SMUGGLER'S TURNAROUND BRINGS BREAK FROM JUDGE

Shirley Wood went from smuggling heroin in the soles of her shoes to
starting an after-school program to keep kids off drugs.

Her unusual transformation earned her an equally unusual sentencing break
in federal court in Chicago, when a judge ignored a plea deal that Wood had
agreed to and decided that because she so totally turned her life around,
she didn't deserve to go to prison.

"There comes a point where justice and punishment become cruelty," U.S.
District Judge Robert Gettleman said Friday as he sentenced Wood instead to
the time she already had served in prison--five days--plus six months of
home confinement during which she will be allowed to go to work. "I'm not
going to be part of that cruelty."

Wood, 28, who lives in Los Angeles but was arrested in Chicago, had pleaded
guilty to the drug crime in 1996. Her sentencing had been delayed for a few
years as she and her attorneys grappled with how to avoid her deportation
to her home country, Iran, where she could face death.

Under her deal with prosecutors, Wood was to have been sentenced to about
30 months in prison.

Instead, and over a prosecutor's objection, Gettleman decided that putting
Wood in prison would hurt the greater Los Angeles community, whose children
are benefitting from Wood's program, called K.I.D.S.--short for Keeping It
Drug Safe.

The judge said he was skeptical of defendants who start doing good deeds
only after they're arrested.

But Wood is different, Gettleman said. Her program is expected to serve
several thousand schoolchildren in the coming year.

"It's a real organization, helping kids not make the mistake she made," the
judge said.

He also requested that immigration officials not deport her to Iran. "The
thought of sending this young woman to Iran gives me the shivers,"
Gettleman said.

But that was only a suggestion; the judge doesn't have the power to order
that. The woman's attorneys said they would fight any deportation effort.

Wood admitted smuggling more than 800 grams of heroin with a friend on a
return trip from Amsterdam in 1995. She was arrested at O'Hare Airport.

Her attorney, James D. Henderson, argued that while Wood knew what she was
doing was wrong, she was naive about drugs and had been threatened with
violence if she tried to back out. After she was caught, she read about the
dangers of drugs and became an "anti-drug zealot," her attorney said.