Reported by Michael Montgomery, Sarah Varney and Erin Marie Daly, in collaboration with California Watch.

Prescription drug abuse is an epidemic in America, killing 40 people each day, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In California, there is now a new facet to the crisis: young pill addicts who are turning to heroin, sometimes with fatal results. The trend is hitting hardest in wealthy enclaves around the state.

In Orange County, as fatalities from prescription drugs continue to rise, in recent years heroin overdoses among young people have nearly doubled. And in some parts of the county it has been a season of funerals for young lives cut short.

Joey Whynaught, 23, was found dead in his bedroom on April 5. At a memorial for Whynaught at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, an uncle strummed an Armenian folk melody before an altar awash in lilies. As video images flashed across a monitor, a friend described Whynaught's frenetic lifestyle.

"Joey was a brother, a son, an uncle, a cousin and a friend," said Tanner Ferrell. "He was the kind of person that would push you to your full potential, whether it be in surfing, snowboarding, music or any other activity."

In a tree-shaded courtyard outside the chapel, a cluster of friends and relatives recalled Whynaught's teenage path to drug addiction.  Heavy drinking, marijuana and prescription painkillers -- broken down and smoked -- were prevalent. Alice Whynaught said her son moved relentlessly to a more powerful high: injected heroin.

"He always told me, 'I don't know why I love drugs, but I just love them so much.' And I said, 'You gotta find out why. What are you numbing up?' But I think it gets to a point where they don't know how to live back in life any more."

Some of the well-dressed young people at the memorial talked about doing drugs with Whynaught. Twenty-three-year-old surfing instructor Evan Macphee remembered traveling along the Pacific Coast; hunting epic waves, smoking and shooting up copious quantities of drugs.

"When the waves were huge, we loved the ocean so we were out there," Macphee said. "And when we got high it was the same way."

Now that world is crashing down. In the past two years, Macphee said, he's been to more than a dozen memorials for friends. Nearly all died from overdosing on pills, heroin or a combination of both. "I've seen that many people die that I've gone to high school with, grown up with, played T-ball with," he said.

Macphee and other recovering addicts told us they crossed the threshold from prescription drugs to heroin when their addiction reached five pills a day or more. At that level, Mexican black-tar heroin, abundant in California, is a cheaper high.

"You get more bang for your buck," said Macphee. "A gram of heroin is the price of one pill. And a gram of heroin could last you three or four days. One pill could last you a couple of hours." 

Few hard statistics are available on the number of young people in California moving to heroin from pills. But interviews with drug treatment experts, doctors and other public health officials suggest a marked increase in heroin use.

Dr. Robert Winokur oversees the emergency department at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, and another hospital in Laguna Beach. Winokur said in the past two years he's seen more and more young people dying from heroin.

"Oftentimes a car will pull up, they'll push out someone from the car and they'll screech off," he said. "We actually call that a 'positive screech sign' in the ER department when we hear the tires going and the screech from the automobile."

Young people dump their friends at the hospital, Winokur said, because they don't want to deal with authorities and face possible arrest.

Popping or snorting prescription narcotics is dangerous, but injecting heroin directly into the bloodstream is a fatal shock to some young bodies, especially if pills are also in the system, Winokur said.

"Often by the time I see these patients, they're already in respiratory arrest or cardio-respiratory arrest."

This kind of drug abuse is not limited to Orange County. Addiction specialists in the Central Valley report heroin is replacing methamphetamine among some young people. Douglas Bodin, a San Francisco Bay Area treatment expert with clients around the state, says pills and heroin used to be an issue for one out of every 20 of his patients; these days it's more like one out of every two or three.

In Orange County, the wave of heroin and prescription drug overdoses among young people is prompting calls for action. At a recent community forum in Costa Mesa, speakers urged families to lift the veil of denial and shame associated with drug abuse and come to grips with young lives being lost. 

At the meeting, attendees voiced an array of concerns.

"They're beautiful young kids. They look like they could be any of our kids," someone said.

"We don't have the luxury of saying someone else is going to handle it," added someone else.

The gathering expressed support for new federal legislation to limit the use of highly addictive painkillers, and passage of a bill being considered by state lawmakers to provide immunity from prosecution for people who seek help for overdose victims.

Since Whynaught's memorial in April, Evan Macphee has lost two more friends to addiction -- by his count the 15th and 16th funerals since he turned 20. "It's super depressing and it's upsetting but it's just kind of become the norm," he said.

These days, Macphee comes to the beach not to get high but to focus on staying sober. "It shouldn't be that way for a 23-year-old kid," he said. "I've been to more funerals than my grandparents have. It's really upsetting that it has to be that way."