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As the co-owner of six Ace Hardware stores in the San Francisco Bay area, Michelle Leopold is used to facing challenges head on. Tragically, in 2019, Leopold endured the most difficult challenge of her life—losing her 18-year-old son Trevor to illicit “Dirty 30” Oxycodone that contained a lethal amount of fentanyl.
For the past three years, Leopold has tied in her hardware business with her outreach efforts and hosted fentanyl awareness events—called the Tools of Fentanyl Awareness and Overdose Prevention—at each of her stores in hopes the tragedy her family went through can be prevented for other families. The events include education around overdose awareness and the current epidemic of fentanyl poisonings and training and distribution of the life-saving tool Narcan, which reverses opioid overdoses including fentanyl.
“Every August since 2022, our six stores do fentanyl awareness and overdose education to all our employees at our six Ace stores, plus any customers and community members interested in receiving free training and life-saving Narcan,” Leopold says. “Our team members are all trained on how to use Naloxone to reverse an opioid overdose.”
The events take place between Aug. 20 and Aug. 31 to coincide with National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day on Aug. 21 and International Overdose Awareness Day on Aug. 31.
Leopold and her story were featured in an Ace Hardware Heartware video, Ending the Stigma.
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