The Unforeseen Spokesman In The War Against Opioids
Domenic Esposito’s journey to becoming one of the foremost spokespeople in the war against opioids is fascinating and captured in the September issue of Westwood Living. Combining incredible sculpting ability with a passion to affect change, Domenic is making a difference felt around the United States.
By Tom Leyden
Photo By: Rick Bern Photography
How did it all start?
Only five words, but a huge question surrounding the journey of Domenic Esposito, a sculptor and longtime Westwood resident who made national headlines in 2018 thanks to his powerful works of art – and the message behind them.
We’ll get to the headlines, but first, the impetus.
Esposito is a parishioner at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church. In 2017, he was approached by Fr. Stephen Linehan and asked to address the congregation about the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal. Linehan frequently called on his parishioners to personalize the appeal and Esposito did some homework before making his fundraising pitch.
“I looked up all these services the Archdiocese offers,” said Esposito. “One was the recovery service Fr. Joe White offers in the west end in Boston. I’d heard about it.”
Domenic had heard about Fr. Joe’s program because he had tried to get his brother, Danny, admitted. Danny has battled substance use disorder for more than a decade and the fight is personal to the Esposito family. During his pitch, Domenic conveyed that personal connection to the congregation.
“After the speech, we had coffee and doughnuts in the church basement,” said Esposito. “I got to meet some of the parishioners and I was hearing things like, ‘You know, my son or daughter is dealing with the same thing,’ or ‘My grandson – he’s been living in this sober home.’
“I didn’t realize it was such a widespread problem, even in a suburban town like Westwood,” said Esposito. “That got me thinking about how I can use my art to be a voice – to get help! I had people at the church telling me they had to pay for their grandson’s recovery and trust me, this is expensive. You can’t write a $200,000 check and say, ‘Go save my grandson’s life.’ It doesn’t work that way. It’s a very long process. So, that got me this anger.”
Through the anger came great inspiration. Domenic, who spent decades in finance, now dedicated his life to creating disruptive art. That dedication gave birth to The Opioid Spoon Project.
“As an artist, I think in a lot of what you do, 90% of it is the idea,” said Esposito. “10% is the execution, but 90% is the idea. So that was, to me, the big revelation. This is prevalent. I’m not the only one. Something needs to happen. I’ve always been intrigued with guerrilla art. We needed to get people’s attention.”
After months of research, labor and effort, Esposito ultimately made an enormous splash on June 22, 2018, placing a giant opioid spoon sculpture, 800 pounds in weight, outside the headquarters of Purdue Pharma in Stamford, CT. Among those on hand was a crew from The New York Times.
“They ran it like an art article,” said Esposito. “It was a great review with photos and everything but it was the Associated Press that really made it take off nationally.
“We had already dropped the spoon. The gallery owner was arrested,” said Esposito. “The police impounded the spoon, there were about 10 police cars and 20 police officers there. The whole street was closed down. It was crazy mayhem. And then my phone rings.
“It was someone from the Associated Press who wanted to ask me a few questions. I was like, ‘Uh, we’re kind of in the middle of a protest, but go ahead.’ The answers to those questions made it out, word-for-word, across the country – USA Today, The LA Times, everybody picked it up and we were the top news article on Google. I had an old boss in California call me and say, ‘You’re the top story on Google, what the hell are you doing?”
And that’s how it happens.
Since that wild day, Esposito has “dropped spoons” at many other locations – Rhodes Technologies in Coventry, Rhode Island, the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington D.C., the headquarters of Johnson and Johnson among others – each sculpture featuring a unique branding on the spoon’s base.
“Here I am, this spokesman for this stuff, and I used to say, ‘Am I really a spokesman?’ But you really do evolve into it, you know what I mean? You realize, ‘Wait, I know a lot about this. I’ve been dealing with this for 12 years with my brother.’ There’s a certain expertise that comes with knowledge. It’s the survival skills. That’s what I was bringing to the table – the survival skills from my brother and my family.”
THE ARTIST
Sitting in Domenic’s studio at his home in Westwood, surrounded by incredibly powerful sculptures and paintings capturing the essence of loneliness that accompanies addiction, we talk about his artistic background and the unique juxtaposition between his successful financial career and his pursuit of artwork as a full-time commitment.
“There was no serious game plan,” said Esposito. “I started taking a lot of welding classes. The guy who taught those classes happened to be a sculptor and so I just got involved. I loved it – the sense of the heat, welding things. This was eight years ago. Remember, I was still in finance, so I would rush out of work to do this stuff.”
His background in finance, as it turns out, opened some unexpected doors to the art world.
“When you’re in finance you spend time in some fancy hotels and I would pay attention to how the drapes look with the bed, how colors come together,” said Esposito. “I always loved design and that was like an art to me. I also took a lot of photography classes at Northeastern. There was never a game plan, but one thing led to another. I bought my own welding machine. I just kept taking more and more classes – Mass College of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, sketching, I did residencies. It became a part of who I am.”
While there may not have been a game plan, there was a firm list of goals Esposito looked to achieve over a five-year period once he made his choice – art over finance.
“I’m the type of person when I say I’m going to do something, I’m not going to do it 20%, 30%,” said Esposito. “It’s 100 or nothing. I dropped everything, even finance, and focused on art as my career.”
THE NEXT VISION
The Opioid Spoon Project has become a 501(c)(3) charity dedicated to raising awareness about the nation’s rabid opioid epidemic. In 2021, more than 100,000 people died of an overdose and more than 80,000 of those deaths were due to opioids.
“I didn’t realize that the opioid issue was so big until I got involved in a Westwood High School organization,” said Helen Coates, a Westwood resident and member of the Board of Directors at The Opioid Spoon Project. “I’ve known Domenic for about twenty years. Our kids went to school together. He suggested I watch a documentary called ‘Dopesick,’ which I did and I was completely mortified. After watching that, I jumped on board and said if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
While the organization maintains its commitment to change the staggering figures that continue to rise, Esposito is also focused on his next major vision, The Memorial Door Project.
Imagine, if you can, an enduring landmark memorial honoring those who battled substance use disorder. Think back to the late 80s and early 90s, when the famous AIDS Quilt left an indelible mark on the country, recognizing those we lost to a dreadful disease. That’s what Esposito wants The Memorial Door Project to be.
The memorial will showcase eight narrative bronze panels set in a large public sculpture. Each panel will depict a memory of a loved one enjoying the normalcy of his or her life pre-addiction. Ideally, the memorial will be showcased in a major city, its attention to detail and vivid depictions easily accessible to thousands, recalling the style of Renaissance artists who told stories through bronze doors, like those found at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
“I meet so many people and they tell me their story about their son or daughter,” said Esposito. “He was an athlete. He pitched and he loved baseball. Or they post a photo on social media about their trip to Disney and how memorable that was, or the kid getting the driver’s license. The point is that there is always a story of normalcy in their mind. They didn’t tell you about picking him up off ‘Mass and Cass.’ That’s not the story they’re gonna tell you. For me, it was the stories of normalcy. How do I tell these stories?”
Esposito has already completed the first panel, a painstaking effort that took months of vision, sketching, planning, casting, molding and sculpting. He depicts a band, including a drummer who was later lost to opioids. The band is practicing in the drummer’s basement, rattling his mother’s china in the kitchen above with each pulsating beat.
“What I wouldn’t give to hear that china rattle again,” was the quote Esposito recalls from his conversation with the drummer’s mom.
From start to finish, a single bronze panel can take up to eight months to complete and cost thousands of dollars. His vision is costly, but the impact would be everlasting, a tribute to those who fight and those who love them.
“The idea is to have this become a national monument to the opioid crisis,” said Esposito. “So we’re working on the pitch book right now, and going around to different cities and towns telling them about the project. We’ve been raising money. We have $27,000 in the coffers. The project is relatively expensive, so our hope is that we cover half of it and the city or town covers the other half and donates some space.”
If Domenic has learned anything, it’s that no journey is taken alone and working together makes the obstacles seem less daunting.
Domenic Esposito featured on American Dream TV, with Tammy DeWolfe
Domenic Esposito - Rick Bern Photography
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Like a spark, Ariel Dangelo brings an immediate jolt of energy to any setting she enters. Whether at an informational wine-tasting event for her clients or a one-on-one consultation, Ariel has a way of establishing a level of liveliness that’s engaging and motivational.
As a Financial Advisor and owner of Nightingale Wealth Solutions, this attribute is vital. Connecting with people in a positive way is one of the keys to her success.
“I love meeting people and hearing about their goals,” said Ariel. “I’m a very goal driven person. I’ve had one client who said they wanted to sail around the world, another client who wants to open a bookstore, another who wants to open an animal sanctuary – I just find it interesting to hear about what people want to do with their lives.”
Everyone’s path is unique and Ariel’s path included an unexpected crater in the road. As she wrote about in her first Expert Contributor column in June, Ariel was thrown off a horse, broke her neck and couldn’t move her legs or hands. That journey, recovering from paralysis and a spinal fusion, shaped her into the woman she has become less than two years later.
“I was constantly going 1000 miles an hour and going through that really taught me to relax and take my time to enjoy things,” said Ariel. “I used to always just strive for my goals and then I’d do ‘everything else,’ and now I realize I can do all of the things I want to do along the path of hitting my goals.”
At the urging of her husband, Michael, Ariel decided to go out on her own as a Financial Advisor in 2020 after years of working in corporate finance. She has been building a team since.
When she takes on clients, their goals, in many ways, become Ariel’s goals. As a Fiduciary, she is obligated to act on a client’s behalf, putting the client’s interests ahead of her own, with a duty to preserve good faith and trust.
“I’ve hired two people this year,” said Ariel. “We have the capacity to take on an additional 100 clients, which we’re looking to implement over the next year. I go through a complete exploratory process and build my financial plans based on people’s goals. I help to identify where the gaps are and help the clients prioritize which gaps they want to fill first. Then we help to coach them to fulfill those.”
Stephen Ledogar joined Ariel’s team in April of this year.
“Ariel rarely thinks about herself,” said Stephen. “It’s pretty rare for someone her age to have such a mature outlook on life. Her wisdom is well beyond her years. I value her guidance immensely, both professionally and personally. The real-life experience she has allows her to be that way, and she puts her needs behind everyone else’s. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Ariel has loved animals since she was young. She started riding horses when she was three-years-old and was on the Equestrian team at UMASS-Amherst, where she studied Corporate Finance and Risk Management. Today, she still enjoys riding horses and takes care of her “fur babies” – Emmett and Benson the dogs, Banner and Becket the cats, and many chickens.
What sets Ariel apart from other people in her position?
“#1 – I’m a Fiduciary. #2 – I’m a woman and I think that really gives people a different voice from what they’re traditionally used to hearing in this environment,” said Ariel. “Many times, people say I’m easy to talk to and they can open up to me about things they haven’t talked about before with someone. When you think about the impact finance can have on marriages and relationships, it can be one of the biggest reasons for contention, so being able to work to take those ‘issues’ off the table for people – it lets me dive into the emotional side of finance, as well.”
Each month, Natalie Marsh of Compass provides Westwood Living readers with the latest real estate transactions, eye-popping figures reflecting a wild era during which most homes are selling for well-above asking price.
“Everybody asks me about it,” said Natalie. “They want to know what their house is worth, whether they are moving or not. Many times, I didn’t have to let people know I am a Realtor since it was such a topic of conversation at the time. It’s great because my job is of interest to everyday people whether they are buying, selling or just staying put – because it helps their home equity. Maybe they take out a loan. Maybe they will do a renovation.”
Natalie and her husband, Ryan, moved to Westwood when she was pregnant with her first of two children.
“There’s a few things we loved about Westwood,” said Natalie. “I love the downtown 109 feel – like I’m back in time with a small town, even though it is quite a large town. I love the commuter rail and University Ave. Shops. The express train was a huge selling point – I could be downtown in 15 minutes. At the time of our home search, I was working in the city.”
Natalie’s move to real estate came after a life-changing 2020.
“I worked at marketing firms and advertising agencies for 15 years,” said Natalie. “I liked it. I was good at it, but when COVID flipped my world upside-down it made me re-evaluate. I used some of my time when we were all stuck at home to really do some deep soul-searching. l met with a life coach and thought about what I was very passionate about, naturally. What did I follow in my life? What did I enjoy finding information about? And it all came down to real estate. That’s when I studied and got my license and the rest is history.”
Once she committed to the industry, she was convinced Compass was the right company for her.
“I knew I wanted Compass up front,” said Natalie. “They offer their agents so many tools. Technically they call themselves a ‘tech’ company, not a ‘real estate’ company. For example, their technology cross-checks public records, so when I go into my CRM and let the computer know these are all my clients and their addresses, I get feedback that tells me, ‘This person moves every 5-7 years and they’ve been in their home for four years. You might want to reach out to them.’
“Also, the marketing tools. I upload the photos, floor plans, things that I have and it spits back out e-newsletters, social ads, teaser videos and a brochure I print for open houses. The technology lets me spend my time leveraging my relationships and getting facetime with clients versus writing copy.”
During this frantic and sometimes frenetic time in the real estate market, Natalie prioritizes her personal touch and properly preparing her clients for the process.
“It wasn’t that long ago that I was buying my own house in this town and three years ago we did a full-gut renovation of our house,” said Natalie. “It’s a very daunting, overwhelming decision, so I try to proactively work with my clients to do our soul-searching and understand what their ‘musts,’ ‘wants,’ ‘nice to have,’ ‘dealbreaker, definitely off the list;’ type things are. In a market when things are moving so fast, my clients need to know that about their search.”
“We interviewed a number of different potential agents prior to selling our home,” said Chuck, a client from Westwood. “Natalie was the best-prepared, most creative, and most responsive out of anyone we talked to. She sold our home for exactly what we were looking for, even after other agents said it was unrealistic. You will not find a better choice for buying or selling real estate in Westwood.”
As you get to know Natalie, you learn about her commitment to social causes and charities.
“With every closing, I donate to two causes – one of my choice and one within the town of the transaction,” said Natalie.
Giving back is important and understanding the magnitude of what she’s dealing with each day keeps her focused.
“It’s not like you’re buying a pair of shoes,” Natalie says with a laugh. “You’re buying a home to live in!”
When the time comes for the Buyer to submit an attractive offer with enough safeguards, you may need to determine which contingencies make sense to waive versus ones to think about creatively without throwing the dog out with the bath water.
1. Mortgage – This contingency is rarely waived unless the Buyer is purchasing the property with cash. A mortgage contingency date about a week prior to the closing date or later is the norm to give the Lender sufficient loan processing time. PROTECT THIS DATE. Request extensions from the Seller to avoid the risk of losing the deposits!
2. Appraisal – This contingency may be considered as folded into the mortgage contingency, especially if this is an FHA or VA loan. If it is not an FHA or VA loan, it is probably safest to explicitly state in the offer “subject to the property appraising at or above asking” to ensure everyone is on the same page and there is no denying that on an on-point appraisal is needed.
Sellers tend to avoid appraisal contingencies on offers and may even ask the Buyers to come up with the difference.
Agents exhibit a lot of creativity to overcome low appraisals. Buyers may request Seller’s closing cost credits to reduce the Buyer’s closing costs. Agents have been known to reduce their commissions to get their clients to the closing table. A very noble gesture indeed, but not highly recommended.
Everyone works hard to earn their keep! Addressing the possibility of an under-appraised property from the beginning may help avoid a lot of tension down the line.
3. Inspection – This contingency is waived frequently and IMO one of the riskiest waivers. Why you ask? Open houses are marketing tools for Sellers to sell their homes. Although the house is staged with color-coordinated drapes on chic signature pieces aesthetically located in the perfect nook, there is more than meets the eye!
Hiring a licensed inspector to look beyond the home’s pleasing exterior/interior is a key investment. An inspector provides a plethora of information for the Buyer to understand the property’s history with roofing, flooding, HVAC, pests, flooring, electrical and HVAC systems to name a few. I always tell my clients, “You need to go into home-buying with your eyes opened!”
Solely Informational Inspections give the Buyer an opportunity to examine the house with an inspector to understand the property’s needs while giving the Seller ease that the Buyer will not walk away from the deal based on inspectional findings.
Bringing a contractor to the open houses or a friend with an eye for scoping the soundness of a home is another idea. Then waiving the inspection makes more sense and your agent has more fodder to negotiate with the Seller’s agent!
This is not an exhaustive contingency list but you can get started on structuring your offer!
“To thine own self be true” [1] as you navigate your next purchase. Happy House Buying!
[1] Act 1 Scene 3 of Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Deborah A. Bondzie is an Attorney at Law with offices in Canton. You can reach her by email at dbondzie@bondzielaw.com or by phone at 617-483-3501.
Westwood brothers Kirk and Jacob McKinney spent the summer hiring fellow high school students to work for them.
You read that right. Jacob, a rising junior, and Kirk, a 2022 Westwood graduate, decided to start their own junk removal business a little over a year ago. One of their main goals when they started “Junk Teens” was to make their business like a community – to make working fun while making a profit.
The McKinney brothers got their drive from their parents at an early age, spending summers and school vacations working for the family tree service business. It was after a short stint working for a junk removal business that Kirk, who considers himself an entrepreneur, decided to take off on his own, enlisting the help of his brother, Jacob.
The Junk Teens will come to your home (with their own pick-up truck and dump truck they purchased) and unload most anything you ask them to take away. Their business has been quite busy this summer and with Kirk going off to Babson College in the fall, Jacob will continue throughout the year with the continued help of fellow high schoolers.
What happens when the junk teens become junk adults? Kirk says “Time to rebrand!“
For more information check out their website at www.junkteens.com
WESTWOOD – The fence went up before the Fourth of July. Before the heat waves and the vacations. Before beaches, beer and barbecue. Before all of that summer rushed into the rear-view mirror, the way it does every year.
Well, almost every year. Of course, 2020 was the exception. By some strange coincidence, the fence – and especially what lies behind it – will be permanently intertwined with COVID and that locked down spring and summer.
Let’s take a step back, into the vortex of my mind. One of the chambers we find in there is filled with all things weather. Statistics, charts, blizzards, visions of a smiling Dick Albert presenting at the Pine Hill (yes, I know, it’s now Hanlon) School in 1983…lots of stuff in there that contributed to lifelong “Weather Nerd” status for me.
It is like a timeline for me, looking back at the major weather events to which I’ve given witness. The Blizzard of ’78 was the kickoff – in pictures and stories and (maybe?) vague memories I see us sledding down the on-ramp at the East Street rotary. Hurricane Gloria. Huge June New Hampshire hailstorm. Hurricane Bob. Three feet of snow on April Fool’s Day, quite an asterisk for our town’s centennial. Halloween canceled by a snowstorm. Irene the semi-dud. Jumping off my roof into soft snow during the Snowmageddon. Henri the complete dud. To name but a few.
Among these big events is possibly the most violent thunderstorm I ever saw, and it was actually quite recent. In talking to folks, I realize that it has already been forgotten by some – maybe they don’t pay much attention to weather events, or maybe it was just overshadowed by the COVID spring which stretched into the summer, and then beyond summer, and then beyond beyond.
But I won’t forget the heat and humidity that day, June 28, 2020, and the approach of the reds and yellows on that Doppler radar I watch. Now, most thunderstorms come through with wind and rain and noise, for a few minutes to half an hour or so. But this one wouldn’t stop. The lightning strikes and booms of thunder kept increasing in both frequency and proximity. The rain was at a level beyond torrential, and it stayed that way for hours. It might rain like that in Hawaii, but I’ve never seen anything like it here.
The lights flickered. The back yard flooded. My fortress held, but less than a mile away, they were not so lucky. For rain like that overwhelmed the roads and drainage systems, and found its way to Washington Street, flooding Norwood Hospital so completely that the building would eventually be condemned. I remember praying for those patients, at once dealing with lockdowns and cordoned-off COVID quarters and no visitors allowed – and now evacuating in a panic as the waters filled the lower floors, destroying a place which is supposed to be the safe haven where they fix people.
Time marched on. COVID’s impacts began to diminish. A plan was hatched. The hospital will be rebuilt bigger and better. It took some time, but it is in progress now. That fence went up, and now the buildings are coming down – and it has been quite jarring to have the stormy memories reawakened, just as new variants threaten to prolong the pandemic. 2020, and all it had in store for us, lingers like the rain that just wouldn’t stop.
Westwood Living? No…thank YOU for living in Westwood. See you next month, and I look forward to hearing from you any time at jayresha@comcast.net.
The moment July 4th comes and goes I already feel as if summer is halfway over.
I start to try to get in more beach days and enjoy the longer evenings because I know within just a few short weeks, Target’s back to school shopping aisles will be jam-packed with spiral notebooks and 15 types of hilighters.
August is the month for slowing down. Perhaps your kids are done with camp and little league. Maybe you’ve carved a week out of your work schedule to spend at the ocean in the Cape or up in New Hampshire by the lake.
No room for time off? Take your weekend to slow down. Get the ice cream cone. Grab the kayak or golf clubs. Read a good book. Let the kids run through the sprinklers and stay up past their bedtimes.
Before long we will be trading in our beach carts for shopping carts. S’mores and fire pit evenings will be spent with sports practices, band concerts and back-to-school nights.
Our lives get so busy that sometimes we forget to just live. We forget to be present.
I hope you spend your August enjoying the warmth and the sun and family BBQ’s because soon enough we will be counting down the days until summer 2023.
