Two Agawam mothers are hoping a community forum will help shed light on a dark issue. Both women watched their son's battle and eventually surrender to heroin.

Debbie Pelley and Jeanne Kelleher sit and share war stories. Both women lost their son's after they overdosed on Heroin. Pelley's son Derek died in April of 2006. He was only 18. She says he had started doing the drug about 8 months before it killed him.

Pelley says, "When I heard my son was doing heroin I almost died. I said what are you doing and he said, you know I tried it and it was so addicting."

Kelleher's son Jesse died a year later. He was 24. Kelleher says when she found out her son was addicted to heroin he was 19 and spent the years leading up to his death trying to get clean.

Kelleher says, "He had been in and out of rehab and had several overdoses. Serious ones when he actually needed CPR."

Kelleher says that's what pushed Jesse to clean his life up.
Her son moved to Boston where he had managed to cut heroin out of his life. He eventually moved back home only a few months before his death.

Kelleher says, "He has to wake up every day and decide he's not going to do it and for some reason that morning he did do it and it was deadly."

For Pelley, the story was all too familiar.

Pelley says, "The one thing i'll never forget is when he was trying to get help and he said, Mom you have no idea. When you do it it's the best feeling in the world and I just wanted to cry."

Both women say more needs to be done to clean up Agawam streets and they are tired of public officials saying it's something that happens everywhere.

Pelley says, "I don't see all these kids dying all the time in every other town like we do in this town."

Kelleher says her son's story proves it. He had moved away, gotten clean. In the end, moving back to Agawam where all the trouble began may have been what killed him.

Kelleher says, "He had actually told my brother in law, his uncle that he needed to get out of this town. I think he could feel the pull."