HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016 04-25 Son's overdose death drives this Minnesota legislator's work STAR TRIBUNE4/27/2016 Son's overdose death drives this Minnesota legislator's work - StarTribune.com
NATIONAL
Son's overdose death drives this
Minnesota legislator's work
By JON COLLINS Associated Press APRIL 25, 2016 - 12:10AM
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Dan Baker had just been kicked out of a drug treatment program for
sharing medication with a roommate. With his family out of town on vacation, the 25 -
year -old took a TV from his parents' empty house in Willmar and headed to
Minneapolis in search of heroin.
"We'd been trying to call Dan all morning because we knew he was home. And he would
never answer, never answer the phone," said his father, Dave Baker.
"My wife was really worried," he said. "'Something's not right."'
Dave and the rest of his family flew back from their California vacation that next
morning, still unable to reach their son, Minnesota Public Radio News
(http://bit.ly/lSnam7R) reported.
When they landed, there was a message on Dave's phone to call one of the restaurants
they own. The urgency of the message, he said, felt "odd."
Dave called as soon as the plane landed. He was told that Dan had died of a heroin
overdose that morning in a Maplewood home.
"It was a horrible situation on the airplane, on the tarmac. It was full of passengers,"
Dave said. "We just had to go into: 'Now what do we do? Oh my god, we've actually lost
one of our babies, and we can never get this back.
It was March 9, 2011. It was the sort of loss that made it hard to breathe, Dave said, even
hours afterward.
Photos of Dan show a clean-cut, athletic young man with short brown hair. Growing up,
he wasn't one for drinking or partying. Instead, he played baseball and hockey. His
father said he was a "good friend to a lot of people."
It wasn't until he enrolled at the University of St. Thomas that doctors first prescribed
him opioid painkillers for a minor back injury that kept nagging at him.
The first hint that the pain pills had become a problem for Dan came not long after,
when his longtime high school girlfriend told his parents she was worried. She said he
wasn't going to class. He was staying in his room. He just wasn't himself.
"He used them more to take away the pain," Dave said. "He felt this unusual buzz, and I
think that was sort of the beginning of what he was able to not turn off so easily."
Dan's parents started accompanying him to doctor visits. They found out he'd been
doctor -shopping, getting more than one doctor to prescribe him the painkillers he
wanted. But even with the support of his family, Dan struggled with the cravings.
"When he could, he always preferred the pills, but it was just getting harder and harder
to find. And then he'd have to buy them off the street. It was very expensive," Dave said.
"When he couldn't get the pills any longer, I think, he dabbled with the heroin, probably
a year before he died."
A stint at an inpatient treatment center in Granite Falls, Minnesota, led to a sober streak,
a new job and a room in a halfway house in Rochester. But it all fell apart after he was
laid off. His father thinks this is when he first experimented with heroin.
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4/27/2016 Son's overdose death drives this Minnesota legislator's work - StarTribune.com
Dan's family left for vacation after he enrolled back in the Granite Falls treatment
program. The night before they were scheduled to return home, they got a call. Dan had
been kicked out of the program for sharing medication with his roommate. Dan assured
his father that he would be OK until they got home.
Instead, Dan and a friend he had met at rehab bought heroin in Minneapolis and went
back to an acquaintance's home in Maplewood.
Dan knew he was going back to treatment and had no intentions of "hitting it hard that
night," his father said. But the cravings won over.
"His body had been clean for two, three weeks," Dave said. "He thought he could
probably do what he did before and his body was saying, 'Absolutely not."'
The next morning, paramedics who had been called to the home pronounced Dan Baker
dead.
A father wants to protect his children at any cost, Dave said. Dan's death has left a void
in his family.
"For our son and daughter, they'll have to know that they can't ever call on their older
brother Dan and see what he's been up to," he said. "For us, it's that emptiness of a
parent not being able to put your arms around your child, and maybe someday having
grandchildren and having a wife, and those things that we'll always kind of wonder
about."
But time, faith and community have helped heal some of the pain. Dave Baker and his
wife have raised more than $130,000 in Dan's name for addiction support services and
other causes. He was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2014 and has
spearheaded efforts in the Legislature to expand programs that prevent opioid overdose
deaths.
"My wife and I, we'll be buried with our son back in Aitkin, back in the cemetery," Dave
said. "And we will always want to live our lives better because he was a part of it."
Signs of Dan are all over his father's office: a poster on the wall for a benefit for the
foundation his wife and he created in Dan's name; a photo of Dan's face rotating
through a digital picture frame.
"For me it's about making sure that every time I come in in the mornings here I always
say, 'Good morning, Dan,"' Dave said. "And he's always there."
This is an AP Member Exchange shared by Minnesota Public Radio News
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