Falling victim to fentanyl

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — They say it can happen to anyone.

A Sioux Falls mother, who lost her son last year to fentanyl poisoning, is speaking out to share his story of addiction and how quickly it changed and ended his life.

“Joseph growing up as a child… he was very outgoing, he liked to do a lot of outdoor things,” mother Vicky Perrault said.

Things like riding bikes. He loved anything on two wheels.

He also loved hanging out with friends and that’s how Joseph’s mother wants people to remember him.

As he got older, Joseph became a forest firefighter in Utah; fighting fires throughout the United States on the West Coast.

Joseph was able to conquer a dream of firefighting and helping others, putting a smile on the face of anyone who crossed his path.

He eventually settled down and got married and had two children.

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His life seemed to be right on track, at least that’s what everyone thought.

“There were kind of signs when he had gotten married, I would hear he was doing the refined, a lot of cough syrup and then he was on Adderall, there was those things he dabbled in I guess at first,” Vicky said.

In 2019, Joseph got divorced and his mom says that’s when things started to spiral out of control.

“So I noticed he was, he would call and ask for money and he never had a job, so I was always wondering what are you doing for money,” Vicky said.

Vicky says Joseph, who had moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, was homeless and began using heroin and other opioids.

She says they tried multiple times to get him help with treatment, but he never wanted to accept it.

“Then about 2022, is when he stopped contacting everybody and it was for a whole year nobody heard a word from him,” Vicky said.

She knew at that point, things weren’t right.

“That whole year that he was gone he was living in a tent camp and it was down by a river and one of the pastors in Grand Rapids, Pastor Kevin, he would go down there and kind of mentor the guys and bring them food and coats and things like that through winter and that’s where he met my son, Joe,” Vicky said.

A lot of the homeless gave him the name Jo Jo.

“Pastor Kevin did a lot for the guys down at the river and he never called them homeless he called them ‘Friends by the River'” Vicky said.

But Joseph’s addiction continued to get worse with him shooting up with heroin and fentanyl on a regular basis.

His mom says he didn’t care about overdosing.

“They always had Narcan, so he’s been Narcanned several times at one time so he’s died or overdosed multiple times and they brought him back,” Vicky said.

Seven times they brought him back to life.

She remembers talking with him early last year about his addiction.

“I said I really wish I could help you Joe get through this and he said ‘I do too Mom, but it’s too late,’ Vicky said.

And it was too late. In March of last year just three weeks after that conversation, Joseph OD again, but this time he couldn’t recover.

He died at the age of 31.

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Now his mother and step-dad turned their shed into a bit of a memorial in their back yard paying tribute to Joseph and his love for bikes.

It’s called Jo Jo’s Bike Shop.

While it helps with their healing, they have a message for others.

“It can happen to anybody at any time; the drugs that are out there they don’t discriminate,” Joseph’s stepdad Mark Perreault said.

“It’s everywhere so it doesn’t matter if you just take one little pill for a one-time thing and a lot of kids are doing that and they are laced with fentanyl, marijuana is laced with fentanyl opioids are laced with fentanyl, everything is laced with fentanyl right now,” Vicky said. “So it’s just a matter of time before you OD or maybe that’s your last time.”

The Perrault’s say they believe education and awareness is key to prevention.

Vicky attends a support group sponsored by Emily’s Hope.