MONTICELLO, NY — Dorothy Sanchez remembers her son Jonathan fondly. In talking about him, she reminisces on how he would help others, on his dreams for the future, on what a loving person he was. 

“He had this big heart. He would counsel people. He graduated early. He was an athlete,” Sanchez said. “I thought he was always going to be in counseling because he would just listen so openly and speak to people, encouraging them, not judging them, and he had dreams for his future.”

When Jonathan died in 2024 due to a drug overdose, Sanchez tried to figure out what her son’s legacy would be. She didn’t want her son’s life defined by how it ended. She knew that there was more to Jonathan than just addiction.

“Addiction became part of his story,” Sanchez said. “But it’s not his identity, and I definitely don’t want that to be what his legacy is.”

According to Sanchez, Jonathan was caught in a cycle of addiction, treatment and then relapse. When caught in this cycle, he wrote. In one letter he wrote, Jonathan expresses love for God for helping him through the dark cycle, and then promises to help others the way he was helped.

“How can I repay you with just my life alone? The answer is I can’t, so I’ll save 1,000 souls” reads the letter, in part. 

After reading the letter, Sanchez knew that Jonathan’s promise could still be fulfilled and that Jonathan and his story could still help others.

“He had this desire to take all of his losses and help other people,” Sanchez said. “When I read it… I thought this was such a great purpose for him.” 

Sanchez decided to curate Jonathan’s writing in order to honor his legacy. The resulting book, “Jonathan’s Legacy: Be The Light”, serves as a way for people to know Sanchez, her son Jonathan and their struggles. 

“I said ‘I’m going to write this book, and so I don’t have to tell the story all the time, or when I meet people one at a time, I can give them this book and let Jonathan speak into their lives.’ And so that’s what I did,” Sanchez said. “I wrote Jonathan’s legacy because I wanted people to know who he really was, and because I believed that his story could still save others.“

After writing the book, Sanchez still felt that there was more to be done. Recognizing that there were others in a similar situation, she found hope for a better tomorrow in that community. She created a Facebook group called Hope After Overdose, connecting with families whose relatives had overdoses and sharing their experiences.

“I actually started it because when Jonathan died, I discovered I wasn’t alone,” Sanchez said. “Sullivan County had far too many families carrying the same heartbreak. So I wanted to reach out to them, and what began as a support group became a place where people could finally talk honestly about what they experience.

This community and these shared experience have informed Sanchez about the opioid crisis and its current state within Sullivan County. Sanchez said that the county has an opportunity to figure out innovative programs to combat substance abuse and overdose due to its opioid crisis, saying that the county could become known for fixing the problem instead of just having the problem.

“Out of everything in the world, we don’t want to be known to be number one for this,” Sanchez said. “We could also be number one for figuring out… the best way to to recover, the best recovery programs. We can be innovative because we have an incentive to be innovative.”

Sanchez hopes that by talking about Jonathan’s story and by spreading her experiences and Jonathan’s writings, she can make an impact and save lives. Already people have expressed how much Jonathan’s story impacted them. Sanchez says that this is her proudest accomplishment.

“I just got a text the other day from someone who had successfully tapered off,“ Sanchez said. “And they said that in the hard times that they were going through, when they wanted to give up, that they thought about my son and they thought about me and the things that I’m doing, and it gave them strength to do it. They thanked me so much that they never want to go back to that dependency again. And while that might not be 1,000 souls, that’s one of them, and that’s what that’s what it’s about.”

Sanchez said that she hopes that by continuing this effort, she can make good on Jonathan’s promise to God to save people. Through her efforts, Jonathan’s legacy lives on.

“Jonathan made a promise to God and wanted to save lives, and addiction prevented him from fulfilling that promise during his lifetime,” Sanchez said. “My prayer is that his legacy fulfills it now. And if his story helps even one family find hope, one person receive better care or one community improve the way it responds to addiction, then Jonathan’s light is still shining.”