A 'PERFECT VICTIM' STUCK IN CHILEAN JAIL

Congressman Tries To Help A Grandmother Who Backers Say Was Duped In A $10m
Drug Scheme

CATSKILL -- In November 2000, Dorothy Platania left for Chile on a simple
trip with her friend to visit his family.

The Catskill widow had known the young man for years. She saw him as a son
and went so far as to say she trusted him with her life.

Today, her friends and family are blaming that trust for leaving Platania
in a Chilean jail, charged with smuggling $10 million worth of heroin in
the secret compartment of a suitcase. They claim the 61-year-old
grandmother and retired registered nurse was duped by a man whose family
has alleged ties to a Colombian drug cartel.

"Anyone who knows her knows she's gullible,'' said the Rev. Victor Nelson,
pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Cairo, Greene County, where
Platania had been a member for seven years. His 500 members have donated
$4,000 to Platania's defense fund.

Now, U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, a Clifton Park Republican, is trying to help.
He has assigned a caseworker to Platania -- though officials acknowledge
they may have little say in how a foreign country's criminal court system
works.

Platania's troubles began Nov. 18, 2000, when Chilean authorities
reportedly surrounded her at the airport in Santiago as she prepared to
return home.

Saying they were following a tip, authorities took her to an interrogation
room, searched her luggage and allegedly found 3.5 kilos of heroin,
according to what has been told to Platania's family and friends. She was
taken to jail, where she still awaits trial.

Platania doesn't speak Spanish, and she suffers from diabetes and
arthritis. But it wasn't until recently, when Sweeney's office stepped in,
that a U.S. Embassy official promised to find a private physician for her
and make sure she received proper medication.

Her fate lays in the hands of a notoriously tough Chilean judge, who
defense attorneys and Lutheran missionaries in Chile fear may throw
Platania in jail for almost 20 years.

"This is a crazy situation,'' said Frank Mulhern, who until 1997 had been
Platania's executive director at Anderson School, Dutchess County, where
she had been a nurse for more than 10 years. Mulhern is now a youth and
family services director in the Bronx, but joined Platania's cause a year
ago by helping to raise money and round up friends to send letters of support.

"This woman is totally victimized and I can't believe it's gone on this
long, without her even getting a trial,'' Mulhern said. "I know Dottie as a
person who cared for kids with disabilities, and she was stupendous. When
you come to see people in that light, you get to know their character. She
had this magic to connect with these kids. Yet, she was the perfect victim,
one that could be totally blind to what people were doing to her.''

Platania's friends say she was cheated out of her $30,000 life savings by
her young friend, trusting the man so much she came to an impasse with her
seven children when they said he could not be trusted.

The two met a decade ago when they were both nurses for disabled youth at
Anderson School. But after her husband's death in 1998, their friendship
grew closer. Her family said they knew the young man only as "Carlos.''

"This man took her for a ride after her husband died,'' Nelson said of
Carlos. "She's a terribly nice, quiet lady. As for him, we don't know where
he is.''

Platania's family is reluctant to be in the public light. A close family
member said many of them fear for their safety, considering Platania's
tangle with a major drug cartel.

Since their mother's arrest, some of her children have reconciled with her
via written letters. They've heard stories of their mother facing one of
her young friend's brothers in a South American courtroom where he faced
trial, and at least one of the South American family members apologizing
publicly for what they have put her through.

"But she is a person without support and without money down there,'' one of
Platania's immediate family members said. Many of them are from Putnam and
Westchester counties. "She wants to get back. Her letters talk about
reconciling with her children and wanting to do things with her
grandchildren. . . . They don't treat prisoners down there very nice . . .
and this guy is walking around free. He obviously knew what he was doing to
get away.''