Inept Show Dog Finds His Niche on the Scent of Crime : In War on Drugs, It’s Winston by a Nose

It was still early in Winston’s career, when some police officers scoffed at the golden Labrador retriever’s talents. He had alerted them that a Buick Regal in a central Orange County motel parking lot was loaded with drugs.

The car was confiscated, searched and the cops came up empty. Your dog goofed, a police sergeant told Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigator Don Lambert.

Lambert returned with Winston to the car. Again the golden Lab signaled the car was hot. There are drugs in that car, Lambert told the police matter-of-factly.

There were. A second search turned up 16 kilograms of heroin, stashed in a false compartment between the back seat and the trunk.

Lambert, Winston’s only handler in the dog’s five-year police career, let a smile slip through as he told that anecdote about a canine who flunked show dog school and bird hunting before finally finding his niche as a drug sniffer.

And the nose on that 7-year-old dog may be the best in the business. Some say that Winston could smell marijuana on a fruit fly’s breath.

The latest discovery, last month, raised Winston’s five-year sniffing record to the $47-million mark in drugs, including money contaminated with narcotics. That’s the total police agencies in Orange County have confiscated because of Winston’s sensitive nose.

“He cost us $6,000; I’d say that’s a pretty good return on our investment,” said Sheriff’s Department Capt. Tim Simon, head of the county’s new regional narcotics program.

Winston gained more publicity last month when it was made known at a court hearing that he had been partly responsible for the arrest of a Huntington Beach schoolteacher and a Long Beach man who are charged in a million-dollar money-laundering scheme.

Newport Beach police were investigating unusual deposits by James R. Hoyland, an Edison High School science teacher, at the Bank of Newport. They wondered whether the money might be contaminated with narcotics. So Hoyland’s money was hidden among other cash in the bank vault, and Winston was sent in to see if he could find anything. He gave his usual drug alert--excited scratching, clawing and biting--at only one stack of money. It was Hoyland’s, hidden in a drawer.

Defense attorneys in the case, arguing for lower bail, pointed out to Harbor Municipal Judge Selim H. Franklin last week that such tests are not always accurate. They cited a recent newspaper study that said most money in circulation has some kind of narcotics residue, since narcotics are so prevalent in our society.

Franklin shook his head.

“I have a lot of confidence in Winston’s abilities,” Franklin told them. “Winston has more credibility with me than most of the witnesses who have appeared before me.”

There are a lot of police dogs in Orange County. Almost every police agency uses dogs for patrol, or searches. Some sniff drugs in secondary roles. But the Sheriff’s Department has the only two dogs in the county trained solely for drug sniffing--Winston and Snowball, another Labrador retriever two years younger. But Winston is top dog on the beat.

From Line of Champions

Winston was bred by a Mission Viejo couple to be a show dog. His lineage is a long history of champion show dogs.

“But he was just too aggressive,” Lambert explained.

The dog was then sold to a field trainer for possible use as a bird dog. But Winston and the trainer did not get along. He was sold to another field trainer, who saw more personality problems with Winston. That trainer sold him to Mandelyn Kennels in Bakersfield.

In 1982, just before Winston turned 2 years old, an advisory council to Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates paid $6,000 for him. The cost covered the price of the dog, training by Mandelyn Kennels and a four-week course to train a handler. Lambert, a dog lover and one of numerous applicants for the post, got the job.

Lambert, who is 43, said he not only has grown to love the dog over the past five years, he has come to respect Winston’s talents.

Sending in Winston

“We’ve had cases where police officers have torn a place apart looking for drugs and come up empty,” Lambert said. “Then we send in Winston, and he finds a hidden compartment just full of narcotics.”

Winston has sniffed drugs hidden inside mattress box springs, inside walls and under trapdoors. Once he even found some under a bathtub. Because he has a strict, high-protein diet, the dog is rewarded with toys instead of food. His favorite: a piece of fire hose.

As confiscations mounted, so did Winston’s reputation.

“Winston? Sure, I’ve worked with him lots of times,” said San Clemente Police Chief Albert C. Ehlow, who worked many narcotics cases when he was a lieutenant. “He’s something to see in action. He can do the job better, and a lot faster, than we can. If it’s there, he’ll find it.”

When Winston began his specialized duties in 1982, only two agencies in the Southland, both in Los Angeles, had full-time drug-sniffing canines, Lambert said. “A lot of agencies were skeptical at first,” he said. “But now when they call, it’s just: ‘Is Winston available?’ ”

He almost always is. Lambert and Winston take calls any hour of the night or day. While Lambert is a full-time investigator, much of his work is with Winston, who works 10 to 12 days a month.

Sheriff Gates has made it clear that Winston and Snowball are available to any police agency in the county that needs them. Winston has two fat scrapbooks filled with letters of thanks from various police agencies in the county.

His biggest case was a $4.2-million drug bust in Anaheim in 1984. Lambert recalled that one of the dealers had given Anaheim police permission to search his hotel room near the Anaheim Convention Center. Winston gave his drug alert while sniffing at sealed cardboard boxes. Once opened, the boxes were found to be full of narcotics-contaminated money. That gave police probable cause to search three other rooms, Lambert said. More than $4 million in $5, $10 and $50 bills was found.

That case brought Winston a toy bone and a handshake from Gov. George Deukmejian. It also brought $1.8 million to the coffers of the City of Anaheim, and nearly $500,000 to the Sheriff’s Department. They were the most generous drug money awards in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice to that time. (Local agencies are allowed to apply for part of the money confiscated in drug raids in which they participate.)

How Dogs Are Used

While that haul was unusually large, it’s typical of the way the police use the dogs.

“The police will ask a suspect if they can search his house, or his motel room,” Lambert explained. “If they say yes, then we bring the dog in. You should see the way the (suspect’s) face changes when he sees the dog.”

Sometimes it’s Winston who cracks a case. Often, however, Winston’s role, as in the Hoyland case, is in helping police decide if there is even a case to pursue. While lawyers for Hoyland and his co-defendant, James Ford, argue that there is no evidence connecting them to drugs, the fact remains that the investigation did not get intense until Winston’s discovery in the bank vault.

“Many times we come up empty,” Lambert said. But that’s not always disappointing to police. It saves them a lot of man-hours pursuing false leads, he said.

Capt. Simon and Lambert had only a brief comment about the newspaper survey cited by Hoyland’s attorneys and the argument that so much currency was contaminated with drugs that Winston’s sniffing didn’t prove much.

“That’s not our experience,” Lambert said.

Getting a Third Dog

The Sheriff’s Department is now getting a third drug-sniffing dog from the same Bakersfield kennel, which has been taken over by new ownership. This one also is a Labrador retriever, and it will be paid for by the Newport-Irvine Rotary Club.

“The Rotary people said they had a little money, and wanted to know what they could do to help,” Simon said. “We told them another dog was the best thing they could do for us. We’ve got enough work to keep them all busy.”

While Snowball already is winning high praise, there is no guarantee that any new dog could excel as Winston has.

Lambert jokes that when he and the dog walk into a police room, people announce, “Winston’s here.”

But Simon credits Lambert as much as the dog. “It takes a special handler to make a dog perform,” Simon said. ‘

Winston lives at Lambert’s home, in a backyard kennel. Living together is not only important for the bond between them, it saves time on emergency calls, the handler said. But he shows restraint when discussing his success with Winston.

“Let’s just say he trusts me,” Lambert said. “He knows I won’t let him do anything where he will get hurt.”