A South Florida family lost a mother and a daughter to drug overdoses, but the surviving father and daughter turned their pain into a promise to help save lives. This weekend, they plan to raise awareness and prevent more families from feeling the same loss. Heather Walker has more in tonight’s 7 Spotlight.
Pictures of family members line the shelves at Chris Cavallo’s home. While they show happy moments over the years, they don’t show the dark times.
Chris Cavallo: “We were in active addiction together for a long time.”
Chris and his wife Robin suffered from drug addiction for years. They eventually got sober, but 17 years later, Robin had to have surgery and became addicted to her pain medication.
Chris Cavallo: “And no sooner did she take that pain medicine and leave the hospital, than she was dead a few months later.”
Daughter Christina says her mother’s death affected her twin sister, Stephanie, the most.
Christina Cavallo: “After that, she sort of spiraled out of control. Became addicted to pain medication and then she died.”
After experiencing two overdose deaths in their family, Chris and Christina knew they needed to work to keep other families from suffering the same fate.
Christina Cavallo: “We both decided we have to do something, and it was right around the time when they stopped calling it the opioid epidemic, and they were saying it’s the overdose epidemic, and people were dying left and right.”
They created the Robin Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to preventing drug overdoses.
The foundation distributes Narcan and provides training on how to use it. It didn’t take long for Chris and Christina to see how important their work has become in South Florida.
Chris Cavallo: “We became – and are – one of the larger distributors in South Florida of Narcan. We can go out and help people that have drug problems that are potential to have an overdose, and those are the communities we’d like to reach.”
The Robin Foundation hopes to get its message out to the community in a big way this weekend, and you can be a part of it. All you have to do is walk!
Loretta Crews-Nido: “But this walk in particular is going to be well attended, and the community is going to come out and just really stand beside those people who have lost loved ones.”
The Robin Foundation is hosting its second annual Walk for Lives event on July 11th in Fort Lauderdale.
Foundation volunteer Loretta Crews-Nido is helping to organize the walk. She says working with the foundation has allowed her to process the pain from the death of her son — also from an overdose.
Loretta Crews-Nido: “I knew, I just prayed, and I knew something would come into my life that would make me get back to the real me, and this has really helped.”
Chris and Christina hope the Robin Foundation and the Walk for Lives event are able to provide help to families with loved ones struggling with addiction – by letting them know support is available and there is hope for the future.
Christina Cavallo: “Believe it or not, connection is the cure, and I really believe that connection cures people and heals people in addiction.”
Heather Walker, 7News.
FOR MORE INFO:
The Robin Foundation’s South Florida Walk for Lives Event
July 11
Samuel Delevoe Park | 2520 NW 6th St FT Lauderdale FL, 33331
Website
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