COFFEE COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — A Coffee County man lost his son to a fentanyl overdose back in January, but he hasn’t wasted any time working to prevent other tragedies through a new nonprofit named after his son.
Alan Vickers reached out to News 2 after seeing our all-day special report, the Faces of an Epidemic, where we sat down with people impacted by fentanyl.
Like many others included in News 2’s Faces of an Epidemic special, Chase Vickers struggled with addiction for years, and went to rehab for the first time at 14.
However, he had been clean for months before relapsing and dying from a fentanyl overdose on Jan. 16 of this year. He was 31 years old.
“My 8-year-old grandson, Cash, found him the next morning at 8:35 [on] his bedroom floor, and he came and got me and he said, ‘Papa, something’s wrong with Daddy,'” Alan recalled. “My wife and I, we flipped him over on the floor, we started CPR, she called 911, and that brings me back to Narcan, because we didn’t have Narcan in our home. We were uneducated. We were oblivious.”
On Alan’s way home from the hospital after losing his only child, he said he had a vision that sparked his new mission in life.
“That vision was ‘Chase Away Fentanyl,’ and it was in gold letters just like the Hollywood sign,” Alan described. “And I just started crying harder. I got home and I told my wife, ‘I don’t know, I have no idea what we’re going to do with this, but this is the vision I’ve got.'”
Shortly afterward, Alan launched a nonprofit, Chase Away Fentanyl, with his wife. For the past three months, they’ve spent all their free time educating people about the dangers of fentanyl and giving away the overdose-reversing drug Narcan to anyone who needs it.
“The addiction community, they’re not going to spend money on Narcan. I mean, they’re just not, and so that’s where we come in, and we give it to them for free,” Alan said.
Alan and his wife have even taken their efforts to Capitol Hill, recently returning from a trip to Washington, D.C., where they attended a U.S. House committee hearing about China’s large role in the American fentanyl crisis.
“It’s appalling. Our country is under siege, and it’s killing our kids,” Alan stated.
Alan hopes Chase’s story impacts at least one person.
“My goal is to save lives,” Alan told News 2. “I couldn’t save my son, and that disgusts me, but I might could save your children, or their children, or anybody’s children, and that’s my goal.”
To learn more about Chase Away Fentanyl, click here. To make a donation, follow this link. Interested corporate sponsors can click here, email Alan.v@chaseawayfentanyl.org, or call 931-581-4560.
