DRUGS TARNISH HOMES' PAST

New Residents Worry About Their Reputations

As Irene Richardson opened her front door, she could tell someone had been
in her house because a dresser had been pushed out of its normal place. She
quickly backed out of the doorway to call 911.

Meanwhile, two men scurried out of the garage and through the backyard, one
of them kicking one of Richardson's English bulldogs on his way by.

"I've never been so scared in my life," she said.

When police came and Richardson looked around the house, she discovered
that none of her belongings had been stolen and she had plenty of easy
items worthy of a burglar's attention.

Richardson, it turns out, lives in a house once rented by Anthony Pacheco,
one of two men charged as a kingpin in one of the largest drug operations
on the Peninsula.

Richardson said the burglars went through her attic and other crawl spaces
as if they were looking for something. They even turned over her mattress.

"They just ransacked the whole house," she said.

Her story illustrates one of the more extreme problems faced by people who
move into houses previously occupied by reputed drug dealers. While Hampton
police never made an arrest in the break-in, it is possible that the
burglars, believing they were ransacking Pacheco's house, were looking for
drugs or money.

If that turns out to be the case, then the burglars were trying to steal
from a drug operation now charged with selling more than 10,000 pounds of
marijuana and 40 kilograms of cocaine on the Peninsula and in other parts
of the country.

Last week, police arrested 33 people associated with the drug ring,
including George Haugen, a 38-year-old former Poquoson man charged with
running the Peninsula end of the operation.

In a federal indictment, prosecutors said the members of the drug ring
employed a cadre of "stash" houses, where they would receive and package
drugs, count money and conduct other drug business. Seven of these homes
are on the Peninsula.

While several of them were used as stash houses up until recently such as
the Haugen family home on Wagner Road, in Poquoson drug ring members have
long since vacated other houses.

And the people who moved in those homes later people with no connection to
the drug ring have felt varying degrees of backlash.

"It's a tough situation," said Sgt. Paul Swartz, who headed the task force
that investigated the drug operation.

Two of the houses are on Palmerton Drive in Newport News.

Brian Zwak, a 25-year-old Navy electrician, has been living in his
Palmerton town house since Nov. 1999. But, in 1997, three members of the
drug ring used the apartment to count out drug proceeds, according to the
indictment.

When news of the indictment became public last week, Zwak was shocked and
worried that his neighbors would associate him with the drug activity.

"I was really caught off guard," he said. "This is a really nice community.
I would have never thought anything like that could have happened here."

Zwak didn't learn about the indictments and the stash houses until they
were published in the Daily Press.

"I thought it was unfair to spray it on me and the other people," he said.

A woman living in the other home on Palmerton said a police officer that
lives nearby had quizzed a neighbor about her.

"Questions were raised," she said.

Zwak's parent called to tell him about the news and, later, neighbors
showed him a copy of the paper.

"I assumed if they all read it, a lot of other people read it. And they may
not know me well enough to know it didn't pertain to me," he said. "That's
what I was worried about getting a bad reputation."

But Zwak said he is grateful he didn't have any problems like Richardson.

Richardson moved into her home in early 2001. The home was broken into two
weeks later. Pacheco rented the house for about six months in 1999, Swartz
said.

While Swartz wouldn't discuss specifics about whether the break-in involved
Pacheco, he said, "something like that may come up in testimony."