Rolling Relief for Meth’s Innocent Young Victims

Tom Salisbury has seen children stripped naked in their frontyards, hosed down to cleanse them of dangerous chemicals, swaddled in towels and held in squad cars to wait as their parents were led away in handcuffs.

An investigator with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Salisbury knows firsthand how traumatic busting a home-based methamphetamine lab can be on the children who happen to live there.

That’s why he, in partnership with Perris businessman John Barnes, began an effort to create a fleet of four county-owned recreational vehicles specially outfitted to provide a refuge for the children caught in the middle of the Inland Empire’s meth trade.

“I just wanted to provide a safe haven for them,” said Barnes, who helped raise $30,000 to buy the county’s first such vehicle.

Filled with new clothes, toys, snacks, videos and DVDs, the “community resource vehicles” will offer children privacy and distraction during the investigation and decontamination process following the arrest of parents or other relatives. One vehicle has just been unveiled; the others are being prepared.

Salisbury, who has witnessed between 1,000 and 2,000 meth lab raids involving children in the last seven years, said he “wanted to come up with a way to reduce the trauma inflicted on those children.” While Inland Empire meth busts have decreased in recent years, authorities say the area remains a center of production, with nearly 200 labs raided in Riverside and San Bernardino counties last year.

In many cases, kids at home labs live in squalor among toxic and highly explosive meth byproducts, feces-stained blankets and kitchens filled with rotting food and maggots, Salisbury said, recalling some of the worst conditions he has seen. Some accidentally ingest toxic substances, like the water-bottle full of meth-laced fluid one 7-year-old boy drank, Salisbury said. After three gulps, he vomited and was eventually fine.

“Most places, we didn’t even want to be inside, yet these kids were living there for extended periods,” he said.

A camping trip with his three children inspired Salisbury’s RV idea. It can take as long as 12 hours for children to be re-housed and provided with medical care after a meth bust, Salisbury said. Often, all of their chemically tainted toys, clothes and other possessions must be destroyed.

“These children are all victims of the poor choices that were made by their parents,” said Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley, who helped Barnes with the fundraising. “They shouldn’t have to pay for it.”

The first 24-foot RV, designed under Salisbury’s direction by Fleetwood RV, has a combination playpen-crib in place of a stove, cabinets stocked with juice, formula and cookies and stuffed dogs and bears scattered on tables and chairs. The bathroom includes a shower and tub for bathing children, plus drawers full of clothing and socks. In place of a rear bedroom is an interview area, with recording equipment for deputies and social services officials.

“Every kid deserves a chance to be in something like these mobile safe havens,” said Salisbury, who believes the vehicles are the first of their kind in the nation. Eventually, RVs will be based in Perris, Jurupa, Indio and Temecula, and can pull double duty at sobriety checkpoints, child abuse investigations and as sheriff’s command centers.

Barnes, moved by a 2004 presentation Salisbury made to the Perris Rotary Club on the social impact of meth, organized fundraisers starting early last year. The county bought three additional RVs with $186,000 in federal grant money secured by Theresa A. Larsen, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Riverside County.

“These kids are just so damaged anyway, and they’re living in such filth,” said Larsen, whose organization will solicit donations to keep the fleet stocked and gather statistical data on the RVs’ use.

The Sheriff’s Department will operate and maintain the vehicles -- a “kinder, softer, gentler way of handling” some of the often overlooked victims of the county’s meth industry, Ashley said.