FOR NEW DEA BOSS, TAMPA ASSIGNMENT IS THE BRASS RING

TAMPA - As a boy, Dominic Albanese spent his summers traveling the
Ohio carnival circuit with his family, handing out prizes to lucky
game players, gorging on corn dogs and cotton candy, and ending every
season at the Circleville Pumpkin Show.

As a man, Albanese joined the Drug Enforcement Administration and
chased drug lords across the sea, crawled through steamy South
American rain forests, dined on military rations and blew up cocaine
labs.

Albanese loved the travel and learning, but he always knew Tampa was
home.

Now, at 47, Albanese is the city's new top DEA official, the assistant
special agent in charge of the local office. Although he can't be sure
the agency will keep him here, Albanese hopes to stay at least long
enough for his youngest child to finish high school.

Albanese and his wife, Tami, a DEA analyst, have three children:
Dominic Jr., 21, Casey, 16, and Ashley, 14.

Even if Albanese has to move, he plans to retire in
Tampa.

``When I left Tampa the first time 20 years ago, my fingernail marks
were in the driveway,'' he said. ``I didn't want to leave.''

Albanese still pals around with his high school friends. One of them,
Thomas A. Hobson, an accountant who played football with Albanese at
Chamberlain High School, said they both dreamed of being FBI agents.

``We both had the same goal in mind,'' Hobson said. ``We were both
athletes and just thought that was kind of a cool thing.''

Carnival Was An Education

Albanese joined the Tampa Police Department in 1978 after graduating
from the University of South Florida.

For lawyer Peter Kelly, the idea of his high school friend as an
officer of the law took some getting used to.

``It took me awhile to get over seeing Dominic in a city police
uniform because of all the mischief we'd get into,'' Kelly said. He
wouldn't spill the details.

Now, Kelly said, he think's Albanese is perfectly suited to law
enforcement.

``He gets along with people. I think he has a real passion for what he
does.''

Hobson went with Albanese and his family on the carnival circuit for
two summers and says the experience was educational.

``It was real life,'' Hobson said. ``We were college kids, coming from
upper-middle-class families, yet we were looked at as trash, ... as
carnies.''

Kelly said the Albanese family was ``well-respected in the carnival
community.'' He thinks the life helped make Albanese a good cop.
``He's not afraid of facing any situation that exists out there, and I
think part of it he learned as a carny,'' Kelly said.

Albanese said his 81-year-old father still works at his carnival
concessions, as do Albanese's three siblings. He said his father
taught him the value of every human being.

``My dad would give you the shirt off his back,'' Albanese said. ``He
took people in who were down on their luck. ... I learned at an early
age there's good in everybody.

``There's not a single bit of education that was better than my
carnival education,'' said Albanese, who has a master's degree from
Nova University in Fort Lauderdale. ``I saw everything. ... People
don't understand carnies.''

His schooling continued on the streets of Tampa. Albanese called his
five years as a city patrolman, responding to slayings, prostitution
and neighborhood spats, ``a five-year education in people, the
process, and testifying, and court and truth and honor.''

That five years, Albanese said, taught him a lesson.

``I learned that people are weird,'' he said.

``I grew up respecting the uniform and the badge,'' Albanese said. But
others have a different view. ``When you say, `Please, sir, stand over
there,' they don't,'' he said with amazement.

When Albanese responded to a call at the DEA's former Twiggs Street
office, officials there invited him to apply for a job.

He became an agent in 1983 and soon left Tampa to chase cocaine
dealers and marijuana growers in Kentucky, and then on to Miami in the
mid- 1980s, a time he described as ``the cocaine cowboy days.''

Cocaine practically swirled in the ocean breeze as drug lords flaunted
flashy cars and high living.

``If you can't make a case in Miami, you've got to quit that job,''
Albanese said.

Albanese investigated Leonel Martinez, a developer so prominent he had
a day declared in his honor and a street named after him. Martinez
pleaded guilty in 1990 to drug charges, admitting he imported
thousands of pounds of marijuana and 1,500 kilograms of cocaine.

Albanese said a city official later sent him the sign from the street
named after Martinez with a note saying they would be more careful
about picking street names.

Helped Shape Snowcap In Peru

In 1992, Albanese transferred to Lima, Peru, where he helped train
police in drug investigations. He also helped U.S. investigators
assigned to the country as part of Operation Snowcap, aimed at
eradicating cocaine production.

As part of this investigation, Albanese went into the jungle to help
destroy cocaine laboratories.

Once, he said, an informant walked into the DEA office and said he
arranged for planes to pick up cocaine base, or unrefined cocaine, in
Peru and fly it to Colombia for processing. He offered to arrange a 4-
ton shipment the authorities could intercept.

After determining the informant was legitimate, American investigators
worked with Peruvian police. On a prearranged day, they flew a
helicopter to a clearing in the jungle.

As they landed, five or six white pickup trucks packed with cocaine
base drove into the clearing, Albanese said.

As soon as the helicopter door opened and the drug dealers saw the
military uniforms and police insignia, the shooting started, Albanese
said.

No one was seriously hurt, but about half the drug dealers got away,
Albanese said. Still, the authorities arrested several men and seized
4,000 pounds of cocaine base. At the time, it was the biggest seizure
in the history of Peru.

Living in Peru with his family posed other challenges, Albanese said.
For instance, a terrorist group was known for bombing Pizza Hut
restaurants. Albanese and his children still had their weekly pizza
nights. ``You couldn't just stop your life,'' he said.

He said they would drive up, he would run into the restaurant and
place his order, and then drive away, waiting up the street for the
pizza to be prepared. Then he would pull up to the restaurant, run in
and get his pizza.

Albanese left Peru in 1994 and made his way up the promotion ladder as
he was transferred to various posts in Florida and Washington.

He knows that some critics see the DEA's work as a Band- Aid, failing
to stop the flow of drugs into and around the United States. But ``if
we did nothing, just think how bad it would be,'' he said. ``We're
working hard every day. We're making a dent. If we did nothing, it
would just be chaos.''