Jill Cichowicz remembers the year her twin, Scott Zebrowski, morphed from a hyper, nerdy ninth grader to a six-foot-four-inch football player who attracted attention from all the girls in high school. But, there was one girl, a foreign-exchange student from Brazil, that caught his eye.
“He told me, I just met the girl I am going to marry,” recalls Jill, who grew up and lives in Chesterfield.
When the mutual flirtation gained momentum, Jill’s mom warned her son to “pump the brakes” on the relationship. When he attempted to slow things down, his girlfriend thought he was breaking up with her and panicked. On the way over to see him, she was killed in a car accident.
“Scott was never the same,” says Jill, founder of 2 End The Stigma, a nonprofit to alleviate barriers to getting help for addiction and provide education about addiction recovery.
The Twin Connection
Like most twins, Jill and Scott shared a special bond that was different than the bond they shared with their three older siblings. “We knew what was going on with one another. It’s almost maternal with me. I would know when he wasn’t feeling well,” says Jill. “He was also very protective. He always had my back. I was painfully shy when I was a kid, and he would make friends for me.”

Jill could see that Scott never recovered from the accident that killed his girlfriend. “He blamed himself,” she says. “After the accident, Scott started smoking marijuana, and that was the beginning of the end for him.”
Scott eventually moved to California where one of his brothers lived. He worked and remained physically fit, but he never stopped using drugs.
In 2014, worker’s compensation put him on OxyContin for a back injury that elevated his addiction. “That is how it took him down in the end,” says Jill.
Scott was usually open with his family about his drug use so Jill “didn’t think it was serious because we thought it was more recreational, which doesn’t make it right,” she says. “What we didn’t know is that he was on OxyContin for three consecutive years.”
Scott kept losing jobs and became erratic. Jill could detect his slurred speech on the phone. The pharmacist at a local Costco discovered that Scott had prescriptions from four doctors for 90 OxyContin pills a week. The pharmacist refused to fill the prescriptions. With no pills available, Scott went into withdrawal.
Scott texted an article about fake pills coming out to a friend.
On February 28, 2017, Scott turned to that “friend” who was a drug dealer for pills, and he was told they were okay. At the time, Scott didn’t know what fentanyl was nor that he was ingesting it — enough to kill an elephant — in the fake pills.
At 6:45 p.m. that night, he drove to an outdoor shopping center and parked his car. Like most nights, there were lots of people out, many dining al fresco, having a great time it seemed. Scott took a call from his mom and told her he would have to call her back. He opened the door of his car, got out and put a coffee cup from Starbucks on the top of the car before dropping to one knee.
“He knelt there for 20 minutes and no one helped him,” says Jill fighting back the tears. “People just walked past him. He kept trying to push up to get to the door, but he couldn’t. He fell over, foaming at the mouth and died of fentanyl toxicity before anyone called 911. If anyone had Narcan on them, it could have saved his life that day.”
Jill is always thinking of his last minute, even now, eight years later. “Did he know?” she asks herself.
“This is a man who was poisoned and killed. He loved his life,” Jill says.
Scott was 38 when he died. No one from the Sheriff’s department called the family for two days. “He was treated like a nobody,” Jill says, adding that her mother had been calling all around trying to find her son. “The whole way he died, he was disrespected. People treated him like he was a druggie and didn’t matter. He was better than that. He was a great person.”
The Last Conversation
Jill had a conversation with Scott the Monday before he died. He had decided to come back home to get help. “He said ‘I have to figure it out,’” recalls Jill. “We talked for an hour and a half. He was really clear and sweet. It was a deep conversation. At the end of the conversation he said ‘Are you happy? No matter what I do I can’t be happy.’”
Scott told his sister he wanted her to be happy. “I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she says.
Born Catholic, Jill went to church for Ash Wednesday. As she was praying, she knew something had happened. When she left church, out of nowhere the sun came out on her face. “It was Scott. I knew he was gone. I got the call on Thursday. I didn’t want to hear it,” she says.
It took the family six months before they could have a funeral. “We were beside ourselves. I am usually a sunny person, but I went dark. This one tore me up. I shut the world out. I couldn’t touch my kids. I couldn’t do car pool or see friends. He was such a big part of my life. I thought I can’t keep living it without him. I was grief stricken.”
A Positive Message in a Tragic Situation

As a way to help manage her grief and bring forth a positive message, Jill created the Scott Zebrowski Scholarship Fund in partnership with The McShin Foundation, a Richmond-based addiction treatment center. “A Night for Scott” was her first fundraiser, and it continues to be an annual event — the eighth annual event was held this year.
In 2020, she started 2 End The Stigma. Fundraising efforts include a golf tournament and community day with CARITAS. “Scott drives the reins,” Jill says of the nonprofit’s ventures.
After working to create awareness in the community about addiction, Jill decided to work with adolescents in early education and prevention. She does national public speaking on addiction and partners with local recovery organizations such as Rams in Recovery at VCU, Chesterfield Recovery Academy, CARITAS, and Real Life Community Center.
Jill has also been working with Governor Glenn Youngkin and First Lady Suzanne S. Youngkin in the First Lady’s fentanyl awareness campaign, It Only Takes One, and with the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Silent No More Overdose campaign, which is presented in middle and high schools around the region. She is also a member of the Governor’s Virginia Addiction Recovery Council.
A Mom and Wife First and Foremost

Jill met her husband, Marc, when he was stationed at Fort Lee (now Fort Gregg-Adams). She and her family — the couple has two boys, Carter and Christian — moved from Fort Drum in New York to Richmond to be closer to Jill’s parents when Marc retired from the military after serving 25 years, which included five long deployments.
When the couple had their oldest son, Carter, they gave him the same middle name — Neal — as Scott. Carter was born on the same date that Scott’s girlfriend died.
“Carter Neal is built like Scott, he acts like him in his mannerisms,” says Jill. “It’s crazy, uncanny.”
During her husband’s military career, Jill was a stay-at-home mom but was very active in military life with her husband, who retired as a major. Her role as a military wife gave her important traits — structured, strong, independent — that would serve her well in her grief journey.
She still asks herself why she didn’t do something sooner about Scott’s addiction. “I live with a lot of guilt. I’m trying to work through that,” she says. “When I do speaking engagements, it’s grief therapy for me.”
Even though she has a balanced life, she says she “is a different person. I look at the world with more empathy and not as judgmental. I try to always picture myself in someone else’s shoes.”