Married couple travels to music festivals to save people from overdosing

SEATTLE - One family is using Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party and other music festivals across the country to raise awareness and help save people from overdosing.

Opioids continue to flood Western Washington. Just this week, a drug task force in Whatcom County seized about 30,000 fentanyl pills and 300 grams of fentanyl powder from a group of drug dealers.

However, the fight to stop this killer drug is also anywhere that there is a crowd of potential users. 

"We knew that we wanted to try and do our part to help against the fight against the fentanyl epidemic," said Ingela Travers-Hayward.

Two years ago, Travers-Hayward and her husband created the non-profit This Must Be The Place.

The couple goes to music festivals and hands out naloxone, a medicine that fights against overdoses.

Their effort was born from personal experiences of losing friends to drug overdoses. Travers-Hayward said they wanted to make a change.

"Hearing that it’s working, you know. Hearing that a couple of lives are saved out there, because of these weird packages we hand out, it feels pretty cool," she said.

Their booth is intentionally welcoming, featuring a picture of their corgi. Travers-Hayward says the goal is to make sure no one feels judged.

At the booth, Travers-Hayward hands out naloxone spray packs and information on how to administer them. She says these packs are not just for people who use drugs.

"Last year, a 19-year-old, who got this stuff from us, saved a stranger’s life in a park in downtown Seattle 24 hours later," said Travers-Hayward.

So far this year in King County, more than 560 people died from fentanyl overdoses.

Even with Travers-Hayward at the Capitol Hill Block Party and her husband out of state at another festival, they know the need is much greater.

"We can’t be everywhere we want, you know. And I think that comes down to funding. It comes down to access to naloxone, you know. We need to be able to scale those two things up in order to be able to be more places, because, yeah, we’re having to turn down festivals," she said.

In their first year, Travers-Hayward says they went to eight festivals. In 2023, they will go to 26 festivals. With the help of donations and volunteers, the couple has handed out 30,000 naloxone sprays.

They hope to continue to grow.

"While carrying naloxone is not going to solve everything. It is saving lives"

For more information on This Must Be The Place click here.