Shannon Lacy: A story of addiction, hope and a deeply felt loss

Sept. 28--A new academic year has started at Keene High School, but the halls are much quieter without the loud voice and laughter of French teacher Shannon E. Lacy. Or, as her teenage students affectionately nicknamed her, "Madame Lacy," "Slacy," or "the Slacinator."

Lacy died June 30 from a fentanyl overdose. She was 26 years old.

She had struggled for three years with an addiction to Percocet, and, more recently, heroin.

After the news of her death, tributes poured in from students, teachers, friends and family members. A Facebook group dedicated to Lacy is filled with posts of students remembering their time in her classroom:

"(She) taught me self-confidence and that no one was better to be than me."

"She had ambition to spread kindness throughout KHS."

"We lost an amazing person."

"No matter what I do for the rest of my life, it will be for you Madame."

These statements make one thing clear: Lacy touched many lives. But all the while, she struggled with an addiction that eventually took her life.

"It's the worst pain," said Shannon's mother, Roberta Lacy, 53, of Nashua.

Just a few months after her daughter's death, Roberta, while interviewed at a Peterborough restaurant, says she still has so many questions she wants to ask Shannon.

She also wants to raise awareness about drug abuse, starting with telling the truth about her daughter's own struggles, which Shannon kept secret for so long.

"I can't protect her anymore," Roberta said. "I can't hide her secret. She's gone."

A life of laughter

Shannon Lacy was always outgoing, and had a knack for connecting with people from an early age, her family remembers. Language and laughter were two of Shannon's lifelong passions.

She was inspired to get into education by one of her own high school French teachers.

While enrolled at Keene State College, she studied abroad at the University of Rennes in France, a school where she spoke only French.

Her aunt, Mary Jo Lyons Chandonnet of Hampstead, says she sees many parallels between her niece and actor Robin Williams, who committed suicide last month after long struggles with depression and substance use.

"Shannon always had everyone wetting their pants laughing. She was absolutely the most hysterical person; she did all these languages and made everybody laugh," Chandonnet said.

"But, unfortunately, she had that inner demon of addiction, and Robin Williams did as well."

Shannon Lacy's story is all too familiar -- one that plays out every day across New Hampshire and the nation.

In February, N.H. Gov. Maggie Hassan declared the use of heroin and other opioids a statewide "epidemic," after the number of fatal overdoses spiked. Health officials have estimated between 115,000 and 120,000 people statewide misuse drugs, and the number of fatal overdoses in New Hampshire nearly doubled in one year, rising from 37 in 2012 to 63 in 2013, officials said.

Drug use has also been scrutinized at Keene High School, since a Keene State College study last year found widespread drug and alcohol use among students, prompting the district to rewrite its substance abuse policy.

A hidden problem

Hints of Shannon's drug use surfaced the summer of 2011, one year after she graduated from Keene State College with a degree in education.

Roberta believes her daughter was first introduced to Percocet by a longtime friend in Nashua. The problem amplified when Shannon started dating a man who dealt drugs and was addicted himself, Roberta said.

"The summer of 2011, I noticed a huge difference. Something's wrong," she said. "Things just didn't add up to me."

Shannon was sleeping through the middle of the day, and money was disappearing, with increasingly strange explanations.

Shannon eventually admitted she was experimenting with pills, but insisted it was under control.

"She didn't admit to a problem," Roberta said.

After student teaching and substitute teaching at Keene High School, Shannon accepted the French teaching job at the school that summer, and she told her mother she wanted to keep it.

The rest of the year, Roberta said, she didn't notice anything wrong when Shannon came home for vacations and holidays. She assumed her daughter had stopped using.

Keene school officials also did not notice anything amiss during Shannon's three years at the school.

"I had no idea," said Keene High School's interim principal, James F. Logan. Logan was the director of the Cheshire Career Center before he stepped in to fill the principal position this year. "...There was no way I could have known. She hid it very, very well."

Logan, who regularly saw Lacy at lunch, said she was "vibrant" and "outgoing."

"She was always talking to you, she wanted to know how you were doing," he said. "She was great to work with, I can tell you that."

Summers home in Nashua, though, proved to be Shannon's trigger, her mother and aunt said.

During the summer of 2012, she didn't seem lucid, but blamed it on allergies and insomnia, "just every excuse known to man," Roberta remembers.

"She denied it so much. ... I thought I was going crazy," she said. "Unfortunately, when you're the parent of an adult who's doing drugs, who's over the age of 18, you're powerless."

The lowest point

Things got worse. In August 2012, Shannon totaled her car while driving in the Andover and Lawrence, Mass., area. When Roberta questioned why she was down there, Shannon gave excuses her mother didn't believe.

Then came a second car crash in March with Shannon at the wheel, again near Andover, Mass.

When Massachusetts State Police pulled Shannon out of the car, she was blue, they told Roberta.

She had overdosed while driving, nearly hitting a tree.

The police officer told Roberta they revived her with Narcan -- a drug that reverses opioid overdoses -- and found heroin in Shannon's car.

It was the first time Roberta had caught wind of heroin use. "You could have knocked me over," she said.

The officer told Roberta he was not going to arrest Shannon, because she was remorseful and had told him where she got the drugs. He said, "She has one track mark, so she hasn't been doing this a long time."

The officer told Roberta this was personal for him; one of his sons was in jail because of heroin.

"He said, 'I want you to get your daughter help,' and he pointed at me," Roberta remembers.

" 'This will kill her. Do you understand?' "

In a room at Lawrence General Hospital, Shannon was crying and apologizing.

"She just said over and over again, 'I need help. I need help. Please help me,' " Roberta said, her own voice barely audible through tears.

Their time in the hospital that day was a nightmare. Shannon was being re-hydrated through an IV, but was still in her own clothes, and had not yet been thoroughly examined by the medical staff, Roberta said.

While a doctor and nurse were in her room, Shannon asked to go to the bathroom. She was in there a long time.

Roberta, getting increasingly frantic, pleaded with Shannon to let her in.

"I could hear the water running, and that's what she would do when she was doing something, like snorting or trying to drink or swallow the pill," Roberta said.

When Shannon came out, her eyes had rolled back in her head.

She had overdosed again, from heroin hidden in her underwear.

While a nurse apologized for not examining Shannon right away, she told Roberta, "Your daughter is doing illegal activity ... so a lot of this responsibility and culpability lies with her," Roberta remembers.

"They put her in a wheelchair and said, 'Take her home.' "

Like many others, Shannon struggled to find treatment programs in New Hampshire or Massachusetts that would accept her insurance, or had beds available, according to her mother.

Treatment is scarce in the state, which ranks second-worst in the nation per capita for the availability of treatment, according to a survey from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services administration, which used 2011-12 data.

Just under 6 percent of the people in New Hampshire who needed substance abuse treatment were able to get it, the survey said.

Shannon was on her mother's insurance plan, which did not cover an inpatient detox program. Together, they scoured lists of available providers.

Most had six-month waiting lists, but finally, they found a doctor who dispensed suboxone in Stoneham, Mass. Suboxone is an FDA-approved medication that works to decrease opioid dependence and ease withdrawal symptoms.

A last chapter

Shannon took recovery seriously, Roberta said. She had told her mother that in the past, she bought suboxone on the street and took it so she could function normally while teaching at school.

Now, Shannon was going to counseling at Monadnock Family Services in Keene and regularly attending appointments in Stoneham.

After the years of lies, Roberta says she was wary at times.

But she and her sister say they couldn't deny the changes in Shannon's behavior in the three months between March and June 30, the day she died.

"She was just what I remember before the drugs ever started," Roberta said. "I had my not-drugged Shannon. Happy and just loving life."

On June 30, nine days after her 26th birthday, Shannon went home to Nashua. That morning, Roberta talked to Shannon over the phone. Her daughter thanked her for her birthday present -- Ray-Ban sunglasses -- and said she would be going to bed early that night. Roberta, who was working late, never got to see her daughter before she died.

In addition to her parents, Shannon leaves behind her 19-year-old sister and her 13-year-old brother, who are struggling to cope with her death. Her young brother had discovered Shannon's body after the overdose.

Shannon's family members still don't know how Shannon got the drugs that killed her.

But the N.H. Medical Examiner's office recently determined the drug was not heroin; instead, it was pure fentanyl, according to Roberta. The CDC describes fentanyl as a synthetic opioid that's 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine.

Fentanyl was recently implicated in a string of fatal overdoses nationwide, after drug dealers cut batches of heroin with it.

Roberta says she believes Shannon did not know what she was buying. And with a drug that potent, Roberta was told there was little that could have been done to save her.

"I wish she was here so I could ask her, 'Did you know that was (fentanyl)?'... and I'm never going to get answers," Roberta said.

A mother's mission

Those who are struggling with substance abuse or other problems can take advantage of the school's Employee Assistance Program, which is offered to all employees, according to N.H. School Administrative Unit 29's human resources manager, Nancy C. Deutsche.

"If people have problems, we want to make sure we can help them," said Assistant Superintendent Daniel J. Black.

Deutsche said as employers, school officials are sometimes the last to know about an issue.

"We're the number-one area where someone wants to keep that information close to the vest," she said.

In the months since Shannon's death, school officials have talked more about substance use with staff, said Logan, the Keene High interim principal.

"We've got to be cognizant of it and keep our eyes open," he said.

Roberta and school officials plan to talk about starting a scholarship in Shannon's memory.

Roberta said she wants to be honest with the students and teachers her daughter worked with. She said Shannon was scared of someone finding out and "terrified" of losing a job she loved.

"She was embarrassed, she was ashamed. She said, 'What school will hire me?' "

Shannon told her family she couldn't cope with the idea of not being a teacher.

"Her life was her students, her teaching," Chandonnet said.

Now, Roberta says, she wants to fight the stigma and anonymity surrounding addiction.

"I want to give back," she said. "Maybe this is what I was meant to do ... not hide it anymore and to talk about it. If anything can come from this, I would like there to be hope and some sort of happiness."

Chandonnet agrees.

"It's not shameful. It's reality."

Ella Nilsen can be reached at [email protected] or 352-1234, extension 1409. Follow her on Twitter @ENilsenKS.

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