Shane Jensen: ripple effect – News – The Hutchinson News

Shane Jensen died of an opioid overdose on Oct. 5, 2018, but he saved two others: a stranger and his daughter.

Jensen’s death contributed to a record year of lives lost from opioids in Reno County, according to Sheriff Randy Henderson. His oldest daughter, Desiree, quit using after he died. That’s when she found out from another woman that Shane saved her from relapsing.

Although, a confidant of Shane’s died of opioids a couple of months later. Desiree thought the loss of her father played a role in his friend’s death.

Shane loved music, cars, writing poems, being a jokester and family, those closest to him say.

From the living room of his parents’ home in north Hutchinson, Sharon Jensen tearfully recalled when her second-born bought a ring from a bubble-gum machine and pledged to marry her when he grew up.

Sharon said Shane was a “mommy’s boy” and the most affectionate of her three children: always giving hugs and kisses, and saying “I love you.”

Tabatha, the youngest child, acknowledged Shane was always a big hugger.

The age gap between Tabatha and Shane — about nine years — is roughly the same amount of time that Shane’s struggled with opioids.

Shane’s plight started after his divorce. Family said the toxicology report listed fentanyl, an opioid that can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

Shane was 47.

Tabatha said Shane took her to a Keith Sweat concert for her 18th birthday. Shane and his friends drank at the show and Tabatha was the designated driver.

Tabatha was elated. She got to drive everyone home in Shane’s baby — a black, 1964 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors just like Sweat, an R&B singer, had in the “Nobody” music video. Except Shane’s had large, chrome rims on the big body car.

“I thought I was very cool,” Tabatha said. “He never let anyone drive it.”

As the addiction grew, Shane struggled to keep a job. He bounced around between his parent’s home and with Tabatha and her daughter, Adrien Canfield.

“He was like my dad, my brother, my everything,” Canfield said.

The two often made jaunts to Kwik Shop for a soda. Shane ironed his outfit, including his underwear, even for the short drive.

Back at his sister’s house, Shane, bald with a goatee, would pull his pants up high “like (Steve) Urkel” and dance around while Tabatha finished dinner.

“Stupid little things to get anyone to laugh,” Tabatha said. “You could never stay in a bad or sad mood around him.”

They also won dance contests together, Tabatha said.

“That was our thing,” Tabatha said before showing a video on her phone of them dancing to Andy Gibb’s “I Just Want to Be Your Everything.”

“We danced well together,” Tabatha said.

Tabatha said Shane always seemed like the “happiest person in the world.” But she knew he was hurting.

Shane talked about his addiction to Tabatha and Desiree. Shane used drugs with Desiree while telling her she should quit.

Shane, however, did hide the addiction from his younger daughter, Melia.

The 17-year-old remembered spending the summer with her father, months before his death, at her grandparents’ house. They would watch TV on the couch. Shane would ask Melia to rub his feet.

The drugs frayed his relationship with family: mainly, his older brother, Shawn, and his father, Glen.

Glen didn’t talk to Shane much because of the drugs, but they still said “I love you.”

Photos, stories and poems Shane wrote are what the family has left.

Desiree quit using soon after her father’s death.

Shane’s close friend, Eufemia Steierl, died on Dec. 18. An autopsy reported Steierl’s death as an opioid overdose. Family told Desiree that Steierl had been depressed from Shane’s death.

Britanya Jones wrote Desiree on Facebook a couple of months after Shane died. Desiree never met Jones.

Jones wrote about how she was crying on the side of the road, and a stranger in the passenger seat of a car stopped to talk with her. It ended up being Shane.

Shane spoke to Jones for 20 minutes and convinced her not to go get high. Jones told Desiree she’s been clean for 12 years.

“I just wanted you to know what he did for me,” Jones wrote. “Because I wanted to die that day … He saved my life.”