Smugglers’ Blues : Jails: Visitors of inmates at the Pitchess Honor Rancho stash contraband in shoes, diapers, you name it. Many of them get caught.

They will use just about anything to carry out their stealthy missions--running shoes, potato chip bags, baby bottles and even diapers. Soiled ones.

Such are the sneaky and sometimes disgusting modes of transport would-be smugglers use as they try to slip contraband past sheriff’s deputies at the County Jail in Castaic, engaging in a regular game of cat-and-mouse each weekend.

Like deputies at other Los Angeles County jail facilities, the deputies at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho have learned that they can take nothing for granted as they screen the thousands of visitors who flock to the jail each weekend. Some smugglers succeed, authorities admit, but plenty fail miserably. They even drive to the jail in stolen cars.

“It always amazes me, the stupidity of people,” said S. C. Underdown, a narcotics detective at the Santa Clarita sheriff’s station. “We catch the stupid ones.”

On rare occasions, visitors have tried to sneak in with packets of drugs tucked in their mouths, apparently not aware that an alert deputy might spot a bulge in their cheek and ask them to say “Ah.”

Every Saturday and Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., between 1,500 and 3,000 visitors--most of them women and children--gather at the check-in station next to the jail’s parking lot. After the visitors pass through metal detectors, gloved deputies search their belongings--pawing through purses or opening medicine bottles--before letting them board shuttle buses to the various compounds of the giant complex.

The jail houses 8,416 prisoners in five facilities on 3,000 acres, ranging from minimum to maximum security.

Visitors are given ample warning as they drive to the prison, where two road signs say: “ATTENTION: You are on jail property and subject to a search.”

“Their rights of privacy are given up when they set foot on these premises,” said Lt. John O’Brien, the officer in charge of visiting operations.

Despite the warnings, at least six each weekend go for broke.

One Saturday, a woman visiting an inmate in the maximum-security facility was arrested after a deputy lifted the inside linings of a pair of white K-Swiss tennis shoes that she had brought for her friend. One shoe contained tobacco, the other marijuana.

Matches were also included.

A deputy had already cleared her to board the shuttle bus, but something made him call her back for a closer look, O’Brien said. The woman now faces felony charges of bringing drugs into a prison and the man, who is awaiting sentencing on a murder conviction, may be charged with possession of marijuana.

O’Brien appears always on the alert. While walking across the grounds, he stopped and paused before a nearly empty trash can. Bending over, he poked through the contents of a discarded shopping bag containing a small milk carton and the remains of something smothered in tomato sauce.

“Nothing here,” he said, sounding a little disappointed.

Most of the confiscated goods are drugs, from marijuana to heroin, and cigarettes, which are now banned at the jail. Weapons are also seized occasionally.

Many smuggling attempts occur in the visiting rooms for the minimum-security area, where the visitor and inmate sit on separate sides of a long table divided by chain-link partition a few feet high.

Visiting rooms in other parts of the jail are divided by glass, with visitors and inmates talking by telephones. The phone wires were repositioned after some visitors ripped the lines out of the wall and tried to stuff drug packets through the holes.

At the minimum-security facility, visitors have simply emptied potato chip bags, inserted their drug of choice and resealed the top with crazy glue.

Some inmates get their contraband via airborne delivery. Deputies say outsiders and inmates agree upon a pickup location on the prison grounds, where inmates perform yard work.

The would-be smugglers toss tightly packed bundles of drugs or cigarettes over the four strands of barbed wire separating the property from the Golden State Freeway. To help the inmates find them, the smugglers spray-paint the packages fluorescent orange or green.

Soiled diapers come in handy for stashing tar heroin, deputies said. The drug, sticky, soft and tar-like, is inserted in the contents of the diaper and tossed in a trash can on the premises. This delivery is also prearranged. An inmate on a work crew will pick up the diaper and later fish through the droppings for the stash.

The linings of disposable bottles work for inserting cocaine or heroin.

Even more resourceful contraband runners get caught.

“We had an inmate who was an artist, and the judge issued a court order authorizing him to receive art supplies so he could continue his trade,” Underdown said.

Tubes of paint, six inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter, were sent by mail to the prisoner from a relative. A curious deputy squeezed a tube and paint oozed out. All appeared just fine--until a tube fell on the floor.

“A deputy stepped on a tube by accident,” Underdown said. “The thing split. The lining of the tubes were professionally packed with cocaine and resealed.”

Recently, the Castaic facility received attention when a man who was supposed to report to start a 15-day jail sentence persuaded a friend to take his place. While the impostor was in custody, the man decided to visit another friend in jail and drove into the facility with several bags of cocaine on the front seat of his vehicle. The drugs were discovered on a routine, random search.

The man later told deputies that he wasn’t trying to smuggle the drugs, Underdown said. He simply had left them in his car. Such incidents are not unusual, he said. “They just forget to leave it when they visit people in jail.”

Deputies conduct random searches of cars in the prison parking lot, sometimes as visitors drive in, and often after they have parked their cars.

Smuggling cigarettes is a continuing problem, particularly Camel Shorts, “because they come in the smallest soft pack and they’re the easiest to reshape,” O’Brien said. In the prison’s black market, a single cigarette can go for $10.

On Saturday, a bold visitor tried to smuggle in a red carton of Camel Shorts with a direct approach. Thinking that no one was looking, he threw the carton over the partition separating him from an inmate.

A deputy saw the red projectile fall into the hands of the inmate and rushed toward the prisoner.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Visiting hours are over for you.”