JANESVILLE – Traffic on Main St. is lazy as Kyle Pucek strolls past tidy homes with wide front porches.
“I lost a lot of friends in the last couple years,” Pucek, 41, says matter of factly. He counts 10.
A car rolls past and a woman waves at Pucek. The two shout greetings.
"That’s Kirsten," Pucek volunteers almost offhandedly, "an ex-heroin addict who’s also in recovery." Pucek grew up with her, and with her fiance, who died of a heroin overdose in 2009.
Contacted later, Kirsten Moore added that her teenage son became attached to her late fiance's brother — and then the brother died from a heroin overdose, too, less than two years later.
[For more on this story by John Schmid, go to https://projects.jsonline.com/...n-my-small-town.html]
Photo: Kyle Pucek, a former heroin addict from Janesville, says his hometown sometimes is in disbelief over the severity of its heroin and opioid epidemic. A factory town on the Rock River, Janesville was anchored for nearly a century by the General Motors autoworks, which closed in 2008.
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