Joshua Harris was born in Eugene, Oregon. He died this March, just a few months before his high school graduation. He was 18.
His aunt, Julie Lindholm, describes Joshua as a “daredevil” who loved to make people laugh. He was a skateboarder who rode his bike all over his small hometown of Harrisburg, Ore., and although he was a bit on the smaller side, he also played more traditional organized sports.
“He broke bones constantly because he was doing tricks on his bike or his skateboard. He was a basketball player, a football player,” Lindholm said. “He just loved to make people laugh. He was that one who, if you were around, you were going to be laughing the whole time.”
Theirs is a close-knit family, as Lindholm describes it. She and her sister Sue were pregnant simultaneously, and Joshua came along just eight weeks before Julie’s daughter Taylen was born.
They were also both stay-at-home moms at the time. So they spent a lot of time together, and so did their kids.
“We spent a huge amount of time together, and this is why it’s been so hard for my daughter, Taylen, because they were really, really close,” she said.
The two families had been planning a joint graduation party for the two cousins.
“We had a party planned for both of them because they were both graduating in June,” Lindholm said.
Harrisburg, which is about 20 minutes from Eugene, is about the size of Cashmere, Washington. The 2020 Census put the population at 3,852.
The death of a charismatic young community member ahead of high school graduation significantly impacts a small town. It’s not just Joshua’s age but also the tragic cause of his death that has the community in mourning.
Joshua fell victim to a fentanyl overdose.
“My sister went in on Sunday morning to wake him to let him know that they were going to go grocery shopping,” she said.
She said Sue knew immediately that something was wrong. He was non-responsive. She and her husband Tom got Joshua out of bed and on the floor. She called 911 while he started CPR.
First responders arrived soon after that.
“They worked, I think, a total of 45 minutes on Joshua,” Lindholm said. “Everybody knew Joshua in town. So they worked, I think, probably longer than they would have normally. And I was on the phone with her when they called it.”
When the medical examiner came, they cleared his room so detectives could go in and confiscate his phone and any other evidence.
“The medical examiner came out and told my sister, ‘You can’t feel any guilt because there was no way he was going to be saved.’ He was too far gone at that point,” she said.
They don’t expect to get the toxicology report results for about six-to-nine months because of the backlog in Oregon. But what they found in the room gives investigators, prosecutors, and the family a good idea of what killed Joshua.
The detectives found a batch of pills and eventually gained access to his cellphone. On it, they found text messages between Joshua and the individual who provided the pills.
“All the text messages were still there,” she said.
It’s being investigated as a fentanyl overdose death, and it is still an active case, but it looks like this might be one instance where at least one individual might face justice for their role in an overdose death.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Joshua was going into his sophomore year. Lindholm said the pandemic response was hard on him and her kids and many others.
“You don’t get to be around people. Schooling went online. His mental health kind of declined a little bit, I think, from that,” she said.
She also said that she was shocked to learn how easy it is for kids to get their hands on pills and other drugs. Julie said that didn’t come as a surprise to her daughter and Joshua’s cousin, though.
“I guess I was really naive thinking it was that accessible. That quick. That fast,” she said. “It sounds like it’s easier to get these street pills than it is alcohol.”
Lindholm and her nephew Joshua when he was about two.
One of the things that have been hard to deal with is the stigma of death due to accidental overdose. Not only is she mourning the loss of her beloved nephew, but she also has to deal with the judgment of others.
“When I tell people he overdosed on something that had fentanyl in it, I get that look like, ‘Oh, it’s just another OD.’ That’s what I feel like I get a lot,” she said. “And he’s not a junkie on the street. He came from a really good home. His parents were super supportive. They were PTO. They volunteered all the way from elementary. Super supportive home and I just feel like sometimes people don’t think that it’s going to happen to their family, so they’ll just ignore the fact of what you just said.”
When asked what she wants people to know and learn from Joshua’s story, she replied:
“They need to know it’s out there, and it’s actually killing our kids. It’s real, and it’s happening, and my sister and brother-in-law didn’t know, they had no idea,” she said. “And if people could learn a little bit more about fentanyl and how much it’s killing people, even the kids and young adults who come from good homes.”
A couple of days after he passed, her daughter Taylen came to her with a picture of a small tattoo Josh had wanted. It was a sun and a crescent moon. All the cousins are 18 or older now, so they got that tattoo together.
The tattoo Joshua’s cousins got to honor and remember him.
The town of Harrisburg also held a memorial for Joshua at the High School recently.
“It was packed. Standing room only. That was how much people were affected by this,” Lindholm said. “It was filled with kids and parents and everyone in the community because they all knew Josh, loved Josh.”
She said it was heartwarming to see the community support for her sister and brother-in-law and Josh’s brother Zachary. But she said she also thinks that many parents showed up because they thought: “That could have been my kid.”
When asked what she thinks our community should do in response to the fentanyl epidemic, she replied:
“I think we need to; just like the Albany Police Department in Linn County, they are beating the streets and the schools and getting out there and informing parents of what this is so they can sit down and talk with their kids about it, too,” she said. “I haven’t heard anything about that in Wenatchee, and I’ve reached out to law enforcement and still haven’t heard anything back from them. Why aren’t we talking about it here?”
Lindholm said she hopes that sharing Joshua’s story will lead parents to talk to their kids about this issue and raise awareness about the fentanyl and opioid epidemic.
She said she urges people to watch the documentary “Dead On Arrival,” which I am embedding here.
Lindholm stressed that the fentanyl crisis and opioid epidemic are killing Americans between the ages of 18 to 45 at an alarming rate in every state across the country. And the numbers released just this week by the CDC show the pandemic “just poured fuel on the fire of the overdose epidemic,” one expert said.
According to the CDC, more than 107,000 people died due to overdose last year.
And Lindholm thinks we should be doing a better job of addressing that issue here in the Wenatchee Valley.
“A local first responder told me they get weekly calls for fentanyl overdoses,” she said. “Weekly. Why aren’t we hearing about it? Get educated on it.”
If you would like to learn more about talking to your loved ones about these issues, an excellent place to start is the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services webpage dedicated to Families Coping with Mental and Substance Use Disorders.
So sad for this family. This is such an important topic. I’m grateful they were willing to open up to the public.
Tragic.