APRIL 13 - 26, 2018 • VOL. 12 — NO. 8
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► Piedmont Healthcare and its flagship hospital expand PAGE 2 ►
After years of friendship, a Gold Girl Scout troop winds down Around Town PAGE 13
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION | P23-28
After 25 years, Phipps Plaza fire station gets a new home BY EVELYN ANDREWS evelyn@reporternewspapers.net A fire station tucked away under the Phipps Plaza mall parking deck was built 25 years ago to serve a booming Buckhead. Now Station 3 will get rebuilt itself and move a short distance to accommodate a major expansion of the mall.
From left, Sgt. Brac Shannon, Nick Curry, Brandon Sterling and Capt. Brain Garner pose with the fire engine at the Fire Station 3.
See AFTER on page 30
EVELYN ANDREWS
Coping with a Crisis: Opioid addiction in the suburbs EXCLUSIVE SERIES
Opioid ODs are deadlier than mass shootings, but some high schools don’t stock the antidote BY MAX BLAU
I
n the spring of 2014, a student fell out of his chair in a 10th-grade classroom at Buckhead’s North Atlanta High School. A teacher quickly noticed he was unconscious and hardly breathing. After someone called 911, a paramedic arrived and, suspecting an overdose, administered an opioid antidote in hopes of saving the kid’s life. The antidote, known as naloxone, worked. In reviving the student, Atlanta Public Schools staffers suddenly found themselves on the front line of the opioid
crisis. Nurses realized they could either shake it off as an isolated incident — or prepare for future overdoses to come. Imagine a school without a plan for an active shooter in 2018. Yet there were four times as many fatal opioid overdoses than gun homicides in 2016. Those deaths have
Listen to our special podcast or watch the video of a deeper discussion about the opioid epidemic’s local impact. See page 11
left a haunting trail of news reports across the country that include students finding classmates sprawled out on school bathroom floors and paramedics responding to the overdoses of teachers. In recent years, the rash of in-school overdoses nationwide hasn’t spared Atlanta, as the NAHS incident showed. And graduates of local public and private high schools have died from overdoses to opioids that they first tried as students. Yet many schools — including ones in Sandy Springs, Dunwoody and Brookhaven – have chosen not to stock the life-saving opioid antidote. See OPIOID on page 10
Buckhead attorney preps sexual abuse cases against local schools BY EVELYN ANDREWS evelyn@reporternewspapers.net
A Buckhead attorney is prepared to sue private schools in Buckhead and the metro area for alleged sexual abuse by staffers many years ago, but needs legislation to pass that would extend the statute of limitations. Legislation that would have opened a window to file such lawsuits against died last month after being opposed by such organizations as the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, which has its head church in Buckhead. See BUCKHEAD on page 20