SURRY COUNTY, N.C. — About every ten minutes, someone dies from taking drugs like fentanyl. It's a staggering statistic from the CDC.
Monday is International Black Balloon Day when families remember and celebrate loved ones lost to overdose.
At Riverside Park, Surry County families came together for the day of awareness to hold a candlelight vigil and read off the names of loved ones they've lost.
It was an emotional moment when they read the names of 115 people who died from overdoses.
A list no one wants to be on.
Each black balloon filled with helium, also honored lives taken too soon.
That includes Michelle Hopkin's daughter. She died almost two years ago when she overdosed on drugs laced with Fentanyl.
“Six months before my daughter passed away she was trying to get help. She called so many places and it was no beds available or she couldn't get an answer," Hopkins said. "She said me and you when I get clean we are going to make the best mom and daughter duo and we are going to save so many lives and I said yes we are.”
Hopkins has since changed careers from banking to working in substance abuse.
“I go around and I tell her story to anybody and everybody because fentanyl is taking a whole generation away from us," Hopkins said.
Melissa Mundy's son Jeremy Collins is a part of that generation. He died on Halloween in 2021.
“He loved everybody,” Mundy said. “He started off with the pills and it led to a fentanyl overdose.”
The necklace Mundy wears carries some of Jeremy's ashes.
“There is no handbook you don't know what to do but talk to them and be honest with them and let them know there is help out there,” Mundy said.
That help was evident at the vigil. Organizer Wendy Odum said she wanted to provide some sort of help after losing her daughter in 2018 and being in recovery herself.
“We have somebody from just about every angle to reach that person that comes out,” Odum said.” That gives me a lot of hope for our community.”
A hope that these types of vigils and list of names won't grow.