DEADLY HEROIN MIX TIGHTENS GRIP ON CITY

Across Chicago, police and hospitals are racing to curb a surge in
fatal overdoses, many of them linked to a potent blend of the drug
and a powerful painkiller

Hospitals and outreach workers are struggling against a surge of
fatal heroin overdoses in Chicago, as word has spread that more
potent, though deadly, drugs have hit the street.

Police were linking 14 deaths on Monday and Tuesday to heroin
overdoses, an alarming toll that shows the drug's broad reach into society.

A 17-year-old son of a Franklin Park police official died in the back
seat of his car Tuesday, still clutching the small packet of heroin
he had just bought on the West Side, police said. That same day, a
39-year-old mother from Lombard collapsed after shooting up the drug
and later died in a West Side hospital. Also among the dead were a
day laborer and a union worker from Chicago.

Police are trying to determine whether these deaths should be added
to a list of 60 people who have died this year in Cook County from a
deadly combination of heroin and the powerful painkiller fentanyl.
The most recent rash of deaths, centered on the West Side, may be one
of the largest clusters of fentanyl-related deaths since
investigators have been tracking the problem.

Officials say the synthetic narcotic, used legally for pain
management, is being added to heroin to give a more powerful high to users.

"Most people have heard the stories. They just think it's good
heroin. They think the media and the police and the doctors and
nurses just don't want them to have it," said Chuck Thomas, chairman
of emergency medicine at Norwegian-American Hospital on the West Side.

Over the last several months, Thomas said there has been a spike in
overdose victims in the hospital's emergency room. The hospital
typically had one or two overdose victims a day, but in the last few
months, "We're seeing 10, 15, 20 a day."

Thomas said the hospital was recently given approval from executives
to order the narcotic Revex, a much more powerful antidote to what is
typically used in heroin overdoses.

As hospitals scramble to save lives, outreach workers are warning
drug users to steer clear of the potent fentanyl-laced heroin. But
for those who don't, outreach workers also educate them on what to do
in case of heroin overdoses.

Susie Gualtieri, with the Chicago Recovery Alliance, said they show
drug users videos with step-by-step instructions and dispense vials
of the drug naloxone.

The heroin causes you to "relax to death," she said. "What [naloxone]
does is it blocks your receptors from feeling the heroin," she said.

Meanwhile, local police are making undercover buys of heroin, to
track where fentanyl is being sold, and testing the samples for clues
to the drug's source. Their federal counterparts focus on
trafficking--tracing the drug's routes into Midwestern and East Coast
cities, most likely from Mexican labs.

The rise in deaths over the last few days has been alarming for
police, and it has meant heartbreak for families across the Chicago
area, from Englewood to Park Ridge.

Joseph Krecker, the son of Franklin Park Deputy Chief Jack Krecker,
graduated from Maine South High School on Sunday. Two days later, he
was found dead on the Northwest Side in the back seat of his car. He
was about halfway between his Park Ridge home and the street-corner
drug markets of the West Side.

"The stuff must have been so powerful that it killed him instantly,"
said Frank Limon, chief of the Chicago Police Department's organized
crime division.

Keith Lee got a phone call about 10 a.m. Tuesday telling him his
brother's body had been found in an alley near Kedzie Avenue and Huron Street.

Craig Lee, 45, did odd jobs and worked as a day laborer, his brother said.

"He was always saying he was going to stop. The last time was last
year," Lee said. The family's funeral plans for his brother will have
to wait for toxicology tests to tell investigators if the drugs that
killed him were tainted with fentanyl, he said.

While many addicts are drawn by the lure of fentanyl's dangerous
potency, some addicts who believe they've survived brushes with the
drug say they are staying away.

Catherine Wrencher is a 36-year-old longtime heroin addict. She said
she believes the terrifying episode she had in recent weeks was due
to fentanyl.

"I couldn't breathe and I started spitting up blood," she said.

Wrencher called 911 before she passed out, she said, and was revived
by EMS workers. She said she wants nothing more to do with fentanyl,
but short of stopping her drug use, the decision is not within her
control, she said.

"Now that [expletive] is everywhere. You don't know what you've got
until you do it," she said.

Phil Thorn, 50, and Jaime Salinas, 28, said they heard about a more
potent heroin in January and went with a group of people to buy $10
bags on the South Side.

After shooting up in his Cicero apartment, Thorn said the others got
sick and passed out.

"It was right away, as soon as they injected, they were dropping,
within a minute," said Thorn, who said he was able to administer
naloxone and revive them.

Salinas said he knew the drug was different from anything he had ever
tried. "I had tunnel vision and I felt real light-headed. On heroin
you get high, not light-headed and no tunnel vision," he said.

Ever since that night, he said, he goes to the same dealers because
he trusts their drugs.

Thorn, a heroin addict for 10 years, said he promised himself he
wouldn't use heroin that he knew was laced with fentanyl. But he said
the withdrawal pains that come 12 hours after using heroin may be too strong.

"I'm a dope fiend and I'll probably do it, but I'll be very careful,"
he said. "It's not a matter of getting high anymore, it's about not being sick."