'YOU JUST SEE DOLLAR SIGNS'

Freedom Lost: Married Father Serving Time For Smuggling Dope

It was an offer the married father should have refused.

Take your truck, cross the border, pick something up and bring it
back. You won't get caught, but you will get paid -- tens of thousands
of dollars.

Police say such offers are turning more and more B.C. truckers into
international drug mules as organized crime looks to the road to
transport drugs across the border.

Trucker Bob Smith (not his real name) drove his rig to the U.S., fully
expecting to drive it back with something illegal inside. Smith says
he never knew exactly what his cargo was until it was loaded.

Hours later, Canadian authorities discovered a large quantity of
cocaine in his vehicle and Smith, a first-time offender with no
criminal record, was under arrest, charged with importing cocaine and
possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

Today, the thirty-something Smith is serving his sentence in a B.C.
jail. He agreed to speak to The Province in the hope his story might
prevent other truckers from falling into the same trap he did.

Smith did not want his name or specific details of his case revealed
because he fears retribution both in jail and out, and he's worried
about the impact on his family.

"Until you've been here [in jail], you don't understand what loss of
freedom means," he says, his arms crossed over his chest. "I sure wish
I'd said no."

He says it was money that turned him from a normal, everyday guy into
an international drug mule and now a prisoner.

"Everybody out there at one point or another has financial problems.
You look for ways to get out of that trouble," he says. "You just see
the dollar signs."

The offer came via an acquaintance who knew Smith was having financial
problems.

"I know how we can get you out of this," his acquaintance said over a
casual beer in a pub.

Smith now suspects part of the reason he was approached was "probably
because I'm easygoing, friendly, naive, gullible, stupid,
approachable, the list goes down.

"You're basically told that even if you do get caught, you'll get a
slap on the wrist. They don't want anybody to think there's a
possibility of getting caught.

"It was a pretty quick decision. If I'd taken time to think of the
consequences, I wouldn't have done it. Once you say yes, it's hard to
get out of it."

Smith was on the road within days of the initial meeting. He's made
countless trips to the U.S. and across Canada in his years as a
trucker, but this haul, he claims, was his first with illegal cargo.

Heading north from the pickup point and knowing what was packed in the
truck, Smith says he felt cornered.

"What are your options? Say, 'Screw you, get it out of the truck?' You
can't phone the police. You're in the States and they're not going to
care," he said. Dropping the trailer and leaving it all behind was
impossible because the drugs and all the evidence still point to the
driver as the culprit. And then there's the issue of informing the
criminals who own the contraband their precious cargo has been abandoned.

Smith remembers little about the first phone call to his wife from
custody. He still didn't have a clear idea what would happen to him.

"I do remember my wife's face in court, the first time I saw her after
I was arrested," he said. That look, he said, spoke of not just anger,
but of embarrassment, confusion, fear and, ultimately, the loneliness
of a lost life together.

Smith lost the drug shipment and the promised payout and the wages he
would have earned if he'd not been in jail. He feels tremendous guilt
for exposing his family to the shame of his crime and the financial
burden they now bear. He's lost his dog. Most importantly, he's lost
the ability to be a full-time father to his child, to mark the
milestones in the little one's life, to be the one the child runs to
in times of need.

Smith's advice for other truckers who find themselves tempted to make
the same mistake is simple: "Say no. Just flat out say no. Don't even
think about it."