At first glance, the big white Christmas Tree in the middle of the Harford Mall looks like a decoration for Valentine's Day. But when you take a closer look you see words like lonely and pain, it may seem grim but the point is to get people talking.
Fifty-four hearts, and almost half show faces. Faces with smiles, full of promise.
"You would never guess that these people had a drug problem," Jennilyn Landbeck said.
It's a problem with a tight grip in Harford County. And many of the faces hanging on the tree struggled with a heroin addiction.
"I think when people think of heroin they think of somebody laying in an inner city gutter, and that is not these kids," Carol Frontera with the Albert P. Close Foundation said.
With it's bright lights and giant candy hearts, the group that displayed 'The Conversation Tree' wants people to ask questions, because then they can be informed about heroin's hold, and possibly prevent another family from heartbreak.
"To me, it's far better to have your 15-year-old mad at you because you went through his phone then to find out your 15-year-old died from an overdose," Frontera said.
"It's a real problem, and not something that we should hide, not something that we should think is taboo as a subject, we need to talk about drugs in our community," Landbeck said.
It's eyeopening, but it's the attention heroin abuse needs.
"We busted the door in and Nolan was slumped over hanging out of a chair, really almost dead," Sandi Gallion said. "That was the first clue that we had that he had a problem with heroin."
That was Nolan's first overdose on the deadly drug. It was three years ago.
"Go from a healthy person with a full face to skin and bones," Gallion said.
Sitting in her son's now empty bedroom, she says Nolan's troubles started after a minor car crash in 2010. He was taken to the hospital for whiplash, and walked out with a prescription for pain pills that he was soon a slave to.
"He started doctor shopping, looking for the medication," Gallion said.
Soon he traded the narcotic pain meds for a cheaper version, heroin. And he was hooked.
"The moment you try heroin, it's almost a death sentence."
Nolan was working as an EMT and a volunteer firefighter. He worked to save people's lives, yet doing a drug that eventually took his. Nolan struggled to stay sober. After his first overdose and first round of rehab, Gallion says her son's sole focus was to feed his drug habit.
Finally after nearly two years of chasing the high, Nolan had enough.
"He decided that he couldn't live the life like that anymore and that was his decision," Gallion said.
This time, he flew out to California for an intense inpatient and out-patient rehab program.
The 24-year-old made it more then six months sober. His family will never have answers about why Nolan decided to shoot up again.
"He was doing what was supposed to be right, he was going to meetings, he had a sponsor, you know, he was loving life agian," Gallion said. "I guess the call of the drug is more then what anybody realizes."
Nolan was at the firehouse he volunteered at, and his mom found him after he missed curfew. He was in the bathroom, just out of reach.
"I called his phone, it rang, I could hear it ringing," Gallion said. "I banged on the door, I even took a fire estinguisher and tried to bear the door in, I couldn't get in the door. I called my husband and I said you need to come down here, I don't think it's good."
It wasn't.
Nolan died from a heroin overdose on January 25, 2015.
"That vision though doens't go away, that vision that you see, and that vision of him dead in the ER, it doesn't change, it doesn't go away," Gallion said. "Close your eyes and still see it today. You know, a parent shouldn't have to do CPR on their own child."
The Gallion's hope their story, Nolan's story, will sound the alarm for families who think heroin can't touch them.
Studies show heroin has a nearly 80 percent relapse rate. Which is why we have to talk about it.
If you want to check out The Conversation Tree, It's on display at the Harford Mall through the end of February.
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