The evening before Chad Baker died, his fiancée, Katie Offenburger, came home from her job as an account manager at a credit card company, let the dog out, and smoked a cigarette on the back porch of their three-bedroom house in Newark, Ohio. The couple had met in addiction recovery, and they had moved in together a few years after they got out.

Offenburger, a petite woman with short, wavy brown hair, was tired but happy after a long day. She and Baker had both endured more than a decade of heroin addiction, recovery, and relapse—a cycle that, for Baker, included six months of incarceration. Now, however, Offenburger, who had turned 34 two months earlier, was more than three years sober, and Baker seemed to have turned his life around as well. He had a job as a plumber’s assistant, and his recovery, as far as Offenburger knew, was going well. Thirty-four years old, he was active in recovery groups, and his outlook appeared to be positive. In drug court, a diversion program that promotes treatment, drug testing, and social services as an alternative to prison, he met Aaron Campbell, an artist and Newark native, and the two became close friends. They bonded over their sobriety and shared love of basketball. They checked in on each other when they were tempted to use and watched games together whenever they could. One Sunday afternoon, Campbell fell asleep on Baker’s couch, a Cavs game on the television. Baker snapped a photo and posted it to Facebook: This is what true friends do, he wrote.

Baker and Offenburger’s relationship had deepened as well. They were raising their one-and-a-half-year-old child, and Offenburger was looking forward to their next phase together, which included getting married. With one caveat: There would be no wedding if they both couldn’t stay sober.

The next morning, Offenburger woke up and walked to the bathroom. The door was closed, but she heard water running. She knocked, but Baker didn’t answer. She pushed on the door, but it barely moved. Through the narrow opening, she could see Baker’s feet. She pushed hard and made her way in. “I saw Chad lying on the floor. There was a needle between his legs,” she later testified.

The paramedics who arrived on the scene at 7:46 a.m. found Baker unresponsive. His skin was pale, he had no pulse, and his pupils had shrunk to pinpoints. The paramedics performed CPR and attempted to revive him with epinephrine (adrenaline) and Narcan, a drug that blocks the effects of opioids, and then rushed him to the hospital, but he never recovered. Chad Baker was pronounced dead at 8:29 a.m. on May 29, 2015, three days before his birthday. A toxicology report subsequently revealed heroin and cocaine in his system.