THE SAM BROWN SAGA

News Story of the Year: The tale of a young mountain biker captivated
a nation and brought more international attention to the Nelson area

One of the biggest stories of 2009 and perhaps one of the biggest
international stories to come out of the West Kootenay in nearly a
decade was the saga of the late Sam Lindsay Brown - a Nelson resident
and beloved member of the local mountain bike community.

In late February, Brown was arrested in a remote area of Colville
National Forest by members of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency while
unloading a helicopter full of marijuana.

Brown had flown the allegedly stolen Bell 206 helicopter loaded with
200 kilograms of marijuana without a license from Sicamous through
the mountains in the dark of night, fog and snow - into the hands of
the DEA agents waiting for him on the other end.

Five days after he was taken into custody at the Spokane County Jail,
Brown was found dead in his solitary cell. He had made a noose out of
his bed sheet and hung himself by jamming it into a light fixture
designed to prevent such actions.

Local CBC reporter, Bob Keating learned of the story early on and
broke it to the world.

"I have several really good contacts in the world of moving marijuana
between here and the States," Keating explained. "I got a call even
before Sam Brown went to jail in Spokane.

"I realized this was a huge story right from the beginning, because
you had the case of a young man allegedly flying marijuana across the
line who died in an American prison - which in and of itself is a
huge story. You also had the fact that this was a regular, almost
scheduled flight between the two countries that had been broken up.

"Plus you had the story of Sam Brown himself, which was also a
remarkable and tragic story on its own."

Brown's arrest and subsequent suicide were just one chapter in an
elaborate sting operation set up between the RCMP and the DEA that
targeted a cross-border drug smuggling operation, which brought pot
across the border and brought back hard drugs like cocaine and ecstasy.

In the following weeks several people were arrested in different
locations on both sides of the border. Three helicopters and a total
of 700 kilograms of marijuana were seized.

When asked by The Nelson Daily News what he thought of his son's
actions and his death, Lou Brown said his involvement in smuggling
didn't come as a surprise.

"I would expect it from him," Brown said three weeks after his son
died. "When you're that age you're immortal. Your own life doesn't
really mean anything."

But Brown said his son's suicide was pretty hard to accept.

"I honestly believe it was a hit from the inside, but we don't know,"
he said. "You kind of read between the lines and it's dirty."

In the months following Sam Brown's suicide and the ensuing drug
busts all over the Pacific Northwest, the story of a young, athletic
daredevil who was caught in the middle of a drug war and died
tragically was evidently too compelling for national media to resist.

In April, investigative reporter, Jesse Hyde came to the West
Kootenay to investigate Brown's story along with the underground pot
industry and accompanying subcultures that exist here for a feature
story in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Hyde parlayed his research into a 14-page epic tale that spelled out
the saga of Sam Brown to a worldwide audience in the August issue
that also featured an article on the sudden death of Michael Jackson.

A reporter and photographer from the Associated Press newswire also
came to the area to look into the story in June.

And, not to be outdone, the movie industry and CBC TV have even
showed interest in Sam Brown's tale.

Shortly after Hyde's story came out, he was negotiating with two
different parties who wanted to buy the rights to the story to turn
it into a screenplay for a movie.

LINDEN MACINTYRE'S TAKE ON THE SAM BROWN STORY

In mid-November, CBC's bastion of investigative journalism, The Fifth
Estate did a one-hour documentary piece about Sam Brown hosted by one
of Canada's top journalists, Linden MacIntyre.

MacIntyre's piece took the story to a whole new level, with
interviews from insiders in the marijuana industry and those who knew
Brown best, as well as in-depth research into facts surrounding the
case. It was not so much the cracking of an international drug
smuggling ring that interested MacIntyre in the tale, but the tragic
story of Sam Brown himself.

"Here you had a guy who didn't think he was breaking any laws. He
knew he was courting trouble, but he thought this was another extreme
hobby or sport like his mountain biking," MacIntyre told The Nelson
Daily News last week. "He'd never been arrested or been in trouble
with the law in any serious way. So he was kind of naive about what
he was doing and what the consequences might be. "He seemed
completely oblivious to the possibility that he might get caught and
he might have to do some serious prison time."

MacIntyre spent a significant amount of time in the region
researching the widely viewed story and managed to settle the debate
about Brown's controversial death.

"The options available to him would be to rat out a bunch of people
or look at a very long time in a very difficult world," MacIntyre
said. "So he just got desperate and killed himself.

"That's my opinion, but it's supported by a lot of objective
evidence. This autopsy report is pretty explicit and thorough. We had
it peer reviewed for its professionalism and the reasons for its
conclusions. It passed a pretty high bar."

While he noted there were many "poisonous comments" posted on the
Fifth Estate website by people who thought the story was glorifying
the life of a drug smuggling criminal, MacIntyre said that's far from
what was intended.

"There was a lot of anger in the anonymous responses that he was a
drug smuggler and a low life who deserved to die," he noted. "But we
were clear that this was not a story to glamourize either the
lifestyle or the practice of smuggling,"

MacIntyre's documentary made clear that Brown's arrest was the result
of inaction by two people in the smuggling ring who could have
stopped Brown from flying across the border in the first place.

He hoped the piece would warn other young people considering the
smuggling lifestyle that proved to be Sam Brown's end.

"What we had hoped it would become was kind of a cautionary tale that
might deter some other young people who figured they could pull this
off," MacIntyre explained. "We came to the conclusion that there are
probably a lot of Sam Browns out there; young folk who are attracted
by the money.

"The whole thrust of the piece was, you better be sure what you're
getting into and who you're getting into it with if you're going to
fool around in this business. Because when you're up against an
extremely motivated law enforcement world and behind and around you,
you are organically connected to some fairly tough customers. And on
the far fringes of this rather peaceful practice that goes on around
Nelson and the Kootenay, on the edges you've got gangs; serious
cartels and criminals. You just don't want to be part of that unless
you know what it's all about.

"Very few of these young people either know or care what it's about;
they don's see further ahead than the challenge of getting the load
across and the reward of getting the money. For Sam Brown, who had
everything to live for, this was the biggest mistake of his life."