Video Transcript

Hello, I’m Mike Christman, special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh FBI Field Office. I want to take a minute to recognize the work of a group I’m sure all of you have heard of—the Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation. They are the recipient of the 2019 FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award.

The Penguins Foundation is a valued partner in the FBI Pittsburgh’s Heroin Outreach Prevention and Education Initiative or HOPE. Through this program, we have been able to educate thousands of students about the dangers of prescription opioid abuse and heroin use by offering free prevention and education programs that are currently available to area high schools. 

Over the past five years, through our continued partnership, hundreds of students across Western Pennsylvania have created public service announcement videos about the opioid epidemic and the importance of keeping families and our communities safe. Every year, the top three schools also get the chance to watch a Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey game in true VIP fashion. I encourage everyone to look at these videos. They are impressive, take a listen.

Yet the effects only came with the help in the form of a small white disc. Her inevitable demise the answer to a tragic hero.

You make mistakes, do things that you never imagined, and you pay the price until one day you find yourself totally lost, not knowing who you are or what you’ve become.  

We felt the HOPE program was necessary after seeing prescription opioid abuse and heroin use reach pandemic levels across Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Who better to connect with our youth than their peers and the Pittsburgh Penguins?

I can’t say enough about the work the Foundation has done for our community and the FBI. It’s amazing and exciting to the see the impact the organization has on so many of our youth.

Members of the Pens Foundation were supposed to attend an event at FBI Headquarters, where FBI Director Christopher Wray would present them with an award in person, but that has been cancelled for now. Please join me in congratulating the Penguins Foundation on winning this prestigious award. We look forward to the work you continue to do to make our community a better place, because that is the Pittsburgh way.