Carly Fiorina. (Laura Segall/Getty)
Carly Fiorina’s stepdaughter, Lori Fiorina, died of an overdose in 2009 after a long battle with bulimia and addiction to drugs and alcohol. Carly Fiorina, who is expected to be named as Ted Cruz’s running mate, has spoke about her stepdaughter during her run for president.
“I very much hope that I am the only person on this stage who can say this, but I know there are millions of Americans who will say the same thing,” Fiorina said during a debate last September. “My husband Frank and I buried a child to drug addiction. We must invest more in the treatment of drugs.”
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Lori Fiorina Was Found Dead at Her Home in New Jersey at the Age of 35
Lori Fiorina died at the age of 35 at her home in New Jersey on October 12, 2009, according to her obituary.
In her memoir, Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey, Carly Fiorina wrote about how she and her husband, Frank Fiorina, were notified about Lori’s death:
They asked us to sit down. Frank collapsed in a chair. I sat on the carpet next to him, my arms wrapped around his knees. The police officers said our daughter was dead, three thousand miles away. We hadn’t heard from her in a couple of weeks. Frank had been in touch with the volunteer paramedics he had worked with in New Jersey, and they asked the police to check on her. …
At that moment, we lost both the woman she was and the woman she could have been. All our hope for her and her life died.
Frank and I leaned into each other and sobbed, for Lori, for our family, for ourselves. A heart truly can feel as though it is breaking apart into a thousand shattered pieces.
Fiorina wrote that Lori’s body had given out after years battling addiction.
2. She Was the Daughter of Carly’s Second Husband, Frank, & His First Wife, Patricia Easler
Carly and Frank Fiorina. (Getty)
Lori Fiorina was the daughter of Frank Fiorina, Carly’s second husband, and Patricia Easler, Frank’s first wife. Frank Fiorina has another daughter with Patricia, Tracy, who is married and has two daughters of her own.
Carly Fiorina married Frank Fiorina when Lori was 10. Patricia Easler had primary custody of the girls at the time.
3. Lori Fiorina Graduated From Farleigh Dickinson University in 1998
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Lori Fiorina graduated from Farleigh Dickinson University in 1998, according to Politico.
“We worried that Lori drank too much in college, but we didn’t think she had an addiction. Those were good years — or so they seemed at the time. I had taken Lori around to visit different campuses, and she had settled on Fairleigh Dickinson, near our home in New Jersey,” Carly Fiorina wrote in her memoir. “She lived with us while she went to school. She did well academically and thrived socially. After graduation she toyed with the idea of going on to graduate school but got an offer for a job in sales at a pharmaceutical company.”
4. She Was Married After College & Her Drug Addiction Began During That Relationship
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Carly Fiorina said in her memoir that Lori was married after college and moved to Virginia, where she became addicted to prescription drugs. She also abused alcohol, Carly Fiorina wrote.
“We are misleading young people when we tell them marijuana is just like having beer. It’s not. And the marijuana they’re smoking today is not the same marijuana that Jeb Bush smoked 40 years ago,” Fiorina said at a debate in September. “We need to tell young people the truth. Drug addiction is an epidemic and it is taking too many of our young people. I know this sadly from personal experience.”
Lori Fiorina was divorced and was living back in New Jersey at the time of her death.
5. Carly Fiorina’s Beliefs About Drug Issues Were Influenced by Her Lori’s Death
Carly Fiorina has said her own experiences with Lori’s addiction battle and death has shaped how she would address the country’s drug problem. Carly Fiorina has said that those addicted to drugs do not need to go to prison, but instead need treatment.
“If you’re criminalizing drug abuse and addiction, you’re not treating it—and you’re part of the problem,” she wrote in a column for Time in January. “Unfortunately, too many of the men and women I have met on the campaign trail have experienced tragedies like ours. They have lost fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. Drug addiction is an epidemic, and it is taking too many of our young people. This is a battle that we must fight. There are things that we can and must do. We must invest more in mental health and in the treatment of drug addiction.”