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Theresa Mathewson and Susan Burkhart never asked for this. They never asked for their mission in life to be educating others about the dangers of fentanyl, but after they both lost a child to fentanyl poisonings that’s what they’re doing.
And now — that drug they’re warning others about — is popping up in all kinds of places and hurting all kinds of people, including the innocent.
It was added to the percocet pills that killed Mathewson’s son and Burkhart’s granddaughter. Dunn police found it in pills that looked like Flintstones vitamins. Sampson County medical workers found it in cigarettes. It was even in the bottle of water that killed Sophia Walsh, whose mother leads the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina.
“Fentanyl is everywhere,” Lt. Patrice Bogertey, of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, told The Daily Record in April. “Fentanyl is commonly mixed with heroin, cocaine, meth, and other narcotics to enhance their effects. It is available in various forms, including nasal sprays, liquids, pills, and powders.”
Dealers have hidden it in liquid eye drops and Advil liquid gel pills, in candy and in edibles.
“I have seen it in both our richest and poorest sections of our neighborhoods,” said Sgt. Adam Sikorski, who oversees Dunn Police Department’s Narcotics and Street Crimes Unit. “Fentanyl is non-discriminatory, cheap and plentiful due to its wide availability through illicit methods such as the dark web. It is extremely cheap and widely used to ‘cut’ other drugs to reduce costs to the dealer and increase potency to the consumer.”
Sikorski’s unit has seized pills that were pressed and stamped to look like legal medication, but the pills were either in part or completely made from fentanyl and binding agents or fillers, he said.
“I have personally seen it mixed into other drugs such as cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin. It has also been widely reported that fentanyl is being seen mixed into other drugs such as marijuana which is very alarming for many reasons,” Sikorski said. “The most alarming thing for me is the fact that marijuana is viewed as less harmful than other drugs and many teenagers may use it, leading to addiction or overdoses by our youth. The lack of education that exists on this danger means many may be unwilling participants in its consumption.”
Local headlines have shown a rise in “unwilling participants” poisoned by fentanyl hiding in plain sight. At least four babies, age 1 and younger, were hospitalized for overdoses in 2022 and 2024 in Dunn and Erwin. One of them died.
“We have seen accidental ingestions in children and senior citizens as well as young adults,” said Kristy Bland, the business development liaison at nearby Sampson Regional Medical Center. “In the emergency department at Sampson Regional Medical Center we have seen accidental poisonings in street-made pills and cigarettes as well as injected drugs purchased as methyl amphetamine and heroin.”
Burkhart’s granddaughter, Nikko Robinson, wasn’t into the drug scene. She was the new mother or a 5-week-old baby, who was just battling exhaustion when she took a percocet from a friend to help her get some sleep. Robinson took the pill and never woke up.
Mathewson’s son, Joshua Mathewson, was getting ready for a big job interview and took a percocet from a friend to get some pain relief the night before the interview when he died. He wasn’t into drugs. He was into helping people. But that percocet wasn’t just percocet. It was fentanyl, too.
Joshua Mathewson lived 27 years on earth. In that time, he revived a friend who was suffering cardiac arrest; helped another friend escape domestic violence; helped free a family trapped in a vehicle after a wreck; and helped others in need.
“Josh was somebody who, if he saw you needed something, he made sure you got it,” Mathewson said.
She started Joshua’s Army Fights Fentanyl to carry on her son’s legacy of helping others, educating people about the dangers of fentanyl and handing out Narcan kits wherever she goes. She and Burkhart work together and also serve on the Harnett County Opioid Task Force.
Every Narcan kit they hand out contains two doses of Narcan. In every kit they put a card with a number people can call to have the kit replaced when it’s used. They also hand out laminated cards with information on the signs of poisoning and the simple steps a person can do to use the Narcan and reverse the poisoning.
Burkhart and Matthewson have helped stock the courthouse with Narcan and any first responders who may be out.
“We do pop-ups in the community. We did one here at the Walmart, and in an hour and a half, we gave away 150 kits. That’s 300 doses,” Mathewson said. “… We’ll hear that there’s been an incident somewhere, and so we’ll find the nearest spot to that area, and we pop up and we just hand it out. We talk to people about whatever they want to talk about.”
Joshua’s Army doesn’t ask for names, addresses or Social Security numbers. They just listen and share the help they have to give.
They’ve handed the kits out at farmer’s markets and community events. They’ve handed out thousands and trained countless others on how to use the life-saving drug to reverse the effects of a potentially deadly overdose. They talk to church groups and schools, anyone who’ll listen.
And it’s making a difference.
Forty-six people died of overdoses in Harnett County last year, down from 65 the year before, 61 in 2022 and a high of 71 in 2021, according to statistics from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Our numbers are down in Harnett County because of what we do,” Mathewson said of the task force and nonprofits like hers.
“We’ve got to do what we have to do to save a life,” Burkhart said. “It’s not their fault … they’re not getting what they asked for.”
On Saturday, Joshua’s Army will host its second family awareness festival to continue to spread the word, pass out life-saving Narcan kits and show members of the community they aren’t alone in their struggle. Fentanyl affects everyone, whether people see it or not.