Every Saturday afternoon, Aimee Dunkle stands behind Santa Ana’s City Hall with a framed picture of her son, Ben, as she hands out brown paper bags filled with kits of the opioid overdose-blocking drug Naloxone—a medication she says will save the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of Orange County residents. As Dunkle worked on a recent Saturday, a woman approached her with tears in her eyes. “I just wanted to say thank you,” she said, explaining that the Naloxone she got three weeks ago saved her son from overdose. “If it wasn’t for that stuff he’d be dead.” Another man shuffled towards her, his head hung low, and asked not for Naloxone, but for encouragement before he turns himself in t

This Orange County mother has been saving lives since her son died of a heroin overdose. Ben Dunkle was 20 years old when he overdosed on heroin, leaving his family in indescribable pain. Mother Aimee Dunkle found herself without a son, and now spends Saturdays with her Solace Foundation helping the children of others recognize the signs and symptoms of heroin overdose and providing life-saving measures in the form of Naloxone. Ben, is more than a statistic found in the "Opioid Overdose and Death in Orange County" report released Tuesday by the Orange County Health Care Agency. He is Aimee Dunkle's reason. Reading between the lines of the technical report, one will find Orange County nonprof