LORAIN, Ohio - Nancy Krasienko knew what happened the moment she looked in her husband's eyes.
Earlier she'd received a call that their daughter -- who had been addicted to painkillers and heroin for nearly a decade -- was found unresponsive. He'd gone to check on her and returned home looking distraught.
"I told him 'don't, don't, don't. I can't," Krasienko said. "He said 'Mama, I think she's gone.'"
Megan Wheeler, 30, died April 6, 2015 after overdosing on a drug cocktail in her apartment.
She is among the hundreds who have died of overdoses within the last three years in Lorain County. The county coroner's office said a record 67 people died in 2013, followed by 60 in 2014 and 62 in 2015.
Krasienko never dreamed Megan -- an energetic, sweet and sassy child who matured into a kind woman -- would develop an addiction.
She grew up a tomboy who loved to ride her bicycle and climb trees. At Lorain Admiral King High School, she spent her free time tutoring others and earned enough extra credit to graduate at 16 years old.
But her life took a turn when she broke her jaw in three places in a 2005 car crash. Doctors prescribed her painkillers, including OxyContin, to cope with the pain.
When her prescription dried up she began selling valuables and stealing, which resulted in numerous run-ins with law enforcement and several stints in jail.
"It got to be where I could tell she was doing wrong," Krasienko said. "I could tell something was going on."
By 2009 she had started using heroin, and Krasienko took custody of Megan's children -- Jonathan, who is now 12 years old, and Miyah, who is 9 -- to shield them from the addiction.
Megan lived close -- at one point she lived upstairs from Krasienko before moving to a nearby house in Lorain -- and received treatment on several occasions. Her longest stint of sobriety lasted a year and a half.
"As long as she was sober, I was happy to let her have the kids," Krasienko said.
Yet the addiction returned when Megan lost her job assembling airplane parts. The day she died, she overdosed after taking a cocktail that included several drugs, including heroin and fentanyl, at her apartment.
"Saying goodbye to my daughter was the worst thing I've ever had to do," Krasienko said.
The death left Krasienko angry with the doctors who prescribed painkillers over the nine years. It also left her disillusioned toward the heroin epidemic that is plaguing hundreds of families in Northeast Ohio.
"All of us are frustrated. We're frustrated as hell because we can't fix it," she said.
Yet she's found relief through Reiki and therapy. She's also been involved with several local organizations -- including friend Lori Guest's Lorain Community Task Force -- dedicated to fighting the heroin epidemic.
Now she's committed to sharing Megan's story to help families affected by addiction.
"Grief comes in spurts for me," she said. "For a week I can be happy. Then the next I'll be thinking about her and I hurt. But the length of the times that I feel okay are getting longer."