Sunday, Dec. 17

3-DAY SERIES ON

THE RISE OF FENTANYL IN L.A. COUNTY

Fentanyl became L.A. County’s deadliest drug in 2022, killing more than 1,900and overtaking meth as the leading cause of overdoses.

Tuesday, Dec. 19

A map of fentanyl fatalities in L.A. County shows where critical resources are missing. Skid Row, MacArthur Park and Hollywood are among the many hot spots.

Today

Three families in L.A. County are struck by fentanyl’s wrath: a mother, a teen, a best friend — the drug took their lives indiscriminately.

later housed Amy and her son in her Watts apartment.

Things went well in the first six months after Amy returned to Los Angeles, but then she started hanging out with old friends and disappearing on weekends, Ron de Buenrostro said.

In the first weekend of October 2022, she didn’t came back and finding Amy became her mother’s fulltime job.

“All those months, I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “My weekends were going out to look for her at the parks and on the streets to see if anyone had seen her. I would show them her picture, but nothing.”

In May, Ron de Buenrostro received a phone call from the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, alerting her that a body matching Amy’s description had been identified.

“When I heard the news,” she said, “I wanted to die too.”

Since then, she has struggled to process her grief while caring for Amy’s son.

A friendship with Perla Mendoza has become a lifeline. Mendoza lost her 20-year-old son, Eli Mendoza, to a fentanyl pill in 2020 and has since become involved in fighting the fentanyl epidemic through advocacy work. A detective referred Mendoza to Ron de Buenrostro and the pair quickly became close, bonding over their shared suffering.

Now, both moms are seeking to raise awareness around the dangers of fentanyl — like Graham and the Markleys — in the hopes of preventing other parents from experiencing their unbearable loss.