Tracy Hack holds a Mother's Day card her daughter made her in high school almost 20 years ago. The morning she received it was going normally. Her daughter gave her the card, and the two planned on going out to breakfast. Tracy left briefly to run an errand before picking her daughter up for the meal. While she was gone, her daughter used heroin and left the house with friends. Tracy said she didn't hear from her for days.

It took Tracy Hack about a year to realize her daughter, Melissa, was using heroin.

“She hid it extremely well,” the Butler resident said. “I think I found a needle, at some point. Then, when I started asking questions, her initial response was denial of course.

“When you start asking questions to other people she's associating with, places where she's going. You find out, yeah, it is true.”

The stories in this series revolve around the long-term, environmental harm growing up around addiction can reap. Experts and scientific evidence suggest those impacts are far more widespread than minors actually turning to hard drugs while they're still children.

But it happens, and as Hack knows now, it happens in Butler.

Today, she serves as Butler County Community College's coordinator for Hope is Dope, a recovery group in town. The organization tries to provide addicts with tools to get and stay sober.

Back when Melissa picked up drugs, however, Hack wasn't so informed. Melissa is her oldest child, and she was still attending high school in Butler. Hack and Melissa's father divorced during “For the first few years that she was using, I had no idea what to do except to ask her to stop,” Hack said.

It all started for Hack's family back in the early 2000s. Hack said the concept of hard drugs making their way into high schools was new at the time, and that resources for parents were scarce.

This story is the second in The Eagle's latest series - "Surviving the Family Tree." The series is running in three installments between September and November. It explores the impacts of addiction on Butler County families and the children entangled in its wake. To read the full story, pick up Monday's Butler Eagle or subscribe online.