Mitch Ouimette filled out a Springfield Technical Community College application three days before he died. He dreamed of joining the military and wanted to go back to school to help achieve that goal.
That application will never be considered, the dream never realized.
The 19-year-old Hampshire Regional graduate and former athlete died from an apparent prescription opioid overdose sometime between going to bed on the night of Sept. 21 and the next morning, when his father, Jim Ouimette, found him dead in their Easthampton home. No official cause of death has been determined, but his father calls it an overdose.
“If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone,” Jim said. “This epidemic is killing good kids who aren’t mature enough to have good judgment, and they get trapped.”
Mitch was a good kid. In addition to excelling on the football and basketball teams, the 2016 graduate earned a reputation for welcoming new students into the district.
“He was a first friend to a lot of people,” said Aubrianne Kane, a close friend of Mitch’s from Hampshire. “We’ve all been hanging out together and trying to help each other out — but you can tell there’s a piece missing not having him around.”
Mitch brought smiles to his friends and peers. He loved practical jokes.
“Any time I pulled something like that or one of his teammates pulled something like that, somehow you knew Mitch was going to be involved or basically in the front row watching the whole thing transpire,” said Claud Salomao, Mitch’s basketball coach for six years at Hampshire. “He loved that stuff. The kid loved to laugh.”
During his sophomore year, Mitch downloaded an app for his phone that turned televisions on and off. He walked down the history hallway at Hampshire, turning on TVs as teachers scrambled to find a cause.
“There’s Mitch in the hallway laughing his ass off because he’s like controlling all of the TVs from his telephone,” said Chalam Hosig, a special education teacher at Hampshire. “Everyone’s like, ‘What, is the school haunted, what’s going on?’ The kid would literally be sitting in the back of the room turning red because he was laughing so hard.”
Hosig taught Mitch during his entire time at Hampshire, both in a guided academics course and math, where she co-taught with one of the math teachers. She described him as a “typical boy next door” and a jock but noted that sports helped Mitch mature and motivated him academically.
“He didn’t think he was going in the NBA, and he knew he wasn’t going to go in the NFL, but just having that team counting on him really motivated him to get his work done,” Hosig said. “I think it matured him in a way. I don’t think a lot of kids really find that until they’re older.”
By the time he reached his senior year, though, some adults at the school began to notice changes in Mitch.
Salomao saw his passion for basketball decline.
“His personality was a little different his senior year. He struggled at times. I work in corrections, so I see a lot of different things,” said Salomao, who works in the jail with the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department. Nonetheless, he added, “There was never any indication to me that at any point of time, with me, he was on drugs.”
Hosig heard and saw more. She observed Mitch coming to school late, or not coming at all. Or coming and sleeping at school instead of going to class. On occasion, students would tell her about parties over the weekend where they saw Mitch and others using opioids.
“I had a really great relationship with Mitch, so any time any of those types of rumors would come across my desk, I would hunt him down and find him and try to have a heart to heart with him,” Hosig said. “He would always swear up and down, ‘Mrs. Hosig, I swear it’s not happening, I swear nothing’s going on. I’m not doing that kind of stuff, you know me, you know me, I would never do that.’”
“He would never admit it to me,” she said. “I kind of wish, in hindsight, that I pushed him a little bit more.”
Mitch wasn’t the only one struggling to stay on track. Students also spoke with Hampshire assistant principal Mark Folta concerned about increasing opioid use by other friends. The administration knew it was a problem and started contacting families, making them aware of what they were hearing. They reached out to local and state police organizations and counselors to get a handle on the situation.
“Whenever we hear things like this we’re trying to get ahead of the story, get ahead of what we think might be happening,” Folta said. “Most of the conversations we had were successful with parents and talking with their kids. Some were not. Some parents are in denial or disbelief.”
Hampshire principal Kristen Smidy said they met with six families. Two of those families said that intervention might have saved their kids’ lives, she recalled. Others told school officials to back off.
“It depends on how receptive the family is,” Smidy said.
Hampshire participates in the Strategic Planning Initiative for Families and Youth (SPIFFY) drug prevention survey, which asks students to report anonymously on their own drug usage. Smidy said the school’s opioid/heroin/cocaine usage rate was under 2 percent in a student population of about 500. SPIFFY found that 1.6 percent of Hampshire County seniors reported using opioid in the past 30 days in 2017. That’s down from a peak of 6.7 percent in 2009.
Folta and Smidy approached the issue from a health perspective more than a disciplinary one. Folta didn’t see an advantage in suspending kids from school when they benefit from being in a supportive environment. Students found distributing drugs, though, face expulsion, Smidy said. Hampshire hasn’t expelled a student for distributing drugs in a few years, Smidy said. It’s only happened twice in her five years as principal and two as an assistant principal.
“We’re trying to save kids’ lives, that’s the stance we took with it,” Folta said. “We want them to get help and get better. That’s the kind of culture we’ve created and the kind of community we want to have here.”
Mitch drifted away from Hampshire’s support when he graduated. He moved in with his mother, Evelyn Ouimette, and sister, Chantel Ouimette, in Springfield.
“I know things weren’t good over there. They started noticing things,” Jim said. “I don’t know the timeline. I don’t know when the addiction started.” Evelyn and Chantel declined to comment for this article.
According to his father, Mitch was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder in high school and was prescribed Adderall that he later admitted abusing. Jim thought that was a gateway drug.
Jim said he noticed Mitch was lethargic and sleeping more when he saw him. His moods were changing, he became more argumentative. He struggled to hold down jobs and had car accidents.
“I’m sure it was attributable to using,” Jim said.
Mitch’s parents discussed and researched the signs, and she called treatment centers to ask for advice in the summer of 2017. The nurses she spoke with told her he was probably using drugs, and they needed to confront him rather than enable him, Jim said.
Mitch was between jobs at the time in July. He’d missed a job interview on a Wednesday, so his parents confronted him the next day. Mitch got upset and denied drug use. He slammed the door so hard Jim worried he’d broken it.
“Our next step was basically to do an intervention,” Jim said.
Mitch had another job interview on Friday. Evelyn sent him a text message outlining that they thought something was going on and were in touch with a rehab center, all he had to do was say the word. She told him they loved him but they couldn’t help him, he had to help himself now, Jim said.
Mitch responded simply and quickly: “I want to go today.”
The rehab center, Oxford Treatment Center in Mississippi, didn’t have room for him that Friday, but could accommodate him the upcoming Sunday. In the interim, Mitch and his dad drove through the tornado-damaged areas around Sturbridge and Monson and found Lake Slog in Holland.
“We talked to him a lot during those three days before, and he was very open and honest about things,” Jim said. “He claimed it was two or three months that he’d felt the addiction.”
Mitch shared an Instagram post from the lake Saturday. The caption said he was going away and starting his new life. A comment asked if he was going on vacation. Mitch responded, “No, rehab.”
“When he was going away he seemed so hopeful and it was exciting to see him live his life again,” Kane, his close friend from high school, said.
Mitch boarded the plane to Mississippi on June 18 and spent 45 days in rehab.
Hearing he went to rehab brought a deep sense of relief to Mitch’s friends.
“It was the best, that’s all I ever wanted for him,” said Joe Laliberte, a friend of Mitch’s and fellow 2016 Hampshire graduate.
In Mississippi, Mitch was elected a cabin leader by the other patients. Jim talked to him every other day over the phone and flew down for a parents weekend five weeks into his stay.
“He was doing great, he really was,” Jim said.
When he left rehab Aug. 3, Mitch moved back in with his dad in Easthampton. He joined a gym, started working part time and participated in an intensive outpatient therapy program four days a week.
Noah Batchelder, who played football with Mitch, returned from vacation the day Mitch got home from rehab. They went to the gym together the next day, picking up old rhythms from their middle school days.
“It was the greatest thing ever having that feeling like your best friend is back and he’s good,” Batchelder said.
And for a while, he was good. But addiction and recovery don’t follow a straight line.
“When he got back he seemed so good, he texted all of us. He wasn’t even smoking weed or anything,” said Zeb Taylor, a friend from Hampshire. “One of my last memories of him is all of us playing football at our friend’s house, just laughs and good times and him telling me he’s doing good trying to get into college. I thought he was doing good.”
Jim struggled balancing trust and vigilance in dealing with his son after his return.
“You can’t isolate him, though. You’re going to push him right back,” Jim said. “It’s such a balance between isolating and trust. What level of trust do you give?”
He noticed Mitch looked lethargic one day and confronted him about it. Mitch claimed he’d taken a Xanax, a sedative used to ease anxiety.
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” Jim said. “The thing about an addict is, addicts lie.”
Jim also considered the possibility that Mitch was suffering from post-acute withdrawal symptoms, the explanation Mitch gave for his behavior. Jim researched it and decided it was plausible.
“The brain’s damaged and it’s got to heal,” he said. “But it was also plausible that he was using.”
Jim noticed Mitch was sleeping more in early September. He passed all of his drug tests, but Jim suspected his son had used fake urine.
“Things weren’t adding up,” Jim said. “I wanted to believe it was this post-acute syndrome. What I was hearing and just kind of watching him, I just came to the conclusion Thursday (Sept. 21) that he was using.”
Jim prepared to confront him.
“It was getting tense here. We were calling him out, he was denying, denying,” Jim said. “It was all coming to a head Thursday night. I was ready to really call him out the next day. Life was going to change again.”
He never got the chance.
Jim went into Mitch’s room the next morning, Friday, Sept. 22, after he’d slept late. He found Mitch dead.
“I would have never thought this would happen. It’s hard to be a good friend. It’s hard to say to someone, ‘you’re messing up,’” Taylor said. “Now this happens. We’re fragile.”
Batchelder was back at Worcester State when he heard the news.
“It really made me mad. I was frustrated,” he said. “I don’t know what type of people would do that to a person like Mitch, especially coming back from rehab. I don’t know.”
That question persists among the friends Mitch left behind.
“It’s upsetting to think there were people around him that would enable him when everyone could see looking at him or looking at pictures of him you would just know he wanted to make the progress. He looked like he was ready to fight it,” Kane said. “It takes one slip-up, it takes the wrong person to totally backtrack you with something like this.”
Easthampton played a home football game the night Mitch died, and the team and community honored Mitch’s life. Many of Mitch’s friends stood near the sideline border rope, hugging and remembering.
Around 500 people attended Mitch’s wake. That and the funeral showed Jim a side of his son he didn’t see much over the past few years.
“It was uplifting to know my son’s short life mattered to these people. I think they got to know him better than I did in his later teenage years. I think he had more of a personality out there,” Jim said. “I just pray that he hasn’t died in vain and it does open some kids’ eyes to not even try it or not play that Russian Roulette.”
One young man Jim didn’t know approached him at the wake. He said that he’d met Mitch at Holyoke Community College, which they both attended last fall before Mitch dropped out. The kid told Jim he’d been off drugs and sober for six months in part because of Mitch.
“He told me, ‘It could have been me,’” Jim said. “I was very affected because he said Mitch really helped him with it, and I think they were helping each other. So if that kid can use this as something that can give him strength and stay off, it’s a lifelong battle, I hope that’s the effect his death has.”
Losing Mitch brought the opioid crisis home for his friends. It made something they’d largely read or heard about real.
“It’s something hard that no one wants to deal with, and people are scared,” Laliberte said. “It’s not something that’s easy to talk about with anybody. You have to make that leap and do what you can do to help no matter how hard it is.”
It made some of his friends examine their own decisions regarding substance abuse.
“He lost so much ability to make the good choices he should have made,” said Sean Ryan, a friend from Hampshire. “That’s a terrifying thing to not feel like you have choices.”
Jim drew attention to the importance of awareness.
“I think part of the problem with some of us parents is we put a blinder on and you don’t think it’s going to happen to your kid,” he said. “I think we’ve got to start young with our kids and talk to them and talk about the opiates. They are out there.”
He encouraged other parents to be proactive, investigate and confront them early, steps he wished he’d taken.
“Do I have regrets? Sure. You can’t let it destroy you. Right now I have an emptiness in me, the sadness that I carry. Sometimes it kind of actually hurts,” Jim said. “You get those what ifs. I gotta live. I’ve got a beautiful daughter, great friends and family, I’ve got a lot of support.”
Mitch’s friends are supporting each other. They don’t have many answers, but one reality will linger.
“What’s going to be tough to deal with for all of us is that he was only 19. We still have all of our lives ahead of us,” Kane said. “To see someone with so much potential lose their life to something like this is going to be hard to deal with for everyone.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com.