“We wanted to draw community attention to something,” the concerned Santa Clarita Valley emergency room doctor started, after watching more than a handful of patients almost die from heroin abuse.

At Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital on Monday, Dr. Bud Lawrence discussed the hospital’s patient intake from the last 24 hours — eight individuals treated for various stages of overdose from using heroin —  which happens to be the same total number of people who died all of last year in L.A.’s third-largest city from heroin and methamphetamine, combined.

The impromptu press conference was organized a few hours earlier, an emergency announcement with representatives from the city and the hospital’s media relations, in addition to Lawrence. There was an additional overdose Tuesday night reported to the hospital several hours after the news conference. Doctors also were able to save that person.

“From a public health standpoint, in the Emergency Department, for the hospital, it’s just concerning to us that there may be something out there that the public should be aware of,” he said.

As Lawrence noted, a spike in the quality or the content can “take its toll on the population of users in that environment,” noting one person was found dead in addition to the nine others hospitalized by opioid or heroin abuse. Hospital officials confirmed there was one fatal overdose, identified by medical examiners as David Alexander Esquivel, 28, of Castaic, who was not treated at the hospital — in addition to nine other patients who were treated, and all survived. All of the reported overdose cases were men and women in their 20s or younger, officials said.

Lawrence noted the problem is  by no means unique to Santa Clarita — in fact, overdose deaths in the United States have risen steadily since 1970.

And Santa Clarita was made abundantly clear there was a heroin problem — in fact, the city launched a campaign “Heroin Kills: The High is a Lie,” starting with a symposium back in 2011. (Click here for site.) Around the same time, city of Santa Clarita officials began to look into more effective youth outreach, which resulted in DFYiT, or the peer-led Drug Free Youth in Town. 

The campaign was preceded by several years of rising overdose incidents, which, for the most part, seem to have subsided, until this week.

However, Sunday and Monday provided a stark reminder of the need to constantly address the difficult issues associated with substance abuse, particularly heroin, and its associated public health risks.

“Please be aware there is something dangerous out there right now,” Lawrence added, “and please take appropriate precautions… please find a safe environment — if at all possible, stop using.”

One of the more common trends, according to several law enforcement officials, is the way heroin is commonly cut with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.

There are numerous ways a drug like heroin can come into a community, Sharits said, even from sources like Craigslist. However, more likely is a purchase was made in the San Fernando Valley by a wholesaler, so to speak, who made a large purchase and then likely distributed to smaller dealers, “and it was too strong,” he said.

The substance abuse counselor, who runs The Way Out Recovery in Saugus, urged parents, family, friends and loved ones to use the difficult situation to take advantage of the one positive that presents itself — the user, a loved one, nearly died, and hopefully now has a stark enough lesson to motivate a change in behavior:

“The best opportunity a loved one will ever have to intervene in a drug user’s life is after an incident like this,” said Bob Sharits, who has spent years helping with addiction treatment in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“(The talk) always start with, “We love you, and we want to support the changes you need to make, but we will not  support your drug use anymore.”