DEALER'S STASH BENEFITS UTAH OFFICERS

Among high-stakes drug traffickers, the hidden bounty of one of the
biggest dealers in Salt Lake City became the stuff of urban legend in
the early 1990s.

There was $1 million in cash, maybe $2 million. A cache of marijuana.
All of it hidden somewhere in the city and all of it supposedly
belonging to Manuel Michael Medina, a 41-year-old convicted dealer
sitting in a federal prison.

In 1992, Medina handed over $38,500 in cash, a house and several cars
in a deal brokered with federal prosecutors.

Five years later, a Sandy officer completing a routine sweep of
transients camping at the Quality Warehouse Center, 8750 S. 300 West,
stumbled across a storage shed with four freezers, all plugged into
the same overhead light socket. When the owner couldn't be located, a
search warrant was secured and the doors were opened.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice delivered two U.S. Treasury
checks -- each totaling $322,370 -- to the Sandy Police Department and
the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office as their share of what was found
inside the freezers -- $860,000 in $100 and $50 bills. The freezers
also contained 540 pounds of marijuana.

The federal government and the U.S. Customs Service split the rest of
the money.

``This will go a long way toward law enforcement,'' said Sheriff Aaron
Kennard, whose detectives arrested Medina in 1991 after a two-year
investigation. Kennard and Sandy Police Chief Sam Dawson said the
money will be funneled back into fighting drugs on the street.

Dawson said he will be able to hire three officers for a new
five-person community policing drug squad. He credited both agenciess'
persistent searches for the payoff.

``We like to think most of our luck is made by hard work and just
keeping after it,'' he said.

``Cops never sleep,'' Kennard said.

Medina was nearing release from a Salt Lake City halfway house when
Sandy police stumbled onto the freezers in the summer of 1997.

In 1992, Medina was arrested for selling cocaine and trafficking
marijuana. As part of a plea bargain, he promised prosecutors he would
cough up all his drug profits and testify against major drug
traffickers in New Mexico.

But he kept secret the $860,000 in cash, a house, a condominium and a
1982 Corvette. He served about four years in prison and was
transferred to the halfway house on July 9, 1996. A month later, he
rented the storage unit and allegedly placed the money and marijuana
in unit No. C27.

On June 16, Sandy police, health and zoning officials were inspecting
the units when they spotted the freezers in Medina's unit. The
marijuana was in black plastic garbage bags; the money was in buckets
and in $5,000 bundles.

There was so much dope, a detective could smell the marijuana without
even opening the freezers.

Almost on the streets once more, Medina was indicted again for drug
dealing when the 1997 seizure was made. He is back in federal prison.

The $860,000 was one of the county's largest cash seizures from a drug
bust in recent memory. Only $150,000 in drug money was seized in Salt
Lake County in 1995. In 1997, the total was $725,000.

Just who deserved portions of the $860,000 was at the center of a
sometimes contentious, yearlong tug of war.

David Tubbs, the FBI's special agent in charge for Utah, Idaho and
Montana, ended the squabbling Tuesday when he handed checks to Dawson
and Kennard.

``Sometimes [fighting drugs] seems like you're fighting a forest fire
with a garden hose,'' Tubbs said. But the impact of this forfeiture

case ``will go beyond just putting people in jail.''