One woman is working to make sure every first responder gets the mental health care they need.
Getting Real About Mental Illness help first responders get mental health care.
Every picture of Adina Peyton's son is both hurtful and healing. She gave birth to Brad Pugh at 17..."a child having a child," she recalls. She admits she was also an alcoholic, and says as much as she loved him, she often feels she failed him.
"He did not have the living skills he needed because his mother couldn't give him those at that time when he was young," Peyton said.
It especially hurts, she says, to think of how he died. She recalls it was Nov. 16, 2020, and that Brad had spent the day with her.
She says he had battled addiction and mental illness for years, and she knew he was struggling that day.
"He was just so depressed," she said.
When he left her house that day, she assumed he had gone home.
Instead, he climbed atop a restaurant in Â鶹´«Ă˝'s Five Points district, and held police at bay for 3 1/2 hours in what she calls a suicidal stand-off.
Brad eventually climbed down and tried to run. Peyton says when he turned toward police and waved an unloaded gun, they shot him 16 times.
She admits the hurt, guilt, and disbelief threatened to derail her own hard-earned sobriety.
For nine months, she struggled with what had happened and how to honor her son's memory. She says the answer came one day as she drove through that very intersection where Brad died.
"God put in my eyes what the first responders saw that night, and I thought they saw what happened that night. They didn't envision it - they saw."
Suddenly, Peyton's heart hurt for those officers and their families.
"They had to go home to their wives, their husbands, their children, and get back up and go to work the next day."
Since then, Peyton's had a burning passion to help the very people she once blamed for her son's death.
She founded a nonprofit called GRAMI - Getting Real About Mental Illness. It helps all first responders get the mental health care they need to process the trauma they see on the job every day.
While most cities and counties offer health insurance to first responders, Peyton has learned many don't seek mental health care in fear it'll create a paper trail their bosses might see.
Sure, she misses her son, but Peyton says helping those who help ALL of us, somehow helps her.
The Third Annual Brad Pugh Memorial First Responders Fundraiser is at 6 p.m. Friday at The Jackson Center on Moquin Drive in Â鶹´«Ă˝.
Click to buy tickets.
