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In 2021, students at Carlmont High School in Belmont were shocked when 17-year-old senior Colin Walker died of a fentanyl overdose. In this episode of TBH, a podcast from KALW made by, for, and about teenagers, one of his classmates tells the story of how students honored Colin’s life after his death, and educated each other about the dangers of fentanyl.

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Episode Transcript

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Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted in 2021. Tragedy hit Carlmont High School in San Mateo County after a 17-year-old senior named Colin Walker died of a fentanyl overdose. It left students, the community and all those who knew him shocked. But deaths like these are not uncommon. In 2021, fentanyl was behind one in five deaths among young people, ages 15 to 24 in California. So how do students process tragedies like this at their schools? And how are young people looking for solutions to the crisis of drug overdoses? Those are questions The students behind the TBH podcast from CA LW tried to answer. TBH is made by about and for teenagers and anyone who wants to hear what’s on the minds of young people. So today we’re going to hear them out and we’ll bring you the story of how students sought to honor Colin’s life and spread awareness about fentanyl. Stay with us.

Miriam Reichenberg: This is TBH. I’m Miriam Reichenberg, and I’m a junior at Berkeley High School. This podcast is made by about and for teenagers and for anybody else who wants to hear what’s on our minds. Today’s episode is about how fentanyl overdoses are impacting teenagers.

Unknown: It’s easy to distance ourselves from the issue, and it’s easy to believe, Oh, this could never happen to me or somebody in my family or my community, and that it does.

Miriam Reichenberg: California is seeing a rise in overdose deaths among young people, and that spike is driven by fentanyl, a drug 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Excerpt from “Fentanyl High”: I don’t want to have to tell any other parents that their child has died because of fentanyl.

Miriam Reichenberg: That’s from a documentary called “Fentanyl High”, directed by Kyle Santoro, a senior at Los Gatos High School. He made the film because he wanted to explore how fentanyl kills and how teens are dealing with emotional pain of Fentanyl deaths. In 2020, two students at his high school fatally overdosed on fentanyl.

Kyle Santoro: Our principal held a kid dying in his arms before paramedics able to revive him.

Miriam Reichenberg: In today’s episode, we’ll hear about a school community and a family doing as much as they can to prevent overdose deaths. One of our producers at TBH. Clearly, Carolina Cuadros didn’t know much about fentanyl until a classmate fatally overdosed. She recently graduated from Karma High School in Belmont, a city in San Mateo County. Here’s Carolina’s story on spreading awareness in the aftermath of tragedy.

Carolina Cuadros: From my perspective, trends are the downfall of our modern society. They fade away just as fast as they emerge. I’ve seen it happen so many times at my school, Carlmont High School. This pattern can seem harmless when it comes to how we dress or what we eat. But simply moving on from one social or political cause to the next can have consequences. And so can failing to address tragedies in a meaningful way. I observed an outlier my junior year of high school when my classmates refused to move on. This was in 2021 after a high school senior named Colin Walker, lost his life after fatally overdosing on a drug laced with fentanyl.

Liz Walker: But we don’t want it to be the only thing that we remember about Colin, you know…how he died.

Carolina Cuadros: Elizabeth Walker is Colin’s mom…she goes by Liz, and says she and her family is still trying to put one foot in front of the other. Liz says Colin loved nature, going on adventures, and making everyone laugh.

Liz Walker: Colin was just a go, go, go active, sporty, funny kid from the beginning. He was, I mean, he was huge. He was a good kid, seeming to go in the right direction.

Carolina Cuadros: But she said something inside him changed during his sophomore year of high school. Colin struggled with anxiety and depression, a battle that worsened during quarantine. To cope, Liz said, he brought drugs sold on Snapchat.

Liz Walker: Colin wasn’t taking the drugs because he was just this happy kid who wanted to party. He was really struggling with being alone and COVID didn’t make it easy and feeling completely just desperate.

Carolina Cuadros: The last time he bought cocaine, it was laced with fentanyl. Liz says Snapchat has made it possible to order drugs as easily as ordering pizza. COVID, the opioid crisis, and easy access to drugs were all coming together at once…and her son was in the middle of it.

Liz Walker: Early on. I mean, like as if the day he died, I knew that we weren’t going to just tell people he died of a mysterious illness or passed away suddenly in his sleep. There was no doubt with me and my husband that, you know, we knew right away fentanyl was involved.

Carolina Cuadros: One in five deaths in California among young people…ages 15 to 24… were caused by fentanyl in 2021. That’s according to analysis of data from the San Jose Mercury News. Fentanyl overdose is not limited to those who knowingly consume the drug. College students taking cocaine to study late at night. Teenagers experimenting with weed for the first time with their friends. The reality is that overdose deaths are impacting everyone.

Liz Walker: The kids that are dying right now. Are getting like the equivalent of two grains of salt. And they’re dying and that they’re not intentionally taking it. They’re buying something on Snapchat. It’s not what they thought. And it’s killing them.

Carolina Cuadros: Colin’s death was the first time most of the students at Carlmont high school lost a classmate. My friend, Chesney Evert, was part of the journalism program at the school.

Chesney Evert: I remember sitting in class and our teachers put this like statement on the board about Colin, Colin’s passing and. Like there were just such a range of emotions from both me and all of my friends. Anger one that this had happened to a person so young and a person our age who is just about to graduate high school.

Carolina Cuadros: I was there too. I remember grieving his life with all my classmates, especially with my peers in the school’s journalism program. I also grieved the loss of innocence at our school. The mindset of “ we are untouchable!” disappeared.

Chesney Evert: This issue was becoming so prevalent that even our bubble of the Bay Area couldn’t protect us. Grief and sadness on behalf of him and his family, who, you know, lost a really incredible person. And at the same time, I remember seeing the opportunity for this story to really change the way that we in our community thought about drug use and the dangers of drug use.

Carolina Cuadros: Every other month, tragic events occur around the world, and Scot Scoop Carlmont High School’s nationally recognized journalism publication covers them. California wildfires, the Ukraine crisis, the Turkey- Syria earthquakes. These have been the main topics of conversation for the student body – for about a week each time.

Chesney Evert: The way our news cycle functions in the present day, we almost become immune to these tragedies that are so impactful and raw and real.

Carolina Cuadros: After that, I’d see the topic disappear from the public’s attention. We would move on, forget, and stop actively caring. This was exactly what Scot Scoop set itself to break with Colin Walker.

Chesney Evert: And I think I wanted to make sure that this issue was not met with that same immunity because it shouldn’t be the loss of a young person to something as prevalent and dangerous as fentanyl is something that should be highlighted and remembered.

Carolina Cuadros: And she would do just that. But it would take time. She and her classmates waited to report on this, until Colin’s family was ready.

Chesney Evert: So we at Carmont Journalism had a death policy in place. I believe that we’d never had to use it or we just wrote it following his passing. There was something along those lines, but we wanted to give the family and community enough time to grieve. Right. We weren’t. We don’t want to jump in on this coverage because obviously, it doesn’t serve anybody.

Carolina Cuadros: Eventually, Colin’s family did reach out at the beginning of 2022. They wanted the school publication to report on Colin’s story and the broader issue of fentanyl lacing. And so the team got to work on what became a massive multimedia project. Chesney led a group of six journalists who worked on multiple platforms…podcast production, video production, news features, and data visuals. Chesney worked closely with the family to make sure the story was delivered accurately, and that the family was comfortable with what they planned to publish. She says writing the story actually pushed her to almost rewrite her own code of journalism ethics. For example, she allowed Liz to read the story before publication.

Chesney Evert: So what I remember is Colin’s mom, Liz, made some she’s she’s very funny. She has a great sense of humor, and she made some quip about Panda Express or something, and we put it being Colin’s favorite food.

Carolina Cuadros: In one of the drafts, Liz left a note about wanting to leave out the details about Panda Express.

Chesney Evert: When you think of “professional journalism”, those aren’t always the moments that you see highlighted in stories. But we as a team decided that, no, that was the exact, the very human, very real and relatable evidence of a mother son relationship that we really wanted to keep in this piece.

Carolina Cuadros: The package, titled “They Didn’t ask for Fentanyl” was published in March of 2022. The pieces educated the school community on fentanyl lacing described who Colin was and what led to his death. The stories also explained potential solutions…like the widespread use of naloxone.

Anoushka Amekerira: Users often don’t know that drugs contain fentanyl. It’s not just the Walker family that was impacted by this devastation. The teen death epidemic from fentanyl poisoning is increasing each year.

Carolina Cuadros: Anoushka Amekerira, my friend and co managing editor, worked on the audio aspect of the project. It featured an interview with the co-founder of songs for charlie, an organization Liz and her family worked with to raise awareness about fentanyl lacing. Anoushka says this all provided students with an education they weren’t finding anywhere else.

Anoushka Amekerira: There were definitely, like students reaching out to me who I’d never talked to before, and they were like, Hey, I learned a lot from your audio package. Like, I think it was really beneficial that you put that out there.

Carolina Cuadros: The student population was eager to learn and hear from other students about an issue that hit so close to home. The students who worked on the journalism project — were invited to participate in a discussion about the fentanyl crisis – during a presentation in the school’s auditorium.

Anoushka Amekerira: We got to hear more stories and like how our project kind of sparked more conversations in the community.

Carolina Cuadros: Colin’s mom, Liz Walker, has continued to work with the high school to spread awareness. She spoke to the freshman during an assembly this past year about fentanyl lacing. She’s planning to do the same this year to keep everyone informed, especially those who did not attend Carlmont during the time of Colin’s death.

Liz Walker: if you’re personally going to school and someone dies in your high school from drunk driving or from a drug overdose or suicide, there is going to be more awareness. Is that, you know, is that going to prevent? All future deaths? No, but maybe some.

Carolina Cuadros: Looking back, I didn’t even know what the word fentanyl meant before Colin’s death. Thanks to the journalism team and his family, my peers and I learned enough about fentanyl to teach others about it…continue educating ourselves…and hopefully, prevent more deaths.

Miriam Reichenberg: Thanks, Carolina. That story came from Carolina Cuadros, a recent graduate of Carlmont High School, who’s now a freshman at UC Berkeley. The story Carolina brought us is sadly not one we haven’t heard before. When a tragic death like Colin’s happens, instead of focusing on the stigma of using drugs, we should focus on preventative measures, educating our communities and processing collective grief. Just as the Carlmont Journalism program did. At Berkeley High, there have been four student deaths in the time I’ve been a student there. This is not insignificant. Each death was very sad and hit the school community hard. I know that I appreciated how my school community came together to memorialize these kids. In one such instance, my sophomore history teacher took the class to meet and talk with the student’s parents. While not a drug-related death, meeting the student’s family members was a meaningful and personal part of the grieving process for many. Thanks for listening to these stories on TBH Podcast from KALW Public Radio. This podcast relies on you to help spread the word. So, please take a minute to give us a rating or take two and give us a review. Help us get our voices to others so they can hear what we have to say. Holly J. McDede, edited and taught along with Sarah Lai Stirland. Lauren Tran-Muchowski is our production assistant. Our artwork was created by [unknown]. [Unkown] Johnson and James Rowlands are our engineers. [unknown] is our supervising editor. Ben Trefny is our executive director. This project was made possible with support from the Association for Continuing Education, the California Arts Council and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Next time on tbe Age will take on anxiety and action in the face of the climate apocalypse.

Unknown: So I think we should do our part in day to day and do whatever we can to help the environment so that we don’t die.

Miriam Reichenberg: Talk to you next time. I’m your host, Miriam Reichenberg.

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