Akron City Council members took an hour Monday to question the operator of a community correction facility after two parents said their sons and others have gone there for help but instead overdosed or died.
Bernard Rochford, executive vice president of Oriana House Inc., which provides addiction treatment, counseling and court-ordered correctional services, was called before a joint meeting of the public safety and health and social services committees.
A month earlier, Tanya Halchak and Nick Stecyk had called council to account. The parents spoke with rage and sorrow about their sons — one dead and the other in prison.
“I’m here today,” Halchak told council in early December, “to ask why nothing is being done, or what can be done, about all the overdoses that are happening right here in our community at Oriana House.”
Her son, a former resident at an Akron halfway house run by the private nonprofit, was transported to the hospital on Nov. 12. “A boy with the mentality of a 14-year-old, he was sent [to Oriana House] by me to get help. He was there for only two weeks.”
Halchak buried her son two days later.
Stecyk said his son was given carfentanyl, a highly potent opioid, while at a medically assisted treatment program run by Oriana House near the county jail.
He overdosed. Administrators ejected him from the diversion program. He’s in prison now.
The stories sounded familiar to Councilwoman Tara Mosley-Samples, whose son — also struggling with addiction — told her of Stecyk’s son and another man he saw overdose while at the same privately run facility where county and city judges send young men and women to find shelter in an opioid epidemic ravaging the community.
Oriana House opened in 1985.
Rochford had 10 employees then.
By 1991, there were 200 residential beds for drug treatment in Northeast Ohio. A year later, the beds doubled, climbing steadily toward the 1,500 beds Oriana House offers today in Akron, Cleveland and Northwest Ohio.
More than half the beds are in Summit County. The operation now employs 800 full-time staff.
Overdose deaths spiked sharply in July as drug dealers began lacing heroin with animal tranquilizers deadly to most humans. The drug is sometimes sold separately. Its potency, while alarming to the public, is marketed to addicts looking for the strongest high.
“Akron and Summit County appear to be the epicenter of a nationwide drug epidemic,” said Rochford. “And Oriana House is not immune.”
To place residents and provide community services, the Akron company received $5.9 million from Summit County in December 2016 and $3.8 million from the city in June 2016. It operates 25 facilities — 15 in Summit County, including a lab to perform drug tests on its clients, a residential unit beside the Glenwood Jail and an intake center on Frederick Avenue.
For decades, Rochford said after addressing council, the agency logged no deaths.
He recalled a man who died in his sleep in 2008 at a crisis intake center. About four more overdosed and died before Halchak’s son in November — the only client to die in the custody of Oriana House, a public relations specialist for the company said. And that’s among 4,540 residential community corrections clients. The agency serves thousands more in outpatient facilities.
“With the opiate crisis,” Rochford said, linking the problems of Oriana House with the community it serves, “the clients are definitely more focused on getting the drug in. … We try to keep the facility as clean as possible. We try to be as progressive and provide the highest quality programs we can. We know we’re not perfect.”
“Don’t compare your facility to what’s going on outside in the community,” said Mosley-Samples, unmoved by Rochford’s testimony or the audits and compliance reports and client satisfaction surveys he presented to council.
“No one’s concerned about their accreditation,” Mosley-Samples said. “The concern is how are so many drugs getting into these facilities.”
Unique challenge
Unlike jails and prisons, community correction facilities have the unique challenge of letting some of their clients out daily for counseling or work.
Oriana House reviews pay stubs and office sign-in sheets to ensure clients don’t meander on their day pass. When they return, all are supposed to be frisked. No exceptions, said Rochford.
“That doesn’t happen,” said Mosley-Samples and the families of clients.
Rochford invited council to a two-hour, guided tour the facility on Jan. 30.
Rochford told council that Oriana has learned from grave mishaps.
The death in 2008 led the company to hire registered nurses to monitor clients’ vital statistics overnight.
To catch what Rochford called “table salt sizes of drugs” sometimes taped behind genitals, advanced strip searches stop short of removing underwear or performing body cavity searches. That would require additional medical staff.
“I know it may be expensive,” said Russ Neal, “but if it saves a life it may be worth looking into.”
Neal also questioned why drug dealers and users are thrown together in a facility meant to deter relapses. Rochford said his staff are often unaware of who uses and sells when the courts send him clients whose records might list specific violations like drug trafficking or vague ones like possession.
To avoid deadly reactions from smoking even over-the-counter drugs, the facilities are now smoke free, Rochford said, though witnesses — including Halchak’s late son — are said to have smoked tobacco this past year.
The company also has installed sensors that detect certain drug residues on bookbags and hands. In-house drug testing is up, with 500 daily samples processed in 24 hours or less. Full-size doors in bathroom stalls have been replaced by half doors to discourage clients from sitting on toilets and shooting up.
Staff — including newly deployed recovering addicts who better connect with clients — undergo 40 hours of initial and annual training. Entry-level employees are paid $10.50 an hour and make $1 more after a year or if they hold a college degree. But they are not required to have a drug counseling or medical license.
In 2015, federal tax filings show the company’s income at $48.4 million, including $32.9 million from program services. That same year, CEO James Lawrence — who was at the council hearing but did not speak — made $898,079 in compensation from Oriana and related organizations. Rochford was paid $460,793.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .