BUFFALO TWP — Kevin Slane said he never imagined he would live multi-generationally, but when his eldest daughter, Alexandra, died of an opioid overdose in 2016, he and his wife, Cathy, wanted to be close to family.

Today, the couple, formerly of Allegheny County, lives in Buffalo Township with their daughter, Marissa, son-in-law Josh and four-year-old grandson, Axel. A second grandchild is on the way.

In the home, everyone pitches in to support the philanthropic foundation started by the couple in 2022. The nonprofit is called Alexandra’s Light of Hope and provides financial assistance to people in recovery, primarily women, in memory of their daughter, who died at age 26.

“We just want to be able to help other women that are going through this and other families that are going through this,” Cathy Slane said.

In the home, pictures of Alexandra hang on the wall. Axel’s toys are in the living room. Easter decorations near the kitchen marked cross-generational efforts to prepare for the holiday together. Axel’s name is an anagram of Alex, which was Alexandra’s nickname, and is a tribute to his aunt, Cathy Slane explained.

Kevin Slane, who has traveled extensively in his career as a certified wine educator, specialist and co-founder of Pittsburgh Wine Guild, said he was always struck by communal living in Italy, which made multi-generational living in the United States seem less unusual in his mind.

“I did a lot of business in Europe, and it's so common there,” he said. “On a Friday evening, if you've not been to Europe, especially Italy, generations of all ages walk together to the center of town. At 11 o'clock, the women and children go home and then the men hang out in the piazza for a couple hours together.”

“We built this house with the knowledge that we were going to all stay together,” Cathy Slane said. “We are happy all being together for as long as they want to put up with us.”

When the Slanes talked about their eldest daughter, a cheerleader, a student in the gifted program and, later, a student recruited by the Shadyside School of Nursing, they described a young woman who deeply cared about her family and friends.

“She was an intelligent, beautiful person,” her mother said.

“When she was young, she would be afraid to do anything wrong,” Cathy Slane continued. “I think that was the hardest part for her and what she struggled with mentally so much during this. She was not the person that drugs were making her to be, and she couldn’t get back to who she was.”

Alexandra started drinking and taking drugs in high school, her parents said, and her addiction began with a number of contributing factors. She was a cheerleader who wanted to fit in, they said, and was bullied relentlessly over text messages. She also had scoliosis, and took prescription medication to help treat her pain.

When they began noticing suspicious behavior that pointed to substance use, they recalled talking to Alexandra’s pediatrician who told them “it was just a phase.”

But Kevin Slane remembers the moment he realized it wasn’t “just a phase” but something more serious than the underage drinking he suspected.

“She came up to me and had track marks on her arms,” he said. “She said, ‘Daddy, I think I need help.’”

The Slanes acted swiftly, putting their daughter in addiction treatment in Beaver County and later pulling her out of the public school she attended to instead go to a private Catholic school.

“It was just like a black period of my life, because all we did was fear,” Kevin Slane said. “Every time she left the house, we just feared.”

Like others who have succumbed to substance use disorder, Alexandra didn’t choose to become addicted to opioids, her parents said. As their daughter was in and out of rehab facilities across the country eight or nine times, the Slanes said Alexandra wanted to get help to make a full recovery.

In Long Beach, Calif., Kevin Slane recalled when Alexandra was in a treatment program living with three other young women in a home with a supervisor trained in addiction recovery.

Alexandra’s younger sister and her father flew out to celebrate her six month sobriety mark.

“She was just so happy and seemed OK,” Kevin Slane said. “And she said, ‘I want to stay a little longer because I feel I’m in a good place.’”

When one of the other housemates’ boyfriends brought drugs into the home, all four started using again, he said.

“She called me and said, ‘Daddy, I want to come home,’” Kevin Slane said. “She told me exactly what happened.”

“You can try to run and hide and try different places,” Cathy Slane said. “We always thought it was the bad area. Maybe there were just too many drugs in our area. But it didn’t matter where we sent her. It was her that needed to have the strength and the health and the stability, and being in a safe environment where you hope somebody isn’t going to walk in with drugs and wipe away your strength at that moment.”

After she left treatment, Kevin Slane said his daughter entered halfway houses. Her experience inspired him and his wife to support other women, and sometimes men, in similar circumstances.

He noted that many insurance companies only cover 30 days of treatment in a treatment facility, he said, when the reality is that recovery is a lengthier process.

“(Recovery) takes so much work and time and money,” Cathy Slane said. “We feel like, you know, we want to be an extra helping hand to help women in recovery. Maybe they need some help to get schooling. Maybe they need help to get some clothing to get a job. Maybe they don't have transportation because you know, they've lost their jobs and their own car.”

The couple’s vision for Alexandra’s Light of Hope is “lofty,” Kevin Slane said, but it doesn’t deter them from holding fundraisers and supporting people in recovery.

Down the road, the Slanes said they hope to buy a three-quarter house and offer career development and trade opportunities for people in recovery. Cathy Slane also said she is considering starting a support group for parents who have lost children to drug overdoses.

Cathy Slane said she understands people’s misconceptions about substance use disorder and the stigma that surrounds it. For her, losing a child to a drug overdose was an education in addiction that she never wanted, she said.

“I’ve come to find out that there are a lot more people from every walk of life that struggle (with addiction),” Cathy Slane said. “And the public wants to look out and say, ‘Oh, addicts. They do it to themselves. They can help it if they want to.’ That is not true.”

“(Alexandra) didn’t want to die,” she said. “She was trying to get help. She didn’t want to be an addict. She would tell us over and over again ‘I don’t want to do this,’ but she couldn’t help it.”

“Her friends were dying, and I would say to God, ‘please don’t ever let that be me,’” she said. “And she would ache so bad that her friends were dying of this. Even though you live with (addiction) right in your face, you can’t stop it.”

“It would be like saying, ‘I don’t want to have cancer anymore,’” Cathy Slane said. “You can’t just wish it away.”

The first time Alexandra overdosed was in 11th grade getting ready for the bus, her mother said. She was wearing her North Catholic uniform when Cathy Slane arrived to see her daughter turning gray on the couch, and immediately administered CPR.

Years later, Alexandra died at home when her parents were out of town, believing their daughter to be in a treatment facility. Alexandra had been kicked out of rehab after breaking a rule, the Slanes said.

“We thought she was in a safe place getting the help she wanted,” Cathy Slane said.

“She got home and her sponsor was going to pick her up and they were going to go to a meeting,” she said. “By the time (the sponsor) got to the house, (Alexandra) was gone.”

When starting the nonprofit, Cathy Slane said the couple looked at legislation that they believe failed their daughter. They considered the different factors that play into addiction, such as mental health, as they became more integrated in the community in Butler County and thought of ways to address addiction through their nonprofit work.

“We wanted to first start out by seeing on a small scale that we were able to do, seeing directly people like our daughter get some kind of help, or just some kind of good feelings about themselves,” Cathy Slane said.

Many of their daughter’s friends who were in recovery with her are now like family to the Slanes, Kevin Slane said.

“We have seen so many people grow and have successful careers, successful lives, successful families,” he said. “And for me, sometimes it kind of hurts. It’s bittersweet.”

Cathy Slane said she and her husband have tried repeatedly to make sense of their daughter’s death as they sought answers to Alexandra’s substance use disorder and her death.

“We tried everything,” she said. “She was in (rehab) in Texas. She was in California.”

“We always tried to figure out why — why it happened,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll ever get those answers. You just don’t know who is going to be affected by this horrible, horrible affliction.”