With dozens of kids orphaned by opioid crisis, this Maryland county has new outlook on trauma services

By PHIL DAVIS

BALTIMORE SUN |DEC 02, 2019 

Growing up in a Cecil County trailer park, Ray Lynn has been shaped by tragedy.

Lynn went from seeing drug addiction firsthand in his neighborhood as a child to tackling the problem as a police officer decades later.

“I can name you friends that are dead because of it,” he said.

Lynn, 44, also saw his brother and sister burn to death in a house fire when he was 19, he said. It’s what led him to become a volunteer firefighter and, later, a Maryland State Police trooper.

So when county leaders picked Lynn to become the county’s Opioid Strategy Coordinator in December 2016, he hoped his personal and professional experience would help him look at opioid overdoses in a new light, knowing what his friends and neighbors have been through.

In 2017, his first year, fatal opioid overdoses in the county skyrocketed.