Elwood Porter, 36, cared for others in addiction even as he battled his own

After years of battling his own opioid addiction, Elwood Porter was passionate about helping others in the same struggle.

In Kensington, where he worked at the public health organization Prevention Point, he was known for regularly saving lives with the overdose-reversal drug naloxone — and for staying with victims as they awoke, comforting them as they gained their bearings.

Porter, 36, died of a fentanyl overdose in Philadelphia in June 2021, devastating coworkers, friends, and his tight-knit New Jersey family.

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The youngest of four children, he used to tell his mother, Hazel Rollerson, that he wanted to be president someday — with an important caveat.

“He said, ‘You have to come live with me and tuck me in every night,’” Rollerson said, laughing.

When he was in seventh grade, Porter and his sister were riding in a car with their grandmother when another driver ran a red light and crashed into them. His grandmother was killed.

“Elwood’s heart, next to me, was his grandmom,” Rollerson said. “He told me, ‘Mom, I heard her take her last breath.’”

“And from that moment, life changed for him.”

After the crash, Porter was prescribed opioid painkillers, Rollerson said. At some point, unbeknownst to his family, he began buying them on the street.

It was the beginning of a long struggle with addiction, punctuated by long periods of sobriety — including a stint in the Navy — and relapses. For a time, he was sleeping on the streets in Philadelphia.

When he was using, Porter was often embarrassed to be around his family, even when they begged him to come home, Rollerson said. But he called his mother every day, and his siblings at least once a week. He doted on his daughter, 15. “He loved her to distraction,” Rollerson said.

Porter eventually moved into veterans’ housing in Kensington and worked his way to renting an apartment on his own. Rollerson remembers how proud Porter was to be in his own space: He FaceTimed her excitedly to show her the empty apartment, before he even moved in furniture.

Even amid his struggles, Porter found purpose and pride in harm reduction — a principle of addiction outreach that helps keep drug users safe even when they’re not ready to stop using drugs.

His mother recalled a young man from Prevention Point telling her: “I can’t tell you how many people he saved.”

Last summer, Porter’s roommate called Rollerson from Porter’s own cell phone, asking if she’d seen her son lately. Porter’s wallet and phone had been left behind in the apartment, and the roommate couldn’t find him, she said.

A day later, Porter was found in his bedroom, dead of a fentanyl overdose. The Medical Examiner’s Office did not suspect foul play, Rollerson said.

A year after Porter’s death, Rollerson and her family are working through their grief and trying to honor Porter’s legacy. Some of his nieces and nephews have volunteered in Kensington in his memory.

“I think we all have a purpose in life,” Rollerson said. “And maybe this was his purpose.”