As told by Mark and Brenda Wiger at their Minneapolis home on Tuesday, daughter Jessica “Jess” Wiger had a soul full of sunshine.

“Energetic, fun-loving,” described mother Brenda Wiger.

“She’s just queued in on such a deep level. She attracted many, many friends,” her father, Mark Wiger, added.

Jess would’ve celebrated a 41st birthday later this month, but 39 years’ worth of memories was all her parents were afforded after a night with an old friend gone wrong.

“They had some cocaine, they thought was cocaine,” Brenda said.

It turned out to be at least laced with fentanyl and the amount Jess ingested was more than two dozen deadly doses worth of the highly potent opioid, Mark explained, adding that the last text Jess ever sent was to a friend, asking, “Where can I get a fentanyl test strip?”

“And the friend didn’t get the message until the morning,” Brenda said with tears welling in her eyes.

Those final words were tough to recall and have been the Wigers’ “calling” ever since.

Mark compared fentanyl test strips to smoke detectors, and per his analogy, opioid-reversing medication Naloxone, often known by the brand name Narcan, would be a fire extinguisher.

“Now, are these important?” he continued, picking up a fire extinguisher. “Absolutely, they’re important. But, it’s better to prevent a fire than to put a fire out, and that’s why all of the fire departments and the building codes require smoke detectors.”

Still, two years after Jess’s death, the test strips are the more difficult commodity to come by, they say, and Steve Rummler HOPE Network later confirmed.

The nonprofit distributes about a thousand fentanyl test strip kits a week, according to executive director Alicia House.

“There’s a huge disconnect still, and I think the number one disconnect is awareness,” she said, asked if there’s a gap between the need for the tests and their accessibility.

The kits that House’s organization distributes come with a QR code for a survey and the results are compiled into an annual report. The subsequent data shows that demand for the test strips has multiplied over the last few years.

The data also said that more than half of the reported drugs tested with the strips came back positive for fentanyl in 2023.

More often than not, those positive test results also changed behavior, “including up to 50% of the people stipulated that they chose not to use the substance at all,” House said.

The best place to get the tests — and for free — is at the Steve Rummler HOPE Network or another one of Minnesota’s roughly 200 Narcan Access Points (NAP), she continued.

The biggest hurdle that remains as of this report, and according to House, is that most of those locations are in the metro.

“There’s a huge glaring gap in those Greater Minnesota areas,” House said. “And so, one of the ways that we try to, like, fit that need is by offering to mail it right to their doors, but there’s a lot of people who may not have, you know, a home that you can mail it to — or have the access to go online and give us their mailing address. And in those instances, unfortunately, you know, I worry about them being missed.”