‘Please ask for my help!’: a Chicago taskforce tries to save lives from deadly fentanyl

The West Side heroin/opioid taskforce is confronting the growing overdose crisis among the city's Black population

There was a time when Gail Richardson might have struggled to make it past the heroin dealer working a busy corner on Chicago's West Side without buying a hit.

Richardson spent half a lifetime getting high, dealing in cocaine and heroin to pay for her habit, and then serving a lengthy stint in federal prison. Now the 67-year-old is back on those same streets, greeting the occasional familiar face from the old days still under the crush of addiction.