Pubdate: Sat, 28 Aug 2004
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2004 Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Brian Hutchinson

KELOWNA'S RETIREE CRACK ADDICT

Roy Crockett, 68, Turned His Condo Into A Drug Den

KELOWNA, B.C. - This city has a serious drug problem, says Roy
Crockett, 68. "I have it on very good authority that the crack we
smoke is watered down."

We were having dinner earlier this week, at his favourite downtown
restaurant, the Olympia. Mr. Crockett is treated as an honoured patron
by the restaurant staff, despite his sudden notoriety as Kelowna's
oldest known crackhead; after all, he has been eating here for the
last three decades.

"It's not pure crack," he continued. "It's cut with something. I'm
told that it's at least half, um, what is it? Ach. My memory is slipping."

"Crystal meth?" I offered.

"Yes, that's it. Crystal meth. I know it's not good. I want to stop. I
think I can stop."

He may be running out of time. Mr. Crockett has been on a wild drug
binge for 18 months, and it shows.

He used drugs before meeting with me at the restaurant, and while he
seemed funny, charming and intelligent, his eyes were sunken, his face
was creased, and his clothes were dirty. He had not slept in three
days.

Sleep does not come easily, he explained. It's not just the adrenaline
rush from the toxic chemical cocktails he inhales daily. It's the worry.

Running the city's largest crack den, he admits, is a constant hassle.
Police are constantly showing up at his door. The kids, his crackhead
friends, are always smoking, fighting and tearing up the place. This
is not how he imagined spending his retirement.

His neighbours at the Riviera Villa, his townhouse complex, were first
astonished by the activity. Now they are just furious. Mr. Crockett
doesn't blame them.

Kelowna is awash in drugs, and authorities don't know what to do about
it, or how to stem the flow of marijuana, crack, meth and heroin.

Mr. Crockett's downtown neighbourhood is the epicentre, a place where
addicts come to score. For the last six months, many have been using
his Riviera Villa townhouse as a shelter, a handy place to smoke, eat,
shower and crash.

Most are drifters, passing through. Some are young girls, homeless and
afraid. Mr. Crockett started taking them in after he started using
crack. He could not help himself. "A lot of them are pretty good
kids," he says. "They call me 'Gramps.' "

But Gramps has lost control of the situation. Some of his guests, the
larger, belligerent males, intimidate him. They have threatened him.
They have robbed him blind. They once cut his wallet out of his pants
pocket, while he slept. They have maxed out his credit cards, and
pilfered his cash savings account. His truck has been lifted on
several occasions; this week, he says, "someone smashed it all to hell."

Now, he says, he's sick of it. "It's a dreadful situation, for someone
my age."

It started with a beautiful young woman: Tall, 22 years old, charming,
almost perfect. They met two years ago, a few months after Mr.
Crockett's retirement party.

"I was bored," he says. "I was an elevator maintenance and repairman,
45 years with the same company. I loved my job and I left with a very
good pension. But retirement sort of created a hole in my life."

She came along, and he took her to his time-share condo in Mazatlan,
Mexico. Yes, it was ridiculous; he's a short, balding pensioner, a
grandfather of 10, three times divorced, three times her age. But he
has always had a weakness for young ladies.

"People my age, they bore me," shrugs Mr. Crockett. "They bore me to
hell."

And she was so beautiful. "I didn't know it at first, but she was a
hard-core heroin user," he says. "We started smoking crack, casually."

She moved into his Riviera Villa townhouse. He bought her new breasts,
and capped her teeth. They continued to use drugs. He was happy with
the arrangement. "Oh, we had such a time," chuckles Mr. Crockett.

Crack didn't do that much for him, he claims. "I couldn't say that it
released any extraordinary sensation. It would just make me stay up
all night, jabbering."

His neighbours were used to seeing Roy in the company of young women,
and always looked the other way. They weren't yet aware of the drug
use. "He was a very nice man, and a darned good neighbour," says
Debbie Fleming. "Roy was the one everyone turned to when they needed
help. He was good at fixing things and cleaning up around the area. He
served on our strata council."

Then his new lady friend ran off with another man. Mr. Crockett
started dating another girl. "This one," he says dryly, "was not very
nice. She was stealing. She's in jail now."

His crack use soared. "I used an awful lot of it," he says. Mr.
Crockett began liquidating his savings to feed his new addiction. The
first six months of this year, he cashed $52,000 in RRSPs; most of the
money was spent on low-grade street crack, and on entertaining his
young friends.

He opened his doors to a number of transient crackheads, who he'd seen
sleeping in parks and hanging around Kelowna's beaches. Soon, dealers
started to arrive; they made themselves at home, too.

About six months ago, the parties melted into one epic, non-stop
bender. "It's now going 24-7," says Ms. Fleming. "People are fighting
and injecting right outside our doors. It's scary. There are small
children living here. We've called police 363 times this year, and
they can't shut Roy down."

Garth Letcher, Kelowna's community policing co-ordinator, says there
"are very few tools" available to deal with the city's growing drug
problem. Police officers have not been able to secure a search warrant
and enter Mr. Crockett's townhouse, he explains. "The courts know that
by the time a warrant is executed, the drugs inside his house will
already be used up."

Something has to be done, because Kelowna's lucrative status as a
premiere tourist and retirement destination is in jeopardy. "We have
to return some sense of safety and normalcy to our city," says Mr.
Letcher.

After our dinner this week, I walked around Mr. Crockett's
neighbourhood. People were dealing and using drugs in plain view. A
red-haired girl in her teens sat on a patch of grass outside the
Riviera Villa and sucked on a glass crack pipe: Alice in Wonderland.

Across the street, outside a strip mall, a large crowd had gathered. A
drug deal had soured, and a shirtless, deranged man was making a
scene. He climbed the roof of a Tim Hortons outlet, and began kicking
at an illuminated Tim Hortons sign.

"I love cocaine," he screamed, in between kicks.

The police arrived, followed by paramedics and fire trucks. We all
stood back and watched as the man began throwing shards of broken
plastic and glass. Once the sign was destroyed, he started chucking
cedar shingles.

"Jump, jump, jump," some onlookers chanted.

Four hours later, he finally came down. Sean Brooks, 26, was arrested
for committing mischief to property.

"This is the kind of stuff we see every day," says Diana Coulthard, a
Riviera Villa resident. "The guy on the rooftop, he's one of the guys
who has been hanging around Roy's place."

Mr. Crockett doesn't use names when describing his "guests." He fears
retribution. The crackheads have basically seized his townhouse, and
there's nothing he can do to force them out, he insists.

"They are in there right now," he said yesterday. "I have told them to
leave but they won't budge."

Earlier this week, in a desperate bid to get rid of him, several
Riviera Villa residents offered to buy Mr. Crockett's unit. He turned
them down, flat.

"My place is in one hell of a mess. It's half ruined, and it needs an
overhaul. But their offer was well below market value," he snapped.

A temporary solution is at hand. Yesterday, some of Mr. Crockett's
children arrived in Kelowna. They are preparing to take him to
Vancouver. Arrangements have been made to have him admitted to an
addiction recovery centre on Vancouver Island.

Mr. Crockett spent yesterday "tying up loose ends." He planned to
board up his townhouse with plywood sheets, and then have the locks
changed. First, however, he had to have police evict his rowdy
houseguests. Officers are happy to oblige.

"Roy has always been quite co-operative, surprisingly enough," says
Garth Letcher. "He has a bit of rapport with the drug squad."

This is not the end of Kelowna's drug problem, of course. And it may
not be the last Kelowna has seen of Roy Crockett. He has been in touch
with his young lady friend, the one he took to Mexico. She is
available again; they may hook up soon.

"I'm going away for a while, but I may want to live here again," he
declared. "This is my home town, and I won't be run out of it."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin