Jose Avila Rubio, 27, of Pasco, Wash., and Estevan Juan Mendoza, 23, of Kennewick, Wash., were sentenced in federal court in Moscow Wednesday.

Rubio was convicted of conspiracy to distribute and will serve 15 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

Mendoza, convicted of possession of 125 grams of meth with intent to deliver, must serve 10 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

Federal, state and local investigators say the men were involved in a major meth distribution network in Lewiston, the Nez Perce Reservation and eastern Washington between 2002 and 2005.

But Pattie Hansen is hoping the power of capitalism will be enough to keep southern Idaho students off of methamphetamine.

Hansen, the executive director of United Way South Central Idaho, is wearing two hats these days. As the chair of the youth committee for Southern Idaho Partners Against Drugs, she’s helping construct an ambitious incentive program meant to keep students of all ages off of methamphetamine.

The goal, organizers say, is to reward students who stay off drugs, not punish those who try them.

“We don’t think punitive works very well with kids,” said John Hathaway, the Region 5 director for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare and an adviser for SIPAD.

Under the plan, students – high-school students at first, expanding to middle-school and elementary schools in subsequent years – would voluntarily sign a pledge at the beginning of the school year to not use drugs. Those students would be randomly tested throughout the year in a program similar to what some districts have in place for testing athletes and others who participate in extracurricular events.

Students who test clean will have their names added to a list for random drawings, and could win everything from iPods to a brand-new car. Those who test positive for drugs will be referred for counseling, and their parents and school will be informed.

Students already randomly tested could still participate in the drawings, Hansen said, and SIPAD is hanging all its hopes for the program on the lure of the prizes. The ultimate focus, should the program work, will be on students in grades four through six – a time when habits that lead to drug use are formed, Hansen said.

“If they can just say no for that long, then it’s so much easier for them,” Hansen said.

Organizers hope to launch the program in October and time it with a visit from Dr. Mary F. Holley, the founder of Mothers Against Meth-Amphetamine. But first, they have to figure out how to fund it – especially the drug tests, the prices of which Hathaway said vary widely. He said the group plans to approach Kiwanis and Rotary clubs in the region and local businesses for help.

College of Southern Idaho spokesman Doug Maughan said Wednesday the college would likely support the program in some way, and the Minidoka County School District has donated a former driver’s education car for use as a prize.

Friday, state Rep. Sharon Block, R-Twin Falls, said she thinks the project will benefit more than just school districts. Drugs were a factor in the convictions of as many as 85 percent of people in Idaho prisons, she said, and 70 to 80 percent of children in foster care are there because their parents were drug users.

“It’s a huge burden on our state,” Block said of the prison population.

SIPAD doesn’t know how well the program will work, Hathaway said. But a study is already planned for after the first year of operation, and organizers are optimistic – after all, he said, everyone who has a job relies on some sort of incentive. Success could just mean the program avoids the fate of previous anti-drug efforts, he said: “A lot of hoopla, a lot of rah-rah and then nothing.”

Nate Poppino can be reached at 735-3237 or npoppino@magicvalley.com.

The workshop was organized to help property managers identify illegal drug activity, as well as its possible impact on residential property.

“It’s a major problem for everyone from the people who use it to the people who invest money into the property that it’s used in,”said Kelly Wilson, senior specialist investigator with the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s office.

Methamphetamine production, he said, creates dangerous toxins that seep into walls and carpets – a hazard to future tenants or homeowners.

The cost of properly cleaning up a home or apartment where methamphetamine was manufactured can cost up to $500,000.

“If you put down $60,000 on a property to rent, you might as well kiss that money goodbye if that property gets contaminated,”Wilson said. “Furthermore, what you might not know is that if we (law enforcement) catch someone making meth on your property a second time then we have the authority to seize your property.”

He said property managers need to recognize the signs of meth use and production.

“Use common sense,”he said. “If someone has a bunch of cans of acetone laying around but they don’t refinish furniture, that person might be making meth.”

He added that meth production often creates a pungent odor.

However, none of the property owners attending the workshop said they knew what meth smelled like, which Wilson described as an “unrecognizable odor.”

He said property managers should contact law enforcement officials if they suspect illegal drug activity on their properties.

Manslaughter trial set for Sept. 10
SANDPOINT — An Oldtown man awaiting trial on vehicular manslaughter and drug possession charges is being denied a furlough to attend an in-patient treatment program in southern Idaho.

District Judge Lansing Haynes denied Jason Charles Miller’s request on Friday to postpone his manslaughter case so he could enter the treatment program.

Miller’s four-day trial on a charge of felony vehicular manslaughter is scheduled to start on Sept. 10 in 1st District Court. He is also awaiting trial on a meth possession charge resulting from the deadly crash and another possession charge stemming from a more recent arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Miller’s defense attorneys asked the court earlier this month to postpone the manslaughter trial because it conflicted with their client’s enrollment in a treatment program in Gooding. Attorneys Peter Jones and Doug Phelps contend Miller has been diagnosed as bipolar and a meth addict.

The attorneys told the court on Friday the program would address Miller’s health issues, which would put him in a better position to assist in his own defense or contemplate potential plea agreements.

Bonner County Deputy Prosecutor Jim Stow objected to Miller’s temporary release, citing the timing of the defense request.

Haynes, ruling from the bench in Coeur d’Alene, said he saw no verification of the dual diagnosis in documents the defense submitted to backstop its request. The defense motion was denied.

Miller, 26, was charged following a deadly July 2006 crash on Highway 57 north of Priest River. The state alleges Miller caused the wreck by passing vehicles as a car ahead of him turned into a waste collection site.

Richard Martin Boge, a 78-year-old resident of Spokane, Wash., died after Miller’s Ford Ranger pickup truck plowed into the side of his Cadillac sedan. Boge was the father of Sandpoint Councilman Michael Boge.

Miller is accused of being high on meth and possessing the stimulant at the time of the crash. The other pending charges were the product of a May 5 traffic stop in Priest River.

Miller was free on bond in the manslaughter case when he was arrested last spring.

An invitation to lunch at Life’s Kitchen from Chef Rouchelle Abrahamson took me to the cute café at 1025 S. Capitol Blvd. to get an update on this nonprofit, which teaches young adults skills for work and life.Sipping gazpacho, I conversed with Congressman Mike Simpson and Roger Jones, 23, who graduated from the Kitchen’s first class in May 2004. Like others who’ve found their way there, Roger had had a run-in with meth.

“When I was arrested, I was dying,” he said. “I’m 6-foot-3 and I weighed just 147 pounds; now I weigh 240. But I had a burning desire to be someone, and once I became part of the Life’s Kitchen program, I felt accepted in society. The biggest payoff is knowing that now I’m an asset to society, not a liability.” “What can we do as a society to get to kids before they hit rock bottom?” the congressman asked.

“The justice system isn’t doing a half-bad job,” Roger said. “It came to a head for me when I was arrested for possession. But it also takes a willingness by the individual … somehow, you’ve got to figure out how to get into someone’s mind and tell them they could make a change. And you need to reach out to parents — sometimes they’re the ones who give kids drugs.”

“Someone like you talking to high school students would make more impact than me, parents or teachers,” Simpson said.

“Oh, yeah?” Roger laughed. “Is there a way to make money doing that?”

Life’s Kitchen serves lunch 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and offers frozen take-home meals, and catering for large and small events. Information: www.lifeskitchen.org.

BOISE, Idaho — When she started using methamphetamine, Julie Saxton was a typical 36-year-old Boise mother. She lived on the Bench with her husband and daughters Maribeth, 8, and Jennifer, 15. She worked as housing programs coordinator for the city. She battled to keep the house clean, stay thin and get her errands done. In 1997, her husband brought home meth to help her lose weight.

“He was always calling me fat and belittling me,” Saxton said. “Of course, the first time I used it I liked the energy, and then the weight started coming off.”

Unwittingly, Saxton, joined a growing number of Treasure Valley women many of them “supermoms” who turn to meth for help, only to end up in the state’s criminal-justice system.

Treasure Valley drug experts say more local women are using meth, and overworked and stressed-out mothers are increasingly turning to the drug to lose weight and gain energy. They are crowding the Ada County Drug Court and women’s prisons. Their children are flooding the foster care system.

“Meth is definitely a women’s drug,” said Marreen Baker Burton, program coordinator of the drug court. “The numbing of the pain, the energy and the weight loss is huge.”

For Saxton, now 46, meth was like a miracle drug. It gave her the energy she needed to keep her house spotless, help her girls with their homework and produce more at the office.

At first, it worked. As she lost weight, Saxton got more comfortable spending time with friends and hosting parties, and her husband started spending more time with her. Her counters gleamed. Because she didn’t sleep much, she had time to bake, cook and decorate her home.

She made a rule never to use meth after noon. Though most people close to her knew her husband was a meth addict, Saxton hid her own use from her girls, her bosses, her landlord and her mother.

But after about a year, she started needing meth just to function. Her husband had late-night parties and cheated on her with other addicts.

In September 2002, a caller tipped police that Saxton and her husband had meth, and the two were arrested. By then, 20-year-old Jennifer was using with her parents. Saxton told police the meth found at her home was her husband’s. She pleaded not guilty. Her landlord bailed her out of jail. Her employer, a furniture store owner, kept her at work.

Saxton was eventually found guilty and served 90 days in a work-release center. She stopped using the drug for a while, then resumed it. She was chugging gallons of water so meth couldn’t be detected in tests required for her probation, making her urine too diluted to test. That’s a common ruse, and authorities were onto it.

Facing prison for violating her probation, Saxton agreed to go to drug court to kick the habit she had been lying about for so long.

“My 14-year-old was just in shock,” Saxton said. “My nickname was Betty Crocker. Nobody would have believed it in a million years.”

Saxton’s story is not uncommon in the Treasure Valley, say coordinators and counselors at Ada County Drug Court, a program that gives addicts intensive treatment and monitoring and clears felony convictions related to drug addiction.

Between 1998 and 2003 the Ada County Drug Court program was less than 45 percent women, said Burton, the program coordinator. Now it’s 57 percent women, and the first phase of the four-phase program is more than two-thirds female. Nearly 85 percent of the women in drug court are addicted to meth, Burton said, and more than two-thirds of them are mothers.

Those numbers are echoed at Idaho’s Department of Correction, where the women’s prison population has grown at more than twice the rate of the men over the past five years.

From 2000 to 2005, the female population jumped nearly 70 percent. According to department research, nearly 90 percent of women inmates assessed with a substance abuse problem listed meth as their drug of choice. A 2005 Idaho State Police survey found that 76 percent of all female inmates had used meth.

Boise drug counselor Sam Hadley said the women meth addicts he sees in the Treasure Valley often fit a mold he calls “supermom.”

“I’ve worked with many women who had large families, and they used methamphetamine to help get the work done, and it worked for a while,” Hadley said. “These women raise their kids well at the beginning because they have a lot of energy, and they look good for their husbands and their boyfriends. But then the addiction kicks in, and they can’t feel anything without meth.”

Because it affects the brain’s release of dopamine, meth robs people of the ability to feel pleasure without the drug, Hadley said. Women lose their emotional connection to their children and no longer feel joy or satisfaction in caring for them.

Former addict Janel Norris said meth let her keep up the public image she always wanted for herself. A mother of three boys, Norris said meth helped her become a thin soccer mom and forget the pain of being raped and molested as a child.

“My house was spotless. I’d stay up all night and clean my house and bake cookies,” said Norris, now 37. “It erased all emotion, and I could be anything I wanted.”

Norris thought meth made her a better mother to sons Adrian, now 17, Adam, now 14, and Kord, now 4. Looking back, she says that maybe it did in the beginning, when she was focused and productive. But now she realizes that after the first year, she was mentally absent when she was with her boys. She often left them with her mother overnight while she was out partying. She’s ashamed of some things, like teaching Adam to hide in the bushes and bark if anyone was coming so she wouldn’t get caught buying meth.

“He was my road dog, and I ruined him that way,” Norris said. “I missed so much with my big boys that I’m not missing with Kord.”

Women who think meth helps them be better mothers don’t realize until they’re sober the damage they’ve done to their kids, local experts say. At first, they do have more energy and are more present in their kids’ lives, Hadley said. But once the addiction kicks in, they are absent and can be neglectful.

“I hate meth because it has destroyed my family and my children,” said 32-year-old Jessica Fitzke, a mother of three who used meth for more than 10 years.

Like many Treasure Valley women who use meth, Fitzke was caught when her newborn twins tested positive for the drug. Kameron and Cody, now 1, were born a month and a half early and went into foster care with Fitzke’s mother. Fitzke got the twins and 3-year-old Henna back when she graduated from drug court Wednesday.

She said it’s hard not to spoil her kids now, thinking of what she put them through, like making Henna nap with her for 10 hours in the middle of the day when she crashed after a being high for days.

“Until they’ve been clean from meth about a year, two years, they’d still argue with me about being a good mother,” said Janet Guerin, head of women’s programs at the Idaho Department of Correction.

From 2002 to 2006, the number of children in foster care has increased by more than one-third in Ada, Elmore, Boise and Valley counties and by 70 percent in Canyon, Gem, Owyhee, Payette, Adams and Washington counties. State government spending on foster care more than doubled over the same period.

Mothers using meth is the cause, said Susan Hazleton, the retiring director of the Family Advocate Program, which provides court-appointed advocates for children in foster care. Its caseload has gone up 78 percent since 2000.

Charity Hagen said one of the hardest parts of recovering from her addiction has been realizing the time she lost with her son, Calvin. Hagen, now 37, found out on her honeymoon that her husband, her college sweetheart, was a heroin addict. She started using meth with her husband when Cal was 3. She ended up leaving her husband soon after, but stayed with meth.

At first, she was getting praise and promotions in her work as an escrow officer. But within a few years, she lost her job and spent her time getting high with friends and stealing merchandise to pay for drugs, food and the rent.

“I thought it would be a bonding thing between my husband and me, absolutely not realizing the death grip it would have on me,” Hagen said. “I didn’t use it in front of my son, but so what? I locked myself up in my room with my friends for hours on end.”

Cal, 12, said he knew what was going on with his mother and once walked in on her using meth. His house was clean enough, and he was never hurt.

“It looked normal, but it wasn’t normal,” Cal Hagen said. “I used to ask her for some juice, and she’d say OK, and three hours later I still wouldn’t have my juice.”

Hagen has been clean for 15 months. Cal said he trusts his mother again and is happy to have her back.

Most mothers get treatment only when they face a felony charge or when their children have been taken away by child protective services.

Local drug counselors and experts say many women addicted to meth don’t think the addiction can be overcome. Hadley said part of the problem is that anti-meth efforts are focused so heavily on scaring people away from using meth — not on getting help for those already addicted.

“We’re not saying also that people recover from methamphetamine use,” Hadley said. “There’s all this focus on brain damage.”

And the treatment money and programs aren’t targeted at women, experts say.

Idaho is one of the few states without a residential drug treatment program where mothers and their children can stay together, said Bethany Gadzinski, head of the substance abuse program at the Department of Health and Welfare.

Gadzinski said the department is trying to get federal money to expand to the Treasure Valley a pilot program started in Pocatello in January.

Idaho lawmakers voted to expand the drug court last year, and are devoting more money to treatment in Idaho prisons.

Saxton, Norris, Hagen and Fitzke all graduated from Ada County Drug Court and have been clean for at least a year without relapse. They are all employed and have their children in stable homes.

Hagen made the dean’s list last semester at Boise State University. But she will be on probation for seven years for stealing to get drugs.

She said she lost eight years of her life but is relieved the nightmare is over.

“I’ll take the repercussions,” Hagen said. “I’m a little embarrassed that I let meth get ahold of me. I’m an intelligent woman.”

TWIN FALLS – When somebody wants to shoot someone, the gun is almost always nearby.

Jake DeGarmo stole a Rupert man’s Winchester 12-gauge shotgun that Johnny Shores likely used to kill Jesse Naranjo in the winter of 2005. Juan Carlos Fuentes Pina allegedly plucked it from inside the meth home they frequented and stuck it in the hands of Shores.

Adam Mower kept a clean record until months before December when he shot Idaho State Police Trooper Chris Glenn. The gun was Mower’s, purchased legally from Sportsman’s Warehouse. When Glenn stopped Mower’s car, Mower looked down at the loaded 9-mm. “The gun was just sitting in my lap still,” he later said in court. “I saw the gun and grabbed it.”

Donald Brink illegally sawed barrels off people’s shotguns to turn a profit. A sawed-off shotgun is what Brink used to kill Brent “Spook” Lillevold inside Lillevold’s basement apartment.

And easy access paved the way for Bulmaro Magana to kill his wife in June 2006 in a cornfield southwest of Wendell. Magana had only to grasp his wife Eva’s 9-mm Browning pistol resting inside the couple’s pickup and shoot her before turning the pistol on himself, said Gooding County Sheriff Shaun Gough.

If a gun owner, who owns his weapon legally and has no criminal record, feels the urge to pull the trigger in a crime, chances are the gun won’t come up on police radar.

But even those barred from owning guns have little trouble finding one.

Got a track record? Go burglarize a neighbor. Trade drugs for a gun. Or simply buy a gun from a friend and no one asks that you report it.

“That’s an individual transaction and (the federal government) doesn’t regulate non-dealers,” said Julianne Marshall, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We enforce the laws that Congress passes. (We are) not to regulate non-licensees.”

Outside of purchases from federally licensed gun sellers, all gun sales go unreported to the federal government and unregulated by Idaho law enforcement agencies. While it’s presumed the customers who buy guns legally will use them legally, Mower – and to some extent Magana – prove that’s not always true. And there’s always the chance a “straw buyer” could turn around and sell it illegally on the streets.

So, local police agencies bank on the Mowers of the world staying cool-headed while they rush to intercept the Brinks, Shores, and Pinas – who have guns illegally – before they use them to commit a violent crime.

“Guns come into our hands more often from other crimes than homicides, a lot of (people) illegally carrying weapons, burglaries, robberies,” said Idaho State Police Lt. Dan Thornton.

It’s hard not to imagine if Twin Falls police did not intercept about 100 guns a year, how many of those guns might be used to commit crimes in the city. Or, what violent crimes might have befallen the county had the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office not seized roughly 250 guns in the past two years.

When serving a search warrant in January 2006 on a suspected meth-trafficking den east of Twin Falls, deputies found 22 firearms, including rifles, shotguns and pistols along with other stolen property. Two suspects arrested at the home, Christopher Overlin and Kelly Hood, were convicted felons and therefore barred from possessing firearms.

Did the two suspects steal, buy or trade the guns with someone else? Deputies are uncertain.

“We can’t always prove that they are stolen because so few people record the serial number from their guns,” said Twin Falls County Sheriff Lt. Don Newman.

But in more than a decade serving the county, Twin Falls County Sheriff Wayne Tousley said he has never traced a gun used in a crime to an illegal sale from a federally licensed firearm dealer. Currently, the ATF is yanking the license from Red’s Trading Post of Twin Falls, citing numerous record-keeping errors.

But straw buyers, or people who buy guns from licensed dealers to sell illegally on the street, are harder to track.

That may explain how Victor Capado obtained one of two guns Twin Falls police seized from him. The 15-year-old from the Phoenix area pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter after shooting a man in the face in February 2005 with a gun he was not supposed to have. In exchange for his guilty plea, the Twin Falls County prosecutor dismissed the charge of a minor possessing a firearm.

Police seized a .22-caliber Beretta from Capado that another Twin Falls County resident bought in May 1996 at the Idaho Coin Gallery. They also seized a 9-mm Taurus that a Twin Falls resident bought from Sportsman’s Warehouse 16 days earlier. If it was stolen, the victim never reported it. Or if the victim reported the theft, he had not marked down the gun’s serial number.

“I can’t see that we charged this guy with stealing the (9 mm) gun,” said Twin Falls police Sgt. Mark Marvin, as he reviewed the two-year-old report. “There’s no record or burglary report for that gun.”

Many of the stolen and privately sold guns floating around the Magic Valley are almost impossible to trace to a source, law enforcement officials say. Too often legitimate gun owners fail to mark their serial number, so when their gun is stolen there’s no record for police to trace.

Cass Friedman covers crime and courts for the Times-News. He can be reached at 735-3241 or cfriedman@magicvalley.com.

On Wednesday they turned in a grant application that puts the county in the running for a million dollars to start up the program.

“I’ve been battling meth since I was 15, an IV user since 16, its no good,” said inmate, Ryan Stevens.

It’s estimated that 80 percent of people behind bars, like Ryan Stevens, have drug or alcohol abuse problems.

And as of right now, little is being done to help change their ways before they get out of jail.

“If someone goes into the Bonneville County Jail, all they’re doing is sitting in the cell. There isn’t treatment,” said Tracey Sessions.

Earlier in the year, Tracey Sessions, along with a group of local leaders put together a program that would change all of that.

The program offers more classes and programs to kick addictions and get mental health disorders back in order.

Once the offender makes progress, the program includes work release to get him or her situated with a job.

After that the program helps with housing outside of jail.

This spring the program was approved in Boise.

Now counties from all over are applying to get the money, but perhaps no one has more of an interest than the people who first came up with the idea in the first place.

And offenders who watch the revolving door in the jail say a program like this might just slow the rate of repeat offenders that come through these doors over and over again.

The winner of the grant will be announced on October 1.

The county is already planning an expansion at the jail, so if approved, they’ll add classrooms and office space to their plans.