CHP STEPS UP DRUG INTERDICTION

Officers look for certain signs among the drivers heading up I-5 into the
Pacific Northwest.

REDDING- It seems like your basic traffic stop:A family pushing the speed
limit a bit on the highway is pulled over by a California Highway Patrol
officer.

After following the car into an Interstate 5 rest stop, Patrolman Al
Stallman saunters over to the old full-sized sedan and talks to the couple
in the front while two young boys, 3 and 5 years old, fight in the back
seat over Ritz crackers.

In his uniform, Stallman looks like a regular CHP officer.

He's not.

But then, the couple and the kids aren't what they seem either, and
Stallman - actually part of a CHP drug interdiction team - is trained to
figure that out as part of an increased effort to catch drug smugglers
using I-5 to move drugs from California's southern border to the Pacific
Northwest.

The CHP team members randomly move up and down the highway teeming with
truckers and travelers, trying to spot and stop the smugglers. So far this
year, the effort - called Operation Pipeline - has seized drugs worth more
than $118 million, including 1,200 pounds of cocaine and more than 7,000
pounds of marijuana.

The framework of Operation Pipeline has been in place for a decade, and
recent increases in drug-fighting money has allowed the state to bolster
the program.

In one bust alone last month, CHP officers found 61 pounds of cocaine worth
more than $11 million in a secret compartment of a car pulled over in
Stockton.

Today, Stallman is suspicious of this couple with the kids. Walking up to
the car, he knows only that the driver, Ines Gonzalez, was going 65 in a 55
mph zone. And despite Stallman's mild manner and polite questions, Gonzalez
is very nervous.

Too nervous, Stallman thinks. What's more, he's puzzled by Gonzalez's story
about how he is just giving a ride to the woman, Jennefer Ramos, and her
children. He has driven this woman he barely knows hundreds of miles from
Hermiston, Ore., to pick up the boys from he estranged husband in Mexicali,
Mexico, and back north to Hermiston.

There are other things that raise Stallman's suspicions, signs he won't
discuss because he doesn't want to tip off smugglers. He radios the two
other cars in the team working near Redding, 200 miles north of San
Francisco.

After Gonzalez, 23 and Ramos, 20, agree to let officers search the car, a
drug-sniffing dog draws the officers' attention to a spot under the dash.
On the other side of the dash, around the engine, they find bolts turned on
a part of the air-conditioning system that's almost never dismantled.

They peek inside. Something is hidden there.

Later at the Redding CHP station, Stallman, his boss, and a federal drug
agent tear apart the air-conditioner. Looking like grease-streaded
mechanics, they produce what might be a hardcover book tightly wrapped in
silver duct tape.

Two Shasta County undercover narcotics agents cut into the package to test
the contents. It's more than three pounds of cocaine, worth over 300,000.

Gonzalez is booked into jail on drug charges. An illegal immigrant, he
tells the officers in Spanish that he borrowed the car without knowing it
contained drugs.

In a nearby room, Ramos is uncuffed. The community college student says she
just needed a ride and Gonzalez offered one - she didn't know about the
drugs.

"I trusted him," she said. "If I had known, I would never have gone. My
babies come first."

Zachary and his little brother, Raul, are giggling as they chase each other
around the room. It's Zachary's birthday, and officers have given them toys
and candy while they question Ramos. Child protective services decides they
- - and Ramos' infant at home - are well cared for.

Departing with her children for a bus station with $76 she got from
Gonzalez, Ramos says, "This is a very big lesson for me. Never again."

Officials say it isn't unusual for smugglers to use women and children
unaware of the drugs as cover.

"They use people to make it look like a family, to make the officer think
there's nothing there," says CHP Sgt. Hal Rosendahl, who runs Stallman's
team.

The couriers themselves, who get about $2,500 per round-trip, and those who
buy and resell the drugs, almost never divelge their secrets when caught.

"If they do, they are going to die or their families will die," Rosendahl says.

Other tricks include using old cars, cheaply painted, like the one Gonzalez
was driving, to blend "right into the woodwork," he said.

Inside modified cars, officers have found drugs in tires, under seats, in
gas tanks, inside false roofs, under false truck beds, in electric drawers
disguised as air bag compartments, and inside electronically controlled
compartments within bumpers.

"There's no way to tell when you're out on the road if they're carrying
dope," Rosendahl says. "It's sheer numbers. Our guys make a lot of stops.
You kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince."