He graduated from UMass with a degree in social work in 2005. He first went to detox over the winter of his senior year. He got clean long enough to complete the spring lacrosse season. Immediately afterward, he relapsed.

He spent his 20s jumping from one dead-end, minimum-wage job to the next –– 22 in all. At 26 he went to rehab in Iowa, living with a strait-laced cousin, an ex-Marine, his father said. He got a job as a social worker, counseling gambling addicts. Then he met a young woman. They had a child together, and the strain was too much for him. He returned to using.

Kevin was warned about bad batches of heroin circulating out of Chicago across the Midwest. He didn’t care. He kept getting high until he died.

When he was clean, his father said, he was his old self, before drugs. He was happy. He confided in his father, explained his demons. Kevin said he started using drugs while at Lynbrook High, when he was 16. He drank beer and smoked marijuana. He did not use opioids until college.

His father said he never saw signs of drug use when Kevin was in high school. “I didn’t recognize the addiction he had to pot,” Glenz said. “Things were going well. His grades were great. He had a scholarship. We were winning championships. I guess I wasn’t looking for trouble.”

Glenz said he could offer no advice to parents. “I can’t tell them how to save their son’s life,” he said. “I couldn’t do it.”

He can only tell his son’s story, in the hope that it will resonate with even one teenager, who will stay away from drugs.

“When you’re addicted,” Glenz said, “all you think about is how you’re going to get high next. Everything else falls behind that.”

Parents’ meeting

A parents’ meeting with Larry Glenz, the father of heroin addict Kevin Glenz, who died of an overdose in 2010, is scheduled for Tuesday, May 27, at 8 p.m. at Calhoun High School.

For more, call the Community Parent Center at (516) 771-9346.

Year-to-date

heroin arrests

Bellmore: 8

Merrick: 5

North Bellmore: 7

North Merrick: 1

Total: 21

For a list of street addresses where heroin arrests have been made, go to www.heroinprevention.com.