PHOENIX — He did good in school and he had a lot of friends, Sylvia Tryon said, sitting at a table just a few feet from photos of her son, Mickey
"He got into high school and got into football and excelled," she added. "[He] started getting letters from different colleges across the country."
Football could have been Mickey Tryon's ticket to the future. But an injury led him down another path. A coach gave him something for the pain.
"They say it just takes one time," Sylvia Tryon said. "You know taking a pill one time."
Mickey Tryon became a personal trainer instead. Focused on bodybuilding, but still using drugs.
He ended up on probation, and then in multiple rehabs. One of those rehabs was Pathfinders, a facility that shut down after the state accused it of fraud.
But rehab didn't take. Sylvia Tryon said Mickey went back to Pathfinders and asked to come back. She said he was told no.
"I can see in my mind," Sylvia Tryon said. "I can see him walking away defeated."
Mickey's parents called around, trying to find a place for him to stay. A friend pointed them to a cluster of four apartments in Phoenix. According to the Facebook page, it advertised as a "post-treatment substance use disorder community."
"I thought they had to be state licensed," Sylvia Tryon said.
But, they don't. State law doesn't stop anyone from using the phrase "sober living," even if they're not licensed.
But there are rules. Only licensed sober living facilities can give out medication to clients. Mickey Tryon was on a lot of medication for various conditions. The apartment owner told Sylvia that Mickey would have to find another place to live because she couldn't dispense that medication.
But Mickey Tryon never had a chance to find another place to live.
On Aug. 19, 2023, Mickey Tryon overdosed. His bloodwork showed fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Fire department records show Mickey Tryon was given eight doses of Narcan. His heart stopped shortly after paramedics arrived. He died at the hospital.
But Mickey Tryon wasn't the only 911 call to the sober apartment complex that day. According to fire department records, paramedics had been to Mickey's apartment building just hours earlier for another medical call.
We talked to the woman who runs the apartment that took Mickey Tryon in. 12News is not naming the complex because it has not been accused of wrongdoing and people still live there.
She said the client from the first 911 call recovered and is doing fine. She said she does randomly drug test residents, and that Mickey wasn't there long enough for her to do her normal intake procedures. She said she didn't know where the drugs Mickey Tryon took came from.
After leaving a rehab accused of fraud, Mickey Tryon ended up in an unlicensed sober living home. That raises more questions for his family about Arizona's rehab industry.
"How did it get so out of control?" Mickey's father, Terry Tryon asked. "How did it get this far?"
"You're dealing with people's lives here. Why isn't there better control?" he said.
We took that question to AHCCCS CEO Carmen Heredia.
"It started with individuals looking to make quick money," she said.
Heredia said her agency is trying to tackle the problem of AHCCCS fraud. So far, the agency has suspended more than 300 businesses accused of fraud and other crimes. Pathfinders, Mickey Tryon's former rehab, is one of those businesses.
State officials now estimate rehab fraud has cost the state $2.8 billion.
"There's a lot of money," Sylvia said.
"That's, unfortunately, what society has come to," Terry Tryon said. "They're chasing the money and not the people."
But Mickey was more than money, the Tryons said.
"He was everything to us," Sylvia Tryon said. "It's the worst feeling in the world knowing I'll never see him again."
More on these stories:
- FBI: Millions given to illegitimate rehab homes in the Valley targeting Indigenous people
- Arizona cutting off funding to over 100 fraudulent medical providers
- 'Trafficking is probably a good word': Eloy motel accused in AHCCCS fraud case
- Native American man found dead outside of a Phoenix group home, home later shut down accused of defrauding AHCCCS
- Arizona is in the middle of a massive crackdown on fraudulent health care providers. These protesters say they were caught in the crossfire.
- Investigation into group home leads to fraud allegations, health department citations after former residents died
- 'We became dollar signs': Native American communities ravaged by one of Arizona's widest-reaching scams
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