Mya's story

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"I don't think I could count the times I was so down on myself and cried wondering why God has to make me hurt so bad and what purpose do I have here. To numb the pain, I did drugs, because when I was high – there was no feeling."

- Mya Schiele, personal journal entry

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From all appearances, Mya was your typical American teenager, with all the emotional highs and lows that come with those sometimes-turbulent formative years.

The 2020 CHS graduate was full of love, kindness and vigor for her family and friends, had a steady job as a waitress at Hi-Way Drive In during the summer months, and her smile and expressive blue eyes could light up a room.

"She was a very kind soul," her mother, Shani Reisnour, recalled. "Pretty loud, too, if you knew her well."

Some of her interests included horses, barrel racing, being around her cousins, and working as a nanny for the beloved kids in her care at the Kiddie Korral 2.0 Child Care Center and Early Learning Program in Minot.

"Mya had a great bond with young kids, and those with special needs," said Reisnour, who noted her almost sisterly relationship with her friend she met at Hi-Way Drive In, April Klein.

Like all kids, Mya wasn't perfect, as sometimes her headstrong attitude could give her mom and step-father, Curtis Reisnour, as well as her father, Jessie Schiele, heartache from her antics.

But on July 24, 2022, just as she was budding into a young adult, the extended family's world came crashing down upon the devastating news that no parent should ever hear.

At only 20 years of age, Mya was found dead at the family farm just outside of Norwich (roughly 15 miles east of Minot), from what was found to be an overdose of fentanyl.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, her family could scarcely process the emotions and chaos, along with the questions and self-reflection, that could have caused their daughter's addictive spiral.

"It was just kind of a gradual progression," Reis-nour said. "I can't specifically say when her behavior started to change."

"I just couldn't see it"

Mya was born May 14, 2002, in Minot, to Jessie and Shani. She came into the world with a congenital birth defect in her jawbone that made speech difficult, and left her with a lingering lisp. Often, the shy Mya felt like an outcast while growing up in various North Dakota towns.

When she came to Carrington, she made a new set of friends and acquaintances, and with time, things were starting to look up for Mya.

"Many times, our house was full of her friends. There was never an empty spot at the dinner table," Reisnour said, as she showed the present state of her dining room with numerous empty chairs.

Mya loved her horse, Turbo, which her mother joked was very "ironically-named" because he was slow. Her plans for education included going to school for early childhood development.

A major life change for Mya occurred in 2019, when she underwent surgery to correct her jaw issues. From around the age of 10, she wore braces for an extended period.

One red flag Reisnour pointed to during that process was the prescription of OxyContin, another synthetic opioid with the potential of abuse, to control Mya's pain from the surgery.

While the procedure gave her daughter a new sense of confidence, it managed to exacerbate her other addictive behaviors.

Her mother conceded Mya's destructive tendencies, noting her love of parties and marijuana use, which began to increase upon moving to Minot.

On October 28, 2021, she lost one of her best friends to fentanyl.

"Then, I started to get scared," Reisnour said. "If he was using it, there was a possibility she was, too."

Just over three weeks later, around Thanksgiving, a despondent Mya became very inebriated, and her mom called the police.

"She was acting extremely irrationally, and just was not like herself. And, when it was all over, she didn't remember a thing of it," recalled Reisnour.

Her parents finally put their foot down, giving Mya an ultimatum.

"We gave her two options, either you move back home, or we're cutting contact with you because I wasn't going to support her choices," said Reisnour. "It was the worst couple months I ever experienced [as a mother]."

On a FaceTime call, Mya shared with her mother a very startling, and scary, development.

"She had bruises all over her legs, and that's when I knew this was getting serious," she said. "From that point on, it spiraled super-fast."

Mya became anxiety-ridden and financially destitute from her addiction. One thing she did manage to hide from her loved ones was evidence of the fentanyl in her system.

"I was drug-testing her every three days, and we didn't know how those tests didn't have fentanyl in them."

Her mother partially blames herself for what ultimately happened to Mya, especially in light of her line of work as an EMS provider.

"I just couldn't see it," she said. "Being a paramedic, I should have been able to pinpoint [the warning signs]; it was right under my nose."

In the end, all she, Curtis, Jessie and her extended family have of Mya are her memories, and a journal (referenced earlier in this story) which gives an enlightening, and sometimes chilling, account of her innermost thoughts, dreams, and fears.

The suspect in Mya's death is believed to be currently in custody. Due to the ongoing investigation, concrete specifics of the case could not be shared with the Independent.

What is fentanyl?

According to information provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid drug approved by the FDA for use as an analgesic (pain reliever) and anesthetic.

In its analgesic use, it is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.

Reisnour says that it's important to make the distinction between medical-grade fentanyl and illicit fentanyl, noting that with its dark reputation, patients have shied away from wanting to take a drug that is helpful in surgical capacities.

According to data compiled by the North Dakota Violent Death Reporting System (NDVDRS) dating back to 2019, the amount of deaths attributable to overdose has risen, from 76 in 2019, to 115 and 132 in 2020-21 and a high of 133 in 2022. Data from that year is preliminary, according to a graph taken from the website of the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services, hhs.nd.gov/health.

In preliminary reports covering the period from the start of the year to July 10, 2023, North Dakota's fatal overdose numbers sat at 40 total.

Of those deaths, 42.1% of the 2019 fatalities were fentanyl overdoses, which then jumped to 61.7% in 2020. After a slight dip to 59.1% in 2021, the rates made a sharp climb to 68.4% (2022, preliminary) and 69.2% thus far in 2023.

In neighboring Minnesota, 1,002 overdose deaths were recorded in 2022, with an even 62% attributable to fentanyl.

One disconcerting trend has been the diminishing number of arrests made for drug/narcotics violations. In 2018, there were 5,455 arrests, a 7.4% increase from the following year. Every year since that time, arrests have dropped, all the way down to 3,721 in 2022. That represents yearly decreases of 8.2, 14.9, 1.4 and 11.4%.

Signs of an opioid overdose may include:

• Slow/shallow breathing

• Less than one breath every 6 seconds

• Gasping breaths

• Blue skin tone

• No response to pain, if a sternal rub is applied

• Small, or "pinpoint" pupils

Fighting back

Foster County Public Health Prevention Coordinator Robin Simonson has been at the forefront of the county's fight against opioid addiction and the push for education and training to combat overdoses in their early stages.

One of the tools available to first responders, says Simonson, is ONEbox, an emergency opioid overdose reversal kit which has been distributed to 10 locations throughout the county, including Carrington and Midkota Public Schools.

ONEbox contains the drug naloxone, which is commonly known by the trade names Narcan, Evzio, and Nyxoid, among others. Naloxone acts as an "opioid receptor antagonist", and reverses opioids' harmful effects to the body's central nervous and respiratory systems.

Naloxone can take effect in up to two minutes from administration if it is taken intravenously (IV), five minutes via injection to the muscles, and 10 minutes via nasal spray.

ONEboxes are installed near AEDs (automated external defibrillators) in community spaces. They include short, step-by-step videos on how to administer Narcan without prior training.

Two doses of Narcan are included with each ONEbox, as well as a CPR mask and sterile gloves.

"With the state opioid response grant, we are working on establishing a local peer support specialist with lived experience to be a local resource," Simonson added.

FCPH offers free naloxone training for businesses and community members. Call (701) 652-3087 to learn more.

CHI St. Alexius Health Carrington Medical Center also sponsors a program called MAT (Medication Assisted Treatment), which combines behavior therapy with medications to treat substance abuse disorders, specifically opioids. The hospital can also treat pain patients through the clinic.

Those interested in MAT can call CHI Carrington at (701) 652-2515.

In addition, FCPH, along with the Foster County Sheriff's Office, has periodic "Take Back" events where persons can turn in their unused or expired medications for safe disposal.

Additional Take Back locations include Carrington Drug, Central Pharmacy and the Carrington Police Department.

The public health office also offers Deterra, a safe-to-use at home drug deactivation system that can be used for drugs in pill, film, patch, liquid or cream form.

Educating others

As for Reisnour, she is talking to whatever public information channels and media outlets will let her tell her story, thus ensuring that Mya's death is not in vain.

"I have to not be ashamed of my daughter, but relish in her memory," she says. "With the knowledge and training that I have, I have to do this."

Reisnour believes that in small towns such as Carrington and in the state as a whole, there is a stigma about talking about addiction, as well as mental health in general. Often, the infrastructure to handle it is severely lacking in the state.

For example, where she works, in Dunseith near the Turtle Mountain Reservation, there is a desperate need for more EMS units and beds to handle psychiatric cases.

"Statewide, our pediatric psych units are oftentimes full," she says. "Several times, we've had to transfer patients from Belcourt all the way to Rapid City."

She spoke at the DEA regional summit meeting in Minneapolis on October 19, which was attended by over two dozen affected families from North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The Reisnours were the only family from North Dakota at the summit.

As part of her presentation, Reisnour gave an emotional PowerPoint presentation featuring audio of the actual 911 call her ex-mother-in-law placed when Mya was found, which is used in Narcan training. Along with informational slides on drug use and crime statistics, the impact of her speech was punctuated with images from Mya's funeral and autopsy.

At the DEA summit, she met U.S. Attorney Mac Schneider, who represents the District of North Dakota.

Schneider spoke to the Independent of the work his and other attorneys' offices are doing to combat the opioid epidemic at the state and federal levels.

"Fentanyl is an absolute scourge that affects communities, urban, rural, great and small, throughout the entire country," he said. "And, unfortunately, North Dakota is no exception to that."

He outlined what he called his office's "relentless prosecution" strategy, which has a two-fold approach:

• Firstly, to target the organized criminal cartels that have communities in their sights for fentanyl distribution, which include elements in larger urban areas such as Detroit, and also international drug rings. Schneider cited the case of a Canadian dealer convicted this year whose drugs were ultimately sold in North Dakota and led to numerous fatalities, and

• Secondly, to target the proliferation of drugs in Indian Country, as it is referred to in United States Code.

"What we've seen is that criminal organizations that target [there], they don't just stay put in tribal communities, they also spread throughout the state," Schneider said.

He mentioned a case where drugs from the Turtle Mountain Reservation made their way to Fargo's Hawthorne neighborhood (historic district).

"It's just around the corner from where my kids go to elementary school," he said. Schneider added, "The point of all this is, we're all in this together."

Even with all the tools U.S. attorneys have, Schneider openly admitted, "We can't prosecute our way out of this. It's not something that prosecutors, working in conjunction with law enforcement, can shut down."

He praised the efforts of the Reisnours and others to get the message out, saying, "By telling their stories of unspeakable loss, to raise awareness, and provide for more effective approaches, and really create community response to this, helps a lot."

In Minneapolis, Schneider was joined by District of Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, and South Dakota U.S. Attorney Allison Ramsdell, where they discussed community outreach approaches.

One of their goals is to draw attention to the nationwide "Faces of Fentanyl" DEA exhibit, which is displayed in Arlington, Va. and contains images of all loved ones lost to the epidemic.

"These aren't statistics, they're fathers, brothers, sisters, and all of our families are at risk of tragic consequences from this extremely dangerous drug," he concluded.

Reisnour also got the chance to bond with another grieving mother, Malia Fox, whose 44-year-old son, Joshua, died of an overdose two weeks after Mya's passing.

In addition, she was invited to appear as a guest on Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Angela Kennecke's podcast, "Grieving Out Loud." She met Kennecke at the summit, and the episode recorded on November 2 has now been released.

Kennecke is from Sioux Falls, S.D. Her daughter, Emily, an artist, musician, and athlete, also died from fentanyl poisoning. Her death spurred Angela to create "Emily's Hope," a charitable foundation which includes a substance-abuse prevention curriculum in development for grade school-age children.

Reisnour says there are also plans to create a statewide memorial through the "First Lady Project", to honor the memory of all those who have succumbed to it.

"Right now, there are only eight people on the memorial wall at the moment," she says. "We want people to be aware of it."

Getting help

Any person currently experiencing addiction or a mental health crisis, or who knows someone who is, is encouraged to get help, and to know that they are not alone in their fight.

Through her mission statement, Reisnour says, "I'm a mom on a mission, pouring pain into purpose. My ultimate goal is to use Mya's voice to help others and save lives. No more stigma! No more shame!"

Reisnour says she is willing to discuss her experience with anyone who needs someone to talk to about their own situation. She can be contacted by direct message through Facebook at her profile name, Shani Rudland Reisnour, and she also offers her cell number, (701) 578-4575.

Additional helpful resources include:

• Community Medical Services, Minot, communitymedicalservices.org; (701) 858-1801

• The Village Family Service Center, Minot and Fargo, http://www.thevillagefamily.org/services/first-step-recovery; 800-627-8220

• Substances Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), http://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline; 800-662-HELP (4357).