San Francisco’s youngest drug overdose victim last year was 14. Her mother still doesn’t know what happened

Paris did not. Her lips were purple.

After the screaming and the 911 call and the frenetic paramedics’ best efforts were over, there was nothing more to be done. On March 9, 2021, Paris Serrano became the youngest person in San Francisco to die last year of a fentanyl overdose.

While more than 1,300 people died from drug overdoses in San Francisco over the last two years, many from the powerful opioid fentanyl, few of them were teenagers. In 2021, 645 people died of fatal overdoses, and at least 3, including Paris, were under the age of 21, according to the most recent data, which provides demographic details for only 469 of those overdoses. In 2020, at least four of the 711 fatalities were teens.

The rate of teenagers overdosing nationally is also very small — but it’s growing. The nonprofit Families Against Fentanyl estimates that fentanyl overdose deaths among American teenagers tripled in the past two years.

Paris is a vivid face of that trend. Her death highlights how the devastation of drug overdoses is spreading along with the prevalence of hyper-deadly fentanyl. And how families sometimes never find out how their child got ahold of the drug — or unknowingly took it.

In the year since that awful day, Mayorga, 39, has wrestled with feelings of helplessness and guilt. She said her daughter would not have knowingly taken fentanyl, and that the drug was not present in her home.

However, because of the circumstances around the overdose, her other child, a 12-year-old girl, was placed in a temporary foster home, and Mayorga has been undergoing counseling.

The mere mention of Paris, a bubbly kid who liked to sing, whose favorite song was “Invéntame” (Imagine Me) by Marco Antonio Solis, and who liked to cook potato pancakes for her mother, chokes up Mayorga. Last month, on the first anniversary of Paris’ death, she spent the morning sitting in the living room of her Tenderloin flat with friends, staring at pictures of her daughter. And crying.

“Today is the worst day, just the worst day,” she said.

Graciela Cortez, a close friend for many years, put an arm around Mayorga.

“Oh my God, that girl was special,” Cortez, 54, told her. “She was a good, clean-hearted girl, and so much magnetism. She was one of those girls who wanted to eat the world in one day. Remember her like that.”

At the time of her death, Paris was a freshman at June Jordan School for Equity, a small public high school named after the renowned American poet and activist. Though just a teenager, Paris dreamed of becoming a police officer or a lawyer, her mother said.

Mayorga came to San Francisco after fleeing violence in Nicaragua 16 years ago to find a better life in America. She had her two daughters with a man she met on the journey, she said, and started to build a solid life, taking house-cleaning jobs while she lived in subsidized housing on Treasure Island.

But the children’s father was violent and abusive, she and her friends said, and he did short stints in jail for it but always came back home. An eviction followed because of the disruptions, punctuated by periods of homelessness and, for Mayorga, stints in a domestic violence shelter.

The girls, she said, were sent to temporary foster homes before. But she said she found some stability about four years ago as a single mom in the supportive housing apartment where she now lives. Then came Paris’ death.

During one of the worst times for Mayorga and the girls, she pitched a tent in the Mission. Former city Supervisor David Campos found the family living there years ago while making rounds with street outreach counselors, and helped route them toward the housing she eventually landed in.

“I remember this mother being very protective of her kids and doing her best to take care of them,” Campos said recently after hearing from Cortez of Paris’ death. “She was in a tough spot and really trying to get back on her feet — she was even working. It’s very tragic.

“To me, it seems like there was a system failure here,” he said.

For Mayorga, that years-old dream of a good life in America feels in tatters.

“God is with us, but why such sadness?” she said. “Nothing in life is more important than your daughter. Why would he take her?”

Luis Tolbar, Mayorga’s 42-year-old boyfriend, was with her when she found Paris. They wonder if the 17-year-old girl Paris was hanging out with had something to do with how fentanyl wound up in the apartment, and then in her system.

The two were smoking marijuana, Mayorga said, “but my daughter never did hard drugs, never, and I don’t do them either.”

Mayorga believes her daughter smoked a joint that she didn’t know was laced with fentanyl, which is about 50 times more potent than heroin.

Lawyers, police and child welfare officials contacted by The Chronicle said they could not comment on the circumstances of the case because it involved a juvenile. The Chronicle could not locate Paris’ friend.

Mayorga said she called a child welfare social worker from the city Human Services Agency to remove the second girl when she showed up the night before, because Mayorga wasn’t able to make her leave and thought she would be a bad influence.

She said the worker, who like others at the agency told The Chronicle he could not comment because it was a juvenile matter, told her he had no authority to remove the girl.

Sources familiar with the situation — who also declined to be identified because they were not authorized to comment, and were granted anonymity by The Chronicle — said the social worker acted correctly.

A police report showed that heroin and fentanyl were found in a jacket in the room where the girls were, but with inconclusive evidence about its origins, officers did not file charges against anyone.

Paris’ death is a reminder that the fentanyl epidemic ravaging the city is not merely a street-life problem.

“Most of the coverage around fentanyl overdoses in San Francisco has been focused on homeless single adults in the Tenderloin,” said Trent Rhorer, director of the Human Services Agency, which overees child protective services but could not comment on Paris’ death. “But the reality is fentanyl is touching more than that — it touches families, too.”

Dr. Allanceson Smith, an adolescent addiction specialist with the city Department of Public Health, said it was “pretty rare for a minor to be using opioids,” but added that such use is growing.

The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports that drug overdose death rates among children 15 or younger are about 0.3 per 100,000, compared with about 22 per 100,000 overall.

“When you look at the U.S. as a whole, the vast majority of kids tend to see opioids as dangerous,” Smith said. “Over 60% of high school students disapprove of opioid use. And it’s not uncommon for kids to be unintentionally exposed — taking it without knowing they’re taking it.”

A sample of Paris’ writing and drawing and the guinea pig that Hazel Mayorga named after her deceased daughter. Photo by Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
A sample of Paris’ writing and drawing and the guinea pig that Hazel Mayorga named after her deceased daughter. Photo by Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle

Slumped in a chair on the anniversary of Paris’ death, Mayorga said she had no idea how common it was for children to overdose. There was only one loss she was focused on — her daughter.

She hummed a little from Paris’ favorite song, remembering how the two of them used to sing it together in her tiny kitchen. “Imagine me, Imagine what one day we could have been,” the lyric goes. Mayorga hung her head and burst into sobs.