By Jade Eckardt (source)

Community members came together to help prevent more overdose-related deaths over the weekend at Babylon’s Summer Block Party on Thursday.

Suffolk County police and the Purple Rock Project, an organization dedicated to helping people who've lost loved ones to opioids heal, joined forces at the event to train guests in using Naloxone, aka Narcan, the medication that reverses opioid overdoses.

Attendees also had the opportunity to memorialize someone they lost to overdose or fentanyl poisoning by writing their name on a purple rock.

SCPD Emergency Medical Service Officers Jason Byron and Alex Trzepizur led the Narcan training and distributed 162 doses parts guests. In addition, they emphasized how accidental opioid exposures can affect people of all ages and that having Narcan in the home doesn't indicate substance abuse, but instead, preparedness and care for loved ones.

In addition, the Purple Rock Project's founder, Carole Trottere, who lost her son Alex to fentanyl in 2018, met with attendees who lost loved ones to overdose and helped them create memorial rocks.

"Writing a child’s name on a rock may seem like a small thing, but I think it is a way of saying to the world that their child was once here," she told Patch during a prior interview.

Trottere's organization often coordinates with SCPD's Narcan training and supplies purple-painted rocks that people can inscribe with the names of loved ones they've lost to overdoses. The rocks are then exhibited at the Suffolk County Environmental Center at the Scully Estate, Tree Memorial and Serenity Garden, 550 South Bay Avenue, Islip and other locations as a reminder of how many Long Islanders have died from O.D. and fentanyl poisonings.

PRP also distributes information about Long Island Council on Alcoholism & Drug Dependence, Gabriel’s Giving Tree and F.I.S.T. to community members.

SCPD and Purple Rock Project will be at the following events throughout the summer:

• Tuesday, July 29, 5 to 9 p.m.

Patchogue Alive After 5

• Thursday, July 31, 5 to 10 p.m.

Alive by the Bay in Bay Shore

• Tuesday, Aug. 12, 5 to 9 p.m.

Patchogue Alive After 5

• Thursday, Aug. 14, 5 to 10 p.m.

Babylon Summer Block Party

• Thursday, Aug. 21, 5 to 9 p.m.