[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:00] Well, good evening, everyone. I know we have a small crowd here this evening, but this is the Union Bridge Drug Awareness Program that we're having here this evening. And we have a couple speakers here. We're going to get started. And our first speaker is Vaughn Ripley. He wants to talk to you about his organization, and he'll give himself a introduction. I don't mess it up. Thank
[0:29] you guys. First, I'd like to thank the mayor and obviously Laura for thinking of us and letting us come out here to do this.
[0:36] I represent Trinity's Children, which is a non-profit foundation.
[0:41] It's in the making right now, that's why our table is kind of empty.
[0:45] A little bit about myself, I was a city council member in Brunswick, Maryland for eight years served two terms.
[0:52] I was planning on serving a third term, and that's when my daughter died, so I changed those plans.
[0:58] I decided not to run for a city council and I decided to start a non-profit and start raising awareness
[1:04] and hopefully help people who are either living with addiction or are facing this in their
[1:09] family.
[1:10] Sorry for the notes.
[1:12] This is the first time doing this, so like I said, we're brand new, Trinity's Children
[1:18] Incorporated.
[1:20] The first thing I want to do is I want to tell you a little bit about Trinity.
[1:23] If you guys get a chance to come over to the table, there's the picture of Trinity, and that's
[1:27] my lovely wife Christine Gashon must forget to say, I think I have to buy everybody a drink
[1:32] if I forget that.
[1:35] Trinity was 18 years old, so when she was born, she was born with a suffodial
[1:40] atresion, which means her esophagus was not connected to her stomach. And
[1:44] doctors weren't sure that she was going to make it. We went through a pretty
[1:48] serious operation and she lived in children's hospital for the first month of
[1:53] her life. So we called her our miracle baby. And she proved that over and over again
[2:00] throughout her short life.
[2:03] She had a ton of passions, but the biggest one was probably music.
[2:07] She loved listening to it and playing it.
[2:09] She was a pianist and played a lot of classical piano.
[2:14] Had a wonderful Ukrainian instructor that was a little bit strict.
[2:18] She didn't quite hit her with a ruler in the hand,
[2:20] but she was a very strict instructor.
[2:23] And so Trinity had a good opportunity to learn a lot
[2:26] about the piano and music theory.
[2:28] And she loved it.
[2:29] it showed in her life as she tinkered all the time on musical instruments and playing
[2:34] with it. She also loved board games. She would gather the family together. You know, we
[2:41] have tons of games, but we don't really play that often. And Trim was always the one
[2:44] to come and just call everybody together to play board games. She had this favorite game.
[2:50] I think it was called Werewolf. And the game, you kind of have to lie to win. Christine
[2:56] used to get nervous because Trinity was so good at the game.
[3:01] We got our hands
[3:02] full with this one.
[3:06] The thing that stands out to most to me is her laugh.
[3:12] She could
[3:13] make a whole room start laughing even if they didn't know what they were laughing at
[3:16] just because her laugh was so magical and she had a zest for life that you can't
[3:25] imagine. And so that's basically why my wife and I want to go down this path. And not
[3:32] only talk about Trinity, but also talk about the problems that we're facing. Mostly
[3:36] with fentanyl, I know that there's plenty of things that we're addicted to, and even
[3:40] outside of drugs, but fentanyls are going to be our main focus because it's unbelievable
[3:46] the amount of tragedy that's happening right around us without us even being aware. Some
[3:53] Some of the statistics that I'll talk about in a couple minutes, probably most of you guys
[3:57] because you're so involved with this and everything, maybe you've heard all of these things
[4:00] or whatever.
[4:01] But I think that a lot of people get floored when they hear some of these numbers and some
[4:05] of the stuff that's actually going on.
[4:11] One thing that Christine loved about Trinity and we have some ring video footage is she would
[4:18] run to everything, she's not very athletic as a matter of fact her run was kind of goofy.
[4:23] But she would get out of her car and run to the house like if friends were in the car
[4:28] They're all climbing up like minutes later walking into the house, but she was already in there
[4:32] And that's kind of the way that she attacked the life, you know
[4:35] Everything was just so much excitement and adventure no matter what she was doing
[4:42] Trinity was also a very trusting person and
[4:48] We think that that may be the reason why we're facing this tragedy today
[4:52] it, because she trusted somebody that told her that she was taking percissette, and it
[5:00] was actually a pressed pill that had fentanyl in it.
[5:05] As far as we can tell, from the investigation and everything, and it's speaking with
[5:08] her friends, seeing the information on her phone, this was the first time that she had taken
[5:14] fentanyl.
[5:16] We got very familiar with the saying, one pill can kill, and I know that a lot of people
[5:22] hear that saying and they think you're over exaggerating and I'm standing here
[5:27] in front of you to tell you that it's not an over exaggeration. One pill can
[5:33] kill and it does every day over and over again.
[5:40] I think
[5:44] that is important to
[5:45] share trend story. I think that it's important for folks to hear it. I think it
[5:49] also kind of humanizes me up here, right? One of the problems that we have, we
[5:54] We also have a 16-year-old son, Zander, and at least now he listens to us a little more
[6:01] than he used to, but Trent used to do this thing.
[6:04] She had this thing whenever I would talk, and she would just sit there and do this the
[6:09] whole time that I was talking, and she would say things like you're exaggerating, because
[6:12] if we would say, hey, pills can be deadly, we don't know a lot about it, but we've been seeing
[6:17] on the news, or we read this, and we just want you to know that it's very dangerous, and
[6:22] and you shouldn't take pills from somebody who isn't your doctor or your parents.
[6:26] I mean, obviously you shouldn't do that anyway.
[6:28] Children are going to investigate and they're going to do things they're curious and they
[6:32] also like to push boundaries.
[6:34] Well, the problem is this boundary is not pushable because, like I said, one pill can kill,
[6:39] so you're not testing any boundary if you just take a pill and die.
[6:43] The idea behind Trinity's children is to do pretty much this.
[6:49] I'm an inspirational speaker.
[6:50] I've been doing it for 14 years, and I do it because I have a whole different life.
[6:56] I was born with hemophilia, and when I was a kid, I got HIV and hepatitis C from blood
[7:02] products.
[7:03] And I don't share that information with you to, you know, like shift gears or anything
[7:07] like that, but I'm telling you, that's why this is kind of natural for me.
[7:12] I'm thinking, I want to make a shift myself in my life because I want to shift some of
[7:19] that inspiration that I have available to me from this other side of my life, and push
[7:24] it toward drug awareness, and I want to start using that, and I want to use my voice.
[7:29] And like I said, Trin was doing this with me, but I think that there are kids out there
[7:33] that I could talk to, especially like in high school, say for instance.
[7:39] And maybe those kids won't do this, because now I'm a dad who's standing in front of them
[7:44] who has a daughter who died at 18 from taking a pill.
[7:48] Maybe instead of doing this, they'll sit there
[7:51] and they'll listen to the story
[7:52] because they'll hear about Trinity
[7:53] and they'll understand because it's just like them
[7:56] and it's just like their friends.
[7:58] As a matter of fact, we're dealing with a lot of that now
[8:01] because some of Trinity's friends are still in kind of
[8:04] the realm of the stuff that we all worry about.
[8:08] And the problem is, how's that even possible?
[8:13] your best friend died from this and yet, you know, you're still going down that path.
[8:18] So I want to talk to the youth. I want to talk to parents too.
[8:21] And obviously you guys, because you guys are a big part of that awareness wall
[8:25] that needs to be out there and helping people.
[8:28] And so that's what I plan on doing.
[8:31] Trinity's children is going to be a nonprofit or attorney I just spoke to them today.
[8:36] We're finishing up the creating the corporation and we go for nonprofit status
[8:41] which takes us a little while. Once we do, we're going to start some events. We're going to do
[8:46] a, I'm pretty athletic. I do a lot of bike races and stuff like that. Well, we're going to do a
[8:51] tough mother and I expect Chad to be out there for that one. We're going to do some, we're going to
[8:57] do a Florida race from Miami to the Keys in January and we're going to also do golf events and
[9:06] things like that, we want to mix it up so that we can get as many people as
[9:10] Christine is really likes golf, so I figured we can do that one.
[9:15] But we're going to mix it up because we want to start raising funds for this.
[9:19] And honestly at this point, I'm looking at each of you guys.
[9:23] I've gotten contact information from most of you and everything.
[9:27] But we need help because this is new to us.
[9:31] And we want to make sure that we're doing the right things, like when we do
[9:34] start raising money. We're already getting a lot of folks who are pouring and wanting to donate to
[9:39] Trinity's children. We want to make sure that we're making that money be effectual. We want it to
[9:44] definitely have an impact. So we need help on that front too. We also need help obviously you can
[9:51] tell on how to decorate our table and stuff like that because we came with Trinity's picture. Basically
[9:57] that was it. I think actually we got donated a couple pamphlets so it would look like we know what
[10:01] we're doing. Let's talk about statistics. Like I said, you guys probably already know this.
[10:07] If you didn't, maybe I can shock you with it. Did you know that they think that right now,
[10:14] 70,000 people are dying annually from fentanyl overdose? Think about that number for a minute.
[10:23] 70,000 people.
[10:27] What that means if you do the math in your head is we're averaging 200 deaths a day.
[10:34] And actually recently, Senator Van Hollen, they came to our family and asked if they could
[10:41] talk about Trinity, and they were at a hearing, and Jelly Roll was there.
[10:48] And he brought up that number, that 200 number, and what he said was really impactful to
[10:53] me, because I had never thought of it this way.
[10:55] You don't think in 200, that's a lot of it.
[10:57] But when he said this, 200 is about the amount of people that get on a standard,
[11:04] air liner, a jet plane to fly somewhere, right? Could you imagine if one jet plane crashed
[11:13] every day, and people were dying? Our government, all the people who are involved with any of
[11:20] that stuff would shut down the airlines until it got figured out.
[11:26] This one's slipping under the radar, folks. 200 people are dying a day, and nothing's being
[11:33] shut down, nothing's being stopped. We're trying to talk about as the way that I feel about it,
[11:38] but that's about it. If it was anything else, and I'm afraid that it comes from my childhood,
[11:44] the stigma associated with drug overdose. Some of you guys may be not quite as old as me, but you can
[11:50] remember, when we thought about drug overdose, it meant a middle aged dude in an alley with a needle
[11:56] sticking out of his arm. And so there's a stigma associated with that, because unfortunately, I'm
[12:01] afraid that people get it in their head that, well, you know, he was doing that.
[12:06] He knew what he was doing, and it's a dark path anyway, so he died from it.
[12:11] It happens.
[12:12] Collateral of damage.
[12:14] Well, I'm not buying that today.
[12:16] When you think of it as one pill can kill.
[12:19] When you think of the athletes, the cheerleaders, the college students, we've got a picture on
[12:26] our table that I notice nobody else has, which makes me excited.
[12:28] So we did do one thing, right?
[12:30] it's from the DEA and it shows the real pills and fentanyl pills and they're
[12:37] exact duplicates including Adderall. Do you want college kids take before they
[12:42] start doing exams? Adderalls. Did you know if you're taking Adderall illegally,
[12:46] right, out of prescription, you have to buy it from somebody. What are you buying
[12:52] it from? A drug dealer?
[12:58] Is that somebody that you can trust that you're
[13:00] definitely getting the thing that you're buying. I'm not condoning Adderall but
[13:03] what I'm saying is you might buy a pill that will kill you that night. And these
[13:09] are the kind of statistics that I think that we need to share. Did you know 18
[13:14] to 45 now? The number one reason for death is fentanyl overdose.
[13:23] Think about what
[13:24] I just said there. I mean again when we talk about things like drunk driving accidents
[13:28] do you remember like mad mothers against drunk driving? They all popped up when
[13:33] and just a small portion of our population
[13:35] was dying from driver accidents.
[13:38] Or cell phones are killing people,
[13:40] because people are texting and stuff.
[13:41] And there's this huge outrage in there.
[13:43] Every state now has a law, you can't do it
[13:45] and all of this and everybody's,
[13:47] they're pushing all this information
[13:48] and everything about it.
[13:49] But none of those come even close.
[13:51] Not even cardiac arrest, cardiac disease in 18 to 45-year-olds
[13:56] is no longer one of the, or the top.
[14:00] It's fentanyl.
[14:03] And that's something that's unacceptable, as far as I'm concerned, I can't imagine that
[14:11] it's the number one killer in this age range.
[14:14] And there's not some huge outrage, there's not some huge thing going on to put a stop
[14:21] to this.
[14:23] And that's why I want to do this, that's why we wanted to start trending these children
[14:26] because we want to be a part of the solution.
[14:30] We want to touch people on a daily basis and help them to not only understand this problem,
[14:36] but maybe how to deal with it, and that's what's beautiful about these kind of events
[14:39] because you've got every phase of it, right?
[14:42] We've got the police and 911 operators, we've got the places where you can visit if you
[14:49] have an addiction problem or need a place to stay during that.
[14:52] We've got Cotton Candy in the corner that's not being made yet because I'm talking.
[14:57] and these guys that are doing mediation.
[15:00] Over here, it's going to take all of us. It's not going to, it's not going to just be somebody like me standing up and talking about it. It's going to be all of us working together and coordinating this to help our community. And that's where it starts, right? I mean, it's going to have to start in our families and in our community as opposed to at the federal level because we can't rely on that. We have to rely on Frederick County and Carroll County, Brunswick and Union Bridge and other towns like that.
[15:29] we have to do it there because that's really what we have access to and that's
[15:35] what we have the power to adjust and fix and that's what I want to start doing
[15:39] with Trinity's children. I want to wrap up because I do want to cut candy to be
[15:45] made but I also wanted to talk about because of my time in the City Council and
[15:50] everything I've made a lot of relationships with commerce men and senators and
[15:55] And even the governor and working with the governor's office on drug addiction and stuff.
[16:01] And I want to continue down that path, I want to utilize that.
[16:04] But I want to do that with you guys.
[16:06] And I want to do more events like this so that I can keep building that network.
[16:11] So that when chat thinks of something, hey, you can call Trinity's children for something
[16:15] or we can call you guys for something.
[16:17] I want us all to be networking connected together so that we can do something here together.
[16:22] Because I think that's what it's all about.
[16:24] And I think humanity has always been about.
[16:28] We're hunters and gatherers.
[16:31] And that's what we need to do right now.
[16:33] Our children are dying.
[16:35] My child did die.
[16:39] We need to step up as time for us to do that.
[16:43] And that's what I want to share every time that I go out and talk.
[16:47] I would also like some feedback from you guys,
[16:49] because I want to know the things that they liked or didn't like.
[16:52] And what kinds of things I should be adding into this.
[16:55] Should I be talking about the statistics?
[16:57] Should I be trying to shock people with these numbers?
[17:00] Should I talk more about Trinity?
[17:02] Should I talk less about Trinity?
[17:04] I want all of that feedback because I want to get better
[17:06] and better at this because I think that eventually,
[17:09] we'll get to a point where we go to things like this
[17:11] and we knock it out of the park.
[17:13] Huh? Yeah.
[17:15] This is my tribute.
[17:17] Yeah, that's me.
[17:18] If you didn't know, I'm a speaker.
[17:20] I come by my table and learn more about Trinity's children and I'd like again I'd like to thank all of you guys.
[17:29] I would like to have a few people in here besides the tables but I do love this and I love that you guys are all here.
[17:36] We really appreciate you. Hopefully Trinity's children is able to do things that you guys will appreciate.
[17:41] Thank you for letting me talk and hopefully we'll have some cotton candy.