Could a local rehab have done more to save a woman who died in their care? Samantha Smith thinks so, and she wants answers about the death of her mother, Carol Salyers. The 54-year-old woman died this March after checking into the Foundations Withdrawal Center in Franklin Furnace. Smith blames the facility. Could the county’s ambulance shortage also have contributed to this tragedy?
Smith says she was relieved to find out her mom was headed to rehab. The troubled woman was deep in an addiction battle that led to three arrests in 2022 for meth and probation violation charges.
Back on March 14, she was worried because she couldn’t contact her mother. But she found her mother parked at the First Stop in Franklin Furnace, crying her eyes out. “She wasn’t herself. I could tell she was under the influence. She collapsed in my arms and was crying. I could tell she was under the influence.” She spent several hours with her mother, who said she needed help after relapsing back into drug addiction and planned to check into the Foundations Withdrawal Center to get help.
Carol said, “I’ll get help and I’ll come home and be with you and my grandkids.” Smith hugged her mother goodbye for the last time. The next afternoon, she got an urgent call from a family member telling her they’d found her mother unresponsive at the rehab center. Smith rushed to SOMC and learned her mother had died. Officers interviewed Smith about her mother’s death, and then she had to identify the mother. Though medical personnel said her mother had been officially dead for an hour, Smith said the state of the body led her to believe Carol had been gone for much longer.
Smith said the staff at Foundations would not give her any information about the circumstances of her mother’s death, so she headed to the Day One Center (both facilities are part of The Counseling Center group). Smith played a recording for SCDN of her conversation with TCC administrators. They told her that her mom checked into Foundations around 11 pm on March 14th and that Salyers had tested positive for fentanyl, meth, and MDMA. She was too intoxicated to answer questions and had refused medical care.
Staff told her they walked Carol up to a room and let her go to sleep. They said Salyers slept through the night and refused a check on her vital signs at 8 am. They said they checked on Carol again at 2 pm, and she can be seen moving on video. They went back to check on her at 2:28 pm and found her blue and cold to the touch. Their medical team began CPR, administered Narcan and called for an ambulance. However, the ambulance was delayed. According to them, “We called 9-1-1 within 8 minutes of finding her and starting CPR. Dispatch initially called Green Township but did not tell us they were out on another call. We called back again 10 minutes later, and they told us that they would have to send someone from Portsmouth. Our medical team performed CPR for forty minutes until EMS arrived at 3:21 pm. They took over, and they left for SOMC.” The representative said they believed Salyers was likely dead when they found her in her room, but no one could be sure as Foundations personnel and EMS workers had attempted to revive her for over an hour until she was declared dead at the hospital.
Smith wants to know why the staff did not check up more on her mother. Additionally, she says a friend of her mom who accompanied her to her rehab check-in says personnel gave Salyers a handful of medication at the time of check-in. “How can you give somebody medication when you say they are in no state to give their medical history? I would have sent her to the hospital. They said she failed her drug screen for fentanyl, MDMA, and methamphetamines.”
SCDN obtained the full autopsy results. They show Salyers died from a deadly combination of meth and fentanyl. Smith wants to know how it happened. “If you use fentanyl, you’re not going to die 12 hours later from an overdose. That means they didn’t search her when she got in, or somebody there had drugs and gave them to her.”
Smith says the facility has been unresponsive to her search for answers. “Those people are rude and corrupt and heartless.” She says she’s looked for an attorney to seek justice for her mother but hasn’t yet found anyone willing to take the case. “Smith says, ”It’s been a long eight months of trying to understand why, but sadly, I’m still suffering from this. I miss my mom.”
SCDN reached out to TCC and asked about the procedure for admitting patients to rehab.
They assured us that patients are searched for drugs, given drug screening, and subject to bed checks and video monitoring. The facility said patients are sometimes administered medication but did not comment on this case. The facility invited SCDN to take a tour and learn more about their operating practices.