From his spot below the pro shop in the parking lot of Lakeview Golf Resort and Spa on Friday morning, Michael Cole had broad views of the golf course and its interlocking fairways and greens.
It wasn’t one of those panoramic Golf Channel kind of vistas, mind you.
No, this one was a cleats-on-the-ground expanse, showing the toil that goes into the game that people presumably play for fun.
At this level, you can hear the percussive snick-thwok! of the club face against the ball for the tee shot.
On this morning, had you been there, you would have also heard Michael Cole recounting his earlier conversation with his daughter, Lauren.
Cole’s view on this sunny morning made for an apt metaphor.
Now, it comes down to slogging it out — one golf swing at a time, in this case — for an endeavor to honor both his daughter’s professional mission and her memory.
“I wished her a Happy Birthday and said, ‘You’ve gotta help us out with the weather, OK, kid?’”
It’s been two years and he still refers to her in present-tense — because, well, he has to.
Death, every day — and a coat for a classmate
As many as 150 people a day die from overdoses of fentanyl-laced drugs and fentanyl poising.
It’s pretty easy to do — the unfortunate, dying part, that is — because fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine in its prescription, medicinal form.
The drug in its illicit, street form can drop people just like that.
On July 9, 2020, one of fentanyl’s fatalities was Lauren Cole. She was just 26, and had battled addiction for eight of those years. Friday would have been her 29th birthday.
Ironically, poignantly, she was a social worker by training, who was very good at her job, as her dad will proudly note.
She worked full-time in that field while also pursuing a master’s degree in that discipline. She volunteered with children, Cole said.
Oftentimes, she would buy toys for those children because she knew it would make their day, he said.
On what would be the last Christmas of her life, she would give a designer coat she got as a gift from her parents to a grad school classmate who admired it — because she knew that classmate was struggling economically.
“Everybody loved her,” Cole said. “She made such a difference. She really did.”
Still, she was floundering — even as she was keeping her clients afloat.
That’s why Michael Cole got in the golf tournament business. And, the life-saving business.
In the summer of 2020, Lauren sat down with her dad to talk to him about an idea for a specialized clinic.
She envisioned a rehabilitation triage-type center, where people could go after being treated at the hospital for an overdose.
The idea was to keep those clients in a controlled environment, say, for three to five days — while convincing them to embark on a full regimen of treatment at a long-term facility.
“You might give them time to think about it,” Cole said. “You might give their parents time to take a breath. It’s like this: You get a short window with fentanyl, and you don’t get a second chance with fentanyl.”
That’s in part because of the insidious nature of the disease of addiction. The brain’s neuro-pathways can be reconfigured to the point where a person isn’t using to “party” — they are using to simply maintain.
Three weeks after the father and daughter sketched a tentative business plan, Lauren was gone.
“Addiction doesn’t care,” he said, his eyes welling briefly.
Wishes, on the ground and in-flight
Addiction doesn’t know about Lauren’s Wish, either, her dad said — but it’s about to find out.
That’s the name of that nonprofit treatment center that expected to open at by the end of this month at Hazel’s House of Hope, on Scott Avenue.
“We’re already getting a lot of word-of-mouth,” Cole said.
“I talked to a gentleman from Indiana who wants to drive his son over for a stay — and he’s got a friend in Ohio who told him about us.”
You can learn more in the meantime by visiting https://laurenswish.org/.
Treatment is free across the board, Cole said.
That’s what Friday at Lakeview was about. It was the second annual Lauren’s Wish golf tournament, with 100% of the proceeds going to the cause.
Same for “Lauren’s Birthday Bash,” held the evening before at Tropics Bar and Restaurant.
That means the facility will have to get by on grants, other federal monies and donations from the community, Cole said.
Loving Lauren (and your kid, too)
“I made her a promise,” he said. “She asked, ‘Can we do this, Dad?’ I said, ‘Of course we can, baby.’ When I meet up with her again, I want her to tell me she’s proud of me.”
In turn, he’d like you do something.
He’d like you to love your child.
Fiercely.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, if somebody came up to you and said, ‘Hey, I saw your kid drinking,’ or, ‘Hey, I saw your kid getting high in the parking lot,’ you might have responded with, ‘Buddy, you watch your kid and I’ll watch mine.’
“Well, it’s different now. Now I’d like you to say, ‘Thank you for thinking enough of my child and my family to tell me that.’ Then, go investigate. Be there for your kid. Because there might not be a second chance.”
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