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How fentanyl poisoning killed one SLO County teen

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By Sara Kassabian | The Tribune (San Luis Obispo)

Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing series of stories examining how opioids — especially fentanyl — are killing San Luis Obispo County residents.

On most days, Candice Varner’s phone would light up with notifications from her daughter, Reidly.

The 17-year-old from Atascadero would text and Facetime a few times a day to ask questions, share a story or request that her mom pick up something on her way home.

But on Feb. 16, 2021, Varner’s phone was dark and silent.

“We always call each other or she usually calls me at work,” said Varner, who works as a hairdresser at a Morro Bay salon. “She wasn’t responding. I even sent her a text that I was scared.”

By the time she got home from work around 6 p.m., she hadn’t heard from Reidly all day. She tried the handle to her daughter’s bedroom door.

It was locked.

So Varner grabbed the spare key from the bathroom and opened the door.

Inside, she found Reidly lying peacefully on her back, with one arm on her stomach and her head slightly off the pillow.

“I sat down on the edge of the bed and touched her stomach, and she was ice cold,” Varner said. “And then I screamed. I pulled her head toward me. There was foam and blood coming out of her mouth.”

The autopsy report showed that Reidly, her only child, died from fentanyl poisoning.

“A bright life was gone in an instant because of a pill,” Varner said.

Was Reidly’s death accidental or intentional?

From what Varner has gathered, her daughter purchased the fentanyl pill through Snapchat from a dealer in Santa Maria.

Whether Reidly knew that the drug she was taking contained fentanyl — a synthetic opioid that is deadly even in small quantities — remains unclear.

Fenta-pills are often pressed to look like common prescription drugs but actually contain the powerful painkiller, like what Reidly took, or a mixture of fentanyl and another drug.

“She locked herself in a room and did it alone. It could have been an accident, but I don’t know,” said Reign, 17, a childhood friend of Reidly who asked to be identified only by her middle name.

Reidly’s mother found multiple pregnancy tests in her daughter’s room at the time of her death. Some were positive and one was negative, according to the autopsy report.

The pregnancy tests were old, Varner said.

In October 2020, Reidly became pregnant. The family discussed it and decided they wanted to raise the baby. But at the six- week ultrasound, it was clear the pregnancy was not viable.

“I do think that had a lot to do with her mental state,” Varner said. “It was just a few months later that she was gone.”

Reidly was not pregnant at the time of her death. Varner said she did not know Reidly saved the tests.

The pregnancy tests, Reidly’s history of drug use and past statements expressing suicidal thoughts made it difficult for the coroner to determine whether her death should be considered an accidental overdose or intentional.

In the end, the coroner ruled the death “undetermined,” according to the autopsy report.

Regardless of whether she knew the drug contained fentanyl, she was willing to take the risk.

“In her headspace, I think she did not give a f— at that time,” her mother said. “I don’t know if she was depressed, or if it was anxiety and panic, but she took the wrong stuff.”

The Tribune asked the Atascadero Police Department for an update on the investigation into Reidly’s death, but requests for an interview went unanswered and requests for a copy of the police report were denied.

Varner said she has not heard from the Police Department or anyone else in law enforcement since she received a copy of the autopsy report five months after her daughter’s death.

Teen struggled with mental illness and substance use at a young age

The path that led Reidly to take the fentanyl pill was at times winding and difficult.

She grew up in Atascadero and attended Santa Rosa Elementary School for kindergarten into fourth grade, before transferring to the Atascadero Fine Arts Academy for the rest of fourth through eighth grade. As a teenager, she bounced between Morro Bay High School, Atascadero High School and later Paloma, the local continuation school — searching for her place.

Reidly’s struggles with severe anxiety started when she was a preteen, Varner said. Behind her chatty personality was a 12-year-old with persistent stomach aches and panic attacks.

Varner took her to see doctors and therapists, with the caveat that they avoid prescribing any habit-forming substances, like Xanax and other benzodiazepines.

When she was around the age of 13, however, an older boyfriend introduced her to Xanax, and she started taking the sedative recreationally to help quell her anxiety, Varner said.

Through her adolescence, she faced pressures typical for a teenager — friendships, older boyfriends and social media — and those not-as-typical — unplanned pregnancies, intimate partner violence, substance use and mental illness.

“She was going through a lot,” Reign said.

Another friend, Dani Bloomer, said she saw Reidly’s experimentation with drugs grow over the years.

“I think the older we got, the worse it got,” Bloomer, 18, said about Reidly’s substance use.

When it came time to go to high school, Reidly decided to go to Morro Bay instead of staying in Atascadero. Varner said she wanted a fresh start.

As potential stressors, her friends pointed to a strained relationship between Reidly and her father, as well as a series of volatile relationships with older boyfriends who also struggled with substance use.

Reign’s mother, Laura, who is a family friend of the Varners and asked to be identified by her middle name, said her daughter and Reidly “were like twins growing up.”

“They were together all the time,” she said.

Laura said she made the difficult decision to separate Reign from Reidly because Reidly started getting into fights and using drugs while attending Morro Bay High School her freshman and sophomore years.

“I sat with Reign and I talked to her about how Reidly can’t come over anymore because it’s not the right path that we need to be on,” Laura said. “That was hard because I really cared about (Reidly) so much.”

Halfway through her sophomore year, Reidly transferred from Morro Bay to Atascadero High School, where she met Violet Williams, 17.

Williams said she remembers Reidly physically fighting with one of her older boyfriends, who she said was also addicted to substances and had a history of violence.

“He’s not a good person, and he really shouldn’t have been in her life,” Williams said. “He introduced her to a lot of stuff, and he pissed me off real badly.”

The friends who knew Reidly from childhood through her teenage years were worried about her health and safety.

“I knew everything about her, and I knew what she was doing,” said Bloomer, while holding back tears. “I knew things were getting worse.”

In the months before her death, hanging out with Reidly was less about having fun and more about keeping her physically safe, Bloomer said.

Atascadero teen described as confident, spontaneous and free-spirited

Reidly faced challenges with drugs and her mental health, but friends said she could be kind and nurturing.

Bloomer was a new student starting classes at Atascadero Fine Arts Academy when she met Reidly. The girls were seated next to each other in their first classroom together.

Bloomer said she had gone to six schools before starting at Fine Arts and was painfully shy.

“The first few weeks, I kept going home to my mom and I was like, ‘This girl is so annoying, and she will not stop talking, and she won’t stop asking questions, and she’s very loud,’” Bloomer said.

Eventually, Reidly’s gregarious nature helped Dani become more outspoken in the classroom, much to the delight of teachers and school administrators, Bloomer said.

Before long, the friends were inseparable both inside and outside the walls of the Fine Arts Academy.

“We were incredible polar opposites. And she was the definition of a free spirit. Anything goes,” Bloomer said.

Williams remembers Reidly as someone who hated being bored to the point it made her physically uncomfortable. She was a person who embraced her many impulses and lived life boldly.

“She was impulsive but also super caring and sweet,” Williams said. “She liked the little things, like going to eat somewhere, doing your nails, doing your makeup.”

Reidly liked to change her hair color, enjoyed driving up the coast and loved water — whether soaking in the bath or hot tub or sitting in the creek on a hot day, her friends and family said.

“I remember one day. … She said, ‘I’m really bored … I want to go jump in a body of water … but I want to do it fully clothed,’” Williams said.

It was nearly sundown, and the friends drove out to Triple Ponds, a swimming hole between Atascadero and Santa Margarita, plunged into the water and then went to Vons grocery store in their wet clothes.

Williams met Reidly right before the pandemic shutdown in February 2020. The two lived near each other and spent the majority of the quarantine together, switching off between houses.

Sometime during their friendship, Reidly went to a rehabilitation center in Long Beach, and it seemed like she was staying away from the people and substances that would get her into trouble, Williams said.

Williams remembers Reidly as being confident about what she wanted and how she wanted it. The friends were inseparable until the fall of 2020, when everything seemed to change overnight.

“Reidly just decided that she hated me,” Williams said. “It was really confusing. It didn’t feel good. So I had to find other people to be friends with.”

Varner confirmed that Reidly could be mean if she was angry.

Williams said Reidly warned her at the beginning of their friendship that she would usually stay friends with someone for about three months. Despite the falling out, Williams still valued their friendship, and they would text occasionally.

“She’d push people away to start a new group of friends,” Varner said. “She was pretty good at that.”

In the fall of 2020, not long after Reidly cut Williams out of her life, she became pregnant and told her mom and other close friends that she wanted to keep the baby.

“I think at first she seemed like she genuinely wanted to stop using substances,” Bloomer said.

Reidly would call her and ask if she would move into an apartment with her to help take care of the baby.

But the fantasy was short-lived.

“I think that she believed she wasn’t strong enough to stop, and so she made the decision (to have an abortion),” Bloomer.

Varner said an ultrasound revealed the pregnancy wasn’t viable and complications meant she had to terminate the pregnancy — it was a difficult time for Reidly.



By Sara Kassabian | The Tribune (San Luis Obispo)

Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing series of stories examining how opioids — especially fentanyl — are killing San Luis Obispo County residents.

On most days, Candice Varner’s phone would light up with notifications from her daughter, Reidly.

The 17-year-old from Atascadero would text and Facetime a few times a day to ask questions, share a story or request that her mom pick up something on her way home.

But on Feb. 16, 2021, Varner’s phone was dark and silent.

“We always call each other or she usually calls me at work,” said Varner, who works as a hairdresser at a Morro Bay salon. “She wasn’t responding. I even sent her a text that I was scared.”

By the time she got home from work around 6 p.m., she hadn’t heard from Reidly all day. She tried the handle to her daughter’s bedroom door.

It was locked.

So Varner grabbed the spare key from the bathroom and opened the door.

Inside, she found Reidly lying peacefully on her back, with one arm on her stomach and her head slightly off the pillow.

“I sat down on the edge of the bed and touched her stomach, and she was ice cold,” Varner said. “And then I screamed. I pulled her head toward me. There was foam and blood coming out of her mouth.”

The autopsy report showed that Reidly, her only child, died from fentanyl poisoning.

“A bright life was gone in an instant because of a pill,” Varner said.

Was Reidly’s death accidental or intentional?

From what Varner has gathered, her daughter purchased the fentanyl pill through Snapchat from a dealer in Santa Maria.

Whether Reidly knew that the drug she was taking contained fentanyl — a synthetic opioid that is deadly even in small quantities — remains unclear.

Fenta-pills are often pressed to look like common prescription drugs but actually contain the powerful painkiller, like what Reidly took, or a mixture of fentanyl and another drug.

“She locked herself in a room and did it alone. It could have been an accident, but I don’t know,” said Reign, 17, a childhood friend of Reidly who asked to be identified only by her middle name.

Reidly’s mother found multiple pregnancy tests in her daughter’s room at the time of her death. Some were positive and one was negative, according to the autopsy report.

The pregnancy tests were old, Varner said.

In October 2020, Reidly became pregnant. The family discussed it and decided they wanted to raise the baby. But at the six- week ultrasound, it was clear the pregnancy was not viable.

“I do think that had a lot to do with her mental state,” Varner said. “It was just a few months later that she was gone.”

Reidly was not pregnant at the time of her death. Varner said she did not know Reidly saved the tests.

The pregnancy tests, Reidly’s history of drug use and past statements expressing suicidal thoughts made it difficult for the coroner to determine whether her death should be considered an accidental overdose or intentional.

In the end, the coroner ruled the death “undetermined,” according to the autopsy report.

Regardless of whether she knew the drug contained fentanyl, she was willing to take the risk.

“In her headspace, I think she did not give a f— at that time,” her mother said. “I don’t know if she was depressed, or if it was anxiety and panic, but she took the wrong stuff.”

The Tribune asked the Atascadero Police Department for an update on the investigation into Reidly’s death, but requests for an interview went unanswered and requests for a copy of the police report were denied.

Varner said she has not heard from the Police Department or anyone else in law enforcement since she received a copy of the autopsy report five months after her daughter’s death.

Teen struggled with mental illness and substance use at a young age

The path that led Reidly to take the fentanyl pill was at times winding and difficult.

She grew up in Atascadero and attended Santa Rosa Elementary School for kindergarten into fourth grade, before transferring to the Atascadero Fine Arts Academy for the rest of fourth through eighth grade. As a teenager, she bounced between Morro Bay High School, Atascadero High School and later Paloma, the local continuation school — searching for her place.

Reidly’s struggles with severe anxiety started when she was a preteen, Varner said. Behind her chatty personality was a 12-year-old with persistent stomach aches and panic attacks.

Varner took her to see doctors and therapists, with the caveat that they avoid prescribing any habit-forming substances, like Xanax and other benzodiazepines.

When she was around the age of 13, however, an older boyfriend introduced her to Xanax, and she started taking the sedative recreationally to help quell her anxiety, Varner said.

Through her adolescence, she faced pressures typical for a teenager — friendships, older boyfriends and social media — and those not-as-typical — unplanned pregnancies, intimate partner violence, substance use and mental illness.

“She was going through a lot,” Reign said.

Another friend, Dani Bloomer, said she saw Reidly’s experimentation with drugs grow over the years.

“I think the older we got, the worse it got,” Bloomer, 18, said about Reidly’s substance use.

When it came time to go to high school, Reidly decided to go to Morro Bay instead of staying in Atascadero. Varner said she wanted a fresh start.

As potential stressors, her friends pointed to a strained relationship between Reidly and her father, as well as a series of volatile relationships with older boyfriends who also struggled with substance use.

Reign’s mother, Laura, who is a family friend of the Varners and asked to be identified by her middle name, said her daughter and Reidly “were like twins growing up.”

“They were together all the time,” she said.

Laura said she made the difficult decision to separate Reign from Reidly because Reidly started getting into fights and using drugs while attending Morro Bay High School her freshman and sophomore years.

“I sat with Reign and I talked to her about how Reidly can’t come over anymore because it’s not the right path that we need to be on,” Laura said. “That was hard because I really cared about (Reidly) so much.”

Halfway through her sophomore year, Reidly transferred from Morro Bay to Atascadero High School, where she met Violet Williams, 17.

Williams said she remembers Reidly physically fighting with one of her older boyfriends, who she said was also addicted to substances and had a history of violence.

“He’s not a good person, and he really shouldn’t have been in her life,” Williams said. “He introduced her to a lot of stuff, and he pissed me off real badly.”

The friends who knew Reidly from childhood through her teenage years were worried about her health and safety.

“I knew everything about her, and I knew what she was doing,” said Bloomer, while holding back tears. “I knew things were getting worse.”

In the months before her death, hanging out with Reidly was less about having fun and more about keeping her physically safe, Bloomer said.

Atascadero teen described as confident, spontaneous and free-spirited

Reidly faced challenges with drugs and her mental health, but friends said she could be kind and nurturing.

Bloomer was a new student starting classes at Atascadero Fine Arts Academy when she met Reidly. The girls were seated next to each other in their first classroom together.

Bloomer said she had gone to six schools before starting at Fine Arts and was painfully shy.

“The first few weeks, I kept going home to my mom and I was like, ‘This girl is so annoying, and she will not stop talking, and she won’t stop asking questions, and she’s very loud,’” Bloomer said.

Eventually, Reidly’s gregarious nature helped Dani become more outspoken in the classroom, much to the delight of teachers and school administrators, Bloomer said.

Before long, the friends were inseparable both inside and outside the walls of the Fine Arts Academy.

“We were incredible polar opposites. And she was the definition of a free spirit. Anything goes,” Bloomer said.

Williams remembers Reidly as someone who hated being bored to the point it made her physically uncomfortable. She was a person who embraced her many impulses and lived life boldly.

“She was impulsive but also super caring and sweet,” Williams said. “She liked the little things, like going to eat somewhere, doing your nails, doing your makeup.”

Reidly liked to change her hair color, enjoyed driving up the coast and loved water — whether soaking in the bath or hot tub or sitting in the creek on a hot day, her friends and family said.

“I remember one day. … She said, ‘I’m really bored … I want to go jump in a body of water … but I want to do it fully clothed,’” Williams said.

It was nearly sundown, and the friends drove out to Triple Ponds, a swimming hole between Atascadero and Santa Margarita, plunged into the water and then went to Vons grocery store in their wet clothes.

Williams met Reidly right before the pandemic shutdown in February 2020. The two lived near each other and spent the majority of the quarantine together, switching off between houses.

Sometime during their friendship, Reidly went to a rehabilitation center in Long Beach, and it seemed like she was staying away from the people and substances that would get her into trouble, Williams said.

Williams remembers Reidly as being confident about what she wanted and how she wanted it. The friends were inseparable until the fall of 2020, when everything seemed to change overnight.

“Reidly just decided that she hated me,” Williams said. “It was really confusing. It didn’t feel good. So I had to find other people to be friends with.”

Varner confirmed that Reidly could be mean if she was angry.

Williams said Reidly warned her at the beginning of their friendship that she would usually stay friends with someone for about three months. Despite the falling out, Williams still valued their friendship, and they would text occasionally.

“She’d push people away to start a new group of friends,” Varner said. “She was pretty good at that.”

In the fall of 2020, not long after Reidly cut Williams out of her life, she became pregnant and told her mom and other close friends that she wanted to keep the baby.

“I think at first she seemed like she genuinely wanted to stop using substances,” Bloomer said.

Reidly would call her and ask if she would move into an apartment with her to help take care of the baby.

But the fantasy was short-lived.

“I think that she believed she wasn’t strong enough to stop, and so she made the decision (to have an abortion),” Bloomer.

Varner said an ultrasound revealed the pregnancy wasn’t viable and complications meant she had to terminate the pregnancy — it was a difficult time for Reidly.

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