Central PA mother talks with Bob Casey about losing her daughter to fentanyl overdose

Lori Mishler, a Harrisburg area resident, sat down with US Sen. Bob Casey on Monday to talk about losing her daughter to the opioid epidemic and how she is keeping her daughter’s memories alive. 

“She was my best friend. There isn’t anything we didn’t do together.”

That’s how Lori Mishler remembers her daughter, Sara Mishler, who passed away from a fentanyl overdose in 2015 at the age of 25. Following her daughter’s death, Lori Mishler founded Sara’s House of Hope, a non-profit ministry that helps families impacted by substance abuse. 

On Monday, Mishler joined US Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) in Harrisburg to talk about Sara’s House of Hope and the impact fentanyl has had on Pennsylvania communities. 

“My daughter started opioid use probably in 2012,” Mishler explained. 

“We battled it constantly for quite a few years, and she was headed back into full-time treatment for a year. She got herself what she thought was Xanax, and ended up with pure fentanyl. It killed her instantly.”

Mishler went on to explain that at the time of Sara’s death, they had no idea what resources were or weren’t available or how insurance would cover treatment or how much treatment would cost. 

“We decided to start our nonprofit because we want to help parents,” Mishler said. “We want to help family members understand what they’re going through, what’s available, and help facilitate treatment for them, for their loved ones. On the flip side of that, we help grieving parents who have lost somebody to substance use.”

“I’m sad to say all of our group of parents that we have in that group have lost children to fentanyl,” she added.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50-to-100 times stronger than heroin and morphine, according to the US Food and Drug Administration. It’s usually used to treat patients with chronic severe pain or severe pain following surgery, but has in recent years become a major driver of drug overdoses due to a surge of cheap fentanyl sold in the US.

In 2022, fentanyl was responsible for the deaths of over 4,700 Pennsylvanians, according to the Pennsylvania State Police Overdose Information Network (ODIN), and the epidemic tends to affect rural communities harder than urban communities. 

Casey, who is running for reelection this November, has been vocal about criticizing his Republican challenger, Dave McCormick, for investing in Humanwell, China’s largest fentanyl producer, when he was the CEO of Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. 

The Keystone reported earlier this month that McCormick’s hedge fund invested $1.7 million in Humanwell, which produces 90% of China’s fentanyl. 

Casey advocated for the passage of the bipartisan Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act, which was signed into law this past April. The law declares fentanyl trafficking a national emergency and places financial sanctions on international drug cartels and other key members distributing fentanyl internationally.  

“One of the things we’ve tried to focus on as well is the, not just the treatment end of it, but also kind of the origin of it,” Casey said during the conversation with Mishler. 

“As we know that these precursor chemicals start in China, find their way through drug trafficking internationally to Mexico. That’s where the problem really explodes when you have the precursor chemicals from China that find their way into the Mexican drug cartels, and then they come across our border through ports of entry.”

With less than 100 days to go in the campaign, Casey has promised to make this an issue in the final months of the election season. 

“I’ve got an opponent, who, when he was a hedge fund manager, actually invested millions in China’s largest producer of fentanyl,” Casey said in a recent interview with NPR Morning Edition. “So, that’s going to be a big issue in this race because we’ve lost too many Pennsylvanians to the poison of fentanyl.”