86 Sundays
Feliz lost her sister, Karina, in a horrifying way — in a way that’s quick to draw judgment and condemnation. Feliz has seen the worst of it all, but Karina deserves to be defined by her life, not her death.
A warning that this episode includes discussions of drug use and poisoning.
Resources:
CDC guidelines on how to test drugs for fentanyl
Find fentanyl test strips here
DrugsData.org provides a rolling update of what's in illicit drugs by geographical area. The data is sent in by strangers, and you might be able to see what’s happening in your city, depending on where you live.
The use of NarCan can help prevent an opioid overdose. Check in your local area to find nonprofits that provide training and distribute the medicine. Find how to use NarCan here.
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Transcripts are not in their final form and are subject to change.
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INTRO
What I have learned from this show and surviving my own grief is that in hard times, people can amaze you. With their generosity – or their stinginess. Because some people have an unending well of compassion, and some people see it as a nonrenewable resource.
Like there’s a finite amount of empathy oil made from the decayed bones of sad, dead dinosaurs, a certain ration you get to spend throughout your life.
And that it's only safe to spend it on grief that feels neutral and understandable, safe.
Some people find it harder to spend their ration on something random or unexplainable or deeply nuanced.
And sometimes…people are just jerks. Nice people! People who would otherwise be very lovely and kind!
Let me give you an example: people trip and fall into the Grand Canyon every year. That is a resoundingly horrifying way to die. And on a Facebook post about a death where a man fell off the skywalk at the grand canyon while trying to take a selfie – , here were two comments I read:
One man said, simply “natural selection”
Another woman said “do stupid stuff, win stupid prizes. Being an idiot should hurt.”
Yikes.
I don’t think these people would classify themselves as cold, or rude, or unempathetic. I think that there are certain kinds of death – uncommon and unpredictable ones – that we hold at a distance because it’s just too much to think that we – or the people we love could go out that way.
That that could never be us, or our loved ones. And that if we keep our noses upturned, if we laugh instead of grieve alongside those grieving, that we will be safe. That we can save our compassion ration for another day.
MUSIC
Today’s guest knows a lot about the sliding scale of empathy, because she has seen it in motion, and felt the effects herself.
Feliz lost her sister Karina in February 2022, when Karina was only 28 years old.
Feliz: She's the funniest one out of all of us. She is always making jokes. She, you always hear her before you see her because she's just loud. She always had a smile on her face if we were having like a family gathering or a party. She was the one who was making sure everybody was feeling included, trying to plan games, those kinds of things that me as the oldest sister, I was just like, we just all made it.
I'm just glad we're here. Um, she's the baby. So she, you know, she kind of got away with things that maybe the rest of us didn't as much, but she also knew how to keep us all accountable. Like she would say, you know, like, Hey, Are you really that mad about it? Like, are you really not gonna talk to, you know, Malaya, our other sister?
Are you guys gonna, you know, you guys need to work it out. Like, stop being dumb. And she was very straight up about it. Um, but she was the one who always brought the desserts. She, you know, was always making all the fun stuff. Um, she was like the fun aunt.
If Feliz were to tell you this while you sat next to one another on a train, or in line at the grocery store, you would feel awful. Awful that she lost the fun sister. Awful that her kids lost the fun aunt. And you would only feel MORE awful as Feliz paints the full picture of who Karina was.
Feliz: She was a server, and so she had the personality to be really successful at that. she fell into that really young, and so she just became really good at it. Like she was training all the new servers.
She was just, excuse me, really good at connecting with people and making people feel good and feel welcomed and feel like they belong there. And, when she was pregnant with my niece, Arya, um, she tried to do like a 9 5 desk job. And she was like, this is not for me. Like I am not, you know, getting to know enough people.
I'm not around and, you know, dancing around and having fun with people. And she went back to her serving job. So that's just, that's just how she was, you know, like very personable and wanting to, to get to know people. and so many people just had these stories of, you know, when I was sad, Karina came and, you know, she picked me up and we went and got coffee and, or, you know, she did this, uh, these things for me when I was having a hard time, or she helped me move, or, you know, she helped me with my babies, like all these things that I had never even heard before, and she was just everybody's, like, good friend, you know?
She had my nephew when she was 17. She had been through some shit, ya know? She was finally in this place where she felt secure in, you know, financially secure. She wasn't rich, she wasn't, but her and her boyfriend, they had good jobs. They, you know, had a place that they loved, felt like home to them. They had their baby that they had. You know, my sister, you know, she had my nephew young, so she was very responsible going forward and she waited and she planned and she planned things like to a tee with that little girl, you know, she, the way she planned her nursery, the way she planned, like she, we didn't get to throw her baby shower, like we got to, So she planned everything.
You know, like she was like, I'm going to wear this, I'm going to do this. Like everything was to a tee with this little girl. And I think it was in a sense because she didn't get to do that with my nephew. You know, she finally felt like I am a responsible mom. This is what I'm going to do. And I'm choosing this, you know.
MUSIC
So she reposted this meme.
It says, Dude, when I say I'm a strong ass bitch, I'm a strong ass bitch. I don't know how I'm getting through the shit I'm going through right now, but I am. And I'm surprising myself. Like, wow. Mama really didn't raise a weak bitch. A sad one? Yes. But weak? Never. And so, she reposted that and she said, There's been a few times I didn't think I'd make it through, but for once in my life, I'm so happy.
I came out stronger each time. And that was less than a month before she passed away.
MUSIC UP
And so, like, she was happy and she was so proud of herself.
She, they planned a Friendsmas, um, in 2021. And my sister is the kind of person nine days before, she can invite a bunch of people to her house and say, Hey, we're going to do brunch. We're going to do mimosas, bring the kids. We're going to have presents. We're going to have a white elephant. We're going to do this, be there, or I'm going to be upset with you.
And people showed up like five days before Christmas. And she was the kind of person who could do that. And so she had this friend's miss thing and she was giving a toast. Um, you know, just for fun. She's like, you know, 2021 sucked, but 2021 or 2022 is going to be the best year ever. And, you know, that was two months almost to the day before she passed away.
[KARINA AND ARIA LAUGHING]
And she was just so optimistic for what life was going to bring for her. And I get where my mom's coming from when she's like, why would she do this? Why would she do something so stupid? And I just always try to remind her, remind myself, like she didn't think she was being stupid.
So that’s Karina — mother of 2. A loving partner. A spoiled youngest sibling and a cool aunt. An ace server who loved working in the restaurant industry and was always training the next generation of servers.
But there’s one thing you don’t know yet. One thing that might suck all of the air and empathy out of the room. One thing that Feliz is careful to share when talking about Karina, because we know how people can be.
Karina's death was headline news, and the headlines changed as more information came out about how she died. And as the headlines changed, so did people’s reactions to Karina’s death.
But this is not breaking news. This is not news. This is the story of a family and a community who lost a light. Like everyone, Karina was much, much more than how she died.
So before you get to know how Karina died, you get to know who she was.
THEME CHIME
ACT I
Being able to share adulthood with your siblings is a cool thing. You saw each other in your most vulnerable stages of development growing up -- through taunting and teasing, or maybe ignoring? Possible physical violence over a remote control. Some siblings grow apart after they leave home.
But despite their age gap, Feliz and Karina grew towards each other.
Feliz: so I have three siblings with my mom and my older brother has his dad. I have my dad and then my two younger sisters have their dad. So it's like all over the place. Um, and there's a big age gap between all of us. My older brother is eight years older than me and then I'm 10 and 11 years older than my sisters.
as we grew older, um, my brother moved, he, you know, his kids were older, he got to move and be all over the place a lot sooner than any of us.
But me and my sisters, uh, started to be really close. They were always like, cuz they're 22 months apart. So they're like, Like this. They slept in the same bed until they were like 16 years old. But we were always really close. I watched them, you know, when, when I was a little older, when I was old enough to do that, I was their babysitter.
I was their, you know, nagging older sister. I was the one in college who would bring them, you know, when they were like in middle school up to visit the campus where I went and stuff like that. Um, but as we all got older and they started seeing me less as like the nagging older sister when we got older.
And I think that really, because Karina and I have the young are the biggest gap cuz she's 93 and I'm 82.
So 11 and a half years is what we are apart. And when she got pregnant with her daughter, or right before that is when she stopped feeling like so young, like little sister, you know? She was more like, okay, like, like she, we, we had the kinda relationship where she would be like, oh my God. Like I got an update, my credit score went up, it's, it's up to this point now.
And she was just like finally, like, growing up, growing up, you know what I mean? We were finally just getting to that like grown up stage of siblings where we're all sharing what like adult life is like, you know?
MUSIC
You hardly ever know when you are in the last moment of your life as you know it. But once that moment has passed, once you’ve crossed that invisible portal from your “normal” life into the alternate universe, even the most mundane details can stand out to you.
And on February 19th, 2022, Feliz had the last moments of her life as Karina’s big sister.
Feliz: She had just gone back to work. My niece was four months old and so I was watching her that night, that Friday night, and she was doing a shift where she was training to run the bar.
Um, or else she probably wouldn't have had a night shift because the baby was so young. Um, but she, there was a woman who was going to be going on maternity leave in the summer. And so they were training her to run the bar and close down the bar and everything. And so I was watching my niece and she came over, ended up getting to my house, like probably 1130 close to midnight to pick the baby up. And, um, she sat on my floor in my living room and my oldest daughter was still awake and my youngest was.
And my oldest daughter was just holding the baby, and we were just talking, and her boyfriend, Sam, he worked overnight, so he called her on his lunch break, she was sitting on the floor with my dog, the, the yapper, and she's like, oh Sam, I want a dog. And they lived on a third floor of an apartment building.
And he's like, you're not going to take that dog out. And she's like, but you love me. So you'll take the dog out. And he, like, they were just joking around and, you know, we were just talking about all these different things. She was talking about her son and how he, um, had gotten in trouble at school the week before and how he was with his dad and, um, for the weekend.
And um, she was always bugging me because she wanted another baby. Um, she wanted one more to be done and she was like, you have to get pregnant with me.
And I'm like, I don't really want to.
I was almost 40 years old. I don't want another baby. And she's like, you can do it, you know, and… Yeah, eventually she, you know, she was tired. The baby had woken up because, you know, obviously her mom was there.
And so she was like, okay, I got to get her home.
She's like, all right, I gotta go. Love you. And she left. And obviously like that night, as soon as she got home, she, I asked her, you know, let me know you made it home safe. And the baby was still awake and she was just so excited to see her mom.
And so they stayed up for a little bit and she's like, I don't mind, you know, Sam will be off work a little later. So I probably wouldn't go to sleep anyway. And so. You know, we were talking about the kinds of bottles that the baby.
We were talking about all these different things before we went to sleep. we talked like throughout the day that on that Saturday.
Her boyfriend didn't work on weekends and that was like their time together. I talked to her here and there throughout the day, but not a lot, um, and that was, that was it, you know, it was just very normal. It wasn't like a, all right, you know, love you, see you later, like, I'm glad that that night when I saw her before she left, that was the last thing she said.
Those were the last words Feliz would hear from her sister. Love you. Bye.
Feliz goes to bed. Karina goes home, she has plans with her boyfriend Sam, and Sam’s sister Cora.
Nora: When did you realize that something was wrong?
Feliz: So she and my sister Malaya, they have babies who are four months apart. They were always at night, you know, when they would be up feeding, they would talk, they would text each other. And so they were constantly in contact with each other. They were constantly. with each other. and so Malaya hadn't heard from her overnight, and she figured, you know, she knew, she knew that she had gone out to dinner with her boyfriend and some of their, some of his family, and that maybe they were going to go have drinks after or whatever.
She knew they were going to, they had plans, so she was like, okay, maybe they're sleeping it off, you know, whatever. So my mom and my sister lived in a townhome community that lived a building away from each other. And so my mom, my sister had gone to my mom's house and was just like, Hey, have you talked to Karina?
And my mom was like, no, you know, I tried to. to text her to see if she wanted these shirts that I have or something and I didn't hear back from her. So she calls me and she's like, Hey, have you talked to Karina? And I said, no, you know, and I was deep cleaning my house that day and I had just found this pack of onesies.
And I was like, Hey, do you want these? Like they're just the right size for the baby, whatever. so I looked back at the message Riot sent her about the onesies, and I saw that it hadn't been delivered, and I was like, well, that's weird, you know, it's already like 2 o'clock in the afternoon, she, she would be up by now, you know, and so my sister just got that, like, spidey sense, and she's like, something's wrong, I'm gonna call Cora,
Forget Liam Neeson. Forget Jason Bourne. If you have older sisters, they will find you faster than anyone on earth.
Mileiah calls Cora. No answer.
She calls Sam – who she always calls when Karina doesn’t answer, because he will – no answer.
She checks Facebook. Cora and Karina have both been inactive for the same amount of time. 13 hours.
Feliz: And she just thought it was weird. Like they were together and then like, are they sleeping? Like what was going on?
MUSIC STARTS HERE
So Mileiah calls the last person she can think of. Sam’s mom, Sue, who had been watching Karina and Sam’s baby on Saturday night, along with Cora’s kids. Cora’s kids are having a sleepover with Sue, but Karina’s baby is still a baby, and she’s not doing sleepovers yet. Sue would have seen Karina on Saturday night. Sue would know what was going on.
Feliz: And it the video turns on and Sue is just freaking out like Crying freaking out and she's like they're all on the floor.
MUSIC FADES
Feliz: I don't know what's wrong. They're blue like that I, I'm freaking out and so my sister is like what? And so she tells my mom, and her and my mom get in the car, and they start driving over to my sister's apartment. And they called me, I was like, we gotta go. we start driving and I'm like, they're fine. They're fine. They're totally okay. And you know, they're good.
They're fine. And the whole way there, I was saying it and, um, it's a straight shot pretty much from where my townhouse was to where Karina's apartment was, um, we're both. Right off of this like major street. And so it's about 15 minutes away. And the whole time I'm just like panicking, like freaking out.
And then I would like come to the realization that my six year old, is in the back seat. And I'm like, sorry, baby. I'm not trying to freak you out. Mommy's just freak. Mommy's just scared. Like, I'm just really worried. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I would go from like screaming and like freaking out and like not being able to sit still in my seat to trying to console my five year old and saying like, Hey, I'm sorry.
Like, look, I'm smiling. And it was probably totally delusional for me to do that. But, and my boyfriend is just like, it's going to be okay. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. It felt like the longest ride of my life and we turned in, turned off the main street to where their apartments were.
And as you're coming over like the hill to, before you turn in, you can just see fire trucks, ambulance, police cars, like everything. And I, I was just like, move, get there now, like hurry up. And so he turns in and he hadn't even stopped the car. And I was like opening the door, running out of the car. And I saw a woman when I very first walked out and she's like, they're all dead.
They're all dead. And I was like, who the hell are you? Like, what is going on?
PAUSE
Feliz: So I go to find my mom and my sister and um, I'm like, who's that woman? Like, what's going on? And my mom, my sister, my sister is just like shaking. She can't speak. She can't talk. And my mom is like, mom calm, like trying to, you know, keep things level, but also trying to figure out what's going on.
She had just gone to the ambulance to, cause right before I got there, Cora, who's the sister, um, Sam's sister, she lived. Um, they had just taken her away and they had taken the baby cause the baby was home with them. Um, and they put him in the ambulance and my mom went to go see the baby at the ambulance and the baby like lit up.
She knew my mom. And so my mom was like, you know, they just took the baby. They're going to the hospital. We're trying to figure out what's going on upstairs. And I'm like, okay, it's fine. And there's just cops everywhere. And, you know, obviously the people from the apartments are all coming out, trying to figure out what's going on.
And I remember asking one of the officers, I was like, Hey, can I go up there? Like, that's my sister. That's my baby sister. I got to go up there. And he's like, you do not want to go up there. And I'm like, okay. Um, and I remember just everybody like yelling and demanding of the detective who showed up.
MUSIC
Feliz: And I remember thinking like, maybe if I go up to him and ask him really nicely, you know, and so I went up to him like, hey, I know everyone's really yelling at you. I'm really sorry. I'm just really worried. And can you just, You know, are you sure that my sister is not okay? And he's like, nobody in that apartment is alive.
And you do not want to go up there, I can't let you go up there.
It’s chaos. Feliz doesn’t know who was in that apartment, but the officer is saying that everyone in that apartment is dead. Five people. Everyone. Karina. Sam. Their baby??
Nobody knows why at this point. Maybe carbon monoxide?
The officer is wrong about some of it. Five people are dead, and Karina and Sam are two of them.
But Sam’s sister Cora is alive and on the way to the hospital. And so is Karina and Sam’s baby.
Feliz: And when I realized the kids weren't there, you know, obviously that was a sense of relief, but also like my sister and her boyfriend, they're gone. Like, what do I, what do I do? You know? So we sat, we sat around the parking lot, just trying to figure out what's going on.
BREAK HERE
And news crews started showing up right away because it was a huge call. Um, five people dead in an apartment, like what is going on, you know? And I remember asking the detective, like, Hey, can you make them like, back up, you know, our family's here. We're just trying to figure out what's going on. Can you make them back up?
And he was like, I can't make them go any further than the police tape. By this time it was around four or five o'clock. And news was coming on and it was live. And so, you know, there we are on the, on the news, you know, from far, from a distance, but they're showing us and, you know, people start calling us like, Hey. We saw you, that was you, right? You know, and my mom started calling people, you know, calling friends of hers or like close family members and just saying like, Hey, my baby's gone. I need help. We asked the victim's advocates to take my mom and I to the hospital.
Um, to be with the baby. And they put us in a car and they were going to drive us there. And then all of a sudden they just wouldn't move. And my mom was freaking out. She's like, you got to go, like, we got to go to the hospital. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And she kept talking to people on her radio, stepping out and talking to people in the car.
My mom's like, I'm getting out of this car. And I'm a very, I'm very much a rule follower. I'm like, she said, he's going to take us. We're not in a state to drive. We need to stay here. Like, that's it. You know, like, and it's so silly now thinking back, like. If there's one time in your life when you can not follow rules, it's in a time like this when you don't have any information.
So I convince my mom to stay in the car and they end up taking us to the police station where they had made it as kind of like a meeting place for our family, um, to get away from the cameras and everything. Um, and it was a holiday weekend. It was President's Day weekend. Um, it was a Sunday night and that building, it was more like the civic center, like where the detectives and the court and everything, there wasn't like a full police presence there and it was empty.
And so it's just my family, um, Sam's family had gone to the hospital to be with Cora, um, and the other families didn't know anything yet. They were still trying to ID the other three people. So it was my family in this. You know, this closed down police station.
It's like haunted. It feels haunted because it's just, you know, completely empty.
They went and they found like, like her Facebook was pretty locked down. I remember my brother calling while we were at the police station. He was in Florida and he was like, you need to get her phone and you need to lock down any of her social media. This is going to be a big story and people are going to find it.
And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, why are you even talking about her phone? Like our sister just died. What are you talking about? Like, I remember being pissed off at him and then later like, oh. You, you had a point. Um, but they went and like, silly random memes that were public on her Facebook.
PREGNANT PAUSE
Feliz: I remember just like shaking and I think that, I don't know if it's like the woman in me or whatever. I was like, okay, if I'm not super emotional, I need to turn that off for right now. I need to just talk level with these people. I'm not going to get any answers if I'm just being the crazy emotional, which is insane, obviously, right?
Like my sister and four other people are dead, you know, 100 feet away from me, but I'm like, okay, turn off the emotions. Let's be business. You know, you are the, you know, and I'm the, I'm the one in my family who handles things like this, like. You know, I'm the oldest daughter. So I'm, I'm like, okay, I'm going to go be the representative.
I'm going to talk to them. I'm going to just be strong and I'm going to, you know, do all these things. But I remember just feeling like shaking inside.
C.S Lewis wrote “no one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.”
Feliz and her family are feeling grief and fear. Because it’s terrifying not to know how your sister and her boyfriend died. Because it’s terrifying to learn how:
Karina and Sam and Cora and two of their friends had a little party on Saturday night. A few friends, hanging out at Karina and Sam’s apartment after the baby went to bed.
Someone – and we’ll never know who – brought cocaine.
And in the perceived safety of their home, surrounded by safe people, they all took it.
And five of them died.
And there – right there – is where the empathy ran out, and the headlines ran wild.
Feliz: It's easy to see things and make quick judgments because. We see a million pieces of media, whatever, every day. And so it's easy to say, Oh, why would you do that? Or why would you think that that's okay?
And, you know, I took a step back several times and I was like, okay, if I saw a story where a four month old baby was there and there was a new story, it was done by like Daily Mail.
Um, they would say like, it was this drug fueled party where a baby was left orphaned and just all these crazy things, right? Like these parents were known to party and they were, you know, it was drug fueled and they, you know, didn't care that there was a four month old baby in the room.
They left orphans and blah, blah, blah. Like, It was horrible. And they took pictures of my niece, took pictures of my nephew off of, and she was four months old. My nephew was 10 years old. And that was one thing I was upset about. I was like, you know what, these kids have no say so. They, they're not giving any consent and they don't have the ability to do so.
And it's gross and skeezy to include their faces in this story that's become an international story. You know, they have the right to that privacy regardless of what their parents did. You know, like it's just, it's so gross.
MUSIC
Feliz: And I had known my sister had like dabbled in that here and there before, but I didn't know that was something that she had done since she had the baby. You know, she had recently stopped nursing and so I know that she had had some drinks and um, you know, I live in Colorado, so marijuana's legal, like they, they had, you know, smoked here and there.
I knew that she had done it once, once or twice when she was younger and that was it. And for me it just didn't make sense. I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, yeah, there was like, a mirror out and it was coke.
But it wasn’t coke. Not even a little bit. This little gathering of friends became – at the time – the largest fentanyl poisoning in our country’s history.
Feliz: They have, it's called a spectrometer, I think is what it's called, where they can test drugs.
And it came up as, it won't tell you that, like the breakdown, but it'll tell you like it's cocaine and something else. And it just came up pure fentanyl.
They had no idea that what they had, um, was pure fentanyl. They thought they were just gonna, you know, do a line of coke, have a, a night at home where they're safe in their own home and hang out with their friends and then go to bed.
And they had no idea. The, the police officer said that they probably didn't even, because of the strength of it, um, they probably didn't even have a chance to realize what was happening. They said it was probably within like minutes of when they did it that they were gone. Depending on how, like what order they all did a line or whatever, they wouldn't have had a chance to call for help, um, or anything like that.
MUSIC FADE OUT
ACT II
THEME CHIME
Feliz has lost her sister. Karina's children have lost their mother.
And hundreds more people have lost a version of Karina that held significance in their lives. The grief of Karina's death is a wave that only grows bigger as it heads towards shore.
But there’s something else that’s growing bigger: the story of her death. And the judgment around it.
Feliz: You know, obviously it's a huge story. I don't fault them for that. It's a big thing that happened in our community.
And like there, my mom saw her face on the screen and just was livid. Like she, I don't even know where she got the number for the newsroom, but she, within a few minutes, she was on the phone with like the newsroom at. You know, two different stations and was yelling at people. And she's like, you don't have any permission. Take my daughter's picture down.
And like, even people who would say things like, I know people who, some of the people who were there and they were known for this. And it's just like, who are you? Like, and I remember there was a minute where Malaya and I were like fighting anybody we could in any comment section we could. Because I was livid, like that's my sister.
And, you know, if there's anything that, that I know, like I can say what I need to say about my sister to my sister, but no one will speak about my sister. It turned into this, you know, fighting strangers on the internet for a while.
MUSIC
Fighting strangers on the internet is a proven tactic to get through the anger of grief.
Grief is compounded when you have to defend the honor of the person who died. That’s a whole other task on top of simply grieving.
We all want the people we loved and lost to be remembered. But we don’t have control over HOW they’re remembered.
When Karina’s death becomes a media story, the biggest fentanyl poisoning ever in the country at the time, it’s not just old colleagues and friends whose opinion Feliz has to hear about. It’s everyone’s.
One article from the Daily Mail is titled: “Four month-old girl orphaned after her mom and dad took her to drug-fueled house party in Colorado where they died after taking 'fentanyl-laced cocaine'”
And this is some of the commentary that nameless, faceless strangers from around the world chose to leave:
“The mother liked to get high… One can deduce that this community has a tolerance for drugs in general, and very little education.”
“I pray she finds new parents that value her life and their own, and have no intention of destroying their chance of years of happiness. I pray this little girl lives a long and happy life with no remorse for her idiot biological parents.”
“Parents more concerned with getting high than the love and safety for their children. The baby girl is too young to remember any of this but her son will be forever scarred.”
“Selfish b @ $ t a r d s . They didn't deserve children.”
“The kids will be better off”
And if you have ever left a comment like this, it’s not too late to delete it. It’s not too late to consider that on the other side of the screen are people who have forgotten more about the person you’re judging than you could ever know from a stupid article in the stupid daily mail.
Feliz: So because the baby was there when they died, um, a case worker from like human services, social services had to be involved from child protection and just to make sure the baby was safe and that, you know, everything like that. And she told us, you know, you guys should be careful. She's like, have you googled your sister's name?
Have you Googled Sam's name? And that's when I did. And I was like, oh my God. Like someday these kids are gonna see this, you know, they're gonna have access to the internet and they're gonna be able to see, you know, Karina Rodriguez, you know, drug fueled party, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that's when I kind of started to kinda go off the deep end and really start looking at everything that was coming up when you would Google their names.
Um, it was crazy cause I've always, I mean, I have a very unique name. You know, if you Google my name, it's like my jobs and like my Facebook profile.
And I had people who I didn't know calling me, and I don't even share a name with the last name with my sisters, but I had, my phone was ringing off the hook.
I would get probably 20 friend requests on Facebook a day. Um, just all these like, random phone calls, text messages, messages on Facebook, messages on social media. People who just wanted to know, like who wanted to, it felt like people just wanted to be like witness to our family's pain. And going through the most traumatic event of your life is hard obviously, but when you have like the eyes of the world on like speculating and picking apart every little thing they can see that's public of these people's lives.
It was just another layer of just devastation. We can't even settle down and grieve. It was, you know, going into protection mode like, big sister, you are not gonna talk out my sister like that.
It’s normal to be curious, but the internet has also given us an abnormal amount of access to things that are none of our business, and the ability to voice our often uninformed opinions about any and everything.
Feliz: And it's hard because people say, well, they shouldn't have been doing that. No, they shouldn't have. But how many people do most of us know who have been to a party and someone, you know, pulls it out. It used to be like a very like white collar drug, like, you know, you've seen the Wolf of Wall Street.
You've seen like, you know, these things where it's like the, the rich, you know, more upper class people are the ones who are doing cocaine. And it just, you know, I always tell people they shouldn't have been doing that, but we're supposed to be able to learn from our mistakes. We're not supposed to die, you know?
My mom always questions, like, how could she do something so stupid? How could she, you know, do this?
And I'm like, she was happy. When you're that happy, you don't think, hey, this next thing is going to kill me. You know, like you don't think that way. You think like, I'm having a good time with my friends. You know, I'm at my house. My baby is in her bed. We're here. We're safe. And I'm going to just do something that I wouldn't normally do because life is good and I'm going to enjoy this time.
in my mind, I was like, you know what, they probably thought we're doing the safest thing. We picked up our daughter. We hadn't had any drinks yet, so we're gonna go home. You know, we can have a couple drinks at home with our friends and then a friend, you know, shows up with this stuff and Fine, we'll try it.
We're at home. You know, like she is safe. We are safe. We're not going anywhere else tonight and It just it didn't turn out that way and that's not it's not fair You know when I mean it's never fair But it feels like when she was really trying and really trying to be in this place my sister You know, she was a young mom.
She was having fun. She was 28 years old, you know, with people she loved, and this never should have happened.
MUSIC FADE OUT
ACT III
THEME CHIME
Feliz is butting up against the sliding scale of empathy of the strangers who encounter Karina’s story and consider themselves experts in her life and death. Countless incendiary comments from strangers who either don’t know the nuances of her story, or don’t care enough to withhold their judgment or haven’t heard of simply scrolling by and writing their thoughts in a journal. Please, people, get a journal.
And the thing about posting comments online is you don’t know who is seeing you. Because Feliz is seeing the hundreds of comments about Karina. And it makes her grieving family wonder who they’re close to in real life could be feeling the same way.
Feliz is NOT saying, oh, go do drugs! She’s instead asking a more important question: should you die from a mistake?
Feliz: That anger, you know, had me up at night, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything. And so I started just writing to people. I would find my state senator, state congress person, you know, national, everybody. I was just writing to everybody like, Hey, why aren't you doing something about this?
Why is this even a thing? And um, I ended up getting some responses and that led me to groups that were like, Hey, actually in Colorado right now, we are trying to pass a law to be more, um, stringent and more strict on fentanyl laws. And so, In April, so not even two months after my sister was gone, um, my sister and I both testified to our state legislative committee about the law, um, on Fentanyl.
[AUDIO FROM TESTIMONY]
We did that twice. And then when the bill passed, um, they asked me to speak at the, the bill signing. So I spoke at that and it just made me feel like, okay, if my sister's name and her story has to be out there and people have to know this, it made me want to have other good things tied to it.
Granted, my sister, what happened to her will never ever be okay, but in my mind, I was thinking about 10 years, five years from now, when the kids can Google their mom's name and they're gonna see that yes, she died and it was horrible and it never should have happened.
I've heard of people who thought they have a joint and it's, there's just marijuana and it ends up having fentanyl in it and they're gone. And there's just such a stigma around it.
And most of these people are doing things that they had no idea had any fentanyl in 'em. And that makes it so sad for me because those people feel like they can't speak out and they can't talk about their loved one without any shame. And I just really feel like. One decision, one moment, one night of their lives does not get to define everything for them.
It really just makes me want to get, get out there and provide education on what, what else we can do and how we can prevent this. How we can, you know, I have no judgment. People are gonna do what they do. We've all done, you know, our own things that maybe didn't align with our morals for the rest of our lives.
But if you're gonna use be safe, you know, there's ways to test it. There's ways to, you know, use safely. Um, and to be aware that if you are around people, even if you're not using any kind of drugs, to know the signs that hey, this person might be experiencing, um, an overdose of poisoning, whatever it is.
Just the distinction between overdose and poisoning has been huge for me. Like even there was a news station who was covering it and she tweeted something and I was like, Hey, my sister was actually not, she didn't overdose. She was poisoned cuz overdoses when you know what you're consuming and you do too much of it.
My sister had no idea it would be like her going to the bar and ordering a beer and getting like something with arsenic in it and totally not what she ordered. She was poisoned. And so just even making those distinctions and being able to talk about it in that way so that families feel okay to say, you know, my child, my sister, my friend, my whoever, this doesn't define who they were.
Obviously, we all have to process it, but I can't, I can't stay there, especially because my girls see that. And now I have this extra pressure of this girl who I love so much who's not biologically mine, but she's mine. And I have to protect her from all these horrible things she's gonna know later in her life.
MUSIC — SLOW IT DOWN
Nora: What is it like to raise your sister's daughter?
Feliz: Um, it's, it's hard. She's this amazing little person. Like, she's so smart. And you know, all parents say that, but she is just, you know, she's smart and she's insightful and she's funny. And but she looks so much like my sister when she was little. Like someone said, Oh, Karina really just gave birth to herself, huh? You know, cause she looks just like her. And there's days when I look at her and I'm just like, Oh, you know, you look so much like your mom or she'll do something that's funny or amazing.
And I'm like, Oh, I hope they're seeing this wherever they are. I hope they see this. Um, I have a seven year old. And so Aria obviously hears her call me mom. And so she'd be like, my mom. And the first time she called me mom, I had to, like, walk out of my house and, like, get a hold of myself because it was just, and I didn't, it was very unexpected.
She's like, hi mommy. Because she calls me auntie and, you know, we show her pictures of her mom and dad every day and she, she can pick them out. She's like, mommy, daddy. Um, you know, she talks about them all the time. And so, um, she, and I tell myself, like, she's two. She doesn't know what these words mean. She just knows that I'm her safe adult.
And my mom is one of her safe adults. My boyfriend is one of her safe adults, but it tears me apart, you know, either when she does things that I wish they were here for when big events come, you know, her birthday was last weekend and, you know, I still bring this picture of them. You know, put it on the table with the cake because they're here, you know, and I, I stress my older sister.
I stress myself out about the future and what that's going to look like. Like, am I loving her enough to be able to get through this trauma that she doesn't even know she has yet? You know, is this gonna, am I loving her enough to make sure that she's gonna be okay? Um, am I doing too much? Like, am I making her this Like peace of her parents and not letting her be herself, you know, like it's and thank God for my therapist She's like you're loving her and that's the important thing You know, those things may come up later and you'll deal with them then future Feliz will take care of it but right now you are loving her and Yeah, there's there's nights that I go to sleep and I'm just like she really wanted me to have another baby And here I am taking care of hers, you know, and I make those jokes with her.
I talked to her all the time Um, yesterday, I was giving Aria a bath, getting her ready, and this song came on, and it just made me cry, made me think of my sister, and she looked at me, she goes, why crying auntie?
Miss sister? You know, I just lost it. Like, how does she know, you know? Obviously we talk about it enough and she picks up on things, but she's two! Like, two in a week! How do you know these things? How do you know? But I feel like it's also that her parents are so ingrained in what we do that... She knows, you know, she knows those emotions and, you know, I just tell her, you know, Auntie's sad.
I miss my sister. I miss your mommy. And she's like, Sister? My mommy? Like she, you know, her broken little two year old, you know, words, but yeah. So days like that are really hard. My sister's middle name was Joy and she hated her middle name, but she gave it to her daughter. She was like, I'm going to make it something new.
And so I always tell my sister, you know, when I have my little talks with her, like, you made such a good choice. Like this little girl is just pure joy.
like I said before, my sister was always telling me, let's have another baby with me.
And I was done. Like right now I have a college freshman and a second grader, and then I also have Aria. So it's like, I am starting over from the very beginning. Um, but in my mind. There was no other, no other choice. There's nothing I wouldn't do for my sister. And, if that meant, you know, changing everything in my life, you know, selling the house that I had bought and buying a bigger house and making sure she had her own space and, you know, having a space for her brother when he wants to be here to visit.
That's what I was going to do. And so that's what we did. But it's always been my goal to make sure that she doesn't, without erasing them, doesn't feel the loss of them. I don't want it to feel like she has this huge hole in her life, which she does. They're not here, but I also want that hole that she has just to be filled with love instead of everything else that is out there.
And I always debate what is harder, that Aria doesn't have her any of her own memories of her parents or her brother Josiah, who has 10 years of memories of them and now doesn't have any more. And I don't know what's more sad to me. And I don't think there's a way to really answer that. You know, they're both incredibly hard and heartbreaking and not fair.
MUSIC
There are very few fair deaths.
You are lucky if you can say, “someone I love died at the exact right time in the exact right way and everyone involved was ready for it.”
And once you cross that threshold into the world without your loved one, time moves differently. You’re counting the hours, and then the days, and eventually the years. But Feliz counts Sundays. Because technically, Karina died at 2am on Sunday morning.
Feliz: I just go by Sundays, like it was the 86th Sunday, uh, yesterday that I haven't had her, um, and, you know, even all this time later, I still can't drive down that, that street.
The main street between my house and her house. I avoid it at all costs. I take like little short little journeys on it, because it's a very main road in our town. But, um, especially going towards her apartment, I just, I can't do it. I still can't do it. It's just, I just get so many, like my body knows. And, you know, in the same way that my body knows it's Sunday, it's supposed to be a day of relaxing, it's supposed to be a day of all these things, laundry, whatever, you know, your Sunday looks like.
And for me, even though I do those things, like I'm at the point where I get them done. I, you know, but. I always know it was that day.
OUTRO
When we spoke to Feliz, it had been 86 Sundays.
When this episode comes out, it will have been 99 Sundays.
In 2022 alone, there were 200 deaths from fentanyl every day in the United States. That’s over 73,000 people. A stadium full of lives, gone.
And in their wake, countless people like Feliz and her family, counting the days since they’ve left. Sunday by Sunday by Sunday.
THEME MUSIC
CREDITS
Thank you immensely to Feliz for reaching out to me with her story, and sharing her memories of Karina with our team. Karina’s life, and the lives of Sam, Stephine, Humberto and Jennifer were stolen from this world too soon. We’re happy to be able to spread the light of their lives just a little bit further.
The opioid epidemic is huge, and there are so many different ways that people have been affected by it. It’s not unlikely that you may be affected by it in some way. This is our first time covering fentanyl on our show, but it certainly won’t be the last.