He was its executive director from 2016 to 2019, but he didn’t stop there.
“I had the data, and I thought, ‘it’s a losing battle if we don’t do something with what we know,’” said Langos, 70, of Miami Township.
So he started the Montgomery County Drug-Free Coalition and helped to launch programs to assist individuals who are addicted, in addition to their families.
That includes the Front Door Initiative, which gave deputies and officers the option to take those with an addiction to a treatment center; as well as GROW, or Get Recovery Options Working, which aims to connect others to service providers and additional resources through regular visits to the homes of those who have overdosed.
His work also resulted in law enforcement blitzes to arrest drug dealers and a program to provide addiction services within the Montgomery County Jail.
He also went on as many overdose calls as he could. That led him to Jamie Brown, who nominated Langos as a Dayton Daily News Community Gem.
“Bruce is someone you can definitely count on,” Brown said.
She had fought addiction for many years and had overdosed many times before they first met. Looking back, Brown now thinks that “Bruce was meant to come on that call.”
Others would say they would help but wouldn’t do so, Brown said, but Langos wasn’t like that.
He gave her sister his business card and said to call when she needed help.
“He was one of the few that actually did what he said and would answer his phone anytime I ever called him,” said Cindy Drake, Brown’s sister who also nominated Langos as a Community Gem.
He helped Brown connect with services and sober living housing. He has been straight-forward and compassionate. Even now, seven years later, they stay in touch and she can count on his support.
“When you talk to Bruce you can just see he’s a good soul,” said Brown, of Xenia.
Langos, who called Brown “one of the great success stories,” became president in 2020 of RG Properties, a Dayton-based real estate investment, development and asset management company. He continues to assist the Drug-Free Coalition and sheriff’s office as needed and is pleased to see many of the programs he worked on continue to operate.
A stigma remains around addicted individuals, Langos said, but he found that the vast majority he worked with weren’t hardened criminals but instead someone whose addiction was triggered – perhaps by a death in the family, or a mental illness.
“It struck me that they were just like I am in a lot of cases,” he said.
Langos has done much work in the community – as the former chair of the Dayton Development Coalition, a former Wright State board trustee and a former commissioner of the Ohio Third Frontier Commission, for example – but he said that his work during the opioid crisis was different and made him more compassionate.
“Law enforcement stood up and really made a lot of this happen,” Langos said. “The rest of us were just there to help.”
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