Your worst fear as a parent has come true in a way you never imagined: Not only is your child dead, but his death is labeled a drug overdose. Few would blame you for trying to hide the truth, but Tom and Stephanie Quehl never considered it. Instead, they turned their son’s death into a call for action.
Jack was successful in high school and college, he’d traveled the world and had a large circle of friends. “He liked to gain knowledge, but he also loved sports,” Tom says. “He was funny. He started an Instagram called Number One Water Fan where he’d rate water. They were great…like he’d rate Skyline Chili’s water versus McDonald’s water.”
At 23, Jack accepted his first job and moved from his hometown of Cincinnati to Baltimore. He had the world at his feet. How did he end up dead?
On September 18th, 2021, Jack and his friends met at a bar to watch football, and Jack and his friend Chris continued the evening at Jack’s place. The next day, their friends texted, then called. When Jack and Chris didn’t respond, they went to Jack’s house. They found Chris dead, and Jack was unresponsive. One called Stephanie.
“The only thing I remember him saying is, ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs. Quehl. I’m so sorry.’ Then I said, ‘Does he have a heartbeat?’ I don’t even know if I asked what happened…I thought okay, we’re going to go get to him… I don’t even know how we knew it was cocaine,” Stephanie says.
After a night where Jack coded multiple times, the doctors said there was nothing more they could do. There was no hope. Tom and Stephanie let Jack go.
They questioned Jack’s friends after learning he had cocaine and fentanyl in his system—had he been an addict? His friends said no…but admitted Jack and many of them were casual drug users. “The friend group said that recreational use was around all the time,” Stephanie recalls.
In any other era, casual drug use likely wouldn’t have killed Jack. But this is the era of fentanyl.
Fentanyl is as a lab-made opioid used to treat people following surgery or who suffer chronic pain, and legal, pharmaceutical fentanyl continues to be used this way. However, because it’s synthetic, fentanyl is relatively easy to make. It’s also extremely powerful—50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine—
and highly addictive. Its manufacturing ease, potency, and addictive properties make it attractive to drug dealers, especially since it’s undetectable to the naked eye.
Drug dealers add fentanyl to street drugs and in some cases pass it off as something else completely. Current DEA testing shows that five out of ten fake prescription pills contain fentanyl and not the Xanax, Percocet or other medications they’re purported to be.
Imagining what happened to Jack and Chris that night is easy enough. Two guys, feeling young and invincible, decide to cap off the evening with a little cocaine. It’s nothing they and their peer group haven’t done before. But this time, although they don’t know it, the cocaine has been mixed with fentanyl. They die because fentanyl is so powerful that it only takes two milligrams, the equivalent of five to seven grains of salt, to kill. “I talked to my kids about not driving drunk and about not having unsafe sex,” Stephanie says. “I had no idea I should warn them about fentanyl.”
Word of Jack’s death spread quickly through Tom and Stephanie’s community, and they were open about it from the start. “I never really thought to hide it,” Tom says. At Jack’s funeral Mass, Tom spontaneously decided to take it head on. He stood before the packed church and spoke of their love for Jack. Then he said, “We know how Jack died. We know you know how Jack died.” Turning to the young people, Tom asked them to make better choices than Jack and added, “If you can’t do it for yourself, if you can’t do it for your friends or your family, do it for Jack.”
That “Do It for Jack” moment of inspiration became a rallying cry. “Stephanie said we need to do something. We need to start something and talk to people so no one else loses their Jack,” Tom remembers.
Neither of them had any experience running a non-profit—Tom worked in IT and Stephanie was an elementary school teacher—but they pulled together family, friends, and neighbors and got to work. Tom and Stephanie did their first fentanyl awareness presentation in 2022. Since then, the Jack Quehl Foundation has talked to 10,000 students and parents, delivered 4 million media impressions, and testified on behalf of an Ohio bill to combat the fentanyl crisis.
It’s not easy. They’re up against young people who believe it won’t happen to them and parents who think Not my kid. Telling Jack’s story means reliving his loss every time. They feel frustration that his death is labeled an overdose. “Jack didn’t go out to die that night. Jack didn’t know fentanyl was in the cocaine,” Tom explains. The Quehls say Jack, and everyone like him who died from fentanyl they never intended to take, were poisoned.
“Keeping going is a challenge,” Stephanie admits. But the positive reaction from students and adults at their talks bolsters them. Other parents reach out with stories of their children lost to fentanyl poisoning. Sharing knowledge in hopes of making a difference feels good.
Tom and Stephanie want people to know that illegal fentanyl is an issue that impacts everyone. “Fentanyl’s not a red problem or a blue problem. You can be a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Libertarian and die,” Tom says. Stephanie adds, “There are no boundaries.”
The Jack Quehl Foundation’s message is simple: Any drug bought on the street or online could be contaminated with enough fentanyl to kill, no matter how authentic it looks. Talk to your kids, your co-workers, your friends, and spread the word. And if you’re faced with a choice to use a recreational drug or take an illegally sold “prescription” pill, stop. Make the lifesaving choice. Do it for Jack.
Respectfully…
Tracy Vonder Brink
Jack Quehl Foundation board member
For more information, please visit the Jack Quehl Foundation website at https://www.doitforjack.org/