When I caught up with Tim Ryan, the recovering heroin addict was, as always, going a mile a minute.

The founder of Man in Recovery had just walked out of Elgin High School where he’d spoken to over 200 kids about his own life story, including the loss of son Nicholas this year to a heroin overdose.

“It was fantastic,” he said of the students’ enthusiastic reaction to the message he and others from the LTM Heroin Awareness Foundation had just delivered..

After the Bears squeaked by the Pittsburgh Steelers on a Sunday night four years ago, Donna Roberts texted her youngest child, Billy, to see if he'd caught the game. He didn't respond, and then his friend called. Billy was at his home, and he wasn't breathing.

John Roberts, a retired Chicago police officer, scrambled to his car and was within minutes of reaching his son when a paramedic came on the line: "Sir, you've lost him."

Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation today creating a task force aimed at beating back the rising use of heroin in the suburbs and throughout Illinois.

The proposal, from state Rep. Sam Yingling of Round Lake Beach, creates a commission that's supposed to study the problem of heroin use among high schoolers and report to lawmakers to suggest what might be done to help.