July is the hardest month of the year for Mike Zompa.

It was five years ago this past July 6 that he got the call from his ex-wife that their son, Evan, had been found unresponsive following what appeared to be an overdose, just 16 days shy of his 26th birthday.

On July 5, only one day removed from seeing his father over the Fourth of July, Evan had been with his roommate at their Providence apartment, set to go to The Hot Club for an evening of carefree fun. When another friend offered to bring some cocaine over to start the night off, Evan — who wasn’t big into drugs and was on the cusp of becoming a journeyman plumber, working alongside his father — wasn’t initially into the idea. But as Zompa would learn later, Evan apparently wound up partaking.

But as has become a devastating commonality with street drugs, the batch turned out to be laced with Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid that is 10,000 times stronger than morphine and 100 times stronger than fentanyl. Intended to be used as a tranquilizer for large animals, with only microscopic doses being enough to kill full-grown, adult humans, neither Evan nor his roommate stood a chance. The friend who had brought it over, Zompa later learned, sought out Narcan and saved themself from an overdose the same evening, but didn’t make an attempt to warn his friends to whom he had just delivered a veritable death sentence.

The next day, Zompa got a call from then Providence Mayor, Jorge Elorza, who informed him that Evan and his roommate were two of as many as 10 deaths that had occurred in that area of the city within just a few days of one another, and it was suspected they had all happened as a result of the same poisonous batch of cocaine. Despite meeting with narcotics detectives and even getting a meeting with the Attorney General, Zompa said that ultimately their quest for justice came up empty.

“Basically they told us they knew who it was, found out who was doing it, but to prove it they would almost have to have him on tape saying that he did it. The laws were not in our favor,” Zompa said. “It was disappointing, there was no justice involved at all.”

And while grappling with the sudden loss of a child will never be a straightforward or easy process, for Zompa, it was a terrible combination of shock and confusion on top of the unimaginable grief.

“We had actually had talks about that fentanyl stuff. He said he doesn’t go anywhere near that. He said my friends would never do that,” he said. “He was not out to kill himself…He was getting ready to take his test for his plumbing career to become a journeyman licensed plumber. Evan showed up for work every day, on time, and he was not a drug user. He was responsible and paid all his bills.”

The tragedy of the event was particularly hard for Zompa, who was (and still is) on his own recovery journey from an addiction to alcohol. He said it was only due to the strong support from a grief counselor that he continues to see to this day, and the friends he had met through local AA meetings, that kept him from falling back into that hole all over again.

“Those guys, they would walk me to my car, they were on me and at my house like a blanket of love. They did not let up,” Zompa, who celebrated 10 years sober this year, said. “If I did not have that kind of support behind me, believe me, I would have been right back into the bottle again.”

Zompa to speak at Warren’s candlelight vigil
Recognizing the importance of that kind of support in dealing with such a loss is why Zompa agreed to share his story with this paper and live in front of a crowd of people, all of who have been impacted in one way or another by the overdose epidemic that continues to sweep through the nation.

On Saturday, Aug. 31 at 6:00 p.m., the Warren Prevention Coalition will hold their annual candlelight vigil to commemorate International Overdose Awareness Day. While the event is certainly underscored by a somber tone reflective of the loss experienced by families and friends of those who have passed away, it is also an evening intended to inspire camaraderie and provide hope.

For Zompa, it will be an opportunity to do all of those things, and simultaneously provide Evan’s story as a cautionary tale warning people that the dangers of drugs and the impact of an overdose do not only happen to people who struggle on the downward slide of addiction — it can happen to anybody, at any time, from one decision that proves to be their final decision.

“He was doing something illegal that he shouldn’t have been doing in the first place, but nobody thinks they’re going to go out like that,” he said. “Right now I look at it and I just pray that it doesn’t affect another member of our family…Maybe he wasn’t shooting heroin, but it doesn’t matter these days.”