`STUDENT' LEADS DRUG BUST

San Benito High: Rookie cop enrolled in school, and her investigation led
to many arrests.

After four months of undercover work by a teenage cop on her first
assignment, authorities calmly walked into San Benito High School
classrooms Wednesday and arrested 25 students, two of them adults, in what
apparently was the largest drug sting in the school's history.

Several more were arrested off the Hollister campus, bringing the total to
23 juveniles and nine adults. More arrests were planned, officials said.
The school's enrollment is 2,700.

Two of the adults, Jesus Alejandro Cordova and Felipe Vallejo, both of
Hollister, were being held in lieu of $100,000 bail. The names of the other
adults were not immediately available.

All the suspects were charged with sale of drugs and face criminal
proceedings.

In addition, the students have been slapped with five-day suspensions and
face possible expulsion.

``It's a tragedy for those kids and families. They will suffer greatly as a
result of this, and I am sorry, but the whole campus has to be taken care
of,'' said Principal Tim Shellito, who has a reputation for running a
strict campus to ensure a safe learning environment for students.

As a result of the campus drug operation, police served search warrants on
several houses in the Hollister area and one in Oakland. Police said they
netted one-third pound of methamphetamines, 2,500 ``hits'' of LSD, 20 vials
of what's believed to be a drug called ecstasy, two rifles, two sawed-off
shotguns and a .38-caliber handgun. None of the weapons was found on campus.

The secretive program was conducted at the request of San Benito High
School officials who two years ago noticed an increase in drug-related
problems. Also, they said, they had found out that drug dealers were
operating across the street from the school and that down the block, other
dealers had weapons.

The sting operation was coordinated by Hollister police and agents of UNET,
the Unified Narcotic Enforcement Team, headed by Cmdr. Bob Cook of the
state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.

UNET is an anti-drug operation that uses personnel from law enforcement
agencies from San Benito and Santa Clara counties in conjunction with the
state Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.

But authorities say the key to the success of the San Benito High School
operation was a rookie Hollister cop named Alisse Hinton. Just 19 at the
time, she passed for a 17-year-old high school senior with an attitude and
a hunger for drugs.

Cook called her a ``gutsy'' cop.

The ruse was so well-planned that it included getting Hinton suspended once
and expelled once, along with numerous detentions for not completing
assignments, playing hooky or cussing out teachers or the vice principal.

Discipline duty

In fact, she got into trouble so often she spent hours on trash patrol, a
punishment detail in which students shuffle around the campus stooping to
pick up litter and throw it into garbage cans.

Shellito and Cook said Hinton played her part so well she had teachers and
campus aides believing she was a troublemaker and malcontent.

And her flashy new Mustang, baggy high school clothes and slang and her
willingness to spend money had campus and off-campus drug dealers eager to
do business with her, authorities said.

In all, she made 65 buys in four months, most on campus, according to Cook,
who predicted the sting will put a damper on high school drug activity
throughout the area.

At all times, she had police backup nearby and was wired for sound. She
audio-recorded each buy, he said; backup units videotaped several.

When the students were arrested Wednesday, they were taken from their
classrooms by school officials and plainclothes officers to the band room,
where they were told of the charges against them, all the time being
videotaped.

Surprise for students

Cook said many of the students arrogantly denied any guilt -- but their
jaws dropped, he said, when shortly thereafter they were confronted by a
now-uniformed officer Hinton.

Most signed statements or written confessions on the spot, authorities said.

In what Hollister Police Chief J.W. ``Bill'' Pierpoint said was one of the
more anxious moments during the four months -- Hinton even ``worked'' her
undercover role during Christmas break, making two buys -- backup officers
in an unmarked car had to tail her all the way to Oakland for a buy as she
was driven there by four of what she calls ``the crooks.''

A self-described Bible-reading Christian, the 5-foot, green-eyed Hinton was
recruited for the Hollister force right out of the police academy at
Monterey Peninsula College and sworn in, secretly, by Pierpoint last June.

She spent the summer in intensive training with other agencies for her role
as an undercover agent.

In September, while still 19, she enrolled as a transfer senior at San
Benito High. She turned 20 in October.

Only two school administrators knew of the ruse. No teachers were told. No
members of the Hollister department other than Pierpoint knew of her role.

The secrecy was necessary for her safety, Pierpoint said.

Hinton told the Mercury News on Thursday it was easy to get in with the
drug dealers on campus. But she said she had to become a completely
different person to play the role.

She wore grungy clothes and makeup, which she never wears, she said.

She had to cuss like a sailor, something she said she didn't like doing at
all and never does otherwise.

Felt secure

And she said that while there were a couple of tense moments during the
four months, she never feared for her safety.

``I wasn't scared at all because I knew the people I was working with were
looking out for me,'' Hinton said.

In fact, the assignment was not without its humorous moments, she said --
such as the time she accompanied a drug dealer to his home to make a buy.

``He locked himself in the house (by mistake) and couldn't get the front
door opened,'' she said.

On another occasion, Hinton was taping a phone conversation with a dealer
and inadvertently turned off the recorder before the conversation ended,
and she feared he had heard the machine being turned off. She never dealt
with the dealer again, she said.

There were some touching moments, too, she said. She was very impressed by
two of the school's campus supervisors, who went out of their way to help
Hinton, believing she was a troubled and troublesome student.

``It was just nice to see that they would take the time to help a student,
and they really were trying to help me out,'' she said.

There was a tinge of sadness, she conceded, about a couple of the suspects,
both male and female, whom she had grown to like.

When she confronted the students Wednesday, she said, she expected the
worst -- However, but for a few hostile stares, none said a word to her,
she said.

Her advice to teens?

``Students are changed by drugs, and it's not worth it from what I've
seen.''