Three years ago, she was sent back to Orange County jail after failing to complete a drug rehabilitation program.

Brennan was partying with other inmates in the jail, authorities said, sitting around a table on Nov. 25, 2003, snorting some of the 100 bags of heroin another inmate smuggled in.

She was found dead in her cell the following morning.

Her family says it was an untimely ending for the 26-year-old, whom they described as a dedicated athlete at Washingtonville High School, about 50 miles north of New York City.

Throughout her teenage years, Brennan played softball and basketball and was once voted most valuable player on her softball team.

"She went to the prom and graduated from Washingtonville High School in three years," said Denise Brennan, her mother. "She wanted to do law enforcement. My husband is a retired New York City police officer."

Instead, she turned to drugs, fell in love with a drug user and had two children, her mother said.

After that, there were absences - jail and drug rehabilitation programs.

When Kathleen Brennan's older daughter asked where her mother was, Denise Brennan explained, "Mommy is in special school."

It was more difficult when Kathleen Brennan died.

"God needed a special angel," Denise Brennan told her grandchildren.

- Lou Michel

Jason Ciurczak excelled at hockey but struggled in school. When his parents divorced, he lived in Amherst with his father, Walter. His mother, Susan, lived in Youngstown.

At 16, Ciurczak was arrested for robbery, and was in and out of county jails and state prisons ever since, getting deeper and deeper into drugs as the years went on.

"He got hooked on heroin upstate [Clinton Correctional Facility]. That's how it all started with that heroin," said his fiancee, Keri Cheetham.

In July 2004, after being arrested in the Town of Tonawanda on drug charges, Ciurczak, then 30, went to the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden, waiting for his case to go to court. While there, he developed a reputation as a go-to guy for drugs.

"He could supply marijuana, heroin, tobacco, and I heard he could get cocaine," Joseph F. D'Amico, Ciurczak's bunkmate, told investigators.

A female visitor brought Ciurczak drugs, investigators said.

At about 3 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2005, Ciurczak went into the bathroom off the corner of his dormitory with another inmate who, at Ciurczak's request, injected Ciurczak in the neck with heroin, investigators said.

Ciurczak came out of the bathroom and sat on the side of his bunk for the rest of the night. At about 6:15 a.m., when he didn't get up to help hand out breakfast trays, an officer went over to his bunk. Ciurczak was dead, a pool a vomit at the base of his bunk.

Dick Cooper, the inmate who injected the heroin into Ciurczak, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to up to 11 years in prison.

- Lou Michel

Linda Riccio was getting dressed to visit her son on Valentine's Day five years ago when the phone rang at 10:45 a.m. It was Nassau County jail calling to say her son, Daniel, was dead.

"I was upstairs, and I heard my wife screaming, "Danny's dead. Danny's dead,' " Michael Riccio said. "I ran down and picked up the phone and said, "What do you mean, my son's dead? What did you do to him? He can't be dead.' "

One of five children raised in middle-class Levittown, Long Island, Riccio, 28, dreamed of one day becoming a house painter or an electrician, but drugs always got the best of him.

A drug addict since 16, he bounced around the system, from the local jail to state prisons and rehabilitation programs. On Jan. 30, 2001, authorities revoked Riccio's parole after he tested positive for drugs. He was sent to Nassau County jail to wait for an opening in a drug rehabilitation program, his mother said.

A day before Valentine's Day 2001, a female visitor smuggled drugs to Riccio in jail, authorities said. Riccio was found dead in his cell the next morning. An autopsy determined he ingested a condom filled with heroin, his family said.

Years later, Michael Riccio is still haunted by something his son often said.

"He said to me many, many times, "I don't give a . . . if I go to jail. It's easier for me to get drugs in jail than on the street.' "

- Lou Michel