Pendleton family shares story of lost son in hope for change

Pelles died June 3, 2022, at his home. His cause of death was “acute combined amphetamine, ethanol and methamphetamine intoxication,” his mother, Tami Pelles, said. He was 26.

Ryker’s substance abuse issues started in his teenage years when he began smoking marijuana with friends from school. As he grew older, Ryker began using harder substances, of which Tami said methamphetamine was his “drug of choice.”

“Ryker was 14 when things really got rough,” Tami said. “As he got older, it was more difficult, because there are privacy issues from care providers. Anything that he would want to do had to be voluntary.”

Tami described Ryker as having been social, energetic and a bit of a class clown. Behind the outward appearance, she explained, Ryker was struggling in school, with himself and with his friends. Tami said she believed Ryker needed help, an intervention or counseling, but she could not compel him to seek it.

“I couldn’t enforce anything, even when he was 15 years old, I couldn’t force him to get any kind of counseling, or treatment,” she said. “I was also excluded from talking to doctors or hearing what they had to say. I recognize that there’s a reason for that, but really, as parents, my husband and I both were trapped. Even when police were called, it was more of a threat to take him to jail than it was to get help.”

Ryker in 2018 moved back in with his family after being gone for several years. He began spending time with old friends, Hudson Pelles, Ryker’s brother said, particularly with friends that had influenced him in the past to use drugs.

“He was just using meth for the most part,” Tami said. “At some point, we’d had an altercation in the home where he had gone after one of his younger brothers. When I tried to rush over I tripped and fell. My younger son, Shepard, called the police because he was scared. They came and asked, ‘What do you want us to do?’ I said we were going to trespass him from the home.”

Trespassing Ryker would prove symbolic of his struggles to get help with his substance abuse and mental health issues, Tami said. In 2020 Ryker violated that trespass and again found himself in police custody.

“He was yelling things at me and somebody working next door called the police,” she said. “When the officers came, they said, ‘If we take him to jail, if you want to press charges, we can make sure that he gets a mental health assessment.’ I said OK. I pressed charges.”

Police arrested Ryker, and he received a mental health assessment from Lifeways, Umatilla County’s former community support service provider. This was not Ryker’s first Lifeways assessment, Tami explained, and he’d long ago figured out if he responded “No” to questions such as “Are you a danger to yourself?” then staff at Lifeways would take his answer at face value and move on to the next case.

“Our first official attempt to get Ryker help was in 2018 when he had moved back into our home,” Tami said. “I went to Lifeways and asked how I could help him. They said I could petition the court to have him evaluated. So we did and it was approved very, very rapidly. Somebody from Lifeways came to the house, sat in the living room and talked to all of us who would talk to him. Ryker came in later and they talked for 20 minutes. In the end, Lifeways couldn’t do anything about it, because it’s not against the law to be mentally ill.”

Tami said Lifeways several times found Ryker was not a danger to himself despite ample evidence of wrist cutting and threats of suicide.

Oregon Health Authority has reported a steady increase in unintentional overdoses since 2019. Data for 2022 has yet to be fully compiled, but the OHA has stated the number of opioid overdoses leading to emergency department visits has continued to grow.

“By category, opioids, and stimulants such as methamphetamine, amphetamine, cocaine, and MDMA accounted for nearly 97% of total unintentional overdose deaths,” the OHA wrote in a press release in May 2022. “The most lethal drugs among these categories were methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl, which were involved in 49%, 34%, and 29% of overdose deaths respectively.”

A combination of methamphetamine and alcohol lead to Ryker’s death. He had not responded to his mother’s calls and texts for more than a day. Tami declared she’d had enough. She set out in the pouring rain to check on him.

Tami knocked on Ryker’s door several times, assuming Ryker was asleep, before she let herself in with a spare key. Tami found Ryker face down in his bed, unresponsive. She dialed 911, but Ryker already had died.

Umatilla County Commissioner John Shafer said changing mental health services in Umatilla County was an immediate priority for him after 19 years of working in the sheriff’s office.

“We had a lady who was suicidal, she literally tried to slit her own throat and almost succeeded,” Shafer recalled. “Well, the medics were good, and she changed her mind. The medics took her to the hospital, and Lifeways was called. They asked her, ‘Are you in danger? Are you a danger to yourself or others?’ She said, ‘No.’ Lifeways then said, ‘OK, have a nice day,’ and left.”

But the woman then called 911, Shafer said, and asked if she were to kill herself, who would be responsible.

“I thought she was at home already, but she was still in the hospital when that call was made,” he said. “I asked to speak to a nurse. She said there was nothing they could medically do for this person. We had to have an officer sit with her for multiple hours until we could transport her to a higher level of care in a bigger city.”

Shafer said this is just one of many negative interactions he experienced with Lifeways during his time with the sheriff’s office and informed his efforts to bring Community Counseling Solutions to the fore.

Community Counseling Solutions took over as Umatilla County’s community health provider in late 2021, and CEO Kimberly Lindsay has faced the challenge by implementing common-sense measures to ensure those that are in the greatest need can receive help.

“Much like Lifeways, CCS cannot compel treatment, it’s a legal obstacle.” Lindsay said. “The framework for Oregon’s administrative rules has to get changed before families that have individuals that are struggling with addiction see significant relief.”

CCS has prioritized triaging new intakes to discern a sense of each patient’s level of need, leading to situations where those in the direst circumstances can receive near-immediate aid. The trick is not everyone who needs help is in immediately dire circumstances, and Lindsay said she is aware and cautious of the risk of complacency when faced with cases of lesser severity.

“It’s not from lack of effort or trying on our part, a lot of folks that work in our industry, especially the addiction side of it, they have a history of it,” she said. “They’re so frustrated with Measure 110 and the inability to compel treatment.”

In the months of October, November and December of 2022, CCS saw 872 clients on the addiction side of their services in Umatilla County, with total client encounters for addiction services in Umatilla County for those three months totaling 6,871. Due to the nature of addiction services, Lindsay said, many clients require repeated encounters and continued support.

For the Pelles family, the pain of losing their son to addiction will never soften, Tami said, but the whole family hopes Ryker’s story may serve as a cautionary tale for other families that might one day face the same fate.

“All he had to say was, ‘I’m not going to do it again,’ which was always a lie,” Tami said. “I had pictures of him that he would send me where he’d cut himself, but all he had to say was, ‘it’s not happening again. I know we’re not the only family with this kind of story.”