Published: 09/10/2026 | Author: Eric Owens

The sixth annual Vigil of Hope filled the community center in Shelter Island in New York on August 27. Roughly 120 people attended. The event has become the town’s annual reckoning with opioid addiction and overdose. 

Due to community dedication, ranging from local Narcotics Anonymous chapters to inpatient facilities, 2026 marked a new turn from the previous five years: a real decline in deaths locally and nationally.

Rain forced a last-minute move indoors from the basketball courts at Fiske Field, where the first five vigils were held. The program started on time anyway.

The Vigil’s Origins

Gina Kraus founded the Vigil of Hope in 2020, the year her son Evan died of a drug overdose at 36. A retired teacher, Kraus built up Vigil as a way for the community to gather, grieve and find a reason to keep going.

A year later, the scale of the problem became impossible for the island to ignore. In August 2021, Swainson Brown, a Shelter Island resident and chef at The Pridwin, died alongside five residents of Southold and Greenport over a single weekend. All six deaths involved cocaine laced with fentanyl. Kraus opened this year’s program by naming each of them.

The vigil is sponsored by the Shelter Island Health and Wellness Committee, of which Kraus is a member. The Shelter Island PD, Public Library, and HUGS also sponsored.

Speakers From Four Different Vantage Points

Kraus assembled a panel that approached opioid addiction from four angles: someone whose family members and friends didn’t survive, those with many years of sobriety and two people newly sober.

Kraus also emphasized the courage it took some speakers to talk publicly about the reality of addiction.

The final portion directed audience members to the local harm reduction resources to prevent addiction, support people who use drugs and keep them alive.

Fentanyl & Treatment

The 2021 deaths that shaped this vigil share a pattern that remains common. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid music deadlier than heroin and is commonly laced into other drugs. People who don’t use opioids and have no tolerance are at particular risk when fentanyl turns up in a stimulant supply.

Naloxone can reverse opioid overdose and is safe to administer even if opioids turn out not to be involved. Naloxone may have limits in treating other drugs like sedatives.

Vigils like this one do double duty. They memorialize and distribute. Past Shelter Island vigils have included nurses handing out naloxone kits and fentanyl test strips alongside instruction on how to use both.

Peer support is the other half. People in recovery from opioid addiction consistently report that hearing from someone further along in the same process does something that clinical advice does not, which is the mechanism the vigil’s speaker panel was built around.

Narcotics Anonymous meetings offer that peer connection on an ongoing basis rather than once a year. NA is open to people recovering from any drug, uses a 12-step framework and asks nothing beyond a desire to stop using drugs. 

NA is one path among several. Medications for opioid use disorder work well in combination with peer support for many people. Neither approach requires giving up the other.

NA Remains Top Option

If you or someone in your household is living with opioid addiction, useful next steps include:

• Ask a local health department or harm reduction program about free naloxone and fentanyl test strips
• Talk with a clinician about medications for opioid use disorder

Our browsable meeting directory indexes NA meetings and our content explains NA concepts for a general audience. You can search by state, city and format. 

You can also dial 800-934-1582(Sponsored) for free, confidential guidance. Chat with an expert today.