HER BUMPER STICKER SAYS IT ALL: FREE MY HUSBAND

A West Vancouver woman has launched a "Free Allen Richardson" campaign to
try to get her husband out of a New York jail.

Amalia Richardson says she'll be printing bumper stickers and she'll be
knocking on politician's doors in Ottawa until someone listens.

"I don't want to see him vanish with a plop, like a stone disappearing in a
pond and, when the ripples settle, he's forgotten," she told The Province
last night. "He deserves more than that."

Amalia returned to her Horseshoe Bay home Friday after weeks of living out
of a suitcase and visiting her husband in jail.

Allen Richardson, 50, is in Downstate Correctional Facility serving at
least eight months for a 1971 minor drug conviction.

He fled to Canada after serving only three months of a four-year term for
selling LSD worth $20 to an undercover cop. Richardson was studying at the
Rochester Institute of Technology at the time.

He turned himself in to a New York judge last month after Canada refused to
let him serve the remainder of his sentence in his adopted country.

The New York State parole board ruled last week that Richardson cannot be
released until March 24 at the earliest, when he will have served one year
in jail.

Richardson led a trouble-free life in Canada, volunteering in the community
and working as a technician at UBC's Triumf lab.

Amalia, who is suffering from breast cancer, says she feels she has to step
up the fight to free her husband.

"I want to get some kind of an appeal going that says, "Free Allen
Richardson," she said.

"I want to get some bumper stickers and buttons made up.

"I'm going to say: "We've got to somehow reduce this sentence because I
feel it's unjust and it's wrong." I can't come back and just sit here in
the sunshine thinking of him back there alone in a cell."

She plans to kick off her campaign officially at a press conference tomorrow.

Meanwhile, last night, she celebrated her 53rd birthday with a few friends.

"I will go out and have a glass of wine for Allen and start again on
Monday," she said. "I just feel I should keep fighting."