MORGANTOWN – There’s a fine art to heckling people on the golf course, and Michael Cole was hitting it straight down the middle on a mellow Friday afternoon last September.
It was easy, since he knew a lot of the people teeing it up for the day at Lakeview Golf Resort and Spa.
Such as that one pal and the sweet putt dropped for birdie from the edge of the green on No. 7.
“I don’t want to say anything,” Cole drolly mused within earshot, “but that ball looks like it might be remote-controlled.”
The fortunes of the dimpled sphere took a wholly different trajectory from the tee on No. 7, courtesy of a slice that seemingly defied all laws of physics, it was so awry.
“Man,” Cole ventured, as the humorously chagrined perpetrator grinned in response, “are you sure you don’t need any more golf balls?”
It went way past dispensing mock-insults for fun, however.
From the back of his cart, Cole was also handing out water bottles, hot dogs and hamburgers, too.
“The people out here mean everything,” he said. “We want to take care of them.”
That’s because they were taking care of Lauren’s Wish.
Approach shot
Lauren’s Wish is the name of the nonprofit clinic and triage center at Hazel’s House of Hope that Cole and a group of his high school buddies founded after the death of his daughter, Lauren, in 2020.
A dose of heroin laced with fentanyl – which is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine – killed her.
The death of his 26-year-old daughter was also laced with a double irony, which both sets just as bitter, her dad said.
It was one her old chums from school – she starred in the classroom and on the lacrosse field at University High – who sold her the dose.
She was a social worker who was good at her job, Cole said.
It was many a Yule she’d buy Christmas presents for the children of her clients with her own money.
Many of those clients she successfully talked back from the abyss of drug addiction.
“Lauren elevated people,” her dad said. “She could save everybody, but her.”
Model wish
Lauren’s Wish was her literal wish.
She had asked her dad if he could help with something she had in mind for those clients, in particular.
Rather than a “treat and street” approach – that is, saving a person from an overdose in the emergency room, and then promptly sending him back into the fray that brought him there in the first place – Lauren, her dad said, had a vision for a compassionate holding tank, of sorts.
A place where a patient could stay for a few days in a controlled environment, before ideally moving onto long-term treatment and counseling.
“I promised her we’d do this,” he said.
Three weeks after she and her dad talked, Lauren Cole was dead.
But her literal wish wasn’t.
‘We’re gonna keep at it’
Visit https://laurenswish.org/ to learn more about the clinic and its work.
Some 1,400 people have been treated at Lauren’s Wish since it opened in 2020, Cole said.
“Around 80% of them entered long-term treatment,” he added. “We’ll take it.”
“Every time I go up there, I get hugs and handshakes,” Cole said.
“Our clients will send cards and letters. They update us on where they are in their recovery. That’s so gratifying. That 80% has stayed consistent.”
A dad is consistent in his mission, also. He’s out in the community, every day, talking about Lauren’s Wish, he said.
There’s the annual golf tournament and the fashion show and the clay-shooting afternoon, all serving as fundraisers for Lauren’s Wish.
“Lauren’s Law,” which is now on the books in West Virginia, metes out harsh penalties of up to 40 years in prison for those dealing in drugs causing death.
Tuesday evening, Cole spoke to students and parents at the girls’ lacrosse game between University High and Morgantown High.
“It’s about building awareness,” he said. “This is Lauren’s wish and Lauren’s work and we’re gonna keep at it.”
