DAD'S DRUG RUNNER

By 14, she was her father's main accomplice in wholesaling
methamphetamine. At 17, she helped send him to prison for decades.
Now, can she escape the life she learned as a child?

This is what can happen when a kid grows up thinking Iowa's meth
epidemic is everyday life:

She will see nothing unusual about trying meth at 12. Or quitting
school after eighth grade to help her dad sell it. Or driving alone in
a black-windowed Oldsmobile, at 14, to buy hundreds of doses from
smugglers and then deliver them to street dealers.

When the meth life seems normal, others will accept the girl's role
without question.

"Me and my dad, we were best friends," she will say later. "He always
saw it as teaching me. He always said I was just like him. People knew
I was my dad's other half."

She will consider it all routine, until federal agents bust them when
she is 17. Until prosecutors force her to testify against her father.
Until she can look back on her lost childhood through sober eyes.

The girl, Amanda Peterson of Sioux City, is a 20-year-old woman now.
She considers herself lucky to have been caught. No one is counting
how many other children are slipping past, unnoticed.

Addiction counselors and law officers who have heard Peterson's story
say it is dramatic, but not unique. During meth's decade-and-a-half
reign in Iowa, they have become accustomed to families that pass the
habit from generation to generation.

"We know the parents, we know the grandparents, and it's just a matter
of time before we get to know the kids," said Tom Duncan, the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration's leader in Sioux City.

Police have always struggled with families that are prone to crime.
But meth compounds the problem by devouring parents' ability to
consider consequences.

"You've been up for three days in a row. You're not thinking about
what's best for the kids," Duncan said. "You're not going to do the
right thing."

Look at the family snapshot of Amanda at 10, clad in a pink shirt and
sweet smile. Less than two years after that picture was taken, she was
regularly using meth. How long would she have remained a child if
everyone had done the right thing?

Her grandmother, Ruth Peterson, was not part of the meth scene Duncan
described. She remembers what her granddaughter was like before drugs.
A friendly kid. Chatty. Free-spirited. Strong-willed. "Amanda's always
been extremely bright, which makes her act older than she is," she
said.

That trait should help her now, the grandmother said. Lord knows how
it's hurt her in the past.

No one describes Amanda Peterson's early years as idyllic. She
remembers growing up in the working-class neighborhood of Greenville,
where she was the oldest of three half-siblings in a family plagued by
domestic violence and hard living. In grade school, she said, she was
simultaneously placed in "talented and gifted" classes and sent to a
counselor because of fights and emotional outbursts.

Until she was 11, she thought that another man, her mother's longtime
boyfriend, was her dad. But she'd heard hints that she actually was
the daughter of Randy Verbeski, an ex-convict who lived in her
neighborhood and had a son at her school.

Her mother, Cyndi Peterson, finally told Amanda the truth and took her
to Verbeski's house.

Amanda was thrilled by her father, who was a muscular, cool-looking
rebel. She started spending time at his place, where she and her
friends could drink Boone's Farm wine and hang out with him and his
buddies. A few months later, the fun subsided when he was arrested on
a drug charge and returned to an Iowa prison for three years.

While he was gone, his 12-year-old daughter was introduced to meth at
parties with teenagers and adults. She struggles now to describe the
power. "The first time you use it, it's a really, really big rush,"
she said. "Really big. You get spun."

She never forgot that rush, but she was never spun as hard again. She
kept trying. Following the classic pattern of addiction, she ate or
smoked more and more of the drug, gaining less and less effect.

Peterson would understand if you decide in the end that she is to
blame for her plight. "I knew what I was doing," she said.

She willingly recounts the facts behind the drug charges and assault
arrests that littered her teenage years.

She speaks more reluctantly about an earlier incident, for which court
papers listed her as "victim." Authorities referred to her then as
"Jane Doe," because the 1998 crime was so awful. And after all, she
was just a kid.

In the "defendant" space, the court papers list a man's name. Peterson
barely recognizes it, because she only knew him by his nickname, Satan.

Satan threw drug parties at his house, and he let kids participate.
When Peterson was wasted, he would have sex with her on a couch.

Police found out about it, and they arrested him on charges of sex
abuse and running a drug house.

Peterson didn't understand, at first, what was wrong. She thought he
loved her.

She was 13.

He was 32.

She sees the truth now. "He didn't love me," she said. "He was just a
damned pedophile."

He wound up pleading guilty and spending three years in prison. She
wound up in a psychiatric ward, briefly, with serious thoughts of
suicide. Then she was back in the world, full of anger and headed for
even more trouble.

Peterson saw what happened to other kids, who would do anything for
meth. She saw girls do things you wouldn't see in the filthiest porn
movies, she said. She figures the only reason she didn't turn to
prostitution was that she could get more drugs at home.

Professionals who treat meth addicts say this kind of thing is
rampant.

Dr. Rizwan Shah has gained national acclaim for helping more than 400
babies and young children who were exposed to meth. The Des Moines
pediatrician has seen the drug lead to other types of abuse, too.
Three-quarters of the children she treats for sexual abuse are growing
up around addiction. The problem is worse when the drug is meth or
cocaine, she said, because those stimulants inflate sexual urges while
smashing inhibitions. The drugs also make parents lose interest in
where their children are, or who might be preying on them.

Shah has never met Peterson, but she nodded knowingly at the details
of her story. "This girl is not an exception," the doctor said.

After Verbeski was released from prison in 1999, he moved in with
Peterson and her mother. They soon were taking meth together, Peterson
said.

For a while, Verbeski worked as a lineman for the phone company. Once
he lost that job, his daughter said, he resumed selling small amounts
of drugs.

They seemed destined to live a low-profile, gritty life. Then came
Halloween 2000, when bigger things suddenly became possible.

Verbeski and two friends were at a riverboat casino that night, when
they hit a million-dollar jackpot on the Wheel of Fortune
electronic-gambling machine, Amanda and Cyndi Peterson said.

Cyndi Peterson remembers Verbeski's joyful call from the casino. She
could hear slot machines chiming and people cheering in the background
as he told her of his stunning luck. She recalled hurling the phone
across her living room, turning to a friend and sharing a premonition.
"I said, 'This is going to be the worst thing that ever happened to
this family.' "

The jackpot has become something of a legend in Sioux City's meth
scene. Recollections vary about how much Verbeski netted, but Cyndi
and Amanda Peterson believe it was at least $200,000. He stored it in
a double-locked safe, his daughter said. He told her the combination
and gave her the only spare key, which she wore around her neck.

The windfall could have gone a long way toward bringing them
respectability. But Amanda and Cyndi Peterson say Verbeski chose a
twisted version of traditional money-management advice: Invest in what
you know.

Soon, he and his teenage daughter were distributing several pounds of
meth a week. They bought drugs smuggled from Mexico, then sold them to
small dealers in Sioux City, Amanda Peterson said. The meth came in
plastic-wrapped packages, often coated in red grease to keep police
dogs from picking up the powerful chemical odor.

Peterson said she routinely went on these errands alone, because her
father figured that if she was caught, the authorities would go easy
on her.

She often got in fights at school or on the street, and she was
charged with assault several times. She remembers a typical incident,
after a young man nearly drove into her car in a parking lot. When he
stopped, she ran to his car, grabbed him through the window and
pounded her fist into his face until she could see a tooth coming
through his smashed lip. Now, she doesn't understand where such rage
came from.

Peterson said her parents signed her out of class at the beginning of
ninth grade, saying they intended to "home-school" her. For a few
months, she filled out mail-in tests, which she said were a breeze to
pass. Then the family moved to a different house, and she stopped
doing any schoolwork. Instead, she spent her time watching over her
younger half-siblings and helping her father build their business.

School district officials are supposed to ensure that home-schooled
students are learning their lessons. But a Sioux City school
administrator acknowledged that families can abuse the rules to evade
truancy laws.

Maggie Wendell, who oversees the district's home-schooling program,
remembers Peterson as a bright but troubled teenager. Wendell said she
seemed to do well for a few months after leaving school. "All of a
sudden, the family disappeared," she said, "and I never heard from her
again."

Peterson recalls good times, when she, her parents and their younger
kids lived in decent rental homes. Although she's never had a driver's
license, she drove fast cars with darkened windows. She had cash for
clothes and trips, and her father often bought gifts for friends. But
the money washed away, in bad deals, impulse purchases - and the meth
they were using for themselves.

They struggled to keep going. At one point, court records show,
Verbeski used a computer to make counterfeit money. Then he sent
Amanda and another woman to a smuggler's house, where they tried in
vain to use the phony bills to buy $1,800 worth of drugs.

Peterson could no longer get high unless she dissolved meth in liquid
and used a needle to inject it into her veins. That is the sign of a
hard-core junkie, she said, and it scared even her father.

She was busted a few times for minor offenses, including driving
without a license. Police knew what she was up to, she recalled. They
warned her that if she didn't stop helping her father, she would go
down with him.

Verbeski told her that he felt the noose tightening.

"He would say, 'One day, they're going to come take me to prison,' "
she said. "He knew it was coming."

She was 17 when it came. The police caught her and her boyfriend with
meth in a hotel room in the spring of 2002. They coaxed her into
spilling everything she knew. She remembers one of them telling her
that she shouldn't worry, that none of this was her fault. She would
later contend that the videotaped interrogation was improper because
she'd been too high to understand what was happening. The argument
failed.

She repeated the story before a grand jury, which indicted her father.
Verbeski considered the strength of the evidence against him, then
pleaded guilty to federal charges of distributing meth and using a
minor to help him do it. A judge ordered him locked up for 22 years
without chance for parole.

In return for her help, prosecutors let Peterson plead guilty to a
state drug charge, under which she'd be eligible for parole. She says
they told her that if they ever caught her returning to the meth life,
they would press for the kind of sentence her father received.

Prosecutors won't comment on the case. Peterson's lawyer, Patrick
Parry, said she had no attorney when she made the confession and the
deal. Parry said he would have been powerless to help her if the
government had decided to send her away for 10 years without parole.
"She's very, very lucky it didn't go that way," he said.

Peterson was sent to the state women's penitentiary at Mitchellville,
where she began 10 months in an intense addiction-treatment program.
In an interview there, she spoke without emotion about her future. She
only choked up while wondering whether her father would forgive her.
"I'm pretty sure he'll die in prison," she said. "And it feels like I
killed him."

After considering it for nearly a year, Randy Verbeski decided against
granting an interview for this article.

But he reflected on his life in a letter from the "Hot House," the
century-old federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan.

"It's crazy, that driving 100 miles with a pound of dope and a pistol
in my car was a normal, frequent occurrence to me," he wrote. "Having
somebody come to my house to deliver pounds of meth was a daily thing.
And I never saw it as dangerous, stupid or even abnormal.

"Add to that the fact that my children were there and knew what was
going on, and therefore came to believe it was 'normal,' " he wrote.
"A far cry from 'Leave it to Beaver.' Can you imagine that episode?
'Hey, Beav, Dad just scored five pounds of dope from a Mexican guy.
Think he'll give us money for a soda?' 'Gee, I don't know, Wally. He
had his gun out and was yelling - maybe we could ask later.' "

He added that he was not the only one to blame for Amanda's plight. He
pointed out that she started taking meth while he was serving time in
a state prison. And, he said, her mother has unfairly ducked
responsibility.

Cyndi Peterson, who has gone through treatment, acknowledges that she
also was a meth addict. She was arrested on a separate drug charge,
but she wasn't charged with helping them distribute drugs. She says
that Verbeski was an enormous, violent man, and that she was too
afraid to stop him from using their daughter as an accomplice. Amanda
backs her up.

Verbeski, 43, wrote that he hopes their daughter succeeds in life.
"She's a very good kid and smart beyond her years. She's got charisma,
and that don't come from any place but destiny. I pray her destiny is
to be great in ways I never have been."

So far, Peterson's destiny has taken an abrupt shift from her
father's. The Iowa Parole Board released her from prison last April,
based on support from her counselors at Mitchellville. She's young,
they said, and she's taken the treatment to heart.

Since then, authorities have loosened her bindings bit by bit. Last
fall, they let her leave a halfway house and move into her mother's
small rental home. This month, they took off an ankle bracelet they'd
used to enforce her curfew. Urine tests, which had been taken weekly
to check for drugs, now will be less frequent.

Peterson is looking into financial aid so she can take
community-college courses. It's tough to qualify if you're a convicted
felon, but she's optimistic.

Meanwhile, she's covering 10-hour shifts as a waitress, and she's
looking for a second job.

She remembers mocking people who worked for a living. Now she's one of
them. "Back then, we might have had a whole lot of money, but it was
nothing," she said. "It was just dope money, you know what I mean?
Now, it's like, 'Wow, I worked my butt off for this check. It's not
much, but it's mine.' "

She sees a mental health counselor weekly. She attends Narcotics
Anonymous meetings - sometimes with her mother, who has managed to
stay straight and hold two jobs. People at the meetings talk about
being "in recovery." The term fails to describe what Peterson's
attempting. She has few memories of a normal existence she might
recover. "What am I going to take from where I was or what I went
through that I can use to get anywhere in life?" she said.

As money allows, she's having her amateur, blue tattoos covered with
more feminine, colorful designs. She plans to have a ring tattooed
around the middle finger of her left hand. It will hide the little "V"
she etched there with a needle and ink to mark herself as Verbeski's
daughter.

She hasn't decided what she wants to do in the long run. Maybe she'll
become a motorcycle mechanic. Maybe she'll become an addiction
counselor. Who knows?

The police know who she is and what she's done. If she slips back into
the life she learned as a child, they would hear about it right away.
She expects she would be locked up for decades. She says she would
deserve it. But she swears it won't happen.

The odds seem stacked against her, but Bud Lewis predicts Peterson
will make it.

Lewis will never forget the night he met her, nearly a decade ago. She
was a frightened little girl, knocking on his front door in the middle
of the night, asking to be let in. She was living just down the
street, and she said she was afraid to go home. She'd heard that
Lewis, who was a counselor at a social services agency, was a safe
person.

He took her in that night, and he worked with her occasionally in the
next few years. He tried to help her calm her rage. But he couldn't
protect her from the forces surrounding her. "Kids aren't born bad,"
he said. "They are what they learn."

The last he'd heard, she'd been sent to prison. He didn't know what
became of her. Then, a few weeks ago, he stopped to eat at a
neighborhood pizza joint. He looked up at his waitress, a bright-eyed,
grown woman, and recognized her as the little girl from his doorstep.

He hugged her and told her she looked fantastic. She told him
everything, including her view that her arrest and imprisonment saved
her life.

Lewis believes every bit of her story - the meth use, the sex abuse,
the grand jury testimony, all of it. He has seen so many young lives
shattered, both in his old job as a Sioux City counselor and in his
current job as an alternative-school teacher in nearby Nebraska.

Peterson has always struck him as a remarkably intelligent, strong
person. He was unsurprised to hear that she passed a high school
equivalency exam without cracking a book, even though she'd skipped
virtually all of high school. He expects she'll make the most of the
first real chance she's ever been given. She's smart enough to see
what's wrong and what she needs to do about it, he said. She's
admitted it to herself, he said, and she has the rare courage to talk
about it publicly.

"And she knows that if she messes up, she's going to have to pay a
higher price than she can afford."

The best outcome would be that she slips quietly into everyday life -
the real kind. The best news would be that you'd never read about.