EARLVILLE MAN CREDITS ARREST WITH SAVING LIFE, TEETH

PONTIAC -- Russell Farley turned 18 years old in La Salle County
Jail, sleeping off a long methamphetamine bender that kept him up for
days without sleep.

"I thought I was going to die," Farley said, recalling his torturous
days in lockup. "I'd wake up and was mad and want to fight somebody
because I didn't have my meth.

"I didn't want to eat," he said. "I just wanted to get high."

Farley has come a long way since the drug task force raided the
Farley homestead in rural Earlville, where police discovered a meth
lab in a barn. Farley's life had been in a downward spiral since the
11th grade, when he dropped out of high school following an assault
on a principal and then started using cocaine. Six months after he
was out of school and on the streets, the people he hung around with
offered him methamphetamine.

"They didn't really tell me what it was," Farley recalled. "They
said, 'Try this. It's way better than coke.'You feel real good when
you're high on it."

Within four months he was addicted, using up to 2 grams a day. Farley
paid a price for the good high. Authorities initially charged him,
his brother and father -- Leon Farley and Roger Farley -- with
unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver,
a Class X felony carrying up to 60 years because two children lived
near the lab.

Russell Farley was only 17 at the time, enabling him to squeak past
the more oppressive sentencing enhancements and negotiate a plea for
four years. He entered the prison system at Stateville Correctional
Center, where he was locked in his cell 24 hours a day and given one
shower a week.

He later was transferred to Pontiac Correctional Center, where the
conditions improved slightly. Prison dentists fixed his teeth and
despite the vile food he regained the weight he lost, from 170 pounds
back to 210, from binging on meth.

Pontiac has no air-conditioning, however, and he shares a tiny room
with an obese cellmate he doesn't get along with. They nearly fought
when the roommate flipped off the lights while Farley was reading his
mail, until Farley remembered his work detail in the prison's
segregation unit for unruly prisoners.

"It's not really worth it," he said. "Seg is not a good place."

Farley is scheduled for parole in November and has a factory job
waiting for him when he gets out. He's glad to leave prison, and
surprisingly grateful for the arrest and conviction that forced him
to get clean.

"Right now, if I was out there I'd be real high and would have lost
all my teeth," he said.