Series: Meth In The Mother Lode (Part 1c)

A USER'S TRAVELS GO DOWNHILL FAST

For years, Kevin Tammarine would travel the foothills in search of
ingredients to make his next batch of methamphetamine.

To make an ounce of meth, he would have to get 30 boxes of cold medicine
containing the drug pseudoephedrine.

That would require 15 stops at grocery and drug stores in cities like
Sonora, Angels Camp and Jackson.

Legally, a person can buy three packs of pseudoephedrine products at once.
To avoid suspicion, Tammarine bought only two. And he'd throw in items like
paper towels and potato chips to camouflage the pills.

But after buying meth-making supplies at a Murphys store on Dec. 16, 2002,
an employee tipped off the authorities that Tammarine was headed to Angels
Camp, likely for more ingredients.

Sheriff's Lt. Eddie Ballard was waiting for Tammarine and his girlfriend in
the parking lot of Longs Drug Store that rainy Sunday night.

Tammarine was arrested on charges of attempting to manufacture meth after
Ballard searched Tammarine's truck and found ingredients for the drug along
with marijuana and meth stuffed in a tennis shoe.

While getting handcuffed, Tammarine remembers telling Ballard, "Hey, I'm a
drug addict and I need help."

Ballard suggested the Mountain Ranch man enroll in Calaveras County's Drug
Court program.

And Tammarine did.

As the county's sixth Drug Court graduate, Tammarine continues to turn his
life around. Some even consider him the poster boy of the program.

However, to this day he's still taking care of the wreckage his meth use
has caused - replacing six missing teeth and paying $20,000 in back child
support payments.

"It does eat at my conscience a bit - all the arguments I caused between
husbands and wives, all the fights, all the crime. What was stolen to get a
little sample of my poison," the 45-year-old carpenter said.

Drug 'lifestyle'

Tammarine grew up in San Diego County a self-described surfer kid, smoking
pot with friends at the beach.

As a teen, he took speed tablets to increase his productivity while working
for his father's landscaping business.

Tammarine dropped out of high school his senior year and moved to Santa
Cruz, where he met his soon-to-be wife on a beach.

The pair married less than a year later in a small Scotts Valley vegetable
garden.

On their wedding day, as he got dressed in drawstring pants and she in a
simple cotton dress, they snorted a line of cocaine.

"Drugs were part of our lifestyle," he recalled.

They moved to Oregon for a few years and sold flowers on street corners,
sometimes trading roses for pot with customers.

"I woke up with a cup of coffee and a joint for years and years and years,"
Tammarine said.

The couple then went to Mendocino County and worked odd jobs before moving
to Calaveras County.

Tammarine, at age 25, and his wife moved to Angels Camp to be near his
grandmother in Columbia and start up his own landscaping business.

Despite not knowing many people, Tammarine quickly became popular because
he was growing a large amount of marijuana inside his two-bedroom home.

"That's when I started getting into the local drug culture of the
foothills," he said. "We had tons of pot. So I'd say, 'Hey, you want to
smoke a joint?' And they'd say, 'Hey, do you want to do a line (of meth)?'

"That's when I fell in love with the drug. It makes you feel like Superman
for a while, but then it'll tear you up. There's no free ride."