A lifesaving legacy: Honor’s HEROES expands recovery support

The Houston Emergency Opioid Engagement System (HEROES) program at UTHealth Houston will now be known as the Honor Nicole Wallace HEROES. (Photo by UTHealth Houston)

From the moment Honor wrapped her arms around him in China, Barry Wallace knew.

“It was just an unbelievable, special bond that I felt so thankful for,” he said.

After a long and complicated adoption journey, Barry and Sherry Wallace brought their daughter home to Texas as an infant. There had been delays, uncertainty, even a moment when they were told they might not be able to adopt her after all.

“That wasn’t going to happen,” Barry said. “That was our little girl.”

From the beginning, Honor was vibrant, funny, opinionated, and fiercely competitive. She didn’t like to lose. As a child, she raced her imaginary friend Billy in the driveway and demanded rematches if Billy ever got the better of her.

“She had a great sense of humor,” Barry said. “And she was smart, really smart.”

Horses became a shared language between Honor and her mother. Sherry, an accomplished rider, introduced her daughter to the barn almost as soon as she could walk. By age 10, Honor was competing in open classes, winning ribbons, and forming deep attachments to the animals she loved.

“She could have done anything she set her mind to,” Sherry said.

For years, life unfolded in the ordinary, beautiful rhythm of a close-knit family.

“Everything was perfect until it wasn’t,” Barry said.

As she grew older, Honor began struggling with substance use. The Wallaces found themselves navigating unfamiliar and painful territory. There were programs and periods of hope, followed by setbacks. Through it all, they showed up.

“You think if you just love them enough, you can fix it,” Barry said. “We tried everything.”

In 2022, Honor died at age 25.

In the months that followed, Sherry and Barry began thinking about how to honor their daughter in a way that reflected the love they will always have for her.

“We wanted her name to stand for something hopeful,” Sherry said.

Years earlier, Barry had a chance meeting with Susan Simon, a representative from UTHealth Houston. At the time, it seemed incidental. Looking back, it feels different.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence we met,” Barry said.

After Honor’s death, that earlier connection resurfaced, leading them to the Houston Emergency Opioid Engagement System (HEROES) program at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston.

HEROES was built around an urgent idea: When someone survives an overdose, that moment can become a turning point. Instead of discharge and silence, patients are met with immediate care, medication-assisted treatment, and a clear pathway to follow-up support. Peer recovery specialists — those who have walked the same path — guide individuals toward stability and healing.

Using real-time data from hospitals, EMS, and community partners, the team proactively identifies individuals at risk and often reaches out within hours of an overdose, sometimes knocking on doors to ensure someone does not slip through the cracks.

“So many of our team members got into this work because they’ve walked this path,” said Tiffany Champagne-Langabeer, PhD, co-founder of the program and associate professor at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics. “They’re thriving on the other side of it, and now we’re reaching our hands back to help someone else across.”

The program now operates in Houston and multiple communities across Texas, distributing thousands of doses of Narcan, which rapidly counters opioid overdose, and partnering with more than 80 organizations to close gaps in care.

“We create the space where recovery becomes possible,” said James Langabeer II, PhD, MBA, EdD, co-founder of the program and the Robert H. Graham Professor in Entrepreneurial Biomedical Informatics and Bioengineering at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics. “And we stay connected until that space turns into stability.”

That approach struck a chord with the Wallaces. Wanting to strengthen that work, they made a significant commitment that includes both immediate program support and a lasting endowment to ensure long-term growth and sustainability. In recognition of their generosity, the program was renamed Honor Nicole Wallace HEROES.

“This gift allows us to expand our reach and intervene earlier,” Langabeer said. “Every life we connect to care is a life that has another chance.”

Their investment will expand peer recovery support, deepen community partnerships, and allow the team to reach more individuals in the critical hours and days following an overdose, ensuring fewer families face the heartbreak they have endured.

In December 2025, when the Wallace family — including Honor’s sister, Heather Gunn, and brother, Lance Wallace — met the HEROES staff, they were greeted by a room full of team members wearing T-shirts bearing the program’s new name, a visible reminder that Honor’s legacy was already at work.

“When I walked in and saw those shirts, I just lost it,” Sherry said.

“You’re not only going to save lives,” Barry said to the team that day, “you’re going to make a lot of parents happy.”

For Sherry and Barry, the gift is about turning unimaginable loss into lasting impact. Through Honor’s HEROES, her name now stands for compassion in crisis, connection in the hardest moments, and hope for families who need it most.