GRANDMOTHER TRIED TO HELP OTHERS WITH POT

For five years, Sherrie D. Wilkie sold some of the best marijuana in
Elmira. She had hashish and exotic pot from Hawaii and Amsterdam. Her drugs
were potent and cheap. One variety was so powerful, she labeled it "Oh My God!"

Sherrie Wilkie But Wilkie isn't your typical drug dealer. She's a
65-year-old single grandmother who claims she doesn't deal drugs for profit
but to help those who are ill and in pain.

That's why Wilkie organized a medical marijuana buyers' club about four
years ago. Her customers included herself and people with cancer, AIDS,
chronic back pain and other ailments.

Regardless of whether she sold it for medical use or not, possession and
sale of marijuana is illegal in New York. That's why police raided her
Southside apartment Dec. 5 and confiscated nearly three pounds of
marijuana, 40 grams of hashish and about $1,000 in cash.

Wilkie was charged with second-degree criminal possession of marijuana. She
remains free under the supervision of the Chemung County Project for Bail.

Her arrest unfolds a story of a woman sincerely trying to help others and
herself, say those who know her well.

She will readily talk to the media about the drug she refers to as "my
medicine." She smokes about a half-ounce a week, to help with her
arthritis, high blood pressure and other medical problems.

She doesn't believe pot should be illegal for medical use and says she will
stand by her convictions.

But a criminal conviction on her felony charge could land her in prison,
although it's not likely, considering she has no arrest record.

Religion fits into woman's penchant for pot Marijuana is a way of life for
Wilkie. In addition to smoking it for pain relief, Wilkie gets high when
she meditates to get in touch with her "spiritual side." She says it's part
of the beliefs of her "Native American-like religion" that perceives God as
nature. She says she's one-quarter Indian and believes God put marijuana on
Earth for its healing powers.

She loves to spend time in the woods, where she communes with nature and
her god, says Beverly Kenney, of Clayton, Calif., who lives with Wilkie's
45-year-old son, Randy.

"She'll come back from a walk in the woods and say that 'Father Earth
talked to her,' and she'll write about what he said," Kenney said.

Wilkie sees herself as a teacher and spiritual guide, especially regarding
her knowledge of herbs.

She obtained that knowledge from talking with other marijuana users,
experimenting with pot, doing research on the Internet and reading books
like "The Marijuana Medical Handbook" and "Hemp for Health."

While she may be knowledgeable about the use of herbs, she doesn't always
use the best judgment in dispensing those plants, Kenney said.

Wilkie's biggest problem, Kenney said, is that she trusts people too much.

"She truly trusts people and wants to help them," Kenney said. "But I never
thought she questioned the people she sold to enough about why they needed
the drug."

Wilkie says she has never sold to anyone younger than 18 or who didn't have
a medical need for the drug. She said she prefers club members have written
evidence, such a letter from a doctor to the Social Security
Administration, for example, saying that the member suffers from a specific
ailment.

But other times, Wilkie relies on the word of a new member, her intuition
and experience.

"Sometimes I can just tell, by looking at someone, that they're sick,"
Wilkie said.

But not all the people she sells to are ill. For the past year she sold
marijuana to a 22-year-old man, who she said was buying the drug for a sick
aunt in Tioga County. Wilkie said she knew the relative and had received
permission from the woman to sell to him.

But Wilkie had no control over what club members did with the drugs, say
police and those opposed to marijuana use.

"She may tell you she's not selling to kids, but I assure you what she
sells eventually gets to kids," said Steven Steiner, founder of Dads and
Mad Moms Against Drugs, or DAMMADD, a Tioga Center, N.Y. anti-drug
organization. "Does she know what the people she sells to do with it after
they leave her apartment?"

Marijuana club members got supply, variety Club members visited her
apartment every few days, Wilkie said. Since November, she has lived alone
on the sixth floor of the 499-unit Edward Flannery Apartments, a senior
citizens housing complex on Elmira's Southside. She is being evicted for
admitting to the media that she possessed and sold drugs, a violation of
her lease. She must be out by Feb. 1.

Wilkie, who has lived in Elmira since she was 8, moved to the federally
subsidized apartments after living several years in Hoffman Plaza, another
federally subsidized housing complex in Elmira.

It was in Hoffman Plaza, in 1997, that she organized the local medical
marijuana buyers' club. She did so after discovering that pot smoking
helped alleviate pain from her osteoarthritis -- a slow progressive form of
arthritis. She said the pot helped relieve the pain that prescription
medicines couldn't.

But that pain relief required a steady supply of medical-quality marijuana
- -- a highly potent grade of pot that is free of spores, molds and bacteria
that could cause further problems for someone with a compromised immune system.

So about every month, Wilkie drove her 1994 Corsica to a New York City
medical marijuana buyers' club to make purchases. She spent the night with
a friend and drove back to Elmira the next day with the drugs.

As her club grew, so did the demand for her pot, going from a few ounces
each trip to a pound or more over the last several months, Wilkie said. She
made so many 10-hour round trips to the city in the past five years that
she went through three used cars, she said.

She kept the pot in her home. On Dec. 5, police found the pot in about 50
bags, many of them scattered throughout her small three-room apartment.

"Most of those little bags were for personal use," Wilkie said. "I put them
away for special occasions, like my birthday or Mother's Day or Christmas
- -- for a little extra pain relief."

She used small marijuana pipes to smoke about two ounces of pot each month.
She smoked several times a day and usually before bed to help her sleep.
Sometimes she cooked with pot, baking it into cookies, which she ate to
help her relax and relieve pain.

Wilkie said she had to stock many varieties of pot because the body
develops a tolerance to the drug's medicinal properties.

"You have to switch to a different type every several days," she added.

She bought the drugs wholesale for $8 to $25 a gram, depending on the pot's
potency. She added $2 per gram to her price. That profit allowed her to
supply her own marijuana and reinvest into more marijuana, so she always
had a ready supply and variety for club members, she said.

Wilkie doesn't appear to be rich, and investigators say there is no
evidence that she made large profits from the club. But eventually, if she
sold all her pot and didn't buy any more, she would have a sizable profit.

Most club members bought $20 worth of marijuana at a time, Wilkie said,
although she wouldn't reveal the largest amount she sold at one time.

Her only other income was $568 a month from Social Security. She put $70 of
that aside to pay car insurance, gas and repairs. The rest went to rent,
food, supplies and insurance co-payments on her 11 prescription medications.

Wilkie said she will continue to use marijuana, saying she'd rather die
than suffer with the pain she endures without the drug.

"I'm more afraid of the pain than I am of death."