from Washington State University with bachelor degrees in accounting and information technology when he was 23. His skills in Web design got him hired right away by different grain companies to create their websites. Little did his family know he would later embezzle hundreds of thousands of dollars from one such company to support an addiction that was continuously spiraling out of control.

Despite Shayne’s success as a young man Hoover, as a single mother, said she couldn’t help but worry about him.

“I can just remember my angst about him growing up and just if he was going to be happy,” Hoover said.

She and her husband split when Shayne was 5 years old. As an alcoholic man, her husband was mostly out of the picture except for occasional visits, she said.

Were her ex-husband’s addictive tendencies hereditary and passed on to Shayne, or did they have nothing at all to do with her son’s own addictions? Hoover does not know, but Shayne’s tendencies existed nonetheless. Sometimes she worried he drank in high school.

“Never in my mind did it occur to me that he might be thinking of drugs,” she said.

Years ago, Shayne was prescribed OxyContin, an opioid pain medication and brand of oxycodone, following a back surgery, which Hoover said may have exacerbated his addiction, though she does not know when exactly it began.

When Shayne’s then-wife, Mari, began to find pill bottles, Hoover said she became suspicious.

Mari now cares for their 12-year-old daughter, Kyra. She and Shayne split amid his increasing addiction.

After a doctor would not renew his prescription, Hoover said he exhausted his own money supply and turned to embezzling nearly half a million dollars from his workplace, Whitgro, earning him a three-year prison sentence, of which he served two years before being released for good behavior.

“He wasn’t strong enough to save his marriage or save his little girl,” Hoover said. His love for them was strong, but the drug was too powerful.

Opioids are central nervous system depressants and include drugs such as heroin, hydrocodone, oxycodone and fentanyl – synthetic heroin.

From 2013 to 2015, there were seven confirmed opioid-related deaths in Whitman County, according to a press release from the Pullman Police Department earlier this month.

Whitman County Coroner Pete Martin said the county experienced four opioid-related deaths in 2016 alone, with another death, pending toxicology reports, likely to be opioid related. All of those who died were in their 20s.

Two of the cases, as well as the one pending toxicology reports, occurred in Pullman, home to WSU. Martin said the presence of a university usually increases the rate of opioid deaths in a county.

It’s not just alcohol anymore, Martin said. Students are experimenting with increasingly potent drugs.

“Good people die from these things. It’s not just druggies,” Martin said.

In the past few weeks, Pullman Police officers have been trained to administer Narcan, an emergency spray that counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose.

Narcan, a brand name for naloxone, blocks opioids from opioid receptors in the brain. The nasal spray would come with a preloaded dose, making the substance easy to administer. The only side effects, according to a press release from the PPD, are those associated with opioid withdrawal.

At the time Shayne’s smile was captured in that Christmas photo in Spokane, he was enjoying a scheduled block of social time with his family, though he remained imprisoned until Jan. 12. After his release, he was rebuilding his life – enjoying a new apartment and a new job, Hoover said.

On Jan. 27, nearly two weeks after he was released, Shayne was found dead by his fellow employees after he failed to show up for work. Hoover said the employees heard his shower running in the apartment and waited for it to stop. It never did.

“The phone call that your child is dead is every parent’s worst nightmare. My emotions have run the gambit from sadness to disbelief to anger,” Hoover said. “Every time I see my granddaughter, I wonder why he couldn’t have been stronger.”

Hoover said she is now working to get in contact with local school principals to tell Shayne’s story and work on educating students about the dangers of drug addictions.

The one message Hoover would like to convey to people is that addiction is an insidious disease.

“It doesn’t discriminate between age, gender, race, financial capabilities. And it robs you of your personality, your conscience, your integrity, your humanity, and it leaves you with nothing,” Hoover said.