Sometime around April or May of last year, local probation and parole agent Brad Draper started noticing an increase in opiate use among the offenders he supervises.

He thought they were abusing prescription drugs like Oxycontin or Lortab. After further investigation, he discovered that heroin had made its way into Roosevelt.

“In my 21 years of law enforcement, I had only made two heroin arrests prior to this,” Draper said. “I wanted to get it shut down before it gained a foothold in town.”

Now, 10 months and 21 arrests later, he and other law enforcement personnel working with him believe they have struck a major blow to the city's fledgling heroin trade. But that comes after spending thousands of dollars on more than 50 undercover buys, in places the average citizen might not expect to be focal points for narcotics sales: church parking lots, grocery stores — even the grounds around Union High School.

“I don't believe I'd say we put an absolute stop to it, but we've definitely had an impact on the local heroin dealers' lives. We disrupted it pretty good. We got down to the source, and they're all either in jail, or they've been arrested or they have warrants pending,” Draper said.

He credited Roosevelt Police Sgt. Jeremy Chapman, the Uintah Basin Narcotics Strike Force, the Duchesne County Sheriff's Office, police in Heber City and Salt Lake City, and fellow Department of Corrections probation and parole agents with helping him tackle the problem. Local residents assisted as well, giving police access to driveways and other areas.

They declined to name those who have been arrested for dealing the highly dangerous drug, since some of them are now working with law enforcement on controlled drug buys as a way of reducing their charges. They don't want to put their confidential informants in harm's way.

“A lot of people want to work the charges off,” Draper said.

Authorities say the heroin — commonly known on the street as “black” and sold in small, colorful balloons for about $40 each — is being transported to the Roosevelt area from Salt Lake City, where it was ushered in through high-level connections in Mexico.

It started out with one individual bringing the drug into Roosevelt from Salt Lake. Soon, others in the area were going to Salt Lake, picking up the heroin balloons at low cost and then reselling them in Roosevelt at the $40-$50 level, depending on the size.

The balloons are easily concealed, with some dealers holding several in their mouths and anal cavities.

The operation was going so well, with buys conducted nightly, it got to the point where police figured out when larger shipments were due to arrive, allowing them to make arrests at highway traffic stops well west of Roosevelt.

One disconcerting aspect of the operation was the large number of youths involved in trafficking heroin, Draper said. Most of the dealers were in their early 20s, and some were juveniles.

“A lot of them were getting started in it, and I don't think they had a clue about what they were playing with, as far as who they were purchasing it from and the destructive nature of heroin,” he said.

Heroin, a derivative of the opium poppy, is usually smoked or injected by recreational drug users as well as addicts. It has an extremely high potential for abuse and addiction, and large doses are often fatal.

Users sometimes mix cocaine, a stimulant, and heroin, a depressant, a lethal combination known as a “speedball.” Some users in Roosevelt were doing speedballs, Draper said.

While heroin's popularity picked up in Roosevelt over the last year, authorities haven't seen much of it in other parts of the Basin such as Vernal or Duchesne. And it never rivaled the illegal drug of choice in the area, methamphetamine, more commonly known as “meth.”

Illegal drugs are a lot more common in the Basin than many people in the area realize, police say.

“It's out there every day. It's all around us,” Draper said.