STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Sharissa Turk was eight-months pregnant when she relapsed and started abusing heroin and anti-depressants again.

It wasn't the first time she had slipped up, but she swore it would be her last.

This time was going to be different, she told herself, because now it was about more than her own life -- she needed to get clean for her daughter's sake.

Turk and her fiance had consulted with their pediatrician, who helped the 25-year-old expectant mother to enter into a detox program at Staten Island University Hospital in Prince's Bay.

She had completed the program in February, and planned to enter an inpatient drug treatment facility March 1, a little more than a month before her baby was due.

Except she never made it that far.

She was preparing to leave the same day her fiance found her lying on the floor unconscious inside their Annadale apartment. There were drugs around her body, he said, and, just a few feet away, were the bags she had packed to take with her to rehab.

Turk was already dead by the time EMS showed up at the house at around 2:30 p.m. Paramedics were unable to save the baby.

In an interview with the Advance, Turk's fiance spoke openly about their life together and the hardships she had faced both publicly and privately over drugs.

Turk was no stranger to the spotlight. She had gained Internet notoriety in 2013 for portraying a blue fairy in an amateur rap video about prescription pill culture on Staten Island.

The bizarre video, which featured Turk wearing with blue wings and dancing around with a plastic wand in a drug-induced fantasy world, went viral shortly after she was arrested on drug charges as part of a large-scale NYPD sweep.

The case against Turk was ultimately dismissed and sealed, but the "Blue Fairy" label still followed her.

'BLUE FAIRY' FOLLOWS HER

"It came up a lot," said her fiance, Frank De Gaetano, 28. "Anytime she went for a job, they would Google her name, see "Blue Fairy," and that's it -- they would let her go.

"She was a person -- she wasn't just 'Blue Fairy,' but no one wanted to give her a chance," he said.

De Gaetano, like his fiance, is a drug addict in recovery, and has been in trouble with the law before.

He says he has watched the Island's drug epidemic unfold over the years, but never could have predicted where it would lead him.

"We never thought of the consequences," he said, noting that he started using drugs as a teenager, mostly taking Percocet and other opioids at parties before getting hooked.

"The pills started getting very expensive and then everyone started turning to heroin because it was cheaper and it was stronger," De Gaetano said.

He says about 15 of his friends have died from a drug overdose over the past few years.

Frank De Gaetano keeps photos of his late fiance, Sharissa Turk. (Staten Island Advance/Ryan Lavis)

"It's sickening, he said.

"You grow up seeing it unfold like that and you say to yourself, 'you were part of the situation.' It's not like I said at 14, 'when I'm 20 I'm going to do heroin -- I'm going to be a lowlife.'

My friends that died didn't plan on dying at 21 or 22; my fiance, she didn't plan on dying right before our baby was born."

De Gaetano was just getting sober when he met his future fiance about two years ago at a mutual friend's block party. They instantly hit it off, and helped each other to stay clean, he said.

"As much as people judged her, she never judged you. She always seen the good in you. And that's why I fell in love with her. Because she seen the good in me," De Gaetano said.

The couple moved in together after Turk became pregnant, eventually settling in a small side apartment in a house on the South Shore.

Everything felt perfect during that time, De Gaetano said.

They spent most of their days getting ready for the arrival of their daughter, picking out the color to paint her room -- a light gray -- and deciding on the baby's name -- Lilly Anna Marie.

SUFFERED FROM DEPRESSION

But Turk, who suffered from depression, began abusing drugs again intermittently during her pregnancy, De Gaetano said.

"Depression is part of getting high for an addict," he said.

A series of damaging events during Turk's life, coupled with a strained relationship with family, had left her often feeling dispirited, the boyfriend said.

Before they met, she had been raped once in her early 20s, he said. And about a year after the "Blue Fairy" ordeal happened, she had been the victim of a violent daytime robbery in a Great Kills park, where she was bound to a tree, gagged and badly beaten, the boyfriend said.

"Anything that could go wrong, went wrong in her life," De Gaetano said.

"She never had any luck," he added.

Frank De Gaetano keeps photos of his late fiance, Sharissa Turk. (Staten Island Advance/Ryan Lavis

Still, the thought of her baby could always bring a smile to her face.

"Everything was about the baby," De Gaetano said, describing how the two of them would talk everyday to their daughter inside the womb, or constantly go shopping to buy her clothes and toys.

After Turk's relapse, they told their doctor about her drug use so she could get help, he said.

If she wanted to keep custody after the baby was born, Turk must complete a detox program, which she eventually did, and enter an inpatient treatment facility. She also made weekly doctor visits to check on the baby's health.

The day she died, a friend was supposed to pick up Turk at around 8:30 a.m. to take her to a rehab on the North Shore, where she would stay for a week.

But no one answered when the friend knocked on the front door, and Turk wasn't picking up her phone.

De Gaetano, an electrician, had already left for work earlier that morning. He noted that Turk had seemed fine when he kissed her goodbye. It was normal for her to sleep late in the morning, he said, and she often kept her phone on silent.

'I FIGURED SHE FELL ALSEEP'

"I figured she fell asleep, and we'll leave her alone and pick her up later," De Gaetano said.

He began to worry when he still couldn't get in touch with her in the afternoon, and left work early to go home and check on her, he said.

That's when he found her body.

She was lying facedown at top of the staircase just past the front door where he had walked in.

"I started shaking her and moving her, and when I turned her over, her face was blue," De Gaetano said.

He called an ambulance as he broke down crying, he said.

The city medical examiner will determine the cause of death, but law enforcement sources say Turk likely died from a drug overdose.

"Every addict wants to have that last hurrah before they go away, and I think that's what she must have done," De Gaetano said.

Adding, "It must have been too much for her."

In the weeks following her death, De Gaetano says he's struggling to keep it together.

"I visit her grave, and I like to talk to her when I'm alone, but I'm mostly just floating through life right now," he said.

He recently moved back in to the apartment, and says he is surrounded by the memory of her everyday.

There are still paint cans that remain unopened on the floor of his baby's bedroom, which he plans on eventually painting in the colors she had picked out.

Before Turk left for detox, she wrote her fiance a loving note that still hangs next to her picture on the refrigerator in his kitchen.

"See you soon -- doing this for our family -- us three," it reads.