Fauquier County, Va (WUSA9) — Two northern Virginia moms are part of a club no one wants to join. They both lost their children to heroin overdoses three years ago.
Now, they’ve joined forces to give others the help they never had.
When Kathrine Folker was 18-years-old, she knew she had a drinking problem. She checked herself in, voluntarily, to a rehab program, but later relapsed.
“I said to her, ‘At least you’re not a heroin addict,' and she just looked at me. And that’s when my world fell apart,” said Kathrine’s mom Caroline Folker who tried to get help for her daughter.
But in a sober-living program, Kathrine met recovering heroin addicts. Those friendships would prove fatal.
“She was drunk at a party and she said somebody said to her, 'hold still,' and injected her into her hand. And that was the first time never had intravenous heroin,” said Caroline.
“I was terrified. And she was terrified. She did want help. I always use the analogy, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off because I was running everywhere trying to find answers,” said Caroline.
Twelve weeks after her first heroin injection, Kathrine died of an overdose in her friend's house. She was 19.
The friend who gave her the heroin that killed her was sentenced to prison for nine years.
The Folker’s moved from England to Fauquier County many years ago. The irony is that many people move to rural areas thinking they’ll avoid crime and hard-core drugs. But the reality is, heroin has a vice-grip on this part of Virginia.
So far this year, eight people have died from heroin overdoses in Fauquier County, according to Fauquier county sheriffs department and the director of the McShin Foundation treatment facility in Warrenton.
Moira Satre is not surprised. Her 31-year-son Bobby died of a heroin overdose in Leesburg in 2015.
Every day in the United States 175 people die of a drug overdoses according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“He said it invaded his dreams. There’s just a lack of control there when you can’t even control your dreams and it comes and creeps in. I know now it was a daily struggle. The only peace I get from that is knowing that he’s not struggling anymore. But, yeah, it makes me sad. It makes me very sad, because I know he fought it very hard,” said Moira.
Moira and Caroline have each started their own organizations and websites to help families struggling with addiction.
Moira Satre runs CAYA, which stands for Come as You Are, a substance abuse prevention organization that provides answers to many questions.
Caroline Folker runs Families Overcoming Drug Addiction, or F.O.D.A that hold support groups at Fauquier Hospital.
“We did not know where to turn,” said Satre.
They want to give others the information they wish they had known then.
On Thursday, both Satre and Folker will be meeting America's Acting National Drug Czar, James Carroll, a former Fairfax County prosecutor and attorney. He is coming to Fauquier County on a fact-finding tour about the opioid- heroin epidemic.
