Thomas M Dolfi Funeral Home

The articles will look at the toll paid by those who have lost loved ones to addiction, as well as those who help treat or respond to it. We welcome reader feedback as we continue to probe this difficult subject.Tommy Darrell was known as “the poster child for recovery.”It seemed as though the 40-year-old Scottdale man had reached his prime. Several years after retiring as a minor league baseball player, he was engaged and planning for his future. After a stint with cocaine abuse that later led to crack cocaine, he was clean for 2 1/2 years, spending much of his free time working with recovering addicts through Eagle Ranch Ministries and Pennsville Baptist Church in Mount Pleasant.He spent his last day with family at a birthday party for the youngest member of his family, then attended a funeral for a person who died of an overdose. His fiancee, Ashley Stokes, said goodnight to him at about 8:30 that night, and his mother sent him an unanswered text about an hour later.Sarah “Sally” Darrell said she typically received a text from her son early in the morning before he went to work saying “Have a blessed day. I love you.”Instead, she woke up to a hysterical call from Stokes. She broke into his apartment across the hall and found him lying dead with one needle mark in his arm and an empty syringe nearby.“It’s a terrible thought, thinking about someone you care about laying there dying,” Sarah said.She said that his death on Feb. 13 was shocking after he had stayed clean for more than two years. Before he became clean, he overdosed twice. Both times, Sarah brought her son back. The Connellsville mom said she finds peace in the fact that he will not have to suffer through another painful recovery.“I told him I didn’t have another recovery left in me, and I don’t think he did either,” she said.She hopes that addicts in recovery will not look at his death as a bad omen indicating poor odds at recovery, or think that they can never beat addiction if Tommy lost the battle. Instead, she wants his death to... (Uniontown Herald Standard)