Belleville News-Democrat reporters Kevin Bersett and Jacqueline Lee noticed in January 2011 that the metro-east seemed to have a lot of overdose deaths. They reviewed five years of coroners' reports in St. Clair and Madison counties, then talked to those closest to the drug problems. They found overdoses were killing more metro-east residents than car crashes, and that the dead were moms, injured workers and suburban teens. They also found that while heroin is getting the headlines as it hits more young people, prescription pills were by far the biggest killer.