SENIORS ACCUSED OF COCAINE DEALING

Seemingly wholesome grandparents Andrew and Winifred Schlehuber were
secretly kingpins of a cocaine cottage industry, claims their former
top customer: a bagel tycoon who says they helped him blow his
fortune up his nose. The Schlehubers, both 69 and looking like a
perfect Norman Rockwell pair, are on trial for allegedly running a
high-volume mom and pop drug mart from their former home on LaGrange
Street in West Roxbury. The Schlehubers have denied the charges.

Mark Smith, founder of the Newton-based Finagle-a-Bagel chain,
testified yesterday he agreed to housesit for the vacationing
Schlehubers for a week in March 2000, in exchange for a 50 percent
discount off his $200-a-day coke habit. Smith's drug habit was
already draining his wealth when, to make matters worse, the cops
showed up while he was there.

Smith, of Wilmington, said he tried to block the cops that night, but
yesterday he willingly took jurors on a sordid verbal tour of the
Schlehuber homestead. Smith described how they stashed rocks of coke
in paper cups in their bedroom dresser drawer, while hiding still
more drugs in a diaper bag in the woods, "for fear of the house being
broken into."

Andrew Schlehuber, a white-haired father of seven, "had problems in
the past with other people watching his business while he was gone,"
Smith testified. That's why he volunteered to housesit. "I was more
than happy to help." The obliging Smith said he was painting the
Schlehubers' house in between scooping coke off a plate with a six of
clubs for their regular customers, like a chimney sweep and a
well-heeled Boston bar owner, when the cops came knocking on March
31, 2000. Smith told jurors he was welcomed into the Schlehubers'
inner circle after selling Finagle-a-Bagel for more than a
half-million dollars in 1998. In addition to paying off his debt to
the couple, he said he treated them to a trip to St. Martin. Andrew
Schlehuber "let me cuff (buy on credit) a lot of cocaine and I owed
him $23,000," Smith said. "When I paid him off, I thought it was only
fair to give him a bit more."

In addition to a spiral notebook from CVS with specific instructions
on what their drug clientele normally bought and how much they paid,
Smith said the Schlehubers left a bucket of water in their upstairs
bedroom in which he would toss the drugs in the event of a raid. But
after the cops showed up that night in March 2000, Smith never made
it upstairs. He told them he was unauthorized to let them in and
tried to block the door with his body. They pushed him in, threw him
up against a wall and arrested him, he said.

The Schlehubers had supporters in court yesterday, including several
of their grown children.

The Rev. Shaun Harrison of Boston's Youth in Crisis Ministries told
the Herald he doesn't buy Smith's story. Andrew Schlehuber, Harrison
said, "is a blessed man," who for the past five years has opened his
heart and wallet to the city's troubled youth.

"I'm a good judge of character," Harrison said. "I don't believe
what's going on here. I think he's being railroaded."