Last Spring, we aired a story about a recovering heroin addict in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, named Lance Rice and the woman whose house he robbed, Nina Rossi.

Back then, sitting in Rossi’s kitchen, Rice said, “I’m so grateful there’s people like Nina out there, because the normal person would automatically hate somebody who did that to their home.” And Rossi responded, “Well, I did hate you, Lance. We had your picture from the newspaper with ‘F.U.’ written on it on the refrigerator. Cuz we felt violated.”

And yet they forged an unlikely friendship as Rice entered a court program that offers treatment instead of jail.

A year later, many things have evolved – in Rice’s recovery, and in his relationship with Nina Rossi.

This past April, under harsh fluorescent lights, 25-year-old Rice shuffles to a podium in a Greenfield courtroom. He hands Judge William Mazanec a handwritten essay he wrote for his graduation from drug court.

The judge reads it to himself, and then offers Rice advice like a father might offer a son. Stay away from bad influences, Mazanec says, and accept that life is hard.

“Some things you’re gonna have to get through and their painful,” he says. “You’ve got to  be able to do them without drugs.”

“Yeah, it’s hard,” Rice responds, “but I’m learning how to do it.”

Finally, the judge decides Rice is ready to leave this court program.

‘You did a good job and I’m very proud.”

In 2013, Rice was an active heroin addict who’d been arrested for breaking into several homes and businesses in his hometown of Turners Falls. He spent time in and out of jail and rehab until his public defender found him a spot in this drug court — a chance to avoid further jail-time. But there were strict conditions: weekly check-ins with a judge and probation officer, random drug screens, group and individual therapy, and near-daily AA meetings.

“The hardest thing was, honestly, keeping track of it all,” Rice says.

He had no car and lived a town away.

“And if we’re there a minute late, then we get locked up,” he says. “I mean, I’ve made the three mile walk before. I’ve taken the bus before, roller-bladed, whatever I had to do to get there.”

And he got help, especially from Nina Rossi — a recovering alcoholic who actually reached out to Rice after he robbed her house. The two became close friends, eating dinner together every week. Rice did odd jobs for her, Rossi paid for some taxis to the courthouse. At the time, Rossi felt very invested in Rice’s sobriety.

“I think about, my god, what would happen if he started using again,” Rossi said last year.  “That would be devastating.”

And at the time, Lance agreed “it would suck that I would probably lose her over something like that. That also probably does help me stay clean.”

But it wasn’t enough. A few months after that conversation, he relapsed.

“It was around the time of my birthday,” Rice says.

Rice had moved in with friends who were still using heroin. He’d watch them get high every day.

“It triggers something in you, even just seeing people on TV doing it can trigger you and set you off. And for a while, I was able to hold on, but it did suck me back in.”

Not with heroin – he takes an opioid-blocker called Suboxone. He went on a cocaine binge. And predictably, he was caught through a urine screen.

“That’s the tricky thing about my addiction, that I knew I was going back to jail basically,” he says, “but I didn’t care.”

He spent a month behind bars. Then, to his surprise, the judge decided to give him one more chance. Rice went back to drug court and treatment. He got into a state-subsidized apartment complex in Greenfield for recovering addicts and says he’s been clean ever since.

But the truth is, now that he’s done with the court program, “I have anxiety about not having to report to a drug screen, not having to report to certain people,” he says. “It’s just gonna be a lot more freedom, and sometimes freedom can be a bad thing for addiction.”

If Lance Rice can stick with recovery, his will be a rare success. Many of his drug court peers are in prison, having relapsed too many times to stay in the program. In the past year, he says, four people he knew died of overdoses. But even Rice’s story is not without its casualties. And one of those….is his friendship with Nina Rossi.

On a recent afternoon, Rossi meets me at her tiny shop, Nina’s Nook, in downtown Turners Falls, where she sells jewelry and art.

Rossi hasn’t spoken to Lance in months. She says a rift started to grow around the time of his relapse — which happened to coincide with some changes in her life. She had a surge of personal expenses — her car transmission, her wedding. She couldn’t keep offering him work, she stopped paying the taxi bill.

“It’s just such a difficult situation for these guys who are in the drug court with all those appointments, and trying to find employment,” she says. “I felt bad that we were in a situation where he was dependent on that very little bit that I could do.”

Without odd jobs to bring him over, their weekly dinners ebbed….and then she heard about his cocaine binge. But not from him.

“I felt like he didn’t turn to me when he needed somebody and felt things were going downhill,” she says, “and maybe I’m not being very helpful at all.”

What originally appealed to her about Rice, she says, was that he owned up to his actions, “and when he faltered, it seemed that he was not willing to do that,” she says, “although he may just have been very embarrassed and ashamed at having messed up.”

For his part, Rice says — while he appreciates all the support Nina gave him — he felt harshly judged after his relapse.

“And the friendship kind of fell apart,” he says, “and I wish her the best, and that’s about it.”

Nina Rossi didn’t come to Rice’s graduation from drug court in April. Nor did any of his family.

“I was hoping my grandmother and grandfather would be here, and my aunt, and a couple of my cousins,” he says.

In the end, only his friend Kim Hathaway, her boyfriend, and their young son were there – along with two other drug court defendants, and me. Rice faces us in the pews as he ad-libs his graduation speech.

“A few years ago, I was knocking on death’s door, and I didn’t know how to get away from that,” he says to the room. “This is very hard, and I know it’s gonna be hard for the rest of my life, but it’s been worth every minute.”

After the ceremony, Rice and Hathaway smoke cigarettes outside —  “I can’t quit everything at once,” he says — and brainstorm sober options for celebration, like soda, pizza, and enjoying the good weather.

This fall, Rice hopes to enroll at Greenfield Community College – a goal he missed last year. When Nina Rossi hears about his plan, she smiles.

“I just hopes he makes it,” she says, “and now and then, he’ll send me a note, saying he’s doing well.”