This paper considers the cover by s-defective independent sets problem (or, simply, the s-defective coloring problem), which generalizes the classical coloring problem. In the coloring problem, each color class should induce an edgeless subgraph. The s-defective coloring problem relaxes this requirement, allowing for at most s edges to appear in each color class's induced subgraph. We propose a local search neighborhood and apply the GRASP metaheuristic to the related minimization problem. The quality of the heuristically-generated solutions is evaluated with a commercial MIP solver. The integer programming formulation that we use generalizes the asymmetric representatives formulation.