Just off North Central Expressway near Southern Methodist University, 20 smiling faces of young adults and teenagers adorn a billboard that went up this week.
The billboard’s message is not like others along the highway. It is not advertising a new restaurant or a local business or a brand of whiskey. The sponsors who paid to put up the billboard said it is advertising something far more important, with the potential to save lives: fentanyl awareness.
Every smiling person featured on the billboard, which will tower over North Central Expressway drivers for a month, was killed by fentanyl. By telling their stories, the families of those lost to the drug hope to spread a message that a fentanyl overdose can happen to anyone.
“It takes an army to spread this word,” said Ofie Moreno, who lost her son Sebastian to a fentanyl overdose in 2022.
The billboard is the latest from Ofie and her husband, Frank Moreno. They have spent the better part of the last two years spreading awareness of the dangers of fentanyl, primarily through the billboards.
The drug has killed thousands of Texans each year, and the numbers have steadily increased in Dallas County since 2019, according to a report from the county health department.
Since their son’s death, the Morenos have put up over 300 billboards featuring Sebastian’s face and those of others lost to fentanyl poisoning. The billboards have popped up in major cities across the country such as Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver and even in Times Square in New York City. The latest billboard comes as a collaboration with Livegy, a local nonprofit advocating against fentanyl that was founded by Cynthia Pursley, who lost her stepson Brian to a fentanyl overdose in 2021.
Several families with loved ones featured on the billboard gathered nearby the sign Wednesday to honor the lives lost to the drug. The billboard features teens as young as 15 and young adults in their 20s. The oldest person on the billboard, Brian, was 43 when he died.
Most of the people pictured died in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and their faces are meant to illustrate that anyone, even a high school football player or a cheerleader, can become a victim of the drug. And it only takes a tiny amount of the drug, 2 milligrams, to cause a fatal overdose.
The billboard carries a sobering message: 22 high school teens die from fentanyl poisoning every week, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data.
By placing the billboard next to a prominent highway and a major private university, the families hope the stigma of addiction can be removed and important conversations can take place about how widespread the drug has become.
Part of that comes with officials doing more to address the spread of fentanyl, whether through increasing public awareness or through prosecuting those who sold the pills, which can result in murder charges after a Texas law passed last year.
Amanda Sampica’s son Jaden Anderson, one of those shown on the billboard, died of fentanyl poisoning on Oct. 28, 2023, in Allen at age 20. She said even though prosecutors know the name of the dealer, that person has yet to face charges, which she blamed on officials not wanting to admit the drug has entered an affluent community.
However, the person who sold the fentanyl that killed Mitchel Pultz, 17, is facing a murder charge, according to Collin County court records. Mitchel’s parents, Lindsay and Kevin Pultz, said their son struggled with addiction to Percocet and had been in and out of rehab.
Stephanie Vaughn said she’s all too familiar with how fentanyl has crept into the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs. Her daughter Sienna, pictured in her cheerleading uniform on the sign, was 16 when she was killed by fentanyl in Plano. Her friend, who had taken what she thought was a Percocet pill, also overdosed that same night and nearly died.
“I have a 15-year-old,” Vaughn said. “I would pull her out of Plano schools in a heartbeat if there was somewhere safe I could put her. There isn’t. The only thing that you can do is educate your family, educate your kids. Because a lot of kids don’t think that a prescription pill is drugs.”
Others who died also didn’t know they were taking fentanyl, their loved ones said. Sebastian, a former high school football player, had injured his back, his mother, Ofie Moreno, said. He slipped and fell in the driveway while trying to clear snow off the roof of his car after a winter storm. Later, he complained about the pain to a friend, who offered him what Sebastian thought was Oxycontin.
It was fentanyl, his mother said. He died from an overdose on Feb. 3, 2022. He was 24.
Sebastian was found unresponsive, with half a pill sitting nearby. Moreno said when police arrived, she tried to give them the pill so they could find out what Sebastian took. She said the responding officers acted as if she had presented them with a live bomb. They refused to touch it and told her it was likely fentanyl.
Until that moment, Ofie had never even heard the word “fentanyl.” Now, she’s started an advocacy group, Bash ‘En Fentanyl, and has put much of her own money into the billboards to raise awareness of the dangers of the synthetic opioid and to honor the life of her son.
“We do this because of his heart,” Ofie said. “He had a golden heart and liked to reach out and help people. He is guiding us through the pain we have from losing him. He’s making this journey possible. He’s guiding us through everything we do.”
For Pursley, the founder of Livegy, her fentanyl advocacy was spun out of an anger that so many people were dying from the drug, leaving grieving families behind.
“I just got really pissed off,” Pursley said. Since Brian’s death, she has been dedicated to handing out as much Narcan as possible, through a free vending machine in Deep Ellum and a dispensers at bars.
Narcan, the brand name of the drug naloxone, can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose and save a life, if administered quickly enough. Part of her advocacy in her travels to colleges and universities has been teaching people how to properly use Narcan.
All of the families who came to the billboard’s unveiling Wednesday said losing their children to fentanyl has been devastating. The drug has torn a hole in their lives, but by spreading their message, they hope to save other families from the same fate.
“All we’re doing is sharing our stories, so hopefully somebody else doesn’t have to go through this,” Vaughn said.
