We've had an entire community swept away.

I can't even think of all the people that I know that have died.

That's Louise Vincent, talking to NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann a few years ago,

as fentanyl deaths in the U.S. were soaring.

I mean, so many people are dead.

My daughter died.

Our mentors are dead. I can barely stand to be here sometimes because of all the trauma and all the people that we've lost.

Vincent, who says that she has used fentanyl and heroin since she was 13, runs what's called a drug user's union.

That's a group that seeks to treat drug users with dignity by giving them a

place where they can get a meal, a cup of coffee, even treatment. She was speaking to man about

harm reduction for drug users. Vincent is one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have

been affected by the nation's opioid crisis, a crisis that has reached almost every corner of

the country, including the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. That's where Brian Mann met Gary and

Cassie Walker on their family farm a couple years ago. They've taken in nine Cherokee kids

whose parents have been affected by drugs.

All of the children we have adopted or fostered has been because of that.

Being in foster care and going to court cases,

and sometimes I would sit there for four to five or six hours,

and I would not only watch one court case, but I would watch 30 or 40 at the same time.

And it really hit me then just how big the problem was.

Among the kids they have cared for are a brother and sister, Ransom, who's six, and Mazzie, who's nine and not the least bit shy.

So how do you live in New York?

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