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Lauren’s Wish golf tournament tees it up for awareness and support of those battling addiction

CHEAT LAKE - Jimmy Gatian had his clubs at the ready and was tying his cleats - when he stopped and looked twice.

"I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have parked somewhere else," he mused in the lot of Lakeview Golf Resort on a cloudy Friday morning. "I mean, if we get a crazy shot or something."

Relatively speaking, the hood of his car was pretty close to a couple of greens on the storied course.

Which means it might be pretty easy (too easy) to bounce the ball from your 7-iron approach right off the fairway ... and right into somebody's windshield.

His windshield.

Then he grinned.

"You know what? We'll figure it out."

After all, he said, he had a round of golf to play.

Not just any round.

Friday was the 2026 Lauren's Wish tournament at Lakeview, the annual launch across the links that serves as the main fundraiser for the specialized clinic and drug treatment triage center in her name.

Lauren's Wish, which is based at Hazel's House of Hope on Scott Avenue, was the literal wish of the late Lauren Cole, whose death by drugs in 2020 couldn't have been more tragically ironic.

Cole, 26, was a social worker who was good at her job.

In fact, her dad Michael Cole said, she successfully counseled more than one client in the depths of drug addiction, helping them turn their circumstances around.

"Lauren elevated people," he said previously. "She could save everybody, but her."

Someone she knew from high school sold her the dose of heroin that killed her, Michael said.

The fatal offering was laced with fentanyl, which is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Six years later and he still shakes his head.

"This is what we're up against."

In 2020, Michael Cole was readying for retirement and his daughter came to him with the idea that would become Lauren's Wish.

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 had a kind of compassionate holding tank in mind.

She envisioned a place where a patient could stay for a few days in a controlled environment, before ideally moving onto long-term treatment and counseling.

"Lauren said, 'Dad, can we work on this?' and I said, 'Of course we can.' Three weeks later, she was gone."

Lauren's Wish, though, is very much in the moment. The center on Scott Avenue has seen close to 1,700 clients to date, Michael Cole said, with more than 80% of that lot opting for full-on treatment and recovery plans.

Visit https://laurenswish.org/contact-us/ to learn more.

"We'll take it," he said. "I made Lauren a promise."

Then he grinned - and looked up.

It was a gray sky, with a forecast calling for a "slight" chance of showers.

More than 30 teams had signed up for the tournament, he said.

The golfers were already fortified with the scrambled egg breakfast that was part of the deal. Later in the round, a golf cart would be dispatched carrying hot dogs and hamburgers right up the tee.

Rain, rain, go away. Please.

"I always say, 'Lauren, honey, you gotta work with me on the weather' - and she always does."