From The Athletic’s Max Bultman:
[On Monday, Ken] Daniels announced the Jamie Daniels Foundation’s partnership with the Children’s Hospital of Michigan Foundation — a partnership meant to address the opioid crisis in Michigan. Daniels’ foundation “supports individuals and families struggling with addiction by providing the education, resources, professional guidance, and financial support they need to make recovery possible.”
“I think he’d be very proud of what we’re doing,” Daniels told The Athletic. “I really do. And the fact that his sister (Arlyn)’s involved with the foundation, he’d love that. … He was a very caring, loyal person, and his friends will tell you that. He went over and above to bring people into a group — when kids felt on the outside, he’d bring them in. And that’s who he was.”
Daniels first felt a dark cloud around him begin to dissipate after meeting with Matt Friedman, a PR professional from Tanner Friedman, and Larry Burns, president and CEO of the Children’s Hospital of Michigan Foundation, to discuss a partnership.
The foundation may prevent that cloud from needlessly attaching itself to so many families each year. There were more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Jamie had been seven months sober, but set up to fail by greed, an abusive system and insurance scams,” Daniels said in his speech. “Addiction is a mental illness. Addicts don’t want to be addicts.”
