High in Ohio: Remembering Hunter LaChance

Lori Ewing has a collage of 11 pictures of her late son, Hunter LaChance.

Connecting the photos is a message: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

LaChance died of an overdose of heroin and tramadol on Aug. 3. He was 21.

“It’s the ultimate pain a parent can feel,” Ewing said. “You just wonder how you’re going to get through the rest of your life without him.”

For the last two and a half months of his life, LaChance lived in Norwalk. He worked at RR Donnelley in Willard.

Ewing and her boyfriend, Vic Noe, would often spend the weekend with LaChance. They were planning to do so on the night he died.

“When Hunter left that day, we had just gone and rented $20 worth of movies,” Ewing said. “He put a movie in and said he had to run somewhere, that he’d be right back.”

That was around 4:45 p.m. Ewing called LaChance at 7, and he said he’d be there soon.

It was the last time she ever spoke to her son.

LaChance had gone to visit friends in Shelby. According to the Richland County coroner’s report, witnesses said LaChance was pale and lethargic. LaChance told them he was high on Triple C (coricidin, cough and cold medicine).

His friends went to bed, while LaChance slept on the floor. They checked on him at 2 a.m. but he was not breathing. They started CPR and called 911.

LaChance was pronounced dead at OhioHealth MedCentral Shelby Hospital. Ewing identified his body.

“I wanted to see him before they took him,” she said.

Ewing will regret her last conversation with her son.

“We got in an argument before he left,” she said. “It was the one and only time we didn’t say we loved each other. I was kind of mad at him for leaving.”

Troubled teen years

LaChance grew up in Galion and attended school there through his freshman year. His parents divorced when he was 12. Older brother Evan stayed with their dad, Richard, while LaChance lived with Ewing.

The teen attended Crestline High School as a sophomore.

“The first year in Crestline, he did OK,” Ewing said. “He hung out with older kids. A lot of them graduated.

“The next year, Hunter started getting bullied a little bit.”

LaChance talked his mother into letting him quit school, though he later earned his GED.

Ewing said her son struggled when he was 16, skipping school and abusing Triple C. He even dabbled in heroin, his mother said.

“He just got mixed up in some stuff,” Ewing said.

LaChance’s attitude toward his mother also changed around that time.

“He became hateful toward me, acting like I was the problem,” Ewing said.

Ewing said she didn’t really know the extent of LaChance’s drug problem.

“So many parents don’t know how to help their children,” she lamented.

A different person

LaChance wasn’t the same person when he was off drugs.

Ewing, who wrote her son’s obituary, described him as kind and sweet. He loved animals and had three pets, a cocker spaniel named Magnum and cats named Princess Annabelle and Prince Caspian.

“He was a joy to be around,” Ewing said. “He had a vibrant personality. He loved to laugh, sing and be silly.”

Ewing said LaChance wanted to go to college and even hoped to be a scientist.

He also liked to cook.

“The Wednesday before he passed away, he called and asked me how to make a pot roast,” Ewing said.

Noe knew LaChance for only a year while dating his mother.

“I was blessed meeting Hunter,” Noe said. “He always made me laugh and smile. He never complained, took life for what it was worth.

“I learned to love Hunter. He was a great friend and kid.”

Margie Maddox is the CEO of Alpha Recovery, a 12-step program in Crawford County. She agreed with Noe’s assessment of LaChance.

“His smile would light up the whole group,” she said.

Maddox said she also visited LaChance in jail, adding he had a relationship with God and got baptized. He also wanted to stay off drugs, she said.

“Hunter had a hunger and a thirst to be sober,” Maddox said. “He just didn’t know how.”

Maddox worried about LaChance when he moved to Norwalk.

“He separated from his connection,” she said, adding LaChance stopped coming to sessions at Alpha Recovery.

LaChance had no one to mentor him, no one to hold him accountable. He was on his own.

“Being 21, he was just trying to figure life out,” Ewing said.

Ewing had hoped heroin wouldn’t be in LaChance’s system during his autopsy.

“I didn’t want him to get back into it,” she said. “Heroin’s like a demon.”

Of the 21 fatal overdoses so far this year in Richland County, 11 are heroin-related.

Four months after LaChance’s death, Ewing is still struggling. She attends a support group at MedCentral Mansfield Hospital for parents who have lost children.

A portion of the obituary she wrote about her son was particularly poignant.

“He will be missed by many but loved forever,” his mother wrote.

mcaudill@gannett.com

419-521-7219

Twitter: @MNJCaudill

About this series

Last year 25 people died of drug overdoses in Richland County. Had these fatalities occurred in a singular accident, it would have been one of the most tragic events in recent history.

But because they happen one at a time and out of view, they are routinely ignored. We believe this masks the problem. Throughout this year, The News Journal has investigated Ohio’s drug problem and its tremendous impact on our neighborhoods and families.

As one part of that effort, we have been publishing information on every local drug overdose death as they occur or are verified. The stories vary in substance depending on a family’s willingness to discuss the victim and other factors. Names may not be used in all situations.

This problem hurts real families and likely won’t stop until awareness is increased. We hope to help raise that awareness.