Ottawa County drug battle reflected in couple's fight for sobriety
PORT CLINTON - When Jeff Schill and Angela Trimble were using heroin together, they'd make elaborate plans of what they'd do when they got clean.
There'd be moments of clarity for the couple where they wondered what they were doing to their son, as the then-elementary school-age boy witnessed their drug binges and saw Schill overdose once while Trimble struggled to revive him.
Ottawa County hit its peak in drug overdose deaths in 2016, one year after Schill and Trimble found different ways to quit drugs and start their own recoveries.
"We love our son. It's just the addiction was so intense, it's hard to think about now," Trimble, 39, said. "I had to find myself again."
Schill's journey mirrors Ottawa County's decades-long struggles to keep illegal drugs at bay and provide treatment options and hope to residents hooked on, at various times, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamines.
The county's overdose deaths, barring a late surge in November and December, are on track to decline for a second straight year.
It doesn't mean addiction related-crimes have eased up.
Judy Flood, the county’s chief probation officer, said her office’s caseload has tripled since 2016.
About 80 percent of the cases on Ottawa County Common Pleas Court Judge Bruce Winters' docket are drug-related, including cases involving possession, theft and burglary.
For a county with a little more than 40,000 residents, it hasn't always been easy to find resources for addiction recovery.
More on Ottawa County's drug battle:
► Meth makes unwelcome entrance to Ottawa County
► Naloxone, DART keys to decline in county's overdose deaths
Schill, now 40 and a prominent local speaker and sponsor for recovering addicts, seemed at first to be an unlikely resource in the county's fight against drugs and addiction.
His life in Port Clinton over the last 24 years reads like a disjointed drug road map, with multiple detours taking him to Ottawa County's juvenile and adult jails and six overdoses bringing Schill time and time again to the brink of death.
One law enforcement official described Schill as, at one point, "the worst of the worst" among county drug offenders.
Ottawa County Drug Task Force Commander Carl Rider pegged his first run-in with Schill to when he was a 7-year-old boy trespassing with his mother and her boyfriend on the railroad tracks.
Rider remembers pulling Schill out of a car on Lockwood Road three or four years ago when the recovering addict was high and still hadn't quit using heroin.
By his own recollection, Schill has been in trouble with the law since he was 15 and didn't skip a beat once he became an adult.
"I went to jail on my 18th birthday at 8 a.m. in the morning," Schill said.
Heroin, then fentanyl take hold
Prosecutor James VanEerten calls Schill “lucky to be alive,” and holds the lanky recovering addict and alcoholic up as one of Ottawa County’s success stories.
A lot has changed locally since Schill and Trimble quit using heroin in 2015.
The county's Drug Abuse Response Team (DART) was formed in 2017 to quickly link overdose victims to recovery options. Light House Sober Living opened its first addiction recovery facility for men in 2015 and added a second home for women in October.
Winters' drug court continues to celebrate graduates, even though the judge acknowledged that success stories are sometimes hard to come by.
As more recovery avenues became available, the drugs flowing into Ottawa County grew stronger.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin, has replaced heroin as the addicts' most popular drug in the county.
Winters said fentanyl is found in cocaine and other drugs being sold and consumed in Ottawa County.
The heroin Schill overdosed on is rarely found in 2018, Winters said.
"Heroin's almost like a luxury," Winters said.
Rider said drugs advertised as heroin may go through 100 different hands before they reach the street level.
VanEerten said officers will ask users on traffic stops what they have and nine times out of 10, the user will say it's "only heroin."
Any drugs seized are sent to the state crime lab for testing, VanEerten said.
"In almost every case, it comes back as some form of a mixture," the prosecutor said.
Addicts in a relationship
Schill and Trimble met in junior high and fell in love in high school.
They drank and smoked weed, and Schill sold and used cocaine.
He thought he reigned supreme as "the best middleman" Port Clinton had ever seen, with his connections in and outside Ottawa County helping him find drugs.
"It wasn't 100 percent of either of our lives in the beginning when we got together," Trimble said.
She said they courted each other by going to dinners and taking trips to Toledo without getting high.
Drugs hadn't yet consumed their lives, and Schill and Trimble had a son together.
Then they got hooked on heroin, starting them on a four-year swoon that coincided with the drug's early arrival into Ottawa County.
Schill survived a horrific car crash in 2007 and he slowly became addicted to opioids, first prescribed painkillers (which included a prescription at one point of 150 Vicodin a month) followed by illegal drugs bought on the street.
At first, Trimble didn't know her boyfriend was using heroin.
"I actually walked in on him using and I was very upset," Trimble, 39, said, as she and Schill sat in their living room.
It took Trimble one time to do heroin and she was addicted.
Her addiction lasted four years.
She said the fun of doing heroin only lasted a few months.
Then it became a chore to get drugs each day to not feel sick, Trimble said.
Schill said he was gone half of each day running to Toledo, Sandusky or Fremont to get drugs.
"It is a full-time job getting drugs, especially heroin," Schill said.
Their addictions took a heavy toll on Schill's and Trimble's relationship, with Trimble describing it as nonexistent after a while.
Every day at work, Trimble would think about the alcohol she would buy on the way home.
She'd hope her boyfriend had drugs so she could feel good enough to get through the night.
His memory fails him occasionally, but Schill can scrape together bits and pieces of details attached to four of his six overdoses.
He has passed out in a car, overdosed in his basement, on his floor and lost consciousness on the sidewalk in front of his home as neighbors and his son watched police and paramedics try to revive him with the anti-overdose drug naloxone.
Schill remembers some details from his sidewalk overdose.
He got out of jail that day, went across the street and immediately downed two Long Island iced teas.
Then Schill got home, found his concealed stash, did a shot of heroin and went outside to pull weeds.
Nobody had pulled weeds at his house the whole summer he spent in jail, he said.
While he pulled up weeds, the rush of drugs into his system kicked in and overwhelmed Schill,
He overdosed and fell right over on the sidewalk.
Trevor Johnson, now the county DART director, served as Schill’s probation officer at the time.
When Schill overdosed in front of his house, Johnson was right down the street.
Johnson estimated it couldn't have been more than 90 minutes from the time Schill exited the jail to when his head hit the sidewalk after his overdose.
He showed up and Schill had turned blue.
“I was really in fear that his heart was going to stop,” Johnson said.
Getting help, moving forward
Before he first tried heroin, Schill used to brag that he'd done every drug on the planet except heroin.
The drug, and needle use in general, carried a certain stigma, he acknowledged.
He was embarrassed when Trimble first walked in on him as he shot up.
"I just love her so much and I didn't want her to know that's where I was in my life, that I was shooting heroin in the basement while she's upstairs," Schill said.
Winters said 60 to 70 percent of drug cases involve addicts who have diagnosable mental health issues such as depression, anxiety or PTSD.
To address those issues, Winters hired a mental health counselor to make sure people in drug court get appropriate treatment.
Winters started mandatory drug testing in his court in 2009, when he was first elected as judge.
The year before he started as judge, there were 33 drug tests administered in the Ottawa County Common Pleas Court.
In Winters’ first year as common pleas court judge, there were 3,300 drug tests, he said.
Ottawa County doesn’t have an inpatient detox center.
Winters said most recovering addicts that can't find treatment outside of the county detox themselves in jail.
“Your best chance of recovery is when you’re a felon. But help is available to anyone,” Winters said.
Between 2006 and 2010, the Ohio Department of Health confirmed 17 total overdose deaths in Ottawa County.
In the six years from 2010 to 2015, there were a total of 21 confirmed overdose deaths, according to ODH data.
After a peak of 14 deaths in 2016, Ottawa County dropped down to 7 last year.
It initially appeared 2018 might turn out to be a repeat of 2016, or worse, as VanEerten issued an opiate advisory Jan. 23 in response to five suspected overdoses that killed three people within a week.
That overdose death rate slowed considerably in Ottawa County after January's early surge, although there have been some county residents who've overdosed in other counties.
Most recently, the Crawford County Sheriff's Office reported Casandra Emch, 39, of Port Clinton died after overdosing in a Bucyrus hotel Nov. 5.
Rider said Ottawa County's drug suppliers come from Sandusky, Lucas and Erie counties.
"In the drug world if I come from an outside area, law enforcement doesn't know who I am, I can operate secretly for a while, establish my clientele and make a lot of money," Rider said.
He said drug dealers based in Toledo can charge more in Ottawa County than Lucas County, following the principles of supply and demand.
The Port Clinton Police Department has responded to 27 overdose calls as of September, up from 18 in 2017.
Between the county's main jail and misdemeanor jail, there 90 to 100 beds.
VanEerten estimated there's between 105 and 109 inmates spread between the two jails, depending on the day of the week.
The majority of those inmates who come into the jails are dealing with some form of drug or alcohol addiction, VanEerten said.
Both he and Rider emphasize the county would rather send addicts to treatment than arrest and incarcerate them.
There has been progress in disrupting the flow of drugs into Ottawa County, both men insist.
Rider said the drug task force's goal from July 30, 2017, to June 30 of this year was to increase its felony drug indictments to 100.
The task force had 121 indictments in that timeframe, with felony arrests for possession, trafficking, corrupting another with drugs, and conspiracy.
"That shows the county, through the prosecutor's office, is making an effort to try and curb the drug problem," Rider said.
Living without drugs
Schill and Trimble stopped using drugs within three days of each other in 2015. Both cited their son as a major motivation for getting clean.
The county's child services agency intervened and both parents were afraid they might lose their son.
"It was between the drugs and my son," Trimble said.
The couple needed time to heal from their drug and alcohol addictions, Trimble said.
While Schill went to rehab in Cleveland, Trimble sobered up cold turkey on her own at home, focusing her energy on painting, exercising and holistic activities.
She quit drugs first and has been free from alcohol for two years.
"I had to learn how to live without using and drinking," she said.
They're both certified to administer naloxone now and Schill speaks regularly to recovery groups about his experiences.
He's part of the Ottawa County Opiate Collaborative and committed to helping people in recovery through sharing his story.
Schill said he didn't know in his early stages of recovery if his relationship with Trimble would survive.
"Our family is proof that a family in addiction can come out of addiction and still be a family when they put themselves to the side and try to better their life,” Schill said.
dacarson@gannett.com
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