SURRENDERING TO A CALLING

Disenchanted ex-drug agent finds life more fulfilling as priest of Midland
church

MIDLAND - Missionary zeal. Either you've got it or you don't.

As a DEA agent in West Texas, Dale Stinson was gung-ho to bust dopers. When
he became disenchanted with the war on drugs, he traded gun and badge for a
cleric's collar and a crucifix.

Today, he works for Jesus. Solidly built and looking younger than his 54
years, he exudes the manner of a tough guy changed. Flecks of gray dot his
brown hair and handlebar mustache.

"I see spiritual warfare now," said Mr. Stinson, pastor of St. Paul's
Anglican Church in Midland. "There is a place for a warrior class of priests."

Mr. Stinson retired from the DEA and came to St. Paul's in 1996 after
concluding that the federal government wasn't really interested in
eradicating narcotics traffic. It was time, he believed, to join the battle
against the Dark Prince.

"Satan is not a weak individual who's just going to roll over," he said. "I
think law enforcement, just like the priesthood, is fighting evil. If we
fought World War II the way we fight the war on drugs, we'd be speaking
German and Japanese.

"There are parallels to Vietnam. We are there to hang in and put up a good
show."

Tough words that don't quite fit into a "go along to get along" philosophy.
But politics was never Mr. Stinson's strong suit, according to his friends.

"Dale was a go-getter," said Charles Boyd, an ex-drug agent who worked in
West Texas. "I mean, this guy didn't back up. He was a motivator, and he
was honest."

And then God called in his markers, sending Mr. Stinson to his first church
assignment in Midland. His new parishioners discovered that he didn't pack
a Glock and handcuffs under his vestments, but they could tell he was
streetwise.

"He had a background that was a little bit worldly," said Herb Ware Jr., a
Midland oilman and lay leader at St. Paul's. "He is a very strong person
yet a part of him is very cordial and understanding. He's a unique man, and
he's doing a beautiful job at St. Paul's."

As it turned out, Mr. Stinson was a lot like his parishioners -
conservative, traditional and attuned to small-town life.

Mr. Stinson was born and raised in rural upstate New York, surrounded by
the Adirondack Mountains. His family belonged to the Anglican Church, which
split from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1500s after England's King
Henry VIII fought with the Pope over the dissolution of his marriage.

"I grew up in the 1950s and '60s. It was what I thought to be a very moral
society; very unlike the moral relativism of today where so many people
think they can pick and choose which of the Ten Commandments to obey."

He enlisted in the Air Force after high school and became a communications
specialist in Panama. After his military hitch, he went to work for the
U.S. Department of State as a communications technician at the American
embassy in Mexico City.

Eventually, he realized the need for a college education and, bankrolled by
the GI Bill, he journeyed home to enroll in the State University of New
York in Albany.

The 1960s roared onto campus, and Mr. Stinson came face to face with
illegal drugs.

"I knew a guy who was fantastically talented in music," he recalled. "He
could have been a concert pianist, but he was useless and unreliable
because all he wanted to do was drop acid, or take speed and smoke dope. It
really bothered me."

Mr. Stinson earned a degree in archaeology and anthropology and toyed with
entering the priesthood. Instead, he signed up with the U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Service in New York City.

Then came a transfer to the U.S. Border Patrol in southern Arizona. Amid
the desert cactus and rocky terrain, the twin complexities of illegal drugs
and illegal immigration confronted him - one guy with a gun in a green
patrol truck.

"It was a real epiphany," he said. "Some nights, I was the only one
patrolling for 250 miles along the border. Just think about it."

In 1983, at age 38, he transferred to the DEA and moved to El Paso. He
studied the arcane arts of the undercover drug agent and became known as
the gringo who spoke Spanish.

Then, he embarked on the most important case of his life. It wasn't even a
drug case. It was a murder case, and it forever changed DEA's relationship
with Mexico.

Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured and murdered by
high-level traffickers in Mexico. Mr. Stinson was one of the agents
assigned to investigate the case in 1985.

"I'm still emotional about it," he said, tears forming in his eyes. "For
myself and those of us who worked with Kiki, it was a tough experience; not
to mention for his wife and children."

The traffickers who killed Mr. Camarena eventually went to prison.

After a stint in Phoenix, Mr. Stinson became resident agent in charge of
the DEA office in Alpine, a Texas town of about 6,000 people in the Big
Bend country.

Alpine is the hub city for Brewster and Presidio counties, a mountainous,
10,000-square-mile region about the size of Delaware and New Jersey
combined. For years, the region has been a shipping corridor for marijuana,
cocaine and heroin coming out of Ojinaga, Mexico, the border town across
from Presidio.

When Mr. Stinson came to Alpine in 1990, Presidio County Sheriff Rick
Thompson had been in office for 16 years. Tall and attired in western wear,
the sheriff cut a John Wayne-like figure. He was said to be the area's most
popular law officer, a former president of the Texas Sheriffs Association.

Mr. Stinson, the DEA supervisor in Alpine, and his regional task force
found out that Mr. Thompson, in fact, was a drug trafficker. When the dust
cleared in 1992, the sheriff had been caught with 2,421 pounds of cocaine
stuffed in a horse trailer. He is now serving a life sentence.

"With Dale, if he knew you were doing something illegal, it didn't matter
who you were," said Dan Ruch, another ex-drug agent who worked with Mr.
Stinson. "He tried to put you in jail."

But for every person who applauded Mr. Thompson's arrest, it seemed another
person resented Mr. Stinson for uncovering official corruption on the Texas
side of the border.

Some local law officers in West Texas began complaining to his DEA
superiors, saying that he was uncooperative.

"Politically, they just devastated him," said Mr. Boyd, the former drug
agent. "Dale took a lot of flak."

Today, Mr. Stinson acknowledges that "doing the right thing" in the
Thompson case hurt him. He said he also resented new policies designed to
shift the DEA's focus from major traffickers to small-time dealers.

"It was disheartening," he said. "What's the sense of putting a bunch of
mopes in jail when you can get the guy who runs all the mopes?"

But more than anything, he said, a call from God led him to the priesthood.
In 1993, he began religious studies and prepared for his transition out of
DEA.

"It was like God said to me, 'OK, your formation is over and you've made
promises to me. And now I'm calling in all those markers you signed.' Maybe
the change in direction at DEA was a hurrying up of this," he said.

His gentler side

After three years as a priest in Midland, Mr. Stinson still takes target
practice with his 9 mm pistol. Some habits stay with you after 30 years in
law enforcement. But it is possible, he has learned, to moderate an
aggressive personality and cultivate a gentle side.

"By the grace of God and with his support, I've been able to change a lot
of my behavior," he said.

Today, he and his family live on a 13-acre spread outside Midland. His
wife, Chris, home-schools their daughters, Brianna and Katie. Mr. Stinson
also has three grown children from a previous marriage.

Most days, you can find him at the small St. Paul's Church, preparing a
sermon or tending to his flock of 35 parishioners. Or he might be found
riding horses with Brianna and Katie.

Professionally, his newest passion is a ministry for Midland police
officers. He encourages them to be themselves - rough talk and all, warts
and all.

"Chaplains are human beings," he said. "We've heard it all before."

And maybe, as he rides along with an officer on patrol, a life can be changed.

"I think one of the hardest things for a person in authority, especially
police officers, is to bend their knees to Christ," he said. "Any success I
had as a cop, I thought, 'Boy, I'm good!' Now, I know I'm only here by the
grace of God."

Mr. Stinson's life as a DEA agent also prepared him to deal with the
spiritual needs of drug dealers and other criminals. During his undercover
assignments, he discovered they are human, too.

"I am willing to talk to people who have been caught up in that scene and
try to talk them out of it and get them back on the right road," he said.
"Sometimes, the best thing that can happen is for them to get arrested and
put in jail. It could save their life."

Although he left the war on drugs behind, Mr. Stinson still stays in touch
with his old law enforcement friends and thinks about the future of a
society that seems awash in dope.

"Here in America, we try to say we can do whatever we want, break the
rules. It's a slippery slope. I don't know how much worse the drug problem
can get. It can just get more pervasive, and I guess that's worse."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski