Four Mendota High School students, Jimmy Fuentes, Anthony Trinidad, Jonathan Alfaro, and Gerardo Portillo decided to get involved in the fentanyl crisis when they made a phone application while in the 8th grade. The app, known as “FentaKNOW”, is designed to provide information on the dangerous drug fentanyl, such as symptoms, dangers, and the opioid reversal agent narcan.
In a report done by ABC 30, it was stated that the four students spent “countless hours after school gathering information about Fentanyl, teaching themselves how to code, and putting it all in one place for the community to easily access.”
With information in both English and Spanish, it is the boys’ hope that the app can help life saving situations as well as inform those who don’t understand the dangers of fentanyl to become familiar. There is also a 911 button directly built into the app for emergency situations.
The app was submitted to the National MESA Championship. MESA stands for mathematics, engineering, science and achievement, and is a club that all four boys are now apart of. The team won their preliminary round of competition in Fresno, a regional award in the Bay area, a state competition in San Diego, and finally were awarded 1st Place overall in the MESA USA National Engineering Design Competition. This competition was against 25,000 other students and their respective creations.
In a quote given to ABC 30, the boys’ MESA coach, Carlos Tamayo stated, “This is obviously something students are going to look up to in the future and the community can feel proud of these boys and what they’ve accomplished.”