HARTFORD, Conn. (WFSB) – Dana Casser was at WestFarms Mall on Sept. 8, 2018, when she got a call from the Middletown Police Department asking her to come down to the station.
They would not tell her what happened over the phone, but she already knew.
“I said to them, ‘is Danielle dead?’” Casser said. “And they said, ‘Yes.’”
Danielle Fasciacco, her college roommate and best friend, had been murdered. Police charged her ex-boyfriend.
“One of our last conversations was me telling her to go get a restraining order, which I don’t think would have saved her life,” Casser said. “But it was what we had talked about.”
In the weeks and months following, Casser relied on the good memories of her best friend to get her through.
“She was a free spirit, spunky, wild, crazy,” Casser said. “We lived together our sophomore year in the same room. That was an experience. She was incredibly intelligent, incredibly kind and caring.”
The next summer, Casser, a teacher, needed a distraction from the sadness. She started making cups.
“I started designing things. I was watching YouTube videos, and it kind of became a downward spiral of making all of these cups. My house turned into a glitter festival,” Casser said.
That glitter festival is now her nonprofit, Cups for a Cause DV. She sells them at farmers markets, craft fairs and her own fundraisers, like one coming up May 17 in Plainville.
A portion of the proceeds from each cup gets donated to a local domestic violence organization, like the Prudence Crandall Center.
Danielle Derosier is the chief program officer at the center. She said Casser’s impact goes beyond dollars.
“Dana’s been an amazing supporter to us for a long time,” Derosier said. “She’s always come through with if we need blankets and sheets for our shelter. If we need something for our kids to do an event she’s, like, the first one to raise her hand.”
Derosier said the signs of domestic violence are easy to miss until it is too late.
“Isolating you from things that you like, maybe your support systems like family and friends, being overly jealous or possessive, having your location, checking your phone all the time,” Derosier said.
Casser knows that feeling. She worried about her friend.
“It was a lot of verbal abuse at the end of the relationship when he had broken up with her,” Casser said. “Prior to that, it was a lot of taking her away from her friends, and taking her away from what she enjoyed doing.”
But she did not really know what resources were out there. Now after hundreds of cups and thousands of dollars donated, Casser knows what help is available and she is making sure no one else has to get that phone call without knowing where to turn.