And a young guy, unconscious-” she trails off. “He was a young guy, he had a backpack, he was kind of disheveled. “It was kind of crowded in the front space, and he was on the ground, and you could tell,” Cambridge recalls. As she walked toward the man, people fed her the information they knew. Three weeks later, as Cambridge was leaving the restaurant for the night, she was called back in because “somebody fell.” Having worked as a nurse practitioner for over 25 years prior to working at Felipe’s, Cambridge is the go-to person for the restaurant’s health-related incidents. “So we decided to get more into training people, even the staff,” to administer naloxone, as well as acquiring Narcan to have on -hand. “We really didn’t have control of people just coming in and using the bathroom, and that’s where it happened,” Cambridge says.
It typically didn’t pose an issue, but the events that transpired that particular night raised one serious concern: the “opioid epidemic” had found its way into their restaurant. This was the summer of 2019, and Cambridge remembers how the people living on the street outside of Felipe’s would come in to use the bathroom. According to Cambridge, the man woke up within a couple minutes and was transported to the nearest hospital to be evaluated.
When the responders arrived on the scene, they administered Narcan, a brand of the drug naloxone used to reverse suspected opioid overdoses. Luckily, the owner followed him outside and called 911 when, not 10 paces into the parking lot, the man collapsed to the ground from an opioid overdose. Cambridge, an employee there in charge of events. It was almost easy to miss the man “staggering” out of the Felipe’s Taqueria bathroom through the congested lines and bustle of hungry patrons, recalls Debra L.