At one point during her 28-mile ride on a “water bike” from Marin County to the Farallon Islands, Jessica Schiller found herself pedaling across open ocean with no land in sight. Suddenly, she had unexpected companions: a pod of dolphins leaping alongside her.
That’s when Schiller felt that her late daughter Naomi, who died two years ago of a fentanyl overdose, was with her.
Schiller undertook “Naomi’s Ride” on Oct. 4. It was partly a fundraiser for Shatterproof, a national nonprofit “dedicated to reversing the addiction crisis in the United States,” according to its website. Schiller said the ride brought in $7,500 for the nonprofit. But for the 52-year-old Mill Valley resident. it was more about keeping a promise she made to her daughter several years ago to attempt crossing from Sausalito to the Farallons via water bike.
“She was always my biggest champion,” Schiller said of her daughter. “She was the middle child and brilliant in her own right.”
The story of Naomi Schiller’s battle with drug addiction was chronicled in J. last year. Naomi’s death at age 20 left her mother devastated. But she also became determined to do what she could to spare other families from experiencing similar grief.
To that end, the founder of Schiller water bikes decided to take on the ride to the barren islands on her own device — which is basically an exercise bike built into a platform between two pontoons. Pedaling powers a propeller, and handle bars enable changes in direction.
“Someone who manages the Farallon Islands told me, ‘You couldn’t pay me enough to get into warm water during peak shark season. You must be crazy,’” Schiller said. “On the realistic side, you have better odds of something bad happening to you on the streets of San Francisco.”
Schiller grew up in an Orthodox home, lived in Israel and married an Israeli. Her three children attended Jewish day schools. But Naomi started using drugs in high school and struggled with addiction from then on.
“She left NYU in her second semester of her second year,” Schiller told J. last year. “In February of 2022, I got her into a detox in Los Angeles, but she ended up leaving. She was missing for a long time. I drove from Marin to L.A. to look for her, driving the streets of Venice. She was deep in her addiction.”
Her death a few months later shook Schiller to her core, the devastation compounded by her son’s similar struggles with addiction. Thankfully, she said, her son is in recovery and doing well.
“As any parent knows, if you lose a child, it’s the worst tragedy imaginable,” she said. “It’s taken me the better part of two years to muster up the courage to just get back in my life. It’s taken me that long. Now I’ve found my purpose. But I do cry every single day.”
As for the ride to the Farallons, Schiller decided that now was the time to make good on her promise to Naomi. There were risks. Great white sharks migrate along the California coast this time of year, and offshore swells can be daunting, if not dangerous. Moreover, a year ago Schiller ruptured her Achilles’ heel on a visit to see family in Israel and was still on crutches earlier this year. She constantly trains on her water bike, though, so training wasn’t an issue.
In the predawn darkness on Oct. 4, she mounted her water bike and headed out to sea, along with a small vessel to monitor her safety, help navigate the route and film the ride. Though she saw no sharks, the swells rose as much as 8 feet, which she compared to “rolling hills coming in from the horizon.”
“It’s never stable on the water,” she added. “You never go downhill. You just go up and over.”
By the last couple of hours of the 10-hour ride, Schiller’s calves were shot. But “I had a long time to think about Naomi and the magnitude of doing this to honor her,” she recalled. As she reached the craggy Farallon shore, “I felt overwhelmed, leaned over my handlebars and started to cry. I felt her love and strength pushing me.”
Though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported a 10% drop in fentanyl overdose deaths, the drug still kills more than 100,000 Americans every year. Schiller hopes her ride and fundraising effort can make a dent in the stats.
“Forty-nine million Americans are living with some kind of substance abuse disorder,” she said. “Every five minutes, someone died [of an overdose]. I’m trying to bring awareness to what my family went through.”