icki Sterling, director of the Washington County Health Department’s Division of Behavorial Health Services, says the turning point for the county in addressing the opioid epidemic was the death of former Hagerstown police sergeant Kevin Simmers’ daughter, Brooke, who overdosed on heroin 10 days after she had been released from a four-month prison stay. “People began to say, ‘Oh, if it can happen to that family, it can happen to my family,’” Sterling says. “This was a normal kid, the daughter of a respected ex-city cop. My daughter went to school with her.” Up until that point, most people in Washington County viewed addiction as a criminal justice issue. Including Brooke’s father.

Christina Trenton Nee, COO, and Charlie Mooneyhan, CEO, of Wells House.

Simmers, an outgoing, thick-shouldered 53-year-old, joined the military out of high school in the early 1980s with the intention of going into law enforcement. “I fully bought into the War on Drugs and what Reagan was doing,” he says. “I wanted to be in narcotics. I wanted to knock down doors and haul bad guys off to jail, and that’s what I did for 30 years.”

Since his daughter’s death, Simmers and Brooke's stepmother, Dana, have been very public about sharing their experience, sparing none of their family’s worst moments and pain. Their daughter, who grew up playing soccer and basketball, became hooked on pills by 18 and then turned to heroin. She tried treatment and rehab several times, and even laid down on the family’s lawn once, begging her father to shoot her to put her out of her misery. “You can imagine as a police officer and a father how I felt,” Simmers says. “It’s like watching a slow train crash coming that you don’t know how to stop.”

For the past three years, the Simmerses have been working to build Brooke’s House in Washington County. The 16-bed treatment project for women is partly to honor their daughter, who once shared her wish of getting off drugs and opening such a center with her parents, but it is also borne of frustration, as the family repeatedly struggled to get the help their daughter needed. Brooke died while waiting for insurance approval for a $700 monthly shot of Vivitrol, which reduces cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

According to a 2016 report from the U.S. surgeon general, only one in 10 people with an addiction problem receives treatment.

“I’ve been a right-wing Republican all my life,” Simmers says. “But how many people do you know that have been attacked by a terrorist? Or an illegal immigrant? Nobody I know. Now, how many families do you know that have been affected by addiction? That’s everyone I know. This isn’t political. This is across the board—and I’ll be the first to agree that attitudes are changing because more white people are dying—that’s totally fair. I was on the other side, and I get it, and people have every right to make that point.”

Kevin and Dana Simmers at the future site of Brooke's House.

Earlier this spring, Keller, the city councilwoman who lost her best friend to an overdose, announced that the city would be joining several hundred municipalities, counties, and states in pursuing legal action against the nation’s largest drugmakers, alleging that they played a key role in launching the opioid epidemic. She highlighted not just the personal toll of the opioid epidemic on families but decreasing property values, its effect on businesses and workforce participation rates, and the immense strain placed on the city’s police, EMS, and fire department budgets. The City Council will likely be forced to raise property taxes again this year.

In an emotional press conference, she pointed the finger directly at the pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue Pharma, which hired hundreds of sales representatives to promote their product and has been accused of using misleading information to hide the drug’s addiction potential.

“This epidemic, largely caused by the pharmaceutical industry’s complete lack of accountability or care about anyone or anything other than their pockets, has wreaked havoc on my city,” Keller said. (In 2007, three Purdue executives pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the misbranding of OxyContin and paid $34.5 million in fines, while the company agreed to pay $600 million to resolve a Department of Justice investigation.) The first three municipality lawsuits against drugmakers—all Ohio cases—are scheduled to be heard in U.S. District Court in Cleveland early next year. Still, they are something of a Hail Mary pass for municipalities. It's hard to imagine Hagerstown and similar cities receiving restitution anywhere near the true cost of the opioid epidemic and officials acknowledge that.

Later, outside a Rotary Club meeting, Keller talks more optimistically about the city’s current efforts to tackle the crisis.

She mentions the increased training for Narcan, a medication that can prevent fatal overdoses, across the city. She also cites the new safe needle program implemented by the county health department—albeit over the objection of a couple of state delegates—to combat Hepatitis C and HIV infections. She discusses plans for the rollout of a new awareness program, Washington Goes Purple, a symbolic color adopted by opioid prevention advocates, geared toward steering youth away from substance abuse.

She talks enthusiastically—and genuinely—about the $40-million downtown revitalization effort and Hagerstown’s future. “To me, the urban improvement project is huge. We’ve been struggling for decades and hopefully this will get the ball rolling,” she says. “We need to maintain a sense of hope. It’s hope or heroin out here.”