NEIGHBORHOOD GRANDMA'S ARREST SHOCKING TO ALL WHO KNEW HER

Mattie Richard, a nearly 80-year-old woman known as "grandma" in the heart
of Bakersfield's highest crime area, learned traditional American values on
the Mississippi farm of her childhood.

As a young girl, she picked cotton during the week, prayed at church on
Sunday and made her suitors ask her mother for permission to go out with her.

She married one man and didn't part from him until he died 30 years later.

She followed her husband to Bakersfield 50 years ago, saved money, bought a
neighborhood store and worked hard to afford the expenses of raising five
children and buying more property.

She helped others less fortunate than herself, building up a long list of
friends. Many in the neighborhood affectionately call her grandma.

That's why in 1997, when she was arrested for conspiracy to distribute
cocaine, more than a few people were perplexed. It was the first and only
arrest of her life.

"I thought the world was coming to an end," she said, recalling a swarm of
gun-toting officers who came to her door on the morning of Sept. 10, 1997.
"I couldn't open the door fast enough."

The arrest didn't stick. The charge was dismissed about two months after
the huge law enforcement raid rounded up 60 people, including Richard, but
little contraband. The raid was two years in the making.

Two of Richard's children were also arrested in that investigation. Danny
Richard, then 42, is in prison, and Theodore Richard, then 43, is awaiting
a retrial after a hung jury.

Richard said her sons may have gotten in trouble when they were younger,
but she believes they are innocent now. She said she has instructed her
family to stay away from drugs.

"I don't like drugs and I don't want to be nowhere around them," Richard
said in a recent interview at her home, while sitting on a soft-cushioned
couch and paying half attention to a soap opera on television.

"Look, I don't like beer, whiskey or anything that is going to make your
head crazy," she said.

Her daughter, Donaice Worthy, 57, sat in an easy chair, nodding in
agreement at her mother's words and adding her father felt the same way
about drugs (though not necessarily about liquor, Mattie noted).

"If my daddy caught me with a stick of marijuana, I'd be over there in
Union Cemetery," Worthy said.

Worthy's 11-year-old son, Sonny, lifted up his sweatshirt to proudly show
off a DARE (Drug Awareness Resistance Education) shirt he just earned in a
program at Sequoia Middle School.

All those sentiments haven't kept the police away from Richard's doorstep.
They went back to her home twice within a month of the first raid, and
again in January this year when they were looking for a robber they thought
might be hiding there.

Richard said she let the officers in each time and they found nothing.
Sheriff's officers confirmed that.

Her recent encounters with sheriff's deputies are a far cry from her roots
in rural Mississippi where she was raised to work hard and abide by the law.

She was born in 1919 on an 85-acre farm in Magnolia, Miss., where her
parents, Monroe and Ercie Stewart, grew cotton, corn and strawberries among
an assortment of cows, chickens and pigs.

She was the sixth of 13 children eight boys and five girls. When she wasn't
doing her chores picking cotton or milking cows she was in the yard playing
baseball or shooting marbles with her siblings and friends.

She attended a country school, but quit after the eighth grade.

To relax, she rocked back and forth on a rope swing that was hung on an oak
tree. She munched on sugar cane.

On Sundays, she would accompany her parents to the Holiness Church of
Christ. That's where this boy, Theodore "Saggie" Richard, came up to her
and asked her her name when she was 17.

"He told me he liked me and asked, Can I come to see you?' " she said.

Her reply, "You got to ask momma."

He did and they saw each other for more than two years before he proposed.
In the meantime, he worked on his father's farm, plowing the fields with a
mule, she said.

"If he made money, he would always bring me his check," she recalled. "I
saved it." She gave him a few dollars' spending money on the weekends.

They got married on March 2, 1940, at a preacher's house in Magnolia. Her
husband worked on farms in Mississippi and Louisiana, while she took care
of their children (Doraice was born in 1941 and her sister, Mary, was born
two years later) and cleaned railroad cars.

Theodore Richard moved to Bakersfield at the end of 1944 to work at Piute
Packing Shed with his wife's brother, Marshell Stewart. She joined him a
couple of months later and they moved into a small house on Northrup Street.

Her husband worked as a hod carrier, carrying mortar for masonry, and she
continued to help him save money.

She also worked in the fields and at a bag company. She and her husband
decided to open up a store on property they bought on Cottonwood Road,
south of Planz Road.

The store opened in 1949 was called Richard's Grocery, 3302 S. Cottonwood
Road.

Mattie Richard worked in the store for 30 years and became well-known in
the community.

"I think she's the sweetest, nicest, kindest lady," remarked Freddie Ward,
who grew up stopping by Richard's Grocery to buy candy and chips. "She was
like a mom to all of us," said Ward, who is now 45 and works as a courtroom
clerk in Bakersfield Municipal Court.

"She would question us to make sure we were spending extra money, not lunch
money," Ward said. "She would also whip our butts just like she would one
of her own kids."

Lenora Daniels, 53, who works at the Child Development Department at
Bakersfield College, fondly recalls her visits to "Miss Mattie's" store.
"She always had a smile and a word of encouragement," Daniels said.

Richard's Store closed in 1997 after being operated by different managers,
but people in the neighborhood still remember the way it was run by Mattie
Richard.

Donnie Sanders, 54, who was interviewed outside the Cottonwood Grocery,
recalled her as "nice to everybody. She never asked for anything. She
always gave."

Sanders said, "If I needed a little extra work, she would give me some."

Another patron during his high school years was Clarence "Buzzy" Bowden,
who is now 57 and the owner of Buzzy's Bail Bonds.

"If I had to have a second mother it would be her," said Bowden, who worked
as a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy and Compton police officer before
retiring and opening up his business eight years ago. "She always gave out
decent advice, naturally good sense."

"I've seen people with no money go up to her and she would give them food
or something to help them out," Bowden said.

Richard explained her actions: "Grown people came and told me they were
hungry," she said. "What are you supposed to do? You are supposed to give
them food."

Bowden was shocked to hear of her arrest. "I couldn't see her committing
any kind of an offense," Bowden said. "I'm a retired police officer and not
too bad of a judge of people. She always was good at her word."

That's why, Bowden said, he bailed her out himself. "I didn't want this
lady staying in jail," he said.

Sheriff's Cmdr. Hal Chealander, head of the narcotics division, offered no
apologies for the arrest. He noted that four defendants in the case were
convicted based on evidence they used her home to traffic narcotics.

Chealander said enough evidence was presented for charges to be filed
against her, even though the charges were dismissed later. He said he does
not question that she may have done good in the community.

"We didn't start out going after Mattie," Chealander said. "She came to us
in the investigation."

Richard's arrest was based mainly on wiretaps of the telephone in her
house, built on three lots on East Third Street by her husband and friends.

One conversation picked up on the telephone tap includes Richard asking
Jerald Hodges, a defendant who was convicted of drug charges in the same
investigation, what he was sending up in a bucket, and he replies
"watermelons."

In a court hearing, defense lawyer Gregory H. Mitts asked FBI agent Mark
Abe, "So why in the world, if she (Richard) is one of the co-conspirators
in this narcotic ring, would Jerald Hodges lie to her, using an evasive
term of watermelon to disguise what he was really sending up in the bucket?"

Abe replied, "Because she doesn't want that activity to occur in her house."

Mitts asked, "Doesn't that make her a non-conspirator?"

The charges against Richard were dismissed at a preliminary hearing in
Bakersfield Municipal Court when a judge agreed that answering her
telephone is not a crime.

Richard said she's not taking any chances of going back to jail. She asks
anyone who comes to her home if they have drugs, and if they do, she tells
them they are not welcome.

Richard sticks with the values she learned as a child. That includes hard
work. "If you want to make some money, you do it," she said.

She's most proud in her life of "not being on welfare and I never asked
anyone for nothing."

Her other two children, Mary Crawford, 55, and Charles Richard, 38, both
live and work in Bakersfield.

Mattie Richard enjoys being in the home and watching television the news,
looking at the character Victor on the soap opera "The Young and the
Restless," and old cowboy movies or sitting under a tree in her front yard
where neighbors frequently gather to visit her.

Her future plans? "I'm going to try to live to 108. That's how old my
great-grandmother was. If the police don't scare me to death, I'll be right
here."