Joey Gilbert and Danny Gilbert’s father-daughter relationship

Joey Gilbert and Danny Gilbert’s father-daughter relationship unfolds through the practical work of trying to keep treatment accessible: insurance, prescriptions, supervised medication, money for care, and urgent calls when Joey’s resolve faltered. Danny tried to protect his daughter without pretending the obstacles were easily solved. Their bond is most visible in those efforts, and in the devastating limit they could not overcome: Joey died of an overdose in March 2017, after treatment barriers had again left her trying to manage medication on her own.

Treatment and the Family Safety Net

Joey had previously done well for a time with Vivitrol, a monthly naltrexone injection that was expensive but could not be abused or diverted. Access ended when she turned twenty-six and no longer had coverage through her father’s insurance. Danny said that without insurance the shot would have cost $1,500 a month. The loss of coverage was not a minor interruption in an otherwise secure course of care: it removed a treatment that had worked for Joey and forced a change in how she sought help.

She later transitioned to Buprenorphine prescribed by David Hartman, a Roanoke psychiatrist whose federally mandated waiting list had also obstructed Tess Henry’s access to treatment. Hartman required Joey to pass a weekly drug test before he would write the prescription. Danny held the medication and gave it to her daily, providing a measure of oversight while the cost of the prescription, appointments, and lab work averaged about $700 a month. The arrangement made Danny an active part of the treatment routine, but it also made visible how much care depended on family resources and ongoing supervision.

Joey’s divorced parents shared the costs when David Hartman’s wife, Cheri Hartman, persuaded him to take Joey on again as a Suboxone patient. During an earlier period of sobriety, he had prescribed her Vivitrol. Joey, who was uninsured, also applied for charity care through a hospital-run clinic. Her parents’ contributions helped make renewed treatment possible, but did not remove the waiting lists, financial hurdles, and treatment rules that repeatedly disrupted her path to care.

Care Interrupted by Rules and Cost

The larger treatment system offered Joey several possible interventions, but access to each depended on conditions she struggled to meet. Some states that had expanded Medicaid improved access to Vivitrol, including by offering injections before people left jail or prison. Joey, however, lost access when she aged off her father’s insurance. Later, the buprenorphine route brought its own expense and monitoring requirements. In Roanoke, the psychiatrist’s waiting list had already been a barrier; the weekly drug testing and the need to pay for appointments and laboratory work added further conditions to maintaining a prescription.

In March 2017, the only inpatient facility willing to accept Joey was a free, faith-based program in Charlotte that did not allow Suboxone or other medications. Joey decided to taper off medication so she could enter. The decision was made in the face of a known danger, not because her treatment needs had disappeared. Jamie Waldrop and Cheri worried about the choice, while Danny objected to a system that required Joey to be drug-free before admission. The facility’s lack of medical staff to supervise detox or medication helps explain its policy, but did not make the policy less consequential for someone trying to withdraw from treatment medication in order to qualify for treatment.

The contrast in Joey’s options was stark: medication had helped her before, and her parents were willing to share its costs, yet the available residential bed required her to stop taking it. Her father’s support could help fund care and keep track of medication, but it could not create a medically supervised place for her to enter. In that gap between a treatment that might stabilize her and a program she could access, Joey was left to taper without the clinical support the situation called for.

Crisis, Contact, and Loss

By this period, Joey was still using drugs. She had allowed an abusive dealer and the dealer’s girlfriend to live with her in exchange for drugs, a situation Danny did not know about. After several interventions, including a visit to Joey in an emergency room, Jamie and Cheri persuaded her to move away from the dealer. As Jamie helped her pack, they found some of Tess Henry’s clothes, a small, concrete sign of the social connections that remained entwined with Joey’s life during this period.

Joey had only two halves of a Suboxone pill left and was stretching them out as she prepared for the Charlotte program. The next day, while Danny was travelling in northern Virginia with his wife, Joey called him after another argument with her boyfriend. She told him she did not want to die, and they argued over the phone. A few hours later, she asked him to transfer four dollars so she could buy cigarettes. Danny replied by urging her to get her life back and reminding her that everyone loved her. Their exchange brings their relationship into sharp focus: he was trying to reach her through immediate, practical contact, while she was facing a situation that had become more urgent than the next step in a treatment plan.

The following morning, Cheri told Jamie that Joey had died of an overdose of illicit methadone on March 26, 2017, at age twenty-seven. Joey had been inside a Roanoke County house for nearly eight hours before anyone called 911. The people she had been using with had cleaned up the scene before the call, fearing prosecution, and police were investigating. Her death was the nineteenth lethal overdose in Roanoke County’s suburbs that year. Danny’s final exchange with her had taken place only hours earlier; the evidence does not establish that he knew how immediate the danger was or that the call could have changed what followed.

Significance of Their Relationship

The relationship shows care as repeated, material effort rather than a simple promise that family support can solve addiction. Danny helped pay for medication, took responsibility for its daily dispensing, and remained available when Joey reached out during a crisis. Her parents also shared treatment expenses, and the family sought further care even after earlier attempts had been interrupted. These actions document sustained involvement without suggesting that Joey’s recovery was within her father’s control.

The obstacles were structural as well as personal: insurance ended, medication was costly, waiting lists delayed care, and the only available residential program required Joey to stop medication without on-site medical supervision. Her father could support her within those conditions, but could not make the options safe or adequate. Joey’s death therefore closes not a story of parental indifference, but one in which active family support repeatedly met a treatment system whose costs, eligibility requirements, and rules could leave a vulnerable patient with no workable next step.