Round Rock - Statesman Online by Brad Stutzman

Photo courtesy of LifeSteps  The  Mobile Outreach Team, MOT,  is trained to administer Narcan (Naloxone),--a drug that blocks the effects of opioids and reverses an overdose--to patients in an emergency. MOT trains people to use Narcan in an emergency and helps them obtain it from local pharmacies, MOT, or from the TONI project.  

Against backdrops of purple — a color symbolizing hope — the photographs stood as mute testimony to lives cut short.

In them: A 40-year-old man held his daughter, maybe age 2, with a hand pressed to her father’s chest and a flower in her hair. A 29-year old woman faced away from a sunset and smiled. A 31-year-old man played acoustic guitar, his wind-blown hair tossed about.

None of those people will ever do any of those things again. They are among the Williamson County residents who have died from drug overdoses this year. They looked on, frozen in time, and those who loved them looked back in memory, as Williamson County hosted its second-annual Overdose Awareness Day program.

Pictured are Commissioner Cook, center, with Rosana Sielaff, left, program director of LifeSteps Coalition, and Donna Connell, right, a community advocate and mother of an adult son who died of a drug overdose three years ago.

I’d like to invite our community to join me at the second annual Williamson County Overdose Awareness Day in Round Rock at Lakeview Pavilion in Old Settlers Park on Saturday, Aug. 19, presented by LifeSteps Coalition to raise public awareness of opioid overdose.

As one of the speakers at the event, scheduled from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., I will join the Coalition and other participants in offering support to those who have lost a loved one to overdosing related to addiction or that was accidental, and to those recovering from addiction. We will also participate in a memorial walk and flower release to commemorate these lives. Those who’ve lost someone to overdose are encouraged to bring that loved one’s photo for the traveling memorial wall that later will be displayed at the Texas Overdose Awareness Day at the State Capitol in Austin on Aug. 31.

I can’t stress enough the importance and value of the LifeSteps Coalition, which is a program of LifeSteps Council on Alcohol and Drugs. This non-profit organization, with offices in Round Rock and Georgetown, sponsors community programs on prescription abuse prevention, alcohol and drug education for minors, parenting classes and more. 

The event was held at the Town & Country Optimist Club Park on Aug. 1 in Austin

Round Rock grad, student take Williamson County internships

·        Brad Stutzman Contributing Writer

10:41 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017  Round Rock

Statesman Online

Cassie Thomas attended Commissioners Court with Garry Brown, Commissioner Cook’s Executive Assistant. Photo by Brad Stutzman

Two Round Rock young women have made productive use of their summer vacations, learning about county government and public service as they served as interns for Precinct 1 Commissioner Terry Cook and Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace Bill Gravell.

Cassie Thomas, a Round Rock High School rising senior, interns with Cook, while Chandler Craig, who is heading back to Blinn College in Brenham this fall, spent her summer in Gravell’s office.

Thomas said her time spent with Cook made an impression on her.

“I didn’t know anything about local government before coming into this internship,” she said. “I didn’t know what a county commissioner was.”

Thomas, 16, and her family moved from Arizona to Round Rock in 2014 after her mother was offered a job at Scott & White.