FORMER DRUG DEALER TELLS PARENTS HIS STORY

Craig Gallow was smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol when he was 15. He
dropped out of Cedarburg High School his sophomore year. He moved out of
his parents' home when he was 16.

He soon started "moving up the drug tree," he said, eating psychedelic
mushrooms, "dropping acid" and taking other hallucinogens. Then he started
using cocaine and was soon selling it to finance his own drug use.

By the time he was 19 he had fathered two children, by different women, and
was headed for the Columbia Correctional Institution, a maximum-security
prison in Portage, to serve four years for drug trafficking.

It's a story he thinks parents need to hear.

"Parents think it doesn't happen, or at least won't happen, to their kids.
My parents didn't think it would happen to me either," said Gallow, 23.

Gallow recently told his story to 75 parents at Homestead High School in
Mequon. It's a story some parents couldn't identify with, he said, until he
told them he probably sold drugs in their homes or their neighbors' homes.

"I spent a lot of time in Mequon selling drugs because that's where the
money is. Between Mequon and Cedarburg, I put a lot of money in my pocket,"
he said in an interview. "I've been in mansions" selling drugs.

And parents shouldn't feel their kids are safe because they're sports
heroes or on the honor roll. Drug and alcohol use by teenagers cuts across
all social groups, he said.

"I partied with them all - athletes, straight As. It doesn't have anything
to do with money or how well they do in school."

And parents' heads nod in recognition, he said, when he describes how drugs
are sold in parks and night spots where teens congregate.

"That's where their kids go at night," he said.

Gallow's appearance was arranged through Mequon Police Department school
liaison officer Mario Valdes and Detective Jeff Taylor of the Ozaukee
County sheriff's drug task force. He also has spoken with other parent
groups, police auxiliaries and inmates in state correctional facilities.

"It's a 'scared straight' approach that works very well" in educating
parents, Valdes said. "It works better than handouts or videos. We're
talking about the real thing: undercover officers making buys maybe from
their own kids."

"The parents have come up to me and said the highlight for them was to hear
Craig's experiences," Taylor said. "It's very shocking to hear someone of
his caliber who did prison time and who was selling drugs in these towns."

Gallow was released from St. Croix Correctional Center "boot camp" in March
last year, marking the end of a long tragic story, and the beginning of a
new, brighter one.

It's a story that Taylor feels good about.

"After doing so many of these investigations, it's nice to actually see a
positive turnaround. We don't get to see that too often."

Scamming the police

It was Taylor who recruited Gallow to be a police informant in 1997 after
Gallow was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Gallow, 18 at the time, quickly agreed to the deal, but for the wrong reasons.

"My buddy and I thought we could use (being an informant) to help us know
where the cops were so we could keep doing deals and using (drugs)," he said.

That worked for about year and a half.

"He scammed us for quite a while," Taylor said. "But it got to where we
suspected he was still dealing. We started giving him misinformation so we
could watch him and catch him, which is what happened in the end."

It's a date Gallow hasn't forgotten.

"I was arrested Feb. 13, 1998, for delivery of cocaine, and then on Feb.
20, I was charged with another intent to deliver. They picked me up with
5.3 grams of cocaine and one-eighth ounce of marijuana."

Gallow was turned in by another informant.

He was sentenced to four years in prison and five years probation following
his parole. He spent the next 21/2 years in correctional facilities in
Portage, Dodge County and Prairie du Chien and, finally, St. Croix.

It was at the Prairie du Chien Juvenile Treatment Center where Gallow
assessed the choices he made.

"I was talking with my cellmate one night. He was from a good background,
but he had killed someone from a prominent Maryland family while driving
drunk," he said.

"We realized together that the only thing we had learned over the last few
years was how to be a drug dealer and a criminal."

Gallow went to a prison counselor and asked to enter drug treatment and
anger management programs. In July 1999, the counselor recommended him for
entry to the St. Croix boot camp facility, a military-style program that
emphasizes discipline as part of education and rehabilitation.

"In boot camp, they confront you with a lot of what you are - thief, liar,
manipulator, drug dealer. They pound that into you and that's what you are
and how you are looked at.

"It wasn't how I wanted to be looked at."

When he "graduated" the following March, people didn't look at him like
that anymore.

Changed after boot camp

Nicole Jacobs, who knew Gallow slightly before he went to prison, could see
a difference. She attended his graduation with an ex-boyfriend, whose
brother was the informant responsible for putting Gallow in prison.

Gallow and Nicole are engaged to be married a year from now.

"In the bad old days, he was totally, yeeeeesh, a real low life," said
Katrena Jacobs, Nicole's mother. But now, "Craig is a great guy."

How does she know?

"I just don't believe him carte blanche. I've watched his lifestyle and I
believe him. He gets up at 3 a.m. to go to work; he's paying his child
support; he's interesting to talk to; he's straight," Jacobs said.

After his release, Gallow went to a halfway house and attended counseling
programs.

"Then I moved out to my own place and patched things up with my parents,"
said Gallow, who says his parents did a good job of raising him.

"I had a positive upbringing. My parents did their job. I didn't hold up my
end of the deal."

His parents declined to be interviewed for this story.

Taylor called Gallow "extremely lucky" to have so many supportive people in
his life, including his probation officer, but especially Nicole and her
family.

"He got some lucky breaks when he got out of prison and hooked up with a
girl who was not involved in drugs and whose family was not. It has helped
him tremendously," he said.

"A lot of times people out of prison get into trouble again because they
hang out with their old friends. Craig has no old friends left because they
are still using."

That's part of the message Gallow delivers when he speaks to boot camp inmates.

"(The inmates) up there range from 15 years old, waived into adult court,
up to older guys. They want to know how do you stay off drugs and stay away
from drugs once you get out," Gallow said.

"I was in their same shoes. I knew what I wanted to happen, but I didn't
know how to get it. Now I can tell them you have to have one hell of a
support group."

Gallow's presentations to parents and other groups are done voluntary, not
as a condition of his parole, he and Taylor said.

"It means a lot to me. It's something you learn in recovery - that when you
get something you try to give it back. This is my way of giving back."

It's not over for him, however. He has one year left on parole and five
years probation after that.

"Craig has a lot of potential," Katrena Jacobs said. "He has much potential
to go back and mess up, but right now he's an incredible guy. He loves my
daughter and he loves his kids. The potential is endless."