A LONG STRANGE TRIP: POT ADVOCATE FACING FEDERAL CHARGES

Pot Advocate Facing Federal Charges After Living the Life of a Fugitive

It was a chilly January morning in 2002 when Ken Hayes Jr., his
partner Cheryl and their toddler Madeline finished packing up a
U-Haul truck ready to leave their cozy Petaluma farm for a new life in Canada.

The family was desperate to leave as Hayes feared an imminent arrest
by Federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers.

He sensed they were coming. He just didn't know when.

As the three hopped in the truck with their parrot Romeo, ready to
take the long drive to Vancouver, a car rolled into the driveway.

It wasn't the DEA. It was Hayes' mother and father.

They showed up unannounced to convince the family to stay. But it was
too late. Their son's mind was set. He was leaving and there was a
real chance he was never coming back.

Hayes founded the now-defunct Harm Reduction Center in San Francisco
in 2000. He dispensed cannabis to sick and dying people and offered
counseling to heroin and crack addicts. For a while, he was one of
the most respected medical marijuana advocates in San Francisco,
having the support of former District Attorney Terence Hallinan, and
then Supervisor Mark Leno and current Supervisor Chris Daly.

Hallinan, in fact, testified on Hayes' behalf in Sonoma County on
charges of cultivating and distributing up to 1,000 marijuana plants.
Hayes was represented at the time by attorney Bill Panzer, the man
who helped write Proposition 215, The Compassionate Use of Marijuana
Act passed by state voters in 1996.

A jury acquitted him and another defendant in the fall of 2001. The
courtroom victory left Hayes feeling triumphant and righteous.

Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 hit and the world changed for
everyone. Hayes thought, however, the federal government might take
it easy on cannabis dispensaries in California since there were much
more pressing matters at hand.

He was wrong.

The Drug Enforcement Agency actually stepped up its efforts to close
down cannabis dispensaries across the state following the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11.

Hayes knew he would be a target by the DEA because he had made
himself a figurehead in San Francisco's pot club industry. He
organized patients' rights rallies frequently and donated time and
money to politicians sympathetic to the cause. He knew his court
victory in Sonoma County was also likely to bring on the DEA's fury.

He had a choice that chilly morning on his farm in 2002. Stay and
face the music, or leave and start a new life.

He chose to leave and become a runaway from the law.

It was a decision that would nearly tear his family apart.

Traveling the World

Getting into Canada wasn't exactly easy. It's a long story that left
his daughter and partner safe across the border into Canada and Hayes
stuck in Washington state with 53 cents in his pocket. He made it in
somehow just as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was preparing an
affidavit for an arrest warrant.

In Canada, Hayes filed for refugee status on the grounds he couldn't
get a fair trial in the United States. The process took 18 months and
was finally denied. The family lived happily in Vancouver, however,
running an alternative medicine shop called "The Spirit Within."
After three years, though, Canada had its share of Hayes. He was
given a "departure order." He didn't have to go back to the United
States, but he couldn't stay in Canada.

His daughter Maddie's mother, though, decided it was time to come
back home to the Bay Area and a more stable life.

Hayes would now be alone in his flight for freedom of prosecution.

Meanwhile, the DEA listed Hayes as a dangerous cocaine trafficker on
its Web site.

This was an obstacle for the fugitive since he could face extradition
depending on what foreign land he ended up in.

He traveled to many foreign lands over the next three years. There
was his trip to Thailand where he went to offer assistance after a
tsunami devastated parts of Southeast Asia. There was his year in
Cambodia where he worked in a medical clinic and offered HIV outreach
to remote villages.

From San Bruno to Marijuana Advocacy

Hayes had always wanted to be a doctor since his days as a young man
growing up in San Bruno. It was his Halloween costume when he was
vice president of the Associated Students at Skyline College. At the
University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1980s he studied
psychobiology, pre-med. But he never made it to medical school, there
were other distractions. Hayes was a Deadhead with the Volkswagen van
to prove it.

He embraced the hippie gatherings at Dead shows and partook in its
counterculture debauchery.

At Dead gatherings, Hayes met marijuana advocates who helped him
forge his own beliefs on the plant's effectiveness as a medical option.

Medical marijuana advocacy would become his life's pursuit, a pursuit
that didn't exactly thrill his conservative parents.

His parents, however, remained supportive of their son through the
years even while he trotted the globe as a federal fugitive where he
finally ended up enrolled in Ovidius University of Constanta Medical
School in Romania. His mother even brought Madeline to see her father
in Eastern Europe. It was a brief visit that left Hayes longing for
his daughter's company.

Maddie would ultimately take a long plane trip all by herself from
San Francisco to Europe to reunite and live with her father. She was
barely 8 at the time.

Hayes had his daughter and was enrolled in medical school. Life was
good. Until, that is, he got in trouble in Romania.

Locked Up

Hayes was accused of growing ayahuasca, a plant containing the
psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine or DMT, used in spiritual
practices by shamans in South America.

Romania didn't take too kindly to the foreigner, however, threatening
him with up to 24 years in prison, and locking him up in what
amounted to a dungeon for more than seven months. On the day he was
arrested in Romania, his daughter Maddie was studying the country's
language in school. She, too was taken into Romanian custody and sent
to an orphanage. Hayes' quest for a happy life with his daughter had
come to an end. The worry consumed him and the dank, dark room he sat
in each day with only a bucket for company left him nearly mad.

Fortunately, Maddie's mom came quick to her daughter's aid, sweeping
her back to the safe confines of the Portola Highlands in San Bruno
within days of Hayes' arrest.

Meanwhile, confinement left Hayes suicidal.

He was ready for extradition. He'd rather come home to the United
States and face federal charges than languish in a Romanian jail. He
was a skinny, disheveled man by the time Romania turned him over to
the United States.

Coming Home

But he was finally ready to face the music. After all, there was a
new president now with an administration hinting at making marijuana
crimes less of a priority for prosecutors.

U.S. prosecutors, however, would not relent in Hayes' case. Rather
than face those prosecutors in U.S. District Court in San Francisco,
Hayes pleaded guilty recently, with attorney Bill Panzer representing
him, to felony charges of cultivating up to 99 marijuana plants for
distribution and for not claiming $25,000 in income from 2001.

He now awaits sentencing. The maximum punishment for the crime is 20
years but prosecutors are only seeking a 16-month sentence. U.S.
District Judge Charles Breyer presides over the case, however, and
has a history of leniency in sentencing marijuana crimes.

He sentenced pot guru Ed Rosenthal to only one day following his
conviction on similar charges in 2003.

In fact, the charges Hayes pleaded guilty to nearly mirror Rosenthal's case.

His sentencing is Aug. 5.

"I don't want to go to jail. If I end up in jail I'm not going to
complain about it. I'll accept my fate," he said.

At 41, the former pot advocate, fugitive and Deadhead is living with
his parents at his childhood San Bruno home.

His daughter Maddie lives across the street with her mom. They get to
see each other every day. Hayes walks Maddie to and from school most
days and volunteers in her class teaching 10 year olds long division.

He thinks back on that chilly morning in Petaluma in 2002 when his
parents asked him to stay. He knows he could have put all this
trouble behind him years ago and save himself and family lots of heartache.

But he takes great joy in his daughter's presence and cherishes who
she's become through it all. Her long strange trip with dad has
turned her into a person who stands up for change, a person who knows
sometimes things in this world aren't right.