SOUTH TEXAS PIPELINE PUMPS IN DRUGS

The 53-year-old grandmother and her co-worker pulled up to the Border
Patrol checkpoint as they had done several times before, carrying the Bible
they hoped would protect the 73 pounds of marijuana in a hidden compartment
of their sedan.

Their boss had told his stable of drug runners - and they believed it -
that carrying the Bible and vials of holy water, and playing gospel music
on the tape deck, would protect them from a search by the stern-faced
agents and the drug dogs waiting for them at the checkpoint. But about 150
miles away, in McAllen, Texas, their boss - 39-year-old evangelical
minister Gabriel Rolando Rodriguez - had no idea his carefully constructed
drug empire was about to collapse.

With a crew of about 20 drug runners making regular trips to Houston,
well-established sources in Mexico and buyers as far away as St. Louis,
Rodriguez ran a solid, if unspectacular, drug operation. Since 1992 he had
been moving 100 to 150 pounds of marijuana a week, never loading up his
runners with much more than 75 pounds because he didn't want to risk losing
more than that if the cargo was seized.

Through numerous other organizations like Rodriguez's, officials estimate
millions of pounds of drugs are smuggled north on South Texas highways each
year.

And because of the region's location on one of the world's largest drug
pipelines - estimates are that more than 62 percent of the drugs seized
along the Mexican border flow through South Texas - drugs are likely more
prevalent here than in other parts of the country.

Rodriguez's drugs were moved north on U.S. Highways 281 and 77, passing
through the Falfurrias and Sarita Border Patrol checkpoints.

"The whole thing about running dope is getting through the checkpoints,"
said Jaime Garza, commander of the South Texas Specialized Crimes and
Narcotics Task Force.

Rodriguez was one of many independent drug lords working out of the Rio
Grande Valley, each carving out a chunk of the drug trade. With demand so
high, the field was wide open, drug agents say.

"(The Rodriguez organization) is kind of the classic Valley pipeline
marijuana conspiracy," Reed said. "It was kind of low-tech. They moved
relatively smaller quantities in increments."

Like many organizations, it was sewn together with family ties. Rodriguez's
brother owned a used refrigerator store in Houston, which was used to help
launder the group's money. His wife has pleaded guilty to drug-smuggling
charges, as has his son.

The Rodriguez organization often used middle-aged women in ordinary looking
cars to smuggle their dope. While using unlikely suspects - senior
citizens, families with young children - is nothing new, the Rodriguez
group added a twist.

"A lot of trafficking organizations have different theories on how to
penetrate the Border Patrol checkpoints," Reed said. "Some have all kinds
of elaborate compartments. In this case, they didn't have that. They had
down-and-out drivers, and some were instructed to play religious music and
have a Bible on the front seat."

But on this trip, on April 7, 1998, the grandmother and her male
companion's luck and superstition failed. One of the checkpoint's
drug-sniffing dogs began barking at their vehicle, and agents found the
marijuana bundles.

As the duty officer on April 7, 1998, Cris G. Pendleton was at the South
Texas Narcotics Taskforce headquarters, a computer-filled warren of
offices. When the call came from the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint south of
Sarita, Pendleton wondered if it was the "same old, same old." Such busts
were daily, sometimes hourly occurrences at South Texas checkpoints.

After the 73 pounds of marijuana were discovered, the man and woman were
taken to separate holding cells at the checkpoint. When Pendleton arrived
at the checkpoint, she sat down with the woman and, as drug agents do with
almost every suspect, gave her a chance to save her neck: Give us names,
tell us who you work for and you won't do time. To Pendleton's surprise and
to Rodriguez's later chagrin, the woman wanted to talk.

The woman had thought this day might come. Despite the vials of holy water,
the Bible, the gospel music, she knew she couldn't tempt fate forever. So
she had quietly prepared. She kept a ledger of phone numbers, names and
vehicle registrations - information that would be poisonous to her
organization, but would keep her from prison.

Pendleton spent the next two years corroborating the information as the
case mushroomed to include the DEA, the Internal Revenue Service and the
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Taskforce.

During the investigation, agents learned Rodriguez and his siblings ran the
tight-knit organization, in which the marijuana was moved from various
properties in the Rio Grande Valley to Houston, where it was stored and
repackaged for redistribution.

Once the evidence was compiled, agents fanned out across McAllen and
Houston to make arrests. Pendleton said that when officers arrived at
Rodriguez's McAll

(Contact Jeremy Schwartz of the Caller-Times in Corpus Christi, Texas, at
http://www.caller.com.)