Major League Baseball player Logan Webb returned to Placer County to speak directly to high school students, some of them not much younger than his cousin Kade Kristopher Webb.

The San Francisco Giants pitcher on Friday spoke to students at Whitney High School in Rocklin, a campus his cousin once attended, to talk about the dangers of fentanyl, an addictive synthetic opioid. Webb also encouraged these young people to seek help if they’re in trouble.

“Kade was poisoned by a drug dealer in December 2021,” Webb told an audience of hundreds of Whitney High students in the second of two assemblies in the campus gym. “He was taken from us. The impact it’s had on our family is continuous.”

Kade Webb was 20 when he died shortly after ingesting a lethal dose of fentanyl. In Placer County’s first murder trial in a fentanyl death, a jury found 23-year-old Carson David Schewe guilty for selling the deadly fentanyl to his friend, Kade Webb.

In December, a judge sentenced Schewe to 20 years to life in prison for Webb’s fentanyl death. Webb had just been released from a drug rehab facility after completing treatment for addiction, according to the Placer County District Attorney’s Office.

At Schewe’s sentencing hearing, Kade Webb’s mother, Elizabeth Dillender, said her son was laid to rest in his coffin with his skateboard placed on his chest and still sporting the fresh haircut he had received to attend his cousin’s wedding.

The MLB pitcher, who grew up in Placer County, told the Whitney High students he was a few days away from his wedding when he was told his cousin had died. His cousin left behind a a now 3-year-old daughter he never met; his girlfriend was pregnant when he died.

“You know, one of the saddest things about watching her grow up is her not getting to know her father, because I know he would’ve been the best father,” he told the high school students.

Fentanyl is a powerful and potentially addictive drug that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin. The California Department of Justice has said two milligrams of the synthetic opioid can result in overdose and potentially death.

Authorities say fentanyl can be sold as pills with some online dealers claiming the pills are Xanax, Percocet and Oxycodone. Fentanyl also can come in powder and vape pens. High profile criminal cases in the Sacramento region have involved evidence showing young people using their social media accounts, such as Snapchat, to sell or and find fentanyl to buy.

“We are finding fentanyl in all sorts of drugs,” Sgt. Daniel Stokes of the Placer County Sheriff’s Office’s Opioid Response Team told the Whitney High students. “You have to be aware aware that any kind of drug you’re taking could have fentanyl.”

Detective Patrick Craven, who helps lead the sheriff’s Opioid Response team in investigations said fentanyl is being pressed into pills in uncontrolled settings. He said that means people splitting a pill with others can have varying outcomes; one piece of the pill can have a deadly dose of fentanyl and the others might not.

Craven warned the students that if they’re ingesting a pill that is obtained illicitly, “you have to assume it has fentanyl.” He said many more young people are now aware of the dangers of fentanyl, but they still believe it won’t happen to them because they mistaken believe fentanyl will come from some unknown street dealer selling the drug on a street corner.

“It’s most likely going to be a friend or someone you trust,” Craven told the the high school students.

Kurt Webb, Kade Webb’s father also spoke at the school assemblies, telling the students that coping with the loss of his son is different every day.

“I’m getting through with faith, family and friends,” the father said. “You get a whirlwind of emotions, one little trigger. It’s a matter of really compartmentalizing some of them, just being able to take one of them at a time and get through the day.”

That was part of the message the MLB pitchers and other members of the Giants organization shared with the students, to break the stigma that surrounds mental health issues and seek or offer help.

“It’s OK to not be OK,” Logan Webb told the students. “I wish I was able to talk more when I was a high schooler.”

The All-Star pitcher shared with the audience that he reached out to Dr. Shana Alexander, a sports psychologist with the Giants and the Sacramento Kings, to discuss the emotions he felt in the wake of his cousin’s death. He said he “needed to cry” and let out all his emotions, almost wanting to scream about his cousin’s death.

Alexander, who also spoke at the school assemblies, said she reached out to support Webb’s family after Kade Webb’s death. She also wanted to participate in public presentations to help prevent other fentanyl deaths.

“My belief is that oftentimes when somebody is using (drugs), there might be an underlying mental health concern,” Alexander told the students. “We want all of you to know that there’s treatment out there and that can be addressed.”