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It’s been eight years since he died, but the grief never leaves a mother who wished there was something more she could do. Like countless others, Richie was a victim of a heroin epidemic that has quickly accelerated into one of the biggest public health crises facing the United States.

“I get up in the morning,” Riley says. “But because of a lot of grief and tragedy, mornings are hard.”

She trails off while trying to keep her composure, but the tears begin to flow. Her son was only 24 years old when he died and trying to overcome the crippling disease of substance abuse.

Richie had gone to a treatment facility and was on the road to recovery, but he lacked basic services such as counseling and community support groups to keep him on track. Riley herself is in long-term recovery and did her best to juggle her own struggles with those of her son.

But in 2007, Richie overdosed – a young man and an entire future lost in a sea of harrowing statistics of an opioid crisis that only seems to grow with each passing year.

“I never in a million years thought this was going to be my life,” Riley says. “I worked, I had a big beautiful house, I was married. I lost all of that.”