Rebecca Barnell, Colton’s mother, right, and Shayna Fitzpatrick, Colton’s sister, stand for a portrait in front of a photo of Colton Lasker at their home on Aug. 5. They aim to keep his memory alive while helping others who are struggling. (Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News)
Two young men died from their struggles with addiction and mental illness.
But their families are keeping their memories alive.
The Zach Liberatore Foundation and the Colton’s Journey to Liberation organization provide resources for those struggling, and work to eradicate the stigma surrounding the topics.
The Liberatore family created the Zach Liberatore Foundation months after their oldest child, Zachary Liberatore, died in October 2020 from an overdose of Opana – a painkiller he used to self-medicate his debilitating symptoms from obsessive compulsive disorder. Since 2021, every October has seen a Zachtoberfest – an annual fundraiser that raises money toward the expansion of OCD resources, offsetting of treatment costs and education on the disorder.
The Treatment for the Effective Management for Pediatric OCD clinic, based in the Children’s Psychiatric Clinic at the Golisano Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, has received more than $500,000 from the Zach Liberatore Foundation so far and a commitment for another $500,000 over the next five years.
“It’s powerful,” said Chelsey McCabe, GCH Buffalo’s director of behavioral health. “This isn’t like some big donor came in and gave the $100,000. This is their boots-on-the-ground fundraising, using their son’s memory and honor.”
Colton Lasker cycled between recovery and relapse during his 10-year battle with addiction, dying from complications during detox in June 2016. When beds at recovery centers were full, few options were available, leaving him and his family scrambling for answers and alternatives.
His mother, Rebecca Barnell, along with sisters Stephanie and Shayna Fitzpatrick, launched the Colton’s Journey to Liberation organization a year later.
A large cutout of Colton Lasker, who lost his 10-year battle with addiction, hangs on a basement door in the family’s home. (Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News)
Proceeds are donated to local nonprofits, such as Kids Escaping Drugs – which helped Lasker navigate recovery at its Renaissance Campus – and ConnectLife, where he saved four lives through organ donations after death. The organization’s website is home to a directory of resources, from community nonprofits to detox centers.
Barnell’s house is within walking distance of Hamburg’s Sparks of Hope, a recovery center started by community members at Hamburg United Methodist Church who wanted to further the organization’s mission.
“It gives me so much peace,” Barnell said. “The accomplishment for me and my life is my children and the results of my children. The result of Colton and my daughters is that they all are affecting other people every single day, and I couldn’t be more grateful.”
‘Secrets kill’
When Zachary Liberatore spoke about his struggle with OCD on social media, his mother, Jennifer, worried that he would be bullied.
But she got on board, and promised him right before he died that she would keep his memory alive.
Four years later, Jennifer Liberatore published her memoir, “You Wonderful Boy.”
The memoir chronicled Zachary’s life with honesty. His childhood bonding with his three brothers over sports and Harry Potter movies – hence, the book’s title pulled from the words of Albus Dumbledore. His stays in six short-term and six long-term inpatient facilities as he grappled with OCD, bulimia and addiction. His text messages to and from his mother, Jennifer, with her last text message to him saying, “Nite Zach. Love you.”
There were days Jennifer Liberatore almost could not face that story.
“I just wanted him to be a happy person, and so reliving all of that was heartbreaking,” she said.
But the writing was cathartic.
“I think when you go through, especially the end and the death, you shut your mind down in order to process, to survive,” she said. “You have to deal with it at a point, or it festers and you can’t ever move forward or heal.”
Eric Liberatore, Zachary’s second younger brother, says it is “really awesome” to have the book get the story out there.
“My mother was so strong for writing that,” Eric said. “Just that fact that it’s reaching more people – her story, our family’s story, Zach’s story – I think it’s awesome.”
Secrets kill, Barnell said.
“My kids were raised knowing that all those dangerous secrets are what cripples you. It will take your life from you; your family’s life from you,” Barnell said. “The secret is what puts the family in a terror. It rips them apart.”
Lasker was outgoing, charismatic and passionate about literature. But he was “scared to death all the time,” Barnell said.
“What nobody knew was how insecure he was and how he had anxiety that he hid,” Barnell said. “The first time he drank, it released him from that.”
Conversations around mental health and substance abuse are growing more common, but stigma persists. A 2024 national survey conducted by Shatterproof, a nonprofit dedicated to combatting the addiction crisis, stated that approximately 57% of Americans believed someone with a substance use disorder was “untrustworthy” and about 69% believed they were “unpredictable.”
A patron at a salon where Barnell was doing her nails for Lasker’s wake had talked about someone else they knew who died, saying, “Well, he was an addict anyway, so he just was asking for it.”
Barnell made sure to let them know just what she thought before she left.
Colton’s Journey to Liberation is about “taking the shame away,” Barnell said.
“We didn’t go through all of that so we could sit on the information that we got and watch other people suffer,” Barnell said. “None of these people are worthless people. They’re all incredible people who have incredible minds, and they’re so capable of so many things. They’re lost, they’re hurting, they don’t understand it and it scares the crap out of them every day.”
The family are talkers, says Shayna Fitzpatrick.
“Ever since my brother passed away 10 years ago, we were saying, ‘This sucks, and this is terrible, and we never wanted this to happen,’ but we knew that so much good was going to come from it, because that’s just the type of family we are,” Fitzpatrick said. “We don’t keep quiet about the things that didn’t go so right.”
A photograph of Rebecca Barnell with her kids Colton, Shayna and Stephanie hangs on a wall in her home. (Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News)
‘Going and going’
A chicken barbecue brought Lynda Sentz to Colton’s Journey to Liberation. The smells from the organization’s barbecue pulled Sentz and her husband in, and it was the flyers of Lasker’s story that inspired Sentz to tell Barnell that they wanted to open a place for people struggling with addiction.
That place would be Sparks of Hope.
“When we read Colton’s story, it was heartbreaking,” said Sentz. “We agreed among ourselves that it’s unacceptable, that there’s not places for people to come, feel supported, loved and reintegrated back into the community.”
The recovery center can be mistaken for a family’s home – cozy sofas, a well-lit kitchen and a backyard garden. People in addiction recovery and their families can stop in for peer-to-peer support. Twelve-step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, can avoid the folding chairs and instead, use the center’s space.
Barnell’s sister – who is about 60 days sober and is in Alcoholics Anonymous – says that the place is a big part of her sobriety. Barnell had bought her a plane ticket from Oregon to Buffalo, where she “packed two suitcases and left everything else behind.”
“It’s so amazing that my nephew is part of my recovery,” she said.
Jennifer Liberatore says that the Zach Liberatore Foundation would not have been anything without the people who came and supported it. Fourteen people – friends and people who started out as strangers – are part of the foundation’s committee and around 100 volunteers help with the events.
A young woman had spoken at last year’s Zachtoberfest about her experience at the TEMPO clinic, and her psychologist was the one that the foundation sponsored a post-doctoral fellowship for, Jennifer Liberatore said.
“Would we give this all up to have him back? Of course,” she said. “But what is being done – that team at the Children’s Hospital telling us, ‘You’re helping so many families and people’ – this just keeps going and going.”
Mylien Lai is a Buffalo News intern, funded by the New York & Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative. She is reporting on the experiences of caregivers and the loved ones they support.
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