A LOAD OF TROUBLE

Man Claims The Car He Bought At Government Auction Made A Wreck Of His Life
With A Surprise Cargo: Drugs

TIJUANA - Jose Aguado Cervantes needed a bigger car.

The soft-spoken Mexican retiree runs a small business out of his modest
duplex just south of the Otay border crossing. He saw an ad for the U.S.
Marshals' auction of vehicles confiscated from smugglers and headed to San
Diego hoping to get a good price on a used station wagon.

But Cervantes, 68, a fastidious father of five and grandfather of six, got
more than he bargained for.

The silver 1987 Buick Century wagon Cervantes bought in July 1999 turned
out, he says, to have a hidden feature, a feature that has changed his life.

"It was all like a nightmare that I wanted to wake up from. Everything I
had worked for was crumbling down right before my eyes," said Cervantes
through an interpreter.

"I was paying for somebody else's mistake. This was such a horrible
experience that every night I pray nobody else goes through the same thing
I did."

Even in the comfort of the tidy, three-bedroom home he shares with his
wife, Aurora, Cervantes cannot shake what he describes as a months-long
Orwellian ordeal at the hands of U.S. authorities. He said it left him
severely depressed and financially devastated.

The Buick he bought for $1,100 turned out to have secret compartments in
the bumpers that Cervantes says he didn't know about and U.S. officials
admit they didn't check for.

After buying the car four years ago this month, Cervantes says he went back
and forth across the border in the Buick 10 times without incident.

Then on Oct. 22, 1999, he says he went to the Otay crossing to take the
passport his grandson had forgotten as he headed north to San Diego that
morning on a school field trip to Balboa Park.

Stuck in the northbound line, Cervantes was about to turn around to go home
when a drug-sniffing dog zeroed in on his Buick.

The car was impounded. Cervantes was arrested and handcuffed.

"They refused to answer my questions," he said. "I was very upset, very
confused. I was so afraid and nervous my mouth went dry."

They took Cervantes to a small room. Within moments, a man he understood to
be "the boss" came in and said 119 pounds of marijuana was discovered in
compartments welded beneath the Buick's bumpers.

Cervantes says he was shocked by the revelation.

"Who were you going to deliver this to?" he recalls the chief agent asking.

"I told him I knew nothing about any marijuana, and that I had bought the
car at the marshals' auction," said Cervantes. "But they did not believe me."

In his wallet, Cervantes says, he had about 3,200 pesos (roughly $300) and
$150 in cash. "They insisted this was payment for smuggling drugs."

Cervantes says he tried to explain that he bought and sold oil filters and
other automotive products wholesale on both sides of the border and often
carried a significant amount of cash. His inquisitors pressed on.

"The inspector said, 'You hid the marijuana very well.' "

Cervantes says he has never been in trouble with the law in either Mexico
nor the United States; not so much as a traffic ticket.

"They made no attempt, though, to check my record. I had no record. But now
I do."

Separation Cervantes' cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in
downtown San Diego was about 10 by 20 feet with two small windows, a bunk
bed and a bare mattress on the floor, where Cervantes slept. There was no
TV or radio.

"I was in there with an alien smuggler and a drug smuggler," Cervantes
said. "Being with these people day and night terrified me to the point of
not being able to sleep; I did not know if they would hurt me.

"I slept on the mattress on the floor for a month and then was moved to
another cell, which I shared with one other person."

The day of her husband's arrest, Aurora had no idea what had happened to
him. "I thought maybe he had gone along on the school trip," she said.

By late afternoon, worry got the better of her. She went to the border and
was told her husband had been arrested. It was Friday and Aurora was told
to come back the following week.

Nearly a week passed before she was able to visit her husband, Aurora said.
She was shocked at his appearance.

Jose, she says, was exhausted and overcome with worry and depression. A
trim man with smooth skin and studious demeanor, Cervantes suffers from
high blood pressure and diabetes, conditions aggravated by his
imprisonment, according to his wife.

"When I visited, I tried to be strong. I was very sad, but I tried to smile
because I did not want to worry him more," she said.

A criminal defense attorney, Sylvia Baiz, was appointed to represent Cervantes.

But Aurora's most pressing concern was to maintain the family business.
Cervantes, who had retired as a personnel manager at a Tijuana company,
says he and Aurora supplemented a small pension with their little wholesale
operation.

"Before I was detained, we had a profit of about $20,000 pesos per month
(about $2,000)," Cervantes said. But he was the principal salesman.

Aurora says she and her daughter, Ana Lilia, tried to keep the family
business going, but it suffered greatly in Cervantes' absence.

"It was very sad here when my father was in jail," said Ana Lilia, seated
on an overstuffed chair alongside the well-worn couch in the family's dark,
cool living room.

"We tried to keep working, keep the business going, but we were hurting a
lot and felt powerless."

Cervantes says his once-growing sales fell by about two-thirds during his
time in jail and have not recovered.

Life behind bars, he says, was a relentless combination of boredom and fear.

"I missed being with my wife, my sons and daughter, my daughters-in-law,
neighbors and customers," said Cervantes, who met and married Aurora 43
years ago when they were both university students in Mexico City.

The couple said their lives revolve around family.

Each of their four sons and daughter has graduated from college or
technical school in Mexico. Family snapshots rotate endlessly on the
screen-saver of Cervantes' personal computer in a tiny bedroom he has
converted to his office.

"I missed my daily walks with my wife and daughter; I missed my couch, my
favorite meals, the TV, going to church, Sunday family reunions," Cervantes
said.

"They took not only my freedom, but also my life."

Fighting back Christmas and New Year's came and went.

"In January," Aurora said, "they moved my husband to a prison in El Centro.
It took all day to get there by bus."

Desperate to find a way to clear her husband, Aurora says she visited the
Tijuana mechanic to whom they had taken the Buick right after buying it.
The mechanic had replaced the front tires, fixed the radio and made other
repairs.

But he told the couple he could not repair a faulty running light - there
was a plate welded beneath the bumper, preventing him from getting at the
lights.

Cervantes said he doesn't know much about cars and it did not occur to him
to question why there would be a steel plate welded beneath the Buick's bumper.

In any case, Aurora said she was certain "the mechanic would remember us
and the car because I had made a point to tell him I was impressed with how
clean his shop was."

The mechanic remembered.

"It was powerful testimony that I was telling the truth," Cervantes said.
"I was excited to go to trial because I knew a jury would believe me."

But on Feb. 9, 2000, with Cervantes' trial a week away, U.S. prosecutors
dropped all charges.