Meth Labs: How Young Lives Are Put in Peril

Their parents have turned what should be safe havens into toxic powder kegs.

Every day, children in trailer parks, suburban tracts and cheap motels across California breathe fumes from chemical brews so nasty they can corrode steel.

Stored alongside their toys or sometimes stashed under their cribs are compounds that, with the slightest miscalculation, can spark an inferno. Their role models are junkies who nurture their habits more than their offspring.

Such are the sad realities for a dramatically growing number of children who live in homes doubling as methamphetamine labs.

There is no more tragic example of the risks than the explosion of a trailer the day after Christmas in the dusty Riverside County hamlet of Aguanga. Inside, three toddlers, ages 1, 2 and 3, were burned beyond recognition.

“My mom was cooking some white medicine on the stove,” said Jimmy James, 7, who watched in horror as the flames that would kill his brothers and sister engulfed the kitchen. “She wasn’t cookin’ no food,” he told police.

With alarming frequency, narcotics officers who investigate the manufacture of methamphetamine are encountering hundreds of children whose parents’ desires for drugs and fast profits have put them in harm’s way.

Perhaps no other illegal drug on the market has resulted in more cases of child abuse and endangerment than methamphetamine, a potent stimulant rivaling cocaine as the most prevalent street drug in the state.

“It’s the bathtub gin of the ‘90s,” said Sgt. Tony Ennis, a Bakersfield narcotics officer. “People make it in their kitchens, garages and bathrooms. Tragedies like the one in Riverside are going to escalate. More children are going to get hurt.”

For parents, the welfare of their children is overpowered by their devotion to the drug.

“You just care about the high,” said Bonnie Lee Hovey, 29, who temporarily lost custody of her four children in 1992. “You don’t look at the people around you. You don’t look at your kids.”

The chemicals used to make methamphetamine are some of the most toxic and explosive on the market. Although law enforcement authorities routinely wear hazardous material suits during raids, children living inside the clandestine drug factories sometimes have been found wearing nothing but diapers.

Of the 32 chemicals mentioned in recipes for the drug, about a third have been rated extremely hazardous. Fainting, nausea, eye irritations, sore throats and respiratory ailments are the least of the side effects.

One key ingredient, hydriodic acid, can cause instant third-degree burns and destroy lung tissue if inhaled. When overheated, red phosphorous, another ingredient, burns furiously or turns into phosphine gas, a World War I nerve agent capable of causing comas and death.

So real are the dangers that the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement estimates that one of every six labs seized by the agency catches fire before discovery. Another study, this one in Oregon where labs also are proliferating, found evidence of explosions and fires at 30% of the production sites seized there.

That so many youngsters are being subjected to this senseless peril enrages authorities on the front lines of drug enforcement.

“It just turns us inside out,” said Police Cpl. Tony Augustyn, who helped to arrest the parents of seven children who were found at a meth lab last month in Beaumont in Riverside County. “This to me is the bottom of the barrel. This is the scum washing down the barrel.”

In raid after raid across the state, investigators have found methamphetamine in all stages of production sitting in uncovered containers and baking dishes within reach of curious hands. During one lab seizure in Butte County last year, investigators discovered a child’s clothes sodden with methamphetamine oil.

In December, state agents working in the Antelope Valley arrested an infant’s mother who had stored chemicals and half-finished speed in formula containers that were next to bottles of baby food in the refrigerator.

At a Bakersfield tract house, officers found five pounds of freshly made methamphetamine drying in the kitchen unattended. Four small children were watching television in the next room.

Not only are the ingredients hazardous, the finished product can have particularly profound effects on juveniles, including irregular heartbeats, seizures and inflammation and hemorrhaging of the brain. Users can become paranoid, highly irritable and violent.

Two years ago, methamphetamine somehow made it into the body of 2-month-old Joshua Stevens of Hemet, who suffocated in his crib. Police say he was sleeping in the living room while his parents were cooking speed in the kitchen. The Riverside County coroner concluded that “acute methamphetamine intoxication” contributed to his death.

Prosecutors believe that the child succumbed to the fumes wafting through the home. Both parents are awaiting trial on felony child endangerment charges.

“Unfortunately, the consideration of life does not play a part in any of this,” said Dan Cupido, Riverside County’s chief deputy coroner. “At what cost will you attempt to make methamphetamine? What value do you put on a life now, especially that of an innocent child?”

If Butte County’s experience is any indication of the risk, five of 15 children removed from seven labs in 1995 tested positive for methamphetamine. The rural community of 200,000 north of Sacramento has one of the worst lab problems in the state for an area its size.

Adding to the danger are the deplorable living conditions that characterize homes that have been turned into labs. Some have terrible plumbing because caustic wastes have burned out the drainpipes. Others are filled with trash and spoiled food. Loaded guns sometimes sit on coffee tables.

Chemical contamination permeates everything--walls, upholstery, drapes. At one house in Butte County, human feces and urine flowed from a broken septic system into a backyard where children played. No one ever thought to fix it.

Social workers say the children who come out of such poor environments are often withdrawn and distrustful. They have a hard time learning in school. Because their basic needs are rarely met, they stockpile food in hiding places--even when placed in foster care. Others, who were seldom washed by their parents, bathe excessively.

No one knows exactly how many children are being subjected to such danger and deprivation. Law enforcement does not tally the number of youngsters found at lab sites, and there is only one statewide study.

It shows that in 1993 and 1994, agents from the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement found 350 children at 147, or 18%, of the 817 laboratories they seized. The bureau, which has nine regional offices, participates in the vast majority of lab investigations in California.

The most children--182--were discovered in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The area is known as the “Colombia of Methamphetamine,” and last year a record 467 labs, chemical storage sites and waste dumps were seized. Narcotics officers in the area say they find juveniles in about half their raids.

“It’s hard to guess, but hundreds of children, perhaps in numbers approaching 1,000, are at risk at any one time,” said Mitchell J. Brown, a high-ranking officer with the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement who conducted the statewide study.

Police attribute the increasing presence of children to government crackdowns on Mexican drug cartels operating large labs in remote areas of the Southwest and on efforts to curtail the thriving black market for chemicals.

As a result, the supply of methamphetamine dwindled as the demand surged. With prices rising, more people got into the business either to make money or to supply themselves. Many of them have been low-income families and single parents.

“The mom-and-pop operations are definitely picking up, and a lot of them have kids,” said Riverside County Dist. Atty. Grover Trask, adding that the trend has increased in the last 18 months.

Today, a pound of methamphetamine has a wholesale value of $6,000 to $7,000 and a street value of $110,000, by conservative estimates. The initial investment in equipment and chemicals is a modest $1,500 to $2,000, less if smaller amounts are desired.

Ingredients can still be obtained on the open market despite efforts to limit their supply. Ephedrine, the main component of one type of speed, is hard to buy in bulk but is found in cold tablets sold at any drugstore.

Cooking methamphetamine is so simple that one father taught his son, who was then 16, how to make it. The boy’s proficiency inspired his proud parents to brag about it to undercover officers.

The couple, James and Deborah Dennals of Oceanside, enlisted their son and daughter, who was then 10, into the family business during the late 1980s. Both children were regularly dispatched to chemical supply companies to buy ingredients, including visits to Triple Neck Scientific in San Diego, the front for a major sting operation.

State narcotics agent Chuck Potter, who posed as a biker, remembered the youngsters: “Both those kids came into the place to purchase chemicals, and I just flamed out. I told them they shouldn’t be doing this and to have their mommy and daddy call me.”

Both parents eventually received prison sentences of more than 20 years for manufacturing methamphetamine. Their son was sent to the California Youth Authority. Their daughter ended up in foster care.

More recently, police say David N. Morris, 41, of Gridley forced his 17-year-old son to help him make methamphetamine for years. The elder Morris and his wife were arrested last month in the Central Valley, an area known for production of the drug.

Morris’ son told investigators that whenever his father made speed, their small two-bedroom house would “get smoky from all the chemicals.” Breathing the acid fumes caused him to choke, he said, until he finally got used to it. One of his chores was to carry bottles of dangerous chemicals.

Police said there was no heat or electricity in the Morris home. Lighting came from camping lanterns connected by extension cords to car batteries. There was no food in the kitchen.

“I hate my dad,” the young man said. “I wish he was dead for how he made me live.”

The night the lab was seized, police immediately summoned a Butte County social worker to the house to assess whether Morris’ son should be taken from his parents and placed into foster care. The social worker also made sure that he was medically screened for drugs and chemical contamination.

It is the only such program in the state, despite the well-documented dangers of methamphetamine and the growing number of juveniles living at production sites.

For years, narcotics agents investigating clandestine labs have left youngsters with the friends and relatives of arrested parents without anyone assessing the children’s welfare, absent obvious signs of abuse.

According to the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement study, state agents referred fewer than one in five children found at labs to child protection agencies in 1993 and 1994.

The best record was in Orange County, where agents referred virtually every youth they came across. The worst was in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where 182 children were found. Agents notified social workers in only one of every 10 cases.

Even the surviving child from the Aguanga disaster was not referred to social workers, said Mary Ann Wilczak-Doczi, a regional manager for child protective services in Riverside County.

“Generally, children are left with people who can relieve the drug enforcement officers of their baby-sitting duties,” agent Brown said. “Out of sight, out of mind, on with the business of narcotics enforcement. Not a real glamorous picture, but it is reality.”

Brown’s research showed that few children removed from labs were tested for drugs or chemicals, that many agents did not make child endangerment arrests, and that training literature did not instruct officers on what to do when children were encountered.

Today, things are changing. Over the last few months and after inquiries by The Times, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and Department of Public Social Services have taken steps to ensure that officers notify social workers whenever they find children at a lab.

Similarly, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren announced late last month that the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement will require its agents to contact social workers, encourage those social workers to conduct drug testing and look for evidence of child endangerment.

“All these people care about is their next drug fix,” Lungren said. “But we can at least ensure their children have a better chance at growing up without being beaten, neglected, exposed to toxic illegal drugs or, worst of all, burned to death in a horrible chemical explosion.”

Meanwhile, the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning, which helps formulate policy for the governor’s office, is discussing formation of a statewide task force that would involve law enforcement, prosecutors and social service agencies.

Spurred by the Aguanga case, the Riverside County district attorney proposed legislation in February that would add six years to the sentence of anyone operating labs around children, 10 years if a child is injured and a 15-years-to-life term if a youngster dies.

Trask also wants to make it easier for prosecutors to bring child endangerment and murder charges against lab operators.

In late 1989, a Los Angeles County prosecutor filed the first such felony child endangerment case in California against William Grant Odom III of Long Beach. He had two children, ages 7 and 9.

During a search of their home, police confiscated 12 guns, three of them loaded. Feces from a pit bull, another large dog and several puppies covered the floor. Two pythons and two boa constrictors roamed the property. Trash and spoiled food filled the kitchen.

Eleven chemicals used to produce methamphetamine were found, along with lab equipment. Nearby, authorities noticed charred roof beams and bare electrical wires that had been strung along the walls.

“The house was like a Superfund site,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Barbara Channell, who prosecuted the case. “These places are really, truly, dangerous, even when they are not running.”

Odom was sentenced to nine years in prison for child endangerment and drug and firearms offenses. In 1991, a state appeals court upheld the conviction, saying that conditions encountered at a methamphetamine lab were likely to cause great bodily injury--the legal criteria necessary to bring a felony child endangerment case.

Justices noted that the squalor and improperly stored chemicals “were a disaster waiting to happen.”

A similar debate is being played out in Riverside County, only the stakes are much higher. Kathey L. James, 39, has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder in the Aguanga trailer fire that killed three of her children. It is the first lab-related homicide case in the state.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Davis is applying the felony murder rule, which states that second-degree murder charges can be filed if someone dies during the course of an “inherently dangerous felony.”

Davis’ approach is new because operating a methamphetamine lab has yet to be officially listed as inherently dangerous under the law. Generally, the rule applies to armed robberies, rapes, assaults with deadly weapons, and aggravated drunk-driving cases in which a death occurs.

James’ attorney, Frank Peasley, contends that making speed is not really that dangerous, so the murder charges should be dismissed. “There are thousands of these labs out there, but someone gets killed every other year,” he said. “You can find meth cooks who have done it for years without a problem.”

Although the murder case has been allowed to proceed, two Riverside County judges have disagreed over whether making the drug is inherently dangerous. The district attorney has asked a state appeals court to hear the issue.

Just as uncertain are the long-term effects that methamphetamine labs may have on the physical and emotional well-being of the children exposed to them.

Scientists know that some chemicals associated with the drug can cause cancer, reproductive problems and liver and brain damage in animals given very high doses. Years of occupational exposure to the solvent benzene can cause cancer in humans. But little is known about the chronic effects of the other substances.

“A methamphetamine lab strikes me as child endangerment from the word go,” said Dr. Thomas J. Ferguson, a UC Davis toxicologist, who has evaluated youngsters from production sites. “Because so few studies have been done, we are running the risk of an extreme experiment here with these children.”

Three of them are Linda, Courtney and Curtis Lawver, who lived with a lab at their home in Oroville for more than a year. They were 10, 7, and 6 then. Today, they talk about the “needle room” where their mother injected speed and the chemical odors that made them ill, especially Curtis, who complained of dizziness and loss of breath.

In later statements to police, the children said they were forced to use drugs and were physically and sexually abused. Sometimes, their mother would tie their hands and put them inside a small trailer for hours.

Courtney, now 11, said she was forced by her mother’s boyfriend to snort a line of speed almost every night or she would not get dinner.

“I was scared a lot,” Courtney said. “Every night my mom would go out to the trailer and take drugs. Then she would come back and shoot a needle into her arm. It’s not good for children to see that. You shouldn’t grow up like that.”

The mother of the children and her boyfriend were convicted on methamphetamine charges. The boyfriend was sentenced to six years in prison, and the mother is now out of custody and on probation. The youngsters live with their father and his second wife in Idaho. After three years of therapy, they are still haunted by their experience.

“I think the children were severely affected by exposure to methamphetamine and their previous home life,” said Arlene J. May, a Pocatello, Ida., trauma counselor who has treated them. “They have poor impulse control. They are indecisive. They have memory problems. They can’t concentrate. They will be dealing with these things for the rest of their lives.”

It has been equally difficult for the children’s father and stepmother, who have devoted much of their time and money to caring for them. Peggy Lawver even quit her job.

“I have totally worn myself out. The work and worry are overwhelming,” she said. “But how can you not worry about these kids? The children keep saying that they are stupid. They blame themselves, and I keep telling them, ‘It’s not you. It’s not your fault.’ ”