For Kevin Biagetti, two weeks is too long to stay alive.
The Barberton man first died in September, collapsing in the street as his 16-year-old son played basketball with friends. A nurse next door administered CPR. Biagetti, 37, came back then faded again.
First responders sprayed the opiate antidote naloxone into his nostrils. And he returned again to the living.
After detox and treatment, he returned home where he said some family also were struggling with addiction. Two weeks passed. Then two more. Old habits returned.
In the blur between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, he awoke under a bridge in Akron near the Haven of Rest, a shelter where addicts often stay overnight. He had injected fentanyl with other addicts, who made off with the contents of his pockets.
Rock bottom, again. Back to detox. Then to treatment. And, for the first time, into a residential program where addicts mend their broken lives together.
In the two weeks since a reporter last spoke with Biagetti, he hasn’t died. But the place keeping him alive is on life support.
Akron is on the verge of losing F I Community Housing, the largest transitional housing unit for men recovering from addiction in Summit County.
Public plea
At Monday night’s city council meeting, F I Community Housing Executive Director Denny Wilson stepped up to a microphone and explained that the facility he’s run for five years at 619 Johnston St. would be sold in less than two weeks.
The property owner, Dave Testa, said he was ordered by a Summit County domestic relations judge to turn the building into cash as part of a divorce settlement.
After Wilson spoke, he was followed by a procession of his clients — tattooed men carried by their faith in Wilson, a recovering addict with a knack for connecting with tattered lives.
Most gave unrelenting testimony about the power of Wilson’s program. Many spoke with new found humility, others with a quivering jaw.
“This is tough for me,” Jeremy Ryan said.
Ryan’s story and that of the other seven clients who attended council follow a pattern distinct to addicts. They’ve lost jobs, wives, families, children, hope. In the hazardous weeks between detox and treatment or treatment and the real world, using was only ever a matter of time. “In a matter of week, I was out,” Ryan said of his last stint through the system. “I had no place to go.”
Wilson picked him up at the front door as he exited a detox program. In two weeks, he hasn’t used. Like other men at F I Community Housing, he’s on his way to working and paying taxes or child support. “If that happens in a matter of a couple weeks, what could happen six months from now,” Ryan said, hopeful for the first time since recognizing his disease of addiction.
F I alumnus Tugg Massa explained that if it weren’t for Wilson’s program, he wouldn’t be alive to help launch a Facebook page that has morphed into the city’s largest grass roots answer to combatting addiction: Akron Say No to Dope. In six months, Massa and the nonprofit group have helped 240 addicts accept help. He’s now placing more friends in treatment than are put in the ground.
Council acts
Council President Marilyn Keith called for Wilson, his wife and his current and former clients to stick around after the public meeting to further discuss the dilemma.
Council members stood to support Wilson. Councilman Russ Neal, a businessman who knows how to balance mortgage payments, asked for a law clerk to pull legislation that allowed the city to secure the financially distraught East Akron Community House in 2014.
The public chambers emptied. Then council asked Wilson to detail the particulars of his plight as council mulled the city’s options with Chief of Staff James Hardy and other members of Mayor Dan Horrigan’s cabinet.
Testa put a deal on the table for Wilson about 18 months ago. The landlord, whom Wilson said has been supportive of what F I is doing for Akron, encouraged Wilson to secure a $150,000 loan for the property. Then Testa would gift $50,000 back to Wilson, who said the “finances were never there” to make the deal happen.
Now the deal is dead.
“Unfortunately I can’t do that anymore,” Testa said Tuesday morning. “I’ve received a court order to sell the building because I’m in a divorce and my ex gets half the proceeds.”
Still, two options remain. Either council finds Wilson a new home or someone, perhaps the city, buys the property at or before the public auction on April 18 and then lease it back to Wilson.
Wilson said Tuesday morning that the city is leaning toward finding a third-party backer to step up. Testa said he’s open to the idea, but he has not been approached with an offer.
Hanging on
Wilson operates on a month-to-month lease.
Rent recently jumped from $1,600 to $1,850. Testa blames the divorce, which has drug on since 2013.
Wilson is currently a couple months behind on rent.
“Right now with paychecks, it’s really hard to budget out,” Wilson said. “That goes back to the nature of waiting on reimbursement for services you’ve provided already.” At times, men have been permitted to stay at his facility for a month or more without insurance, government subsidies or the cash to help Wilson keep the lights on.
Testa said Wilson always pays the bills, even if they’re occasionally late.
The 18-bed facility offers calm for drug-addicted men to put their lives back together. Wilson stresses peer-to-peer interaction. The program is staffed 24/7 by a recovering addict, clean since he too stayed there as a client.
Wilson moved in five years ago with a vision to help more than addicts. Each month, children gather for a safe place and a snack after school. Donated goods fill the food pantry, which feeds 65 people each month. When temperatures drop too low in the winter, Wilson and his men fold out 50 cots and throw open their doors to the homeless.
Narrow stairwells and hallways with carpet older than the men who live there line the offices that have been converted into dormitory wings. Downstairs, a weight room gives the men something to do. Wilson recently bought a couple cars to shuttle the clients to long-overdue dentist and doctor appointments or to government agencies that help them find jobs or get a driver’s license.
Mending lives
Biagetti, the Barberton man whose been at F I Community Housing for about a month, has broken the routine of addiction.
Whether in jail or on the edge of death, he would hit a new low. Then detox. Spend a few weeks in intensive, sometimes court-ordered, treatment facilities. Go home to his drug. Then repeat the process.
Molested when he was 5 years old by someone a boy should be able to trust, Biagetti was taking opiates as a high school sophomore. “Once I was old enough to enough to not feel, that’s what I did.”
He picked up pills and dropped out of school. Then heroin. And finally fentanyl and carfentanil — synthetic opiates deadlier than cyanide. “I became sicker quicker, and I needed more.”
As he finished sharing his story, he stood from a couch in a two-man dormitory wing at F I Community Housing and walked across the room. In arms that opened without hesitation, Biagetti let the tears fall on his roommate’s shoulder.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .