K
athy O’Keefe is a remarkable woman. She’s exceedingly compassionate, sharp as a tack, and she can recall the smallest numerical details from events that happened years ago. She is also Flower Mound’s self-proclaimed “Drug Lady.” After the drug-related death of her son, O’Keefe founded the 501c3 organization Winning the Fight in 2011 to provide drug education to Flower Mound’s youth and to provide resources to families struggling with the disease of addiction. “On March 20, 2010, we lost our 18-year-old to an accidental overdose of Xanax and heroin,” O’Keefe said. “God immediately said, ‘You need to do something.’” After her son, Brett O’Keefe, overdosed three times, was hospitalized and attended rehabilitation programs, Kathy O’Keefe found that she - and her community - were in dire need of practical, informative drug education. “We took a breath, and we realized that we lacked education, we lacked support, we lacked resources. It created isolation,” she said. “We brought a strategic plan to the community and said, ‘What do you need?’ Ultimately, we needed a conduit between kids and resources.”
Winning the Fight by Rebecca Beer | photo of group by Kathy O’Keefe
56 | LANTANA LIVING | APRIL 2021
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