Jackie Siegel: “The Queen of Versailles” on her mission to save lives

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Episode Transcript

Elizabeth Vargas:

Jackie Siegel, welcome to Heart of the Matter. Great to have you on.

Jackie Siegel:

It’s such an honor and a pleasure to be here today. Thank you.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I think your story is so… Unfortunately, a lot of parents can really relate to your story and to your loss. You are not the only mother who has lost a child to drug addiction, not by, sadly, a long shot. And I was so struck by the fact that you said something that so many other parents have said, which is that, “I had a great relationship with my daughter and I had no idea.”

Jackie Siegel:

We missed all of the warning signs with her as parents. I never saw her doing drugs.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Never?

Jackie Siegel:

No, but I did notice sometimes during school, she’d come home and she’d be tired. And I was just thinking it was just normal teenager stuff. I didn’t realize she was popping Xanax and things like that, that was making her tired and sometimes irritable. When she passed away, we found her diary and it really opened up my eyes. And I feel like getting inside of her head as a teenager and her journey of how she became addicted to drugs, and with the bullying that happened in school and peer pressure and all that, I realized I know my daughter better now-

Elizabeth Vargas:

After reading her diary.

Jackie Siegel:

… after reading her diary.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Just so our audience knows, it wasn’t like you found the diary and read it on your own. She actually sent a friend a text message that that friend was supposed to send to you, should anything happen to her. And I have that text message here. This is the message she sent to you.

Jackie Siegel:

Yes.

Elizabeth Vargas:

“I just fell into a deep sleep, dreaming sweet dreams and knowing how much you love me, and I’ll always be with you. Take my journal in my nightstand drawer, the fat one I always use. I’ve never shown anyone my journal, but there’s no one else I would rather pass it on to than you. My business and now is everyone else’s business. And I’m okay with that, Mom.” Gosh.

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. So a few weeks before she passed away, she had sent that text to one of her friends because she realized at that point that she might not wake up the next morning. But unfortunately, her or the friend never told me anything or showed me this text until later after she overdosed for real and passed away. And I wish the friend had shared that with me, but I guess she was just protecting Victoria’s privacy.
But Victoria knew she was playing basically Russian roulette with the drugs, especially with the fentanyl in the pills now. Even if they think they’re taking a Percocet, you just don’t know. But it looks like Percocet but they put fentanyl in it and they’re taking fentanyl, and it kills them on the first try. She did know that she was playing with death.

Elizabeth Vargas:

She began taking pills when she was 15. You took her to the doctor, because she was having anxiety and the doctor prescribed her Xanax.

Jackie Siegel:

That’s correct. She was having the teenage anxiety with peer pressure at school and all that. And so the doctor treated her with that. Then she got addicted to the Xanax, and then they put her on Adderall. So she started going on like a roller coaster with the prescription drugs. And then the doctor realized, “Hey, this isn’t a way of life to take these drugs all the time,” but she was already addicted. And then, that’s when she turned to the streets, basically the street, the hallways in her school, because-

Elizabeth Vargas:

So she was getting it from other kids?

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. The kids at the school, they had pill presses to make Xanny bars. I didn’t even know what a Xanny bar was. It’s basically four Xanax in a long… It’s like four pills in one that you can break up or take the whole thing. So she got super addicted, and she actually realized how bad it was. And she came to me and asked for me to go to rehab, and I was shocked. I said, “But why do you have to go to rehab?”
She says, “Mom, I’m addicted to Xanax. I have a drug problem.” So me and-

Elizabeth Vargas:

How many years after being prescribed the Xanax was this?

Jackie Siegel:

I want to say it’s probably a year and a half or to two years, somewhere in that range.

Elizabeth Vargas:

And you had no idea she was taking this extracurricular Xanax, so to speak?

Jackie Siegel:

No, no. So as far as I was concerned or knew, she got the prescription from the doctor for a few months, and then it was no more, and no more doctor’s visits. So she was basically self-medicating herself, escaping whatever pain that she was dealing with, with the boys and stuff. And she also got a little particularly bullied at school after the documentary came out, which she felt that the documentary… Well, first of all, she was a very humble girl. She wanted to go to public school. She didn’t want to be in private school. She wanted just to be with everyone else. She was just a very special, humble, All-American girl. And when the movie came out, then people realized, “Oh my gosh, this is David Siegel’s daughter. Her father is a billionaire, and that we’re building this incredible mansion.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

You’re talking about the documentary, The Queen of Versailles?

Jackie Siegel:

So at that point, emotionally, she got really… I think our privacy was violated. Our privacy was public now. And so, she had different groups of friends. All of a sudden they wanted her for money to help to even buy drugs for them, for their partying. And she also got bullied at school a little bit more. So that was a challenge for her.

Elizabeth Vargas:

So when she came to you and said, “Mom, I think I need to go to rehab,” you were shocked, but you sent her.

Jackie Siegel:

But it was for prescription drugs.

Elizabeth Vargas:

For prescription drugs.

Jackie Siegel:

Well, actually they were a prescription. It was for Xanax that she was now buying from her drug dealer. And so, we took her in and while she was in rehab, she met a 26-year-old man who has also passed away from an overdose since all this, and she fell in love. They were there for two weeks, no drugs. Before she came home, she went with this man and he introduced her to heroin. And a week later, she was gone. But he was in there because he was court ordered to be in there. It was that or jail, you know what I mean? His parole officer or attorney told him, “Hey, you got to act like you’re doing the right thing.”

Elizabeth Vargas:

Did you know she had met this young man in rehab?

Jackie Siegel:

I knew that they met and she says, “Mom, please just give him a chance. He’s a wonderful guy, and I’m in love and I want to be happy.”

And so I thought that she had a chance at happiness. Well, when she passed away, my husband and I realized we want to do everything in our power to help spare other people from this totally preventable death of their children. And 75% of drug overdoses are from opioids, whether it’s the fentanyl on the streets or prescriptions. I had a friend that, she was addicted to Percocets. And she went to rehab. She was clean for three years with no Percocets. She heard about Victoria’s death and she missed the funeral. She felt bad and she thought, “You know what? I’ll just…” By herself, she went and took a bunch of Percocets and she too overdosed right after Victoria, a friend of mine. And those were regular prescription drugs.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I’m curious after… First of all, I still can’t believe that your daughter tried heroin the first day she got out of rehab under the influence of this young man. And you said in an interview, “When Victoria died, my world fell apart and all the money in the world couldn’t bring it back.”

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. And so we actually stopped construction on Versailles. We didn’t care about Versailles anymore. I kind of went into a depression. I just can’t believe it. This isn’t real. I kept her room exactly how she left it. I was just kind of waiting for her to come home. I was-

Elizabeth Vargas:

How long did you keep her room like that?

Jackie Siegel:

Around nine years. I just-

Elizabeth Vargas:

Nine years?

Jackie Siegel:

I just remodeled her room. I kept all of the special memory pieces and I took a video of it. I’ve now turned her room into a yoga room, like a place for meditation and peace and praying. And this is basically how I get my strength to cope, and I feel closer with her and it’s very fresh and clean and overlooking the lake here. So it’s like my little getaway to help me with my mission of saving lives. And that’s really what I’m spending the rest of my life is to do a greater good in this world and not to be caught up in all materialism and all that stuff. It’s in my veins right now. I just really want to make a difference. And I feel like I’m carrying on with a legacy that unfortunately her death triggered my mission in life, and that’s what it took. And we’re doing so much right now with our foundation, Victoria’s Voice. We discovered the fentanyl, which is the antidote for, it’s like the last-

Elizabeth Vargas:

Naloxone.

Jackie Siegel:

Naloxone.

Elizabeth Vargas:

The Narcan.

Jackie Siegel:

Narcan, yes. And we’ve gotten that supply to police departments across the country, all the police departments that are accepting it. I know in Florida, the health department gives it away for free. We have it over the counter now in the CVSes, Walgreens so people don’t have to get a prescription for it. In fact, it’s been so… Just one story real quick, because I know we’re limited on time. There was a barbecue… Well, we had a charity event for our foundation, and we gave goody bags with the Victoria’s journal and the naloxone in the goody bags. And this one-

Elizabeth Vargas:

You gave goody bags with Narcan in it?

Jackie Siegel:

Yes, at all of our foundations, all of our speeches.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Good for you.

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. So this one gentleman, he comes up to me and he lived in our area, in Orlando, and he says, “I don’t have any kids, and I don’t know anyone that does drugs and stuff,” but he says, “thank you.”
And I told him, “Well, give it to someone who does, or you just never know.”
So anyway, so I completely forgot about it. Then I ran into him a month or two later, and he comes up to me and he says, “You’re not going to believe what happened.” He says, “When you gave me goody bag, I just took the Narcan, naloxone and I threw it in my glove compartment in my car, and I forgot about it,” he says. He went to a barbecue in the next neighborhood over here, actually right behind me, if you look behind me, across the lake, there was a barbecue. He was invited to it, and there were some teenagers. The teenagers behind their parents’ back were doing drugs. One of them overdosed and the kid was already turning blue and dying. And he says, “Oh my goodness, I had this Narcan in my glove compartment.” He ran out to his car, he brought it back in, administered it, sprayed it up the kid’s nose, and they called the ambulance and saved that child’s life.

Elizabeth Vargas:

He saved his life?

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. Just by-

Elizabeth Vargas:

With the Narcan you gave him?

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. That’s one of many, many stories.

Elizabeth Vargas:

It has to make you feel good, Jackie.

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. And even in Seminole County with Sheriff Leema, all of his police officers carry Narcan, because… Well, it’s naloxone, one’s generic and one’s like the brand. But he says that they’ve used it almost 700 times since we’ve given it to them. So in there, there’s at least 700 lives that me and my husband and Victoria have saved just in that one county because of what we’re doing.

Elizabeth Vargas:

I want to get back to that moment that you read Victoria’s journal, because I was so curious to read in an interview that you gave shortly after you read it. You said, “When I first read her diary, I was shocked by all the experimentation with drugs. She said she had an eating disorder, depression, bullying. There was so much she was going through and I had no idea.”

Jackie Siegel:

I tell you, it was just quite devastating. And as a mother, I just wish I had this diary or even the conversation. In fact, I want this diary to encourage other parents to really get to know their children, because a lot of parents think, “Oh, my child would never do drugs.”
But in this world that we’re in that right now, the drug epidemic has gotten even worse. But reading her story, it was just so, like I said, I feel I know her better now. It just really gave me the drive to really educate other parents. And also, I feel that the diary could help other kids in high school that were my daughter’s age, realize that they’re not alone with feeling that they’re not good enough or the peer pressure, or they’re not smart enough, or not pretty enough or too fat or too skinny, that that’s normal. It’s all a process of growing up and learning and to be able to talk to your parents. And if for some reason you don’t have a good relationship with your parents, maybe grandma, grandpa, another someone that they look up to for help. Because if they turn to drugs, to self-medicate, you can die in the end.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You were an involved mom. You thought you were close to your daughter, and the tragedy of it at all is that you didn’t find out until after she died about this whole massive part of her life that you had no idea, and that she was struggling with and really, really having trouble.

Jackie Siegel:

I know. And I just wish that she had opened up to me. But I think there was a point that she was just self-medicating, and she liked the drugs. The people she was hanging out with were doing drugs. And she got in with a really bad group of people. In fact, they would steal stuff like my purses and things like that for drug money, which I didn’t know at the time. I was just thinking, “Oh my God, where did I put my purse?” I thinking I was absent-minded. But now I realize that they were stealing stuff going in my closet.
And it’s quite devastating. But I’m getting so many people coming up to me… Because I also am involved with Mrs. America. They support the Victoria’s Voice Foundation. So I have the Mrs… From every state, we have winners like Mrs. Texas, New York, all 50 states going around, and it’s Mrs. so most of them are mothers. They have access to schools and their social community, and they’re going out there warning other mothers, other parents, giving them the warning signs. And we give away the journals to them to pass out. And I feel like I have these beauty warriors all across the country that are also helping to do what we can for-

Elizabeth Vargas:

I know Victoria knew that she would be sharing this journal with you. Do you think that she would be happy with you sharing it with the world that other people know these very private struggles she was having?

Jackie Siegel:

I already know that right now, she is so happy with what we’ve done with her journal, because she knows we’re saving lives and in a way that she died with a purpose, that she didn’t die and pass away and she’s forgotten about. We called it Victoria’s Voice because her voice is being heard, her voice is out there. And we are growing and we’re really reaching out there. In fact, with the Broadway Show. Yeah, it’s already in Boston.
And they’ve already announced that it’s definitely going to Broadway for 2025 and 2026. And in the show, it’s really special because the show is a lot about Victoria in the show. And I’ve been blessed with that, because it’s really getting her voice out there even more. And it goes off a lot on her diary with her personal struggles and brings it to life. So it’s really-

Elizabeth Vargas:

And the Broadway show is also called, The Queen of Versailles?

Jackie Siegel:

Yes.

Elizabeth Vargas:

That’s very exciting.

Jackie Siegel:

Yes. Actually, it made me cry, because for me, I felt like Victoria’s spirit is there, like she came back to life in a way. And we’re doing just some great things. I’ve been so blessed. I feel, I don’t know, it’s like a divine, how this all happened and getting the word out there.

Elizabeth Vargas:

Jackie Siegel, you have taken the unimaginable and the tragic and turned it into something good. And thank you for sharing your story and your daughter’s story. But most importantly, thank you for the lives that you’re saving by talking about this and getting Narcan out there and in people’s hands where it can actually do some good. Thank you so much. And congratulations on the upcoming Broadway Show. That’s really wonderful.

Jackie Siegel:

Thank you so much. And thank you for getting the word out there.

Elizabeth Vargas:

You bet. Jackie, thank you.