File photo From left, Kevin Blankenship, John Todd, Michael Cole, Ed Boyle and Rebecca Crystal take part in the ribbon cutting during the grand opening of Lauren’s Wish in 2023.

MORGANTOWN — Michael and Cheri Cole were set to hit the road to Washington, D.C., early Wednesday.

That’s so they could be at the White House, and in the Oval Office, by 3 p.m. – when President Trump was expected to sign the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act into law.

The HALT Act metes out harsh penalties to those dealing in fentanyl and other drugs causing death.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Michael Cole said Tuesday of the bipartisan bill that cleared the House and Senate last week. “It took a special girl to make a lot of this happen.”

He’s referring to the daughter he and Cheri brought into the world — a daughter whose life was ended early by a dose of heroin laced with fentanyl.

In its medicinal, prescription form, fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Lauren Cole was just 26 years old. Her father found her slumped in her car in the parking lot of her Morgantown apartment complex on the afternoon of July 9, 2020.

That was the first step, he said, to what would become Lauren’s Wish — and then Lauren’s Law.

Lauren’s Wish is the addiction triage center he helped found in her name.

The 24-bed facility, located at Hazel’s House of Hope in Morgantown, offers counseling and additional help to drug overdose survivors.

A patient will stay there for his initial recovery before moving on to longterm rehabilitation. The center is coming up on its 1,000th patient, Cole said, and 88% of the patients seen to date have stayed with the recovery regimen.

Lauren’s Wish was his daughter’s literal wish, Cole said.

She was a social worker who was good at her job, he said — and many of the people successfully counseled, in fact, were in the throes of drug addiction.

And that was even as she struggled with demons of her own, her father said.

“Lauren elevated people,” he said. “She was there for everyone. The only person she couldn’t save was her. That’s the sad irony of it.”

She and her father had spoken about the idea of such a facility in the last summer of her life.

“Dad, can we do this?” she asked.

“Of course we can,” was the swift reply.

Three weeks later, she was gone. She bought the dose that killed her from an old high school friend.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey made Lauren’s Law official this spring, creating a legal tool to deliver up to 40 years in prison for offending dealers. He signed the legislation in a ceremony just down the hall from Lauren’s Wish at Hazel’s House of Hope.

Now, Michael Cole is heartened that he and Cheri get to witness the signing of the national version.

He knows Lauren will be looking on also, he said.

“This is for Lauren and Matt Clawges and Derek Crytser and all the people taken away too soon. It’s for their families. It’s for the people who can get into recovery.”

While the grief over the loss of Lauren’s life is still there, the affirmation, he said, comes from those patients who are living to tell about it, courtesy of Lauren’s Wish.

“They stay in touch with us,” he said. “You’ll have the days when you don’t want to move forward or do anything. Then you’ll get that card or that text or that email, and that keeps you going.”