The heroin epidemic has ravaged Long Island’s South Shore for years now, and this most insidious of street drugs shows little sign of loosening its vise-like grip. more

The drug addicts’ brain scans that Dr. Stephen Dewey takes appear in psychedelic shades of red, yellow, green and blue, each indicating a level of brain activity — or inactivity. Red means excited. Blue is dormant. Dewey is the laboratory director for behavioral and molecular neuro-imaging at the North Shore-LIJ Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. In that capacity, he’s put hundreds of addicts’ brains to the test — the positron emission tomography test, that is — seeking to understand precisely what happens to the mind when a pot smoker lights up or a heroin junkie shoots up. And, he has found, it isn’t pretty. more

Scott Resnik, president and chief of Bellmore-Merrick Emergency Medical Services, remembers the taste of the dust. “There was a metallic component,” he said. “There was a starchy component.” more

Kennedy High’s Homecoming was ablaze with school spirit, on and off the football field, last Friday. Homecoming festivities were held at the school, which takes in students from parts of … more

The Meadowbrook Alternative Program, which the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District offers as an alternative to the mainstream, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. more

In the terrible days and weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Kevin Kelly, a Bellmore-Merrick Emergency Medical Services volunteer, spent 18-hour shifts at ground zero, digging through the soot-laden “pile,” at first in search of survivors, and later in search of the dead. more

A New Jersey man is accused of stealing $1.6 million in insurance payments from Bellmore-Merrick Emergency Services, a private volunteer ambulance corps with headquarters on Newbridge Road in Bellmore, just north of Sunrise Highway. Brad Reiter, 50, a former treasurer and president of the EMS unit, was arrested and charged with the theft on Sept. 29, according to acting Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas. more

“Remember, you are the future.” Douglas Smestad repeated this affirmation daily to the hundreds of students he taught for two and a half decades in history classes at Calhoun High School, … more

Bellmore-Merrick area schools were locked out Thursday morning after officials received an unconfirmed report that a man was spotted carrying a rifle on Sunrise Highway, near the Merrick train station. more

By all accounts by Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District principals, opening day of school on Sept. 1 went off without a hitch. more