About the Tommy DeRoia Success Foundation

Tommy’s Story

Tommy DeRoia was a college graduate, a successful businessman, a professional athlete, a loving son and brother, and a friend to everyone. His soul was defined by compassion and kindness, always helping those who struggled with life.  He suffered for six long years with the chronic relapsing disease of the brain known as addiction. Throughout his battle, he never stopped fighting, always putting one foot in front of the other, desperately trying to obtain long term recovery.  In May of 2016, the disease finally won, and we lost him to an opiate overdose. The same stigma and roadblocks that hindered his recovery still exist today, making it challenging for patients with addiction to achieve long term recovery.  

In 2023, we lost 112,000 lives to overdoses…someone’s child, someone’s parent, someone’s loved one.  We wanted to change this and make recovery a real possibility with hope, support, and love.  We created this foundation based on Tommy’s tremendous courage and ability to love unconditionally while fighting an uphill battle that the world did not understand.  Therefore, we use all opportunities to educate different aspects of society, so that the stigma cannot determine a patient’s outcome.  We present funds to those organizations that provide continuum of care, in order for recovery to be possible. Our hope is that the disease of addiction will be addressed as the recurring medical condition that it is, and that every patient will receive the necessary treatment regardless of where they are at in the disease process.