COVENTRY TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- Angela Perella's struggles started early in her life.

She began smoking marijuana at age 13 and moved on to using crack cocaine, which marked the struggles in her life for the next 33 years.

Perella died July 9, 2015 of a fentanyl overdose. She left behind two children, ages 21 and 19. She is one of a growing number of people dying from using heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil in Northeast Ohio.

Dominic Perella, a Northeast Ohio police officer who agreed to be interviewed only if his department wasn't mentioned, said that he and his younger sister grew up in a typical 1970s household.

Their father was a police officer and their mother a stay-at-home mom until they got a little older. Then she took various part-time jobs.

Their parents divorced when he was about 13. A few years later, his sister started using drugs, but the extent of her drug use wasn't known until she first checked into a drug rehabilitation clinic at the age of 18.

"She was the kid that wasn't afraid of anything," Dominic Perella said. "She was the kid that didn't necessarily need approval from parents and adults. She just wanted to have fun, so I think it was easier for her to go ahead and try something, not knowing or not really caring about how dangerous it would be."

When she got out, she relapsed, as would be the pattern for the rest of her life. She stole from friends, family and strangers alike to pay for drugs.

She waitressed and lived with her mother. She'd disappear for days and sometimes more than a week on a crack binge, then return home and sleep for days. She'd get sober, sometimes for as long as two years, before relapsing.

"It tore us apart in some ways," her brother said. "By the time this started up, our parents had split up. But it was tough. Now you have a single parent that had to deal with all of this, not that it would have made a difference if my dad was home. It just would have made it difficult in a different vein."

She struggled holding a job, and to her brother's knowledge, only got treatment for her addiction when it was court-ordered.

"I think it was tough on her kids," Dominic Perella said. "They felt bad when she'd get in trouble or when she betrayed them or when they thought maybe she was on the other side of it and would relapse again."

Dominic Perella thinks someone told his sister that she could use heroin to keep from getting crack withdrawals. She turned to heroin about two years before she died. In August of 2014, their dad died. Angela Perella, with the rest of the family, took it hard.

"I remember she asked me if I thought people in heaven could see what we're doing here," Dominic Perella said. "I knew what that meant. If she used, is dad going to know?"

On her birthday, just days before she died, she had her first and only open conversation about her addiction with her family, including her kids. She talked about how difficult it was for her to go through withdrawals, how she felt she had to keep using heroin in order to keep from feeling sick.

"That day was probably the best conversation her and I had since we were kids," her brother said. "She actually seemed to be in the best place ever on that day. It gave be a false sense things were actually turning around. If she's openly admitting a lot of things about herself and that maybe she'd be in the right place to deal with it. But it wasn't meant to be."

Angela Perella came home July 9, 2015 and went straight to the bathroom. Her brother said she had lost her job as a waitress that day.

Her mother noticed she didn't come out of the bathroom. She knocked on the door and got no response. She opened the door and it stopped, hitting Angela after she had fallen to the floor from the overdose.

An paramedic tried to revive her with Narcan and an epinephrine pen to her chest. She was taken to Akron City Hospital, where she died.

Perella said his sister's death has been tough on his mother and on his niece and nephew. His mother still keeps in contact with her daughter's good friends and that seems to help, he said.

"There's no way to forget that, your child dying in front of you," Donimic Perella said.

His niece and nephew are dealing with the loss of their mother, but still have many questions.

"That's pretty young to lose a parent," he said. "They're dealing with it well, but I think they have a lot of questions, questions about addiction. Why would my mom do this? Why would she put this thing before us?"

Even through the years of addiction, Angela Perella was a good friend to many, her brother said. After she died, friends who hadn't seen her in years stopped him and told stories about his sister that he had never heard.

There was such an outpouring of support that he took to Facebook to thank all of them and let them know she always spoke fondly of them.

"I can tell you that she still mentioned every last one of your names at one point or another in the context of some great memory," he wrote. "With all of her struggles, which many of you knew about and many of you were affected by, she still managed to brighten so many of your lives. Whenever I would see any of you, you would always smile when you asked about her."