Richmond-born activist fights stigma of drug addiction

published on June 28, 2023 by Maria Rantanen in Richmond News

One had a legal gun, the other an illegal one.

An early-morning armed robbery at Denny’s in Vancouver, an arrest and an eventual acquittal due to a technicality is the mutual history of two Richmond sons in the early 1990s – one as a cop, the other as an armed robber.

But to see them chatting over a cup of coffee 30 years later – with the former cop asking the former robber to help educate the City of Richmond on addictions and homelessness – their camaraderie and mutual admiration is obvious.

Richmond city councillor Kash Heed, a former VPD cop and former solicitor general, and Guy Felicella, peer clinical advisor with the BC Centre for Substance Use, recently sat down with the Richmond News to talk about old times but also to look forward to how the City of Richmond could better tackle the toxic drug crisis, people living on the streets and the mental-health issues that often lead to these…