AFTER ARREST, HE LOOKS TO RUN

Three years ago during a late-night traffic stop, Pless Dickerson's
public persona as a popular school administrator and his private
battle with drug addiction collided: The longtime Westbury High
School principal known for gentlemanly manners and his easy rapport
with students, was arrested with a plastic bag of crack cocaine in his car.

"This is not me, this is not who I am," Dickerson remembers thinking
as he was taken to Nassau County jail by undercover narcotics
detectives who, acting on a tip from an informant, had pulled him
over. "But it was."

"I sat there in that cell," he said, "and I thought: 'My career is
over. What am I going to do next?'"

After finishing eight-and-a-half months in a drug rehabilitation
program that gave him the chance to have all criminal charges
dropped, Dickerson came up with the answer: Run for Westbury school board.

Now a vocational educational counselor at Phoenix House in Hauppauge,
the same facility that helped him overcome his addiction, Dickerson,
57, is one of six candidates running for three at-large seats in the
district where he spent 34 years as an educator, 18 of them as the
high school principal. Dickerson's platform for the May 16 primary
emphasizes his educational background, pointing out that there are no
career educators on the Westbury board. He retired from Westbury in
June 2003, two months after his arrest.

"I still have Westbury in my blood," Dickerson said during an
interview at the Rockville Centre office of his attorney, William
Petrillo. "I still have a passion for the kids and I think I still
have something to offer."

The day after his arrest, reporters were camped out in front of his
home, and the story was everywhere: respected school principal caught
with crack. Worse still, he had to tell his family.

"Initially, the first day I thought about running - you've got TV
cameras outside your door and you're living in the community you work
in - who wouldn't think about trying to escape?" he said.

His older brother in Atlanta, where Dickerson grew up, offered the
perfect out: Sell that house and come home.

Then the letters started coming. More than 100 of them, talking about
the man who began teaching black history, the principal who pushed
students to take AP classes, and played clarinet with the school band.

"He is one-of-a-kind, and the very best kind," one teacher wrote.

"We are family, plain and simple. ... For that reason, we love and
support him and will see him through this," an administrator wrote.

"I'm grateful to have had him as a teacher and a friend," a 1976
Westbury High alum wrote.

Recalling the support, Dickerson's smooth voice wavers. "It was
almost like I was at my own wake," he said. "And in a way, I was at a
wake. It was the death of that person I had become ... my arrest
began the life-saving process for me."

His addiction, he said, crept up on him. He suffered chronic cluster
headaches, and had spent a lifetime avoiding introspection, first
with long hours at work and, later, with drugs.

"I basically got caught up in my job and never dealt with a lot of
personal, emotional things ... I worked very hard and I enjoyed my
work but I never really dealt with myself and from that I ended up
medicating myself," he said. "You think you're in control, but you're not."

He began to miss days at work, although those who knew him then say
they were stunned by his arrest, and subsequent admission that he had
a drug problem.

"I never would have seen it coming," said Tameika Lovell, a 2001
Westbury graduate who is now interning in the guidance department.
"He was always so professional, for someone to have a problem like
that and to need help - he never showed any signs of that."

Lovell's mother, Elaine, is among a group of residents and community
activists now working on Dickerson's campaign.

"He had a downfall and he's trying to really make a positive
comeback," she said. "He's got a lot of knowledge. There are always
those who are not willing to forgive and forget ... but I see him
trying to really do good."

Dickerson says that, in some ways, he is as much of an example for
students now as he was during his long tenure as principal:
"Everybody sometimes has a fall. It's not about your fall, it's about
how you get up."