Vice President JD Vance’s mother says she’s ‘one of the lucky ones’

The Middletown native has been in drug recovery for the past 10 years.

Middletown Municipal Court Judge James E. Sherron; Dorothy McIntosh-Shuemake, a Butler County resident who lost her daughter, Alison, to an overdose; and Alisha Bond, a recovering addict who was first connected to treatment through HopeLine, also spoke at the event.

The event, which began with a resource fair at 11 a.m. and ended with speakers and a candlelight vigil and walk around Smith Park pond in the evening, was organized by the Butler County Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Services Board, HopeLine and several other county community and addiction service agencies.

Victoria Hensley, the HopeLine care coordinator for Middletown and Butler County, was “instrumental” in organizing the event, according to McIntosh-Shuemake.

Hensley has worked in the addiction field for 10 years, and she lost her brother and sister to overdoses.

“This is so important to me...to keep their memory going and to heal with other people,” she said.

Vance-Aikins said she spoke to raise awareness on the issue of substance abuse and overdoses in the community and county.

She said her “clean date” is Jan. 19, 2015, garnering applause from the crowd.

Vance-Aikins said at one point, she was “trapped” in a cycle of addiction where “each high came with a deeper low.”

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said.

McIntosh-Shuemake, who lost her 18-year-old daughter Alison 10 years ago exactly on Aug. 25 to a heroin overdose, is intent on keeping her memory alive.

After Alison passed, McIntosh-Shuemake decided to put her cause of death in the obituary.

“We’ve been talking about her cause of death and her life ever since,” she said.

She wanted to let those gathered know that there is hope.

“When we don’t reach out to each other, it ends in tragedy,” she said. “I would rather no other family knows this kind of awful (feeling).”

Compared to a peak of 232 overdose deaths in 2017 in Butler County, there were 90 suspected fatal overdoses in 2024, according to the Butler County Overdose Data Dashboard.

In 2025, there have been 58 suspected fatal overdoses.

While numbers have gone down, there is still a great awareness needed on the issue, according to Bond.

“Everybody’s healing so much louder,” she said. “We’re recovering so much louder, and we’re talking about it so much more.”

She said while recovery can seem daunting, “it doesn’t even take as long as you think it’s going to.”

“You think it’s going to be so hard, and you think you can’t do it, but...you really can,” she said.

Bond is a singer, something she returned to when she got clean.

Middletown Municipal Court Judge James E. Sherron spoke, citing the high number of drug cases his court sees — about 80% of all cases are drug cases.

“When I took the bench eight years ago, I knew things had to change,” he said.

Treatment providers are embedded into the court docket for each drug case, providing each defendant the opportunity to get help, according to Sherron.

“It takes a community, it takes the whole system to try to fight this,” he said. “Nobody can do it one their own.”

How to get help

For crisis services and after-hours assistance, the Butler County MHARS board funds a 24/7/365 Crisis Hotline, Mobile Crisis Team, and Heroin Hopeline. These services can be accessed by calling 844-4CRISIS, offering immediate information and referral support at any time.