News Story Detail

NorthBay Health ICU nurse Danielle Manno, R.N., wants the worst day of her life to save lives.

Danielle’s son, Anthony Callan, 20, died in April 2021, after he took what he thought were OxyContin pills but which turned out to be fatal doses of Fentanyl. Now she is part of a video project in Vacaville schools that is warning students and parents about the dangers of Fentanyl — a project that will soon expand to a larger video effort for all Solano middle and high school students.

“I want my warnings to save kid’s lives and to honor my son’s life,” Danielle said. “All we can do is educate.”

For Danielle, the video project began earlier this year when she was approached by the Medical Sciences class at Vacaville and Will C. Wood High Schools about the possibility of joining with them, Solano County Public Health and Vibe Solano on a project to educate their fellow students on the dangers of Fentanyl.

“I thought it was a great idea. And the students really were leading the effort. They came up with the whole project,” she explained. The students recorded lessons including one that demonstrated (using grains of sand) how only a tiny amount of Fentanyl can kill.

And then Danielle was recorded sharing the emotionally stirring story of Anthony’s death – beginning the video by reading a message Anthony had written on a baseball and presented to her on the baseball diamond at Vacaville High School during his final home game his senior year.

“Dear Mom, thank you for always motivating me to keep going and to never give up,” she read through tears. “Thank you for screaming at me in the middle of my pitch. I love you, #25 Anthony Callan.”

It’s an inscription she still smiles at – a picture of who he was: sweet, funny, loving.

“Anthony was my joy,” she said. “He was funny and loving. We talked every day. He loved his family and friends and he loved baseball.”

A car crash during his senior year, left Anthony with recurrent back pain. “He had pain pills from his doctor,” said Danielle. What his family didn’t know is that when those pills ran out, he turned to a friend who suggested they could buy pills off the street.

After he graduated in 2019, he was off to Folsom Community College where he would play ball.

He had an apartment and was living there but soon he was calling home, unhappy, anxious and depressed. Danielle suggested he come home for a while.

“He didn’t seem right. I thought he had depression and then one day he’s standing in the kitchen and I thought he looked like he was in withdrawal from something,” she said. “So I asked him and he said ‘no,’ and I thought maybe it was just light anxiety and depression.”

But things got worse. Danielle was able to get Anthony into counseling and then after a few sessions, he invited his parents to join in a meeting, where he cried and told them everything.

“He’d been using OxyContin. He felt he had disappointed us and he was so sorry,” Danielle recalled. “I remember telling him we will get through this together that we love him and are here for him.”

A few weeks later, Anthony’s counselor left and he told Danielle he didn’t want to try to see another counselor. He stopped the session but a month later he confessed to his mom “I did it again.”

Danielle admits that before Anthony’s death, she was fairly ignorant of the Fentanyl crisis. “I didn’t know about it. He told us he could get deliveries on his phone.” Once, after seeing a news report on television about parents dealing with their children having access to Fentanyl, she had asked Anthony about it. “And he told me ‘Mom, I’m not that stupid. I’m good, I’m not doing that,’” she said.

Now, as Anthony stood in her kitchen, telling her he had used OxyContin again, Danielle hugged him and told him he would have to go into rehab.

“NorthBay helped us find a rehab that week and we took him in the next Monday. It was 30 days but it was not long enough,” she said.

During the first week, Anthony had called saying he wanted to leave. “He was going through withdrawal. He was like somebody I didn’t know,” she said. But the next morning he called and said he wanted to stay, a call Danielle credits to another person in the program – a firefighter – who was rehabbing as well.

Anthony made it through the 30-day program. On Wednesday April 7, 2021, he came home.

“He was like a brand new person. He was on fire for life. He talked and talked and had so many ideas and things he wanted to do,” said Danielle. He signed up for Narcotics Anonymous classes on Zoom. He went back to a restaurant job and the following Monday they held a welcome home barbecue for him with friends and family.

“The next day I was at work and texted him to tell him I loved him but I didn’t hear back so I texted again and then called,” Danielle said. He called her back and assured her he was fine and thanked her for the barbecue, saying it was a good time. “That’s the last time I talked to him,” she said.

A few hours later she got a message from Anthony’s step mom saying they had found him in his room unresponsive and that rescue crews were working on him.

He didn’t make it.

“I was at work and I just collapsed,” she remembered.

Jen Veler, R.N., Clinical Manager of Critical Care Services, has worked with Danielle for years and was there to catch her. “I think for the whole team that was there that day, it will take a long time to process this,” she said through tears. “But we came around her, because we are a family.”

Jen drove Danielle to where Anthony was but says her NorthBay family’s help didn’t end there. “We just came together as a team to care for her,” she said. “We brought food to her house and many of us were at the vigil she had for her son and we just checked in on her all the time.”

And the team has grown to understand the Fentanyl crisis and how to care for the families as well as patients. “As nurses, our instincts kick in and we just do all we need to save a life but now our team has grown to understand what to say to parents and what the family needs because we’ve all experienced it now.”

Danielle is grateful for her NorthBay family’s love and care. “It helped so much,” she said.

It also helped cement her determination to do something to fight back against the opioid crisis.

“We found out later that during the weekend (before the barbecue) Anthony had found 20-year-old dealer in Suisun. He had met him on Sunday in Suisun and he bought three pills he was told were Oxy but they were all laced with Fentanyl – lethal doses,” Danielle explained.

Investigators later found the dealer and arrested him. They found him with $55,000 in cash, guns and drugs—OxyContin, Percocet and cocaine.

As the second anniversary of Anthony’s death approached in April, Danielle was pleased to see that the video project she had recorded with the Vacaville students was expanding to be shown to middle school students. Parents of the students were allowed to view the video so they would know what their students would see as well.

“Kids think they’re invincible. Anthony thought he was invincible but you’re not invincible,” she said in the video. “The drug dealers don’t care. They are lacing everything with it now, even marijuana … It’s in vape pens. It’s in Xanax, Ativan, OxyContin, Adderall …and they put in pills and it kills you. It took a second and he was gone. You think you’re invincible and Anthony did too.”

The reaction from students and parents has been wonderful. “I get so much response from kids and messages from parents, thanking me and saying how proud they are of me for being so strong,” she said.

But the best response came when she learned that some kids had come to school counselors to say they had been taking pills and needed help. “When I heard that, I cried. I was so happy,” she said.

And now a documentary film maker from the East Coast is making bigger film that will include Danielle sharing Anthony’s story, she said. “The idea is to use that video each year in schools across the county.”

That education is the key, she said.

“A lot of people didn’t know about this issue. I’m a nurse and I didn’t know,” she said. “I never thought this could happen to us. But everything is laced with it now and I’m working to try to help people understand that.”

She wants all parents to know and to not be afraid to talk to their kids about it. “Don’t think it won’t happen to you,” she said.

There is help available if you or anyone you love is suffering with opiod addiction. Learn more about the Fentanyl crisis and resources available in Solano County.