WEST TEXAS MAN, 73, BECAME UNLIKELY HEROIN ADDICT

His ex-wife and grown children say they're stunned by his fatal descent

ODESSA, Texas - Tommy D. Smith, 72, and Anita Galvan Beatley, 34, were
unlikely lovers. It wasn't just their age difference.

He was a tall, raw-boned electrician, a World War II veteran who liked to
hunt and fish. He paid his bills, had good credit and ran his own repair
shop. He was a stable family man with a wife of 54 years and three grown
children.

She was a short, squat heroin addict, a known police informant with a long
criminal record. But she was young, and she beckoned him to join her inside
heroin's warm cocoon. He became an addict, and his business became a cover
for heroin dealers.

Mr. Smith never made it out alive.

"He lost it all. Family, money and his life," said Cpl. Maureen Fletcher,
an investigator with the Odessa Police Department. "The situation was
obvious. You could tell she was just using him. It's sad, but it happens."

After Mr. Smith died of hepatitis in April of 1997, Ms. Beatley moved in
with a disabled, retired 65-year-old man. They live in his decrepit mobile
home on the outskirts of Odessa. She did not return phone calls for this
story.

Today, Mr. Smith's stunned former wife and three children wonder how they
failed to detect his descent into addiction. And they wonder why the police
couldn't stop the druggies who infiltrated his life. They warn that his
demise means that anyone, not just a suburban teenager, is vulnerable to
heroin in today's world.

"We probably held our father in higher esteem than he deserved," said Dr.
Kenneth Smith, a physician who is Mr. Smith's only son. "I've learned that
you cannot be too suspicious. We see the problems and turn our backs.
You've got to confront the truth in these situations earlier rather than
later."

An atypical user

But how could they have known? Mr. Smith defied the profile of the average
Texas heroin addict whom counselors see at treatment centers. He was more
than 70 when he got hooked. The average addict starts at 22 and uses heroin
for 14 years until the hellish existence finally drives him or her to seek
treatment.

Data compiled by the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse suggest
that young people snorting or smoking heroin are uncommon in the wide
underworld of drug abuse. Contrary to recent heroin chic images in the
media, 94 percent of all addicts seeking treatment in Texas use needles.

As did Tommy Smith and Anita Beatley.

"There's nothing to say a junkie has to start using when he's 15 or 20
years old," Cpl. Fletcher said.

Mr. Smith's family learned that he had been living a double life. He spent
a lot of time at his shop in an industrial district just south of downtown
Odessa, a blue-collar town of 95,000 people in the Permian Basin oil field.
No one could repair electric motors as well as Tommy Smith, his customers
said.

Mr. Smith's wife, Bonnie, also was in her 70s. She spent most of her time
at their neat three-bedroom, two-bath home in a middle-class neighborhood
several miles from the shop. She sold Mary Kay cosmetics. Her world of
church friends and grandchildren rarely intersected with her husband's
world at work.

Mr. Smith kept Ms. Beatley and his growing heroin addiction hidden from his
family for almost a year, but he had to tell them the truth when hepatitis
landed him in the hospital in October 1996.

"I knew he was involved in something, but I never thought it was a woman or
dope," said Bonnie Smith, now 75. "When he hit us with it, I was absolutely
floored."

Here is the story Mr. Smith told his shocked wife, son and two daughters.
Much of it is confirmed by his business associates, court records and
police investigators:

Late in 1995, Ms. Beatley was jobless and homeless. Her husband had died of
a heroin overdose. Her two children went to live with a sister in Denver
City, Texas. In court papers, she acknowledged that she had used heroin
since her early 20s.

Friends had told her that Mr. Smith was generous and enjoyed helping
people. Even though he knew she was drug-dependent, he agreed to let her
stay in a rickety camper that sat unused beside his shop. "I think his
weakness was his need to be needed," Dr. Smith said of his father.

Other family members and friends said Mr. Smith's weakness was women. To
some, he confided that sex with a younger woman was something he never
dreamed of experiencing at his age.

Mr. Smith told people that Ms. Beatley gave him heroin the first time to
relieve migraine headaches. Soon they began using the drug together on a
regular basis.

"He fell in love with her," said Shorty Alford, one of Mr. Smith's close
friends. "She became all that mattered to him. She knowed what she wanted
and how to get it."

Strange people from the drug world began hanging out at Mr. Smith's repair
shop. Sammy Enriquez, whom police were investigating for heroin
distribution, was one of them. Eventually, federal agents would arrest him
on heroin distribution charges in Odessa.

"She [Ms. Beatley] was dealing out of Tommy's shop," said Cpl. Fletcher,
the detective. "And she and Sammy were using Tommy's pickup trucks to run
drugs."

At some point, Mr. Smith stopped working and began selling tools and
equipment. He sold a valuable coin collection and his guns. He pawned other
valuables and failed to reclaim them.

"Tommy didn't keep his word like he used to," Mr. Alford said. "He borrowed
money and wouldn't pay it back."

Back at home, Bonnie Smith noticed that her husband was losing weight. He
looked terrible and fell asleep during conversations. He lost interest in
seeing his children and grandchildren.

Finally, he went into the hospital and his family found out about Ms.
Beatley, his heroin addiction and the collapsed state of his business
affairs. They also discovered that their ordeal was just beginning.

"Dad's in the hospital. There's a volcano of unpaid bills on his desk.
Anita's got the keys to the shop and possession of both his pickups,"
recalled Sandie McCurdy, one of his daughters. "And she's got his
permission to be on the property."

No way out

The first order of business was to get Mr. Smith's pickups back from Ms.
Beatley and her friends. With the help of police, his son and daughters
retrieved the trucks. They also shared with the officers their suspicions
that heroin dealers had taken over their father and his business.

"Kenny told them that Anita had gotten Daddy hooked on heroin and that she
was an addict," Ms. McCurdy said. "But they seemed to see it as a domestic
dispute between Anita and my mother and daddy."

After a few days in the hospital and more rest at home, Mr. Smith went back
to Ms. Beatley. They openly lived together in the little shack next to his
shop. Mrs. Smith, with her children's support, filed for divorce from the
man she had married during World War II.

Mr. Smith started working again and appeared to be off drugs. But the
strange cast of characters continued to mill around the shop.

Veronica Hernandez ran a secondhand store next to the shop and considered
herself Mr. Smith's friend. She said men whose names she never learned
sometimes appeared to be guarding the old man.

"I believe he needed someone to reach in and pull him out," she said. "But
how you gonna do that when he don't want to go? This chick just ran his
life. It wasn't my business."

Ken Smith said his dad sometimes made ominous remarks and appeared to be
frightened.

"I went to see Dad at the shop once, and he told me he couldn't talk to me
because he would get in trouble," Ken Smith said. "He said there was no way
I could understand what he was dealing with."

Within a month of his discharge from the hospital, Mr. Smith was back on
heroin. To one friend, he confided that he awoke each morning wondering
where he and Ms. Beatley would get $50 to buy their daily fixes.

Bonnie and Tommy Smith's divorce became final on Feb. 7, 1997.

To make matters worse, the police were watching the drug activity at the
shop with greater interest. They suspected that Mr. Smith was being taken
advantage of, but he also appeared to be a willing associate of known drug
dealers who were under investigation.

"Apparently that is where he wanted to be, with her [Ms. Beatley]," said
Cpl. Fletcher. "We wanted her really bad but couldn't understand where he
fit in."

On March 25, 1997, police raided the shop and arrested Ms. Beatley and Mr.
Smith on charges of heroin and cocaine possession. Police told family
members that Mr. Smith gave them no choice but to arrest him.

"They told us they just wanted her but that Dad got in their face and
defended her, so they took him in, too," said Ken Smith.

Tommy Smith was very sick with hepatitis and bleeding ulcers. He got out of
jail on bond and went into the hospital. His weight dropped to 115 pounds
on his 6-foot-2-inch frame.

Mr. Smith died on April 21, 1997. He was 73. Doctors listed the cause of
death as hepatitis due to intravenous drug use.

A puzzling record

Anita Beatley, now 36, has never gone to prison despite repeated felony
arrests, convictions and probated sentences dating to 1993. "I don't know
how she's done it," said Freda White, a district court clerk who reviewed
Ms. Beatley's criminal record.

Narcotics officers familiar with Odessa's criminal underworld acknowledge
that she has been a willing informant, but none of them said she was
valuable enough to ask a district attorney not to put her in prison.

"I would love to put her in prison," said Joe Commander, a deputy in the
narcotics division of the Ector County Sheriff's Department. "Tommy would
never have ended up the way he did if not for her."

The Ector County district attorney's office dismissed the drug-possession
charges against Mr. Smith two months after his death.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)