By Nancy Maass Kinnally
Posted Sep 4, 2018 at 12:01 AMUpdated Sep 10, 2018 at 12:11 PM 
I was walking back to my downtown Miami hotel alone late one evening when a stranger approached me and asked if I could help him.
He didn’t ask for money. He just wanted something to eat. He was newly homeless, he said, had been sleeping in Bayfront Park, and all he’d had to eat all day was a slice of pizza. He told me his name was Brandon and that it was his 25th birthday.
I wasn’t sure whether I believed him, but there was something about him that made me decide to go out of my way to help him. He was articulate and polite. He said he’d come to Florida from upstate New York after a breakup with his live-in girlfriend.
“I messed up,” he said. “It was my fault, so I left.”
When he got to Florida, Brandon said, he’d gone to the beach, where his backpack was stolen. Without his ID, he couldn’t get a job or even stay in a homeless shelter until he got it replaced, which he was working on.
I walked a block or so with Brandon to a Whole Foods that was getting ready to close and told him to pick out some hot food.

A young Brandon Roat. Contributed
Special to The Palm Beach Post
It took him a while. He was lactose intolerant, he explained. Much of the hot food had already been put away, and almost everything that was left had cheese in it. He settled on some chili. He asked if I thought the crackers would be extra. I told him it didn’t matter, he could have the crackers.
We talked for a while as we walked around the store and stood in line. My cell phone rang. My daughter wanted to talk about planning her birthday party. He asked me how old she was going to be. I told him 13.

 Brandon told me he’d lived in a group foster home and that he’d never known his birth parents, who’d been addicted to cocaine. He said he never did drugs, “except maybe a little weed, but I usually can’t afford it.”
I asked him how he was showering if the homeless shelter wouldn’t let him stay there. He said it had been a couple of days since he’d had a shower. To this day I have no idea why – maybe because I am the mother of a teenage son – but I offered to let him use my hotel room to take a shower.
“That would be amazing,” he said.


About the author
Nancy Maass Kinnally is best known to Palm Beach Post readers as the lifelong friend of former Post reporter Susan Spencer-Wendel, who died of ALS in 2014 after writing the New York Times best-seller “Until I Say Goodbye.” CEO of Relatable Communications Group, an Orlando-based marketing and public relations firm, Kinnally previously spent 10 years as director of communications for The Florida Bar Foundation, where she promoted the work of civil legal aid organizations statewide, including the Legal Aid Society of the Palm Beach County Bar Association. Kinnally, a Palm Beach County native, and Spencer-Wendel, who covered courts for The Post, shared an appreciation for the work of civil legal aid, an abiding passion in social justice, and a belief in second chances.

Back at the hotel, I made him wait downstairs while I removed my valuables from the room. Then I came down to the lobby and gave him the key card and the room number and sent him to the room on his own. I waited down the hall and called my friend, Noemi, mainly to talk about work.
But questioning my own sanity at that point, I felt compelled to tell her about the young man taking a shower in my room. She was the one person in the world I knew would understand. I also wanted to stay on the phone until Brandon was out of my room and gone, just in case.
Brandon emerged half an hour later looking like a different person. His hair and face were clean and his demeanor brightened. He had on a different shirt, a loose-fitting black and red flannel.
“Look at you!” I exclaimed, still on the phone with my friend.
He beamed, and I suddenly realized how handsome he was.
He handed me back the key card. Before we parted ways, Brandon gave me his cell phone number and told me his last name: Roat.
Like “boat,” but with an “r,” he said.
I gave him my business card and told him to call me if he needed a lifeline. He said he would call me when he got settled and got a job. He’d found a couple of restaurants that said they’d hire him once he got his ID. He showed me a phone he had – not a smartphone but a cellphone.

 All the while, I was still holding my own phone, with my friend on the other end of the line. I handed Brandon a $20 bill, although he still hadn’t asked for money.
“For tomorrow,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said. And away he went.
When I got home to Orlando, I told my husband and 17-year-old son the story. They looked at me like I was crazy. I realized I had been. They rolled their eyes when I told them Brandon had said it was his birthday.
So, I decided to look him up on Facebook. If he had until recently had a job and a place to live, as he said he’d had, he would probably have a Facebook page. Sure enough, he did. And from a brief scan, it seemed he’d been telling me the truth.
I saw a post dated exactly a year before the day I met him. In it he was thanking Mother Nature for sending the “pow pow” for his birthday, referring to the powdery snow in which he’d gone skiing that day. It had really been his birthday. And he was really from upstate New York.
So, I sent Brandon a friend request, thinking that if he got his ID and a job and a place to live, one day he would replace his cellphone with a smartphone. And maybe, if he’d lost my card or forgotten to call me, he’d accept my friend request, and I’d know everything had turned out all right.
Several weeks later, I was sitting at home and started to scroll through Facebook when I saw that Brandon had accepted my request.
“Wonderful!” I thought. “He’s landed on his feet!”
But that was not it at all.
These were the first words I saw on his page:
Connie Brisson Sorman is feeling devastated with Brandon Roat and 6 others.
March 2, 2017
Canandaigua/Pittsford: Brandon Roat, age 25, left this world on February 14th in Miami, FL, after an accidental overdose. Brandon fought bravely through an 8-year battle with addiction. If only his love for life had equaled his love for himself, he would still be here with us, where he should be. His passion for nature and being one with the earth, whether exploring a forest or knee deep in powder on a mountainside, was unparalleled. He was a true friend to many and enjoyed music festivals, skateboarding, biking, the Canandaigua gun club, his dogs and creating things with his hands. His disease had a powerful grip on him, however, and because the lies the drugs told him were so much more powerful than the love that surrounded him, he struggled to recognize the worth of his own light in this world. If being loved had been enough to overcome addiction, Brandon would have been a different man. He was truly loved by all.

 After Nancy’s friend request to Brandon was accepted, the first post on his Facebook page was from his mother, Connie, who said her son died of an accidental overdose on Feb. 14, 2017. Contributed
Special to The Palm Beach Post
Stunned, I looked again at the date in his obituary: Feb. 14. He’d died just 12 days after I met him. On Valentine’s Day.
Reading further, I discovered that Brandon had parents and a stepfather, two sisters and a brother, two stepsiblings, and lots of other family.
So, he hadn’t lied about his birthday or where he was from, but he’d lied about a lot of other things.
Scrolling through his Facebook page, I discovered that his family had learned of his death on Feb. 28. That day they’d been searching for him, calling every phone number from which he’d ever called them. It had been too long since they’d heard from him. They were going to file a missing persons report. But then they got the call.
He’d been in the morgue in Miami-Dade for two weeks before they knew.

 His Facebook page had since been filled with farewell messages from family and friends along with happy, normal childhood photos and pictures of an adult Brandon in all kinds of silly poses – cutting up with friends, holding his arm around pretty girls, and dancing at music festivals. He was described as charming, mischievous, gentle, sweet.
I sat there crying. It was spring break, and my son was home. I told him about Brandon. I hugged him. The crying became sobbing. I wondered if the $20 I gave him had gone toward the drugs that killed him.
And then, I hopped on Facebook Messenger and sent Brandon’s mother a message.

Brandon, who loved nature, died of an accidental overdose after consuming opioids laced with carfentanil, which someone would only ingest if their intent was to commit suicide, according to his mother, Connie. Contributed
Special to The Palm Beach Post
I told her how sorry I was. And I told her how I’d met Brandon. I figured I was probably one of the last people to see him alive she’d hear from, if not the very last.
“I only wish I had known the whole story, and that I could have reached out to you and told you where he was,” I wrote. “I feel terrible. I can’t imagine your grief at losing such a special boy.”
I braced for her reaction.“Thank you so much for sharing that,” she wrote. “You have no idea how much that means. Thank you for buying him his last birthday dinner. I miss him so much.”
In the time since then, Connie and I have exchanged a lot of messages. I’ve learned that we’re the same age, and we’ve both worked for nonprofits in similar capacities. She’s extremely well-educated and caring. And a great mom.
She and the rest of Brandon’s family did all they could to help him defeat his demons. One attempt at healing included a family trip to swim with the dolphins at Discovery Cove here in Orlando.
Nonetheless, at 25, Brandon was found with heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil in his body. A tiny speck of that last drug is enough to kill.

A Facebook post Brandon’s mother, Connie shared about a month after her son died. Nancy reached out to Connie to tell her she had met Brandon just 12 days before his death.
Special to The Palm Beach Post
A year to the day after she learned of Brandon’s death, Connie posted to his Facebook page.
“I continue to share my son, Brandon’s story, not for pity or for support, but in hopes that his story will touch someone and save a life. Deaths by opioid overdose are on the rise. In most cases, the victims are unaware that they are getting fentanyl and never aware that they are getting carfentanil, like with Brandon, because if they were, they would be intending suicide. We know that our son did not intend to die. In essence, he was murdered and although his murderer will never be brought to justice for his death, there are others who are being prosecuted now.“More and more states are holding drug dealers responsible for overdoses related to opioids. When our son died, we had very little information, and the state of Florida was not prosecuting at that point. When they did pass the law, they were not pursuing cases retroactively. Our son did not die with any dignity, nor was treated with any after his death. We didn’t get to see him. We never got to say goodbye.
“If Brandon’s story, our story, will help one mother avoid the devastation of that, then I have done well. Please share his story. He was an addict, and he needed to get himself help. He did not deserve to die.”
I’m honestly not sure why it has taken me 18 months to share Brandon’s story.
But I know Connie wants his story told in order to call attention to the opioid epidemic, which killed more Americans in 2016 than were killed throughout the entire Vietnam War. And I’d also like to shine a light on the work of my newest client, Southern Legal Counsel (SLC), a nonprofit law firm in Gainesville.
SLC has been working to protect the human and civil rights of Floridians for more than 40 years. Among other things, they work to abolish laws and practices that punish homeless people for the things they do to survive, whether sleeping or resting in public places or asking for money in much the same way Brandon asked me for food.
I told Connie why I wanted to write about Brandon, and she was all in.
“I encourage you to tell his story,” she wrote. “His tragedy does not have to define every addict’s story. If we can find ways to break down the stigma associated with mental illness, addiction and homelessness, which generally go hand in hand, we can give people back their dignity and help others to see that they need help no differently than someone with chronic illness needs health care. Thank you for telling Brandon’s story. I believe there was a reason that you were there and bought him dinner on his last birthday.”
Homelessness and the First Amendment
When Brandon Roat approached Nancy Kinnally, he was panhandling.
Last Thursday, as part of a campaign coordinated nationally by the National Center on Homelessness and Poverty and statewide by Southern Legal Counsel and the ACLU of Florida, a coalition of advocates sent a letter to the city of Lake Worth demanding that it repeal a ban on panhandling.
The coalition is working to educate local governments that ordinances banning panhandling have been found unconstitutional, that punishing homeless people with fines, fees and arrests for asking for help only prolongs their homelessness, and that housing and social services are the only true solutions to homelessness.
Brandon told me he’d lived in a group foster home and that he’d never known his birth parents, who’d been addicted to cocaine. He said he never did drugs, “except maybe a little weed, but I usually can’t afford it.”