POT BUST WORTH AT LEAST $20 MILLION

SAN ANDREAS -- Calaveras County and state narcotics forces swooped down on a
veritable Mother Lode of marijuana Friday, chopping and pulling more than
10,000 plants from a Sierra hillside plantation about three miles outside of
San Andreas.

They were all female sinsemilla, the eye-watering, seedless cream of the
marijuana crop, and ranged between 3 feet and 8 feet tall. Lush and green,
they still had at least two months of growth and flowering to do, but some
already had begun to bloom.

Estimated street value: Between $20 million and $30 million, based on
narcotics officers' calculations of $2,000 to $3,000 for a fully mature
plant.

It nearly tripled the previous biggest pot bust in Calaveras County's
history, and it was the biggest in the state this year, said officers from
the state Campaign Against Marijuana Planting.

"We knew it was big," said Lt. Mike Walker, who supervises the Calaveras
County Narcotics Enforcement unit, "but we didn't know it was this big."

Two men camping and working at the site were arrested and booked into
Calaveras County Jail on suspicion of felony marijuana cultivation. At least
six others fled into the tree- and brush-covered countryside.

"It was like flushing a covey of quail," said Calaveras County sheriff's
Sgt. Dan Johnson, who plotted the sunrise surprise. "I just wish we could
have caught a few more suspects."

The two suspects who were arrested were Gerardo Mora, 33, who gave an
Atwater address, and Lorenso Gudino, 38, who did not give an address. Both
men were from Mexico, and Calaveras County Undersheriff Randy Grasmuck said
he didn't know whether they were undocumented workers.

Officers said Gudino, Mora and the people who got away all seemed to be
workers at the plantation, not owners of it. There were no guesses on
whether any bigger fish might be caught.

According to Walker, the county's narcotics team spotted the plantation --
or at least part of it -- on a routine pot reconnaissance flight about six
weeks ago. The marijuana had been planted in two quarter-acre groves near an
abandoned cement plant off Poole Station Road, southwest of San Andreas.

It had been irrigated through drip systems and manual hoses fed from a
nearby spring. Several weapons, including loaded sawed-off shotguns and a
Russian military rifle loaded with a 30-round magazine clip, were found in
two campsites.

Part of the plantation was on private wildland -- Walker said he didn't know
whether the owners were involved -- and part was on land managed by the
federal Bureau of Land Management.

For Friday morning's raid, about 50 officers, most of them in camouflage
fatigues, gathered at a 3 a.m. briefing. There was one Special Weapons and
Tactics team from Calaveras County, another from neighboring Amador County,
the Calaveras "Bad Frogs" narcotics unit and 15 CAMP officers.

The two SWAT teams followed a railroad grade, crossed the Calaveras River
and sneaked up on the plantation at about 6 a.m. Workers were already
tending the gardens, and when they spotted officers they ran in different
directions.

Two were tackled, and SWAT team members and a CAMP helicopter searched for
nearly three hours for the others before giving up and getting on with the
job of dismantling the garden.

For that task, the SWAT team members hiked to the hillside plantations,
uprooted some of the plants, cut most of them at the base and bundled them
with duct tape in clumps of 10. Then they put them in nets, and the
helicopter hauled them to a 21/2-ton military truck at the old cement plant.

By the end of the day, the pot totaled 10,152 plants and looked like a
shipment of Christmas trees filling the truck bed.

It was covered with a tarp -- "We don't care to have anybody know what's
being transported," said sheriff's spokeswoman Kathy Maxwell -- and driven
away for disposal.

Never mind where.

Checked-by: Don Beck