SPEED'S NOSE FOR COCAINE NABS TRAFFICKERS AT BORDER

Detector dog Speed earned his superhero name this month after sniffing out
two loads of cocaine during a single weekend at the Pacific Highway border
crossing.

The sturdy eight-year-old black lab with a thumping tail found more than 66
kilograms of the drug hidden in two different vehicles trying to cross into
Canada. Customs officers uncovered a third cache of nearly 73 kg of the
drug hidden in a delivery truck on June 2.

"I think he's a great dog. He's part of the team," Speed's proud handler,
customs Insp. Mike Hepner, said yesterday.

Hepner said Speed, whose usual reward for tracking drugs is a few minutes
of play time with a red rubber Kong, was treated to a barbecued steak for
his weekend's work.

"He gave me a pretty good week," said Hepner, who's worked with Speed since
he was a puppy.

The Canada Border Services Agency displayed Speed's drug-sniffing talents
during a news conference yesterday to announce the cocaine seizures.

The three separate vehicle searches netted 139 kg of cocaine -- more than
the amount seized at the Pacific Highway crossing in all of 2003. Last
year, officers confiscated 110 kg at the border crossing.

Doug Clarke, the agency's chief of traffic operations at the Pacific
Highway and Douglas border crossings, said the seized 123 plastic-wrapped
bricks of cocaine means 1.4 million individual doses of the drug were kept
off the street.

With a street price of $10 per dose, the seized drugs would have been worth
$14 million.

"We look at this as an organized-crime issue," said Const. Alex Borden,
spokesman for the RCMP's border integrity program. "Somebody obviously
packed this stuff up to ship it across the border."

On June 2, customs officers searched a commercial truck carrying a load of
wine from Berkeley, Calif., after noticing discrepancies in the paperwork.
They found 72.9 kg of cocaine hidden behind pallets of boxed wine.

On June 11, a minivan driver set off suspicions, so customs officers called
Speed to sniff around.

"He got crazy, really excited about a duffel bag," Hepner said. "We were
joking that it was probably full of coke, and then we unzipped it." Inside,
officers found 28.3 kilograms of the drug.

In the early hours of June 14, Speed was called to search an SUV and
scratched a hole in the upholstery of the back seat, but Hefner said
nothing was visible. Officers searched further and found 37.8 kg of cocaine
stashed in hidden compartments in the floor and side panels of the SUV.

"If I see my dog indicate, I believe him," said Hefner. "He scratched a
pretty good hole in that car."

Aracely Dayana Corea, 30, of Vancouver, and Yader Manuel Corea Martinez,
21, of Burnaby face drug-importing and trafficking charges in the June 11
seizure.

Aguilar Walther Orellana, 24, of Vancouver, and Tyrone Justin Lafrenier,
25, of Port Coquitlam face similar charges in the June 14 seizure.

Police are still investigating the case involving the wine delivery truck.