Cannabis club's broker arrested

The Daily Journal

A marijuana grower described as the main broker for Ukiah's Cannabis Buyers
Club was arrested late Friday afternoon by Lake County sheriff's deputies.

Officers reportedly confiscated 51 plants from a ranch on the
Mendocino/Lake County line.

The Lake County Sheriff's Department would not comment on the arrest, but
the Lake County Jail confirmed that charges against the woman who was
arrested, Yvette Rubio, included felony cultivation and possession of
marijuana with intent to sell.

But Cherrie Lovett, founder and director of Ukiah's distribution center for
medical marijuana, said the plants belong to her personally and to other
customers of the club. .

As a designated caregiver for a number of people with physician issued
prescriptions for pot who are too sick to grow it themselves, Rubio said
she is simply "babysitting" the plants

"I get labor and materials," Rubio said. "The marijuana is Lovett's,
period. I'm not selling it to her." .

Both women said the plants were grown outside in the open grown outside in
the open, in fenced in patches, each patch clearly marked with copies of
Rubio's contract with the Cannabis Buyers Club

Rubio said she talked to the deputies about her contract with the Buyers
Club. "They handed me a search warrant," she said, "I handed them my contract.

"They acted as if the contract was meaningless. They said Lake Country was
not one of the five counties in the state where it was permitted to grow
medicinal marijuana.

"I told them as far as I knew Lake County was still a part of California."

A friend who witnessed the bust called Lovett, who phoned Rubio's house
while deputies were still there.

Lovett said she asked the commanding officer at the scene, Sheriff's
Detective David Garzoli, to wait to cut the plants until hearing from her
lawyer.

The officer told her the marijuana would be under lock and key at the
department's storage shed, but even though both women still hope to get it
back, they are worried about mildew.

"Once even a little bit of mildew sets in," Lovett said, "it. can kill us.
I personally have no medicine now."

Lovett said the 51 plants were ready to be harvested, and would have been a
six months' supply for the people it was being grown for.

Rubio, who is applying to medical schools next month and said she was doing
calculus homework when the deputies arrived, is concerned about the felony
charges brought against her.

"I can understand that the guidelines voted in under the Compassionate Use
Act are not very clear cut," she said. "but since they 're not, how can
they be so clear cut that I'm not a care giver?

"I'm not some bigtime grower," she said. "I thought I was growing less
than I was allowed to.

"Maybe a lot of people are Iying to the deputies," she said, "saying
they're growing for sick people. But they're mistaken this time I really
was,"

Rubio was bailed out of Lake County Jail Friday night on a $5,000 bond,
according to Lovett, and both women were consulting with their attorneys at
press time.