NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio -- Paula Novak spent a weekend last August talking with parents of other North Olmsted High School hockey players about her oldest son who she hoped would finally play in the program's alumni game.
Her 23-year-old son, Taylor Folds, 23, had spent years battling addiction. The former defenseman for the Eagles was a few months sober after a years-long addiction to heroin. He told his mother a few days earlier that he was doing well.
But Folds never played in that alumni game. He took a fatal dose of heroin Aug. 29 in his bedroom in an apartment on West 140th Street in Cleveland.
It was a Saturday, the same weekend his mother went to speak to the hockey moms and dads about her son's struggles. She didn't learn until Monday about his fatal overdose, and that her son had become one of 228 people to overdose on heroin, fentanyl or a combination of the two last year in Cuyahoga County.
"All the other hockey parents were so happy that Taylor was doing so good," she said in a recent interview. "But here he was already gone. And I didn't even know it."
Opiate addiction has become a public health crisis. cleveland.com is chronicling the the Heroin's human toll series the stories of those people who are left behind; the parents, children and family members who are now a part of a growing fraternity of real people behind the deadly statistics.
Folds had a sharp wit growing up, and was quick to make friends. He loved to goof around with his younger nieces and nephews, and surprised them on Easter morning when he was in seventh grade by showing up in an Easter Bunny costume.
He was passionate about skateboarding and music. He taught himself to play the drums, and his neighbors would listen to him play along with classic rock and metal songs by Ozzy Osbourne, The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. He and his grandmother listened to the local classic rock station together.
Folds never showed any warning signs of addiction, until his junior year. He told Novak that he wanted to quit hockey. When she told him that he needed to finish what he started, Folds purposely failed a class to make himself academically ineligible to play, Novak said.
Later that year, the same day the family moved into a new house, a teacher found a small amount of marijuana on Folds in the school's lunchroom. A confrontation ensued, and North Olmsted police were called to the school, Novak said.
Police didn't arrest him, but Folds entered a behavioral treatment center and spent three days there, she said.
After that, Folds did a "complete 180," Novak said.
He turned his grades around. He re-joined the hockey team and made varsity. After the season, the coach named Folds the team's rookie of the year and the most improved player. He graduated with honors, Novak said.
Most of Folds' friends went away for college, while he stayed and went to Cuyahoga Community College. He wanted to be a glassblower, but Novak encouraged him to take some additional classes, so he took some business classes.
Folds met new friends and started playing in a band. Novak said that was when everything changed.
He stopped caring about school, and eventually dropped out. His 6-foot-3 frame dropped from 185 pounds to 155 pounds. He started stealing from his family, first some of Novak's jewelry, then some electronics. Then Novak's other son, who was 9 years old at the time, noticed his Nintendo DS was missing.
Novak drove with Folds to the pawn shops where he had sold those items, and bought them back.
Novak said she twice thought her son had hit rock bottom.
The first came when she found Folds on the bedroom floor appearing to be overdosing. She called police. Folds came back around just as they arrived, and jumped out of his second-floor window. Officers caught up with him and arrested him.
"I thought that was it, this had to be it," she said. "But it wasn't."
Novak and her husband decided that Folds could no longer stay in the house the year he turned 21. Police showed up to their home and arrested him in the front lawn on a bench warrant as his 10-year-old brother walked home from school.
Not long after that, Novak and her husband were in the stands at their son's youth baseball game when a neighbor called them to say Folds was breaking into their garage.
They decided to call the police and have their son arrested.
"It was the worst thing I've ever done," she said. "I thought the tough love would make it click. It didn't."
Incidents like those became rather routine - Folds would commit a low-level crime, get caught, detox in the city jail, get released, then get back on drugs, violate terms of his probation, and end up back in jail, Novak said.
"It was just a cycle," she said.
The family tried to get Folds checked into rehab facilities. Sometimes he wouldn't go. Other times the overloaded facilities had no open beds, even though Folds was on his parents' health insurance plan They offered to put him on a waiting list.
Novak even flew Folds to an in-patient clinic in Florida for treatment, but he soon came home after someone in the house snuck in marijuana and shared it with the patients, and everyone got sent home.
It wasn't until last year, when Folds was sentenced to to the Nancy McDonnell Community Based Correctional Facility, that he finally turned the corner on his addiction.
He got back up to his normal weight, got a full-time job at a car wash and started trying to repair his relationship with his family.
Folds used some of his day passes from the facility to go watch his brother's hockey games. He spent another day with his hospitalized grandmother.
Folds was doing so well that, during a phone call on Aug. 27, Novak offered to let him come back and live at home, but he declined the offer. Instead he split an apartment in West Park with another former inmate at the facility.
During that phone call, Folds said he wanted to buy Novak and his little brother something. He finally had a job and money, and realized how badly he had treated them while in the throws of addiction, Novak said.
Folds then talked with his brother about shoes and skates, and the conversation ended.
"It was really good," Novak said.
Folds called her again the next day, while she was in a meeting at work, but she missed the call. He called again on Saturday, Aug. 29, but Novak was busy school shopping with her younger son and working at the hockey club's booth at the school's homecoming festivities all weekend.
She recalled the conversation with Folds to other parents, and said that for the first time since he graduated high school, her son was home and healthy enough to play in the school's alumni hockey game, which was later that year.
That Monday, the mother of one of Folds' friends called Novak at work. She had seen a Facebook post from another of Folds' friends, dated Aug. 29 night. The post ended with "RIP Taylor."
"No, no, no," she repeated, each word louder than the next, until she was screaming in her office.
Then she thought, it was just on Facebook, maybe it wasn't true. But the office secretary called the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office, who confirmed they had Folds' body. The office told Novak that they had been calling the wrong number for her since Sunday, she said.
Police had found Folds on the floor of his bedroom Aug. 29, lying on top of the heroin needle he used to inject himself. His roommate's girlfriend called 911.
The timing of Folds' death made the pain extra sharp, Novak said. He had been clean and was trying to get back on his feet.
"It wasn't supposed to be this time," she said. "He was on the right path."
Novak is left with a swarm of unanswered questions. She has contacted more of her son's friends, coworkers and acquaintances than the detectives assigned to investigate his death, she said.
But above all, Novak said her family's experience exposed the inadequacies of a system overwhelmed by skyrocketing numbers of drug addicts and overdoses - from the treatment facilities to the criminal justice system.
Novak called for more beds at treatment facilities, more education campaigns in schools and more stringent oversight of probationers and people in halfway houses to keep them off drugs.
"There needs to be more places for people with addiction that need help," she said. "When you need it, you need it."