BABYFACE BUST TURNS TEEN-AGER AROUND

The teen will serve 6 weekends in jail The former Northside High student,
busted in Operation Babyface, has stayed clean of drugs for four months.
For one Northside High School student, rock-bottom came last summer.

His grades had gone from As to Fs. He had pulled back from his
extracurricular activities and stopped talking to his parents. He had lost
weight, grown his hair, even dressed differently. Life had become all about
the drug, the next high, the next buzz he could get.

Then he sold drugs to an undercover police officer. And his life changed.

Charged on eight counts of selling drugs and imitation drugs, the
17-year-old faced more charges than any other of the students charged during
last year's police operation that placed an undercover Roanoke County
officer at the high school to catch drug dealers. The prosecution even tried
to get the teen- ager charged as an adult.

Instead of fighting the system, the teen went along with it. He followed the
rules, went to counseling and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Expelled from
high school, he enrolled in Virginia Western Community College to work
toward his equivalency diploma. He started volunteering at RAM House and
plans to get trained to answer phones for a teen help line.

And for more than four months, he's been clean.

So when it came time for the teen to be sentenced Thursday, Judge Philip
Trompeter recognized the efforts the teen has made to help himself and
sentenced him to six weekends in jail. Trompeter told the young man he hopes
for "glorious" things from him.

"I'm very, very proud of you for what you've done," Trompeter told the teen,
who, although 18 now, isn't being named because he was 17 when he was
charged. "I hope the six weekends in jail will be all the jail time you ever
serve. I hope you'll be a great success."

At his trial in December, the teen told Trompeter that the incident had been
the "biggest wake-up call" he ever imagined. He echoed those sentiments
Thursday, assuring Trompeter that he was on the right track and didn't
intend to ever get mixed up in drugs again.

Once before, he went through a substance abuse program and did what he had
to do to beat the system. This time, he's adopted a different mentality, he
said.

"This time I'm doing the right thing," he testified in Roanoke County
Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. "There's a difference between where
it's external motivation and internal motivation. ... If I make it through a
day clean, I'm proving something to myself."

County police Officer K.L. Moulton spent 10 months at Northside High School
and then at William Byrd High School for summer school during what was
dubbed Operation Babyface. Posing as a junior, she did homework, took tests
and participated in school activities - and she also befriended those mixed
up with drugs. In the end, nine students were charged with selling drugs,
while the names of 50 more were submitted to the school's substance abuse
counseling program. After Thursday's hearing, the teen's parents said that
although the whole incident has been a tough ordeal for their family, they
appreciated Moulton's work. The more she thinks about it, the teen's mother
said, the more she thinks what happened was a godsend.

"She was doing her job," his father said. "In the end, she helped him and
she helped this family."

The teen told Trompeter that although he had been doing drugs for a while,
he never sold any until he met the girl who would turn out to be a police
officer. He struggled with selling, he testified, but finally caved in and
helped her get drugs.

"I was thinking about how I'd get my next high and this girl was waving
money in my face," he said. "Even though it obviously looks like I'm a drug
dealer - how could it not? - I wasn't going around offering people drugs. I
got drugs for her and I got drugs for me."

The teen sold Moulton marijuana, Ecstasy and prescription drugs as well as
imitation drugs. He faced eight charges in Roanoke County and Roanoke. The
city charges resulted from when he supplied the officer with some of the
drugs in the parking lot of the Melrose Avenue Pizza Hut where he works as a
cook.

Thursday, a Pizza Hut manager testified on behalf of the teen, who he called
one of his best employees.

Trompeter told the teen he wants him to continue working, continue in school
and continue with his counseling. He also ordered the teen to serve 100
hours of community service and pay restitution for the several hundred
dollars in county money used to purchase the drugs. The remainder of the
total 12-month jail sentence Trompeter handed down will hang over the teen's
head.

After the hearing, Moulton said she was glad to hear about the teen trying
to turn his life around.

"That makes me happy," she said. "If he was destined for a life of trouble,
I'm glad he got caught."

A second teen-ager charged with selling imitation methamphetamine in the
Operation Babyface case received a suspended commitment to the Department of
Juvenile Justice on Thursday. Trompeter told the 17-year-old, who has
already served three weeks in juvenile detention for testing positive for
marijuana at his trial, that he better stay out of trouble.

That teen, who is also working toward his GED, must also continue counseling
and treatment.