Matthew Williams was the hardest worker at Big O’s Hand Car Wash on West North Avenue, someone who waited outside even on the coldest days to usher customers onto the lot.

Williams was known for being so meticulous that some customers would have no one else work on their vehicles, said Omar Tate, the car wash’s owner. He also loved to make people laugh with antics such as trying to rap, Tate said.

Williams, who was homeless and beloved by his friends, lived in an abandoned building next door to the car wash, where he died of a drug overdose at age 52.

The neighborhood has since witnessed two mass overdoses this summer that hospitalized dozens of people. For many, they were a wake-up call to Baltimore’s overdose crisis, which has ranked as the worst in the country in recent years.

Though a drop in overdose deaths last year was seen as a promising sign, drugs claimed the lives of at least 778 people, each of whom had an important story to tell, including Williams, who died in October.

Williams was born on Nov. 4, 1971, one of two twin boys, to parents Dr. Henry R. Williams Jr., a decorated oral surgeon with a passion for Mercedes-Benzes, and Juanita Williams, a medical transcriber who dedicated her life to raising their four children.

They lived near Loyola University, and acquaintances often compared the family to the fictional Huxtables from “The Cosby Show,” said Williams’ sister, Leslie Johnson.

Williams went to Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School and was so popular that he attended three different proms with girls he knew, his sister said.

She thinks it was probably around then that he and his twin, Mark, fell in with the “wrong crowd” and began to use drugs.

In his early 20s, Williams met the daughter of a family friend, Cheryl Adams-Williams, who worked with his father and brother at a medical clinic. She felt drawn to his kindness and humor, Adams-Williams said.

They were married the day after the new year in 1994 and had two children whom Williams doted on, Curtira and Connor.

Within a few years, their marriage fractured, in part due to what she now understands to be Williams’ escalating drug use, Adams-Williams said. Around the same time, tragedy struck when Williams’ twin died of a heroin overdose at age 26.

Williams said “it was like losing part of a limb,” according to Adams-Williams. He would never truly recover.

Over the next decades, Williams was treated for drug addiction several times, said Leonard White, a friend who met him in the early 2000s. “He was trying to get his life together,” he said.

There were also moments of levity. Williams had a beloved pet turtle he brought to friends’ houses, White said. They would watch the Ravens play football on TV and eat pizza at Williams’ father’s house, where he lived.

In 2018, Williams’ father died of colon cancer. After losing his primary source of financial support, Williams struggled with finding stable housing, White said.

Williams would eventually move into the building next to the car wash. Today, a makeshift memorial sits in the window: a portrait of Williams next to a spray of silk flowers.

“In his addiction and out, he was good. He never gave up. He did everything to the best of his ability,” Tate said.

After Williams’ death, his ex-wife stood outside the boarded-up building, trying to imagine the final years of his life, which were so different from the ones they knew together. She was touched when Williams’ co-workers wept when she confirmed his death.

“You could see how much of an impact he had,” Adams-Williams said.