Pubdate: Mon, 15 Jun 2009
Source: Daily Journal, The (San Mateo, CA)
Copyright: 2009 San Mateo Daily Journal
Contact:  http://www.smdailyjournal.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3778
Author: Bill Silverfarb
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Ken+Hayes
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)

A LONG STRANGE TRIP: POT ADVOCATE FACING FEDERAL CHARGES

Pot Advocate Facing Federal Charges After Living the Life of a Fugitive

It was a chilly January morning in 2002 when Ken Hayes Jr., his 
partner Cheryl and their toddler Madeline finished packing up a 
U-Haul truck ready to leave their cozy Petaluma farm for a new life in Canada.

The family was desperate to leave as Hayes feared an imminent arrest 
by Federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers.

He sensed they were coming. He just didn't know when.

As the three hopped in the truck with their parrot Romeo, ready to 
take the long drive to Vancouver, a car rolled into the driveway.

It wasn't the DEA. It was Hayes' mother and father.

They showed up unannounced to convince the family to stay. But it was 
too late. Their son's mind was set. He was leaving and there was a 
real chance he was never coming back.

Hayes founded the now-defunct Harm Reduction Center in San Francisco 
in 2000. He dispensed cannabis to sick and dying people and offered 
counseling to heroin and crack addicts. For a while, he was one of 
the most respected medical marijuana advocates in San Francisco, 
having the support of former District Attorney Terence Hallinan, and 
then Supervisor Mark Leno and current Supervisor Chris Daly.

Hallinan, in fact, testified on Hayes' behalf in Sonoma County on 
charges of cultivating and distributing up to 1,000 marijuana plants. 
Hayes was represented at the time by attorney Bill Panzer, the man 
who helped write Proposition 215, The Compassionate Use of Marijuana 
Act passed by state voters in 1996.

A jury acquitted him and another defendant in the fall of 2001. The 
courtroom victory left Hayes feeling triumphant and righteous.

Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 hit and the world changed for 
everyone. Hayes thought, however, the federal government might take 
it easy on cannabis dispensaries in California since there were much 
more pressing matters at hand.

He was wrong.

The Drug Enforcement Agency actually stepped up its efforts to close 
down cannabis dispensaries across the state following the terrorist 
attacks of Sept. 11.

Hayes knew he would be a target by the DEA because he had made 
himself a figurehead in San Francisco's pot club industry. He 
organized patients' rights rallies frequently and donated time and 
money to politicians sympathetic to the cause. He knew his court 
victory in Sonoma County was also likely to bring on the DEA's fury.

He had a choice that chilly morning on his farm in 2002. Stay and 
face the music, or leave and start a new life.

He chose to leave and become a runaway from the law.

It was a decision that would nearly tear his family apart.

Traveling the World

Getting into Canada wasn't exactly easy. It's a long story that left 
his daughter and partner safe across the border into Canada and Hayes 
stuck in Washington state with 53 cents in his pocket. He made it in 
somehow just as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was preparing an 
affidavit for an arrest warrant.

In Canada, Hayes filed for refugee status on the grounds he couldn't 
get a fair trial in the United States. The process took 18 months and 
was finally denied. The family lived happily in Vancouver, however, 
running an alternative medicine shop called "The Spirit Within." 
After three years, though, Canada had its share of Hayes. He was 
given a "departure order." He didn't have to go back to the United 
States, but he couldn't stay in Canada.

His daughter Maddie's mother, though, decided it was time to come 
back home to the Bay Area and a more stable life.

Hayes would now be alone in his flight for freedom of prosecution.

Meanwhile, the DEA listed Hayes as a dangerous cocaine trafficker on 
its Web site.

This was an obstacle for the fugitive since he could face extradition 
depending on what foreign land he ended up in.

He traveled to many foreign lands over the next three years. There 
was his trip to Thailand where he went to offer assistance after a 
tsunami devastated parts of Southeast Asia. There was his year in 
Cambodia where he worked in a medical clinic and offered HIV outreach 
to remote villages.

 From San Bruno to Marijuana Advocacy

Hayes had always wanted to be a doctor since his days as a young man 
growing up in San Bruno. It was his Halloween costume when he was 
vice president of the Associated Students at Skyline College. At the 
University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1980s he studied 
psychobiology, pre-med. But he never made it to medical school, there 
were other distractions. Hayes was a Deadhead with the Volkswagen van 
to prove it.

He embraced the hippie gatherings at Dead shows and partook in its 
counterculture debauchery.

At Dead gatherings, Hayes met marijuana advocates who helped him 
forge his own beliefs on the plant's effectiveness as a medical option.

Medical marijuana advocacy would become his life's pursuit, a pursuit 
that didn't exactly thrill his conservative parents.

His parents, however, remained supportive of their son through the 
years even while he trotted the globe as a federal fugitive where he 
finally ended up enrolled in Ovidius University of Constanta Medical 
School in Romania. His mother even brought Madeline to see her father 
in Eastern Europe. It was a brief visit that left Hayes longing for 
his daughter's company.

Maddie would ultimately take a long plane trip all by herself from 
San Francisco to Europe to reunite and live with her father. She was 
barely 8 at the time.

Hayes had his daughter and was enrolled in medical school. Life was 
good. Until, that is, he got in trouble in Romania.

Locked Up

Hayes was accused of growing ayahuasca, a plant containing the 
psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine or DMT, used in spiritual 
practices by shamans in South America.

Romania didn't take too kindly to the foreigner, however, threatening 
him with up to 24 years in prison, and locking him up in what 
amounted to a dungeon for more than seven months. On the day he was 
arrested in Romania, his daughter Maddie was studying the country's 
language in school. She, too was taken into Romanian custody and sent 
to an orphanage. Hayes' quest for a happy life with his daughter had 
come to an end. The worry consumed him and the dank, dark room he sat 
in each day with only a bucket for company left him nearly mad.

Fortunately, Maddie's mom came quick to her daughter's aid, sweeping 
her back to the safe confines of the Portola Highlands in San Bruno 
within days of Hayes' arrest.

Meanwhile, confinement left Hayes suicidal.

He was ready for extradition. He'd rather come home to the United 
States and face federal charges than languish in a Romanian jail. He 
was a skinny, disheveled man by the time Romania turned him over to 
the United States.

Coming Home

But he was finally ready to face the music. After all, there was a 
new president now with an administration hinting at making marijuana 
crimes less of a priority for prosecutors.

U.S. prosecutors, however, would not relent in Hayes' case. Rather 
than face those prosecutors in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, 
Hayes pleaded guilty recently, with attorney Bill Panzer representing 
him, to felony charges of cultivating up to 99 marijuana plants for 
distribution and for not claiming $25,000 in income from 2001.

He now awaits sentencing. The maximum punishment for the crime is 20 
years but prosecutors are only seeking a 16-month sentence. U.S. 
District Judge Charles Breyer presides over the case, however, and 
has a history of leniency in sentencing marijuana crimes.

He sentenced pot guru Ed Rosenthal to only one day following his 
conviction on similar charges in 2003.

In fact, the charges Hayes pleaded guilty to nearly mirror Rosenthal's case.

His sentencing is Aug. 5.

"I don't want to go to jail. If I end up in jail I'm not going to 
complain about it. I'll accept my fate," he said.

At 41, the former pot advocate, fugitive and Deadhead is living with 
his parents at his childhood San Bruno home.

His daughter Maddie lives across the street with her mom. They get to 
see each other every day. Hayes walks Maddie to and from school most 
days and volunteers in her class teaching 10 year olds long division.

He thinks back on that chilly morning in Petaluma in 2002 when his 
parents asked him to stay. He knows he could have put all this 
trouble behind him years ago and save himself and family lots of heartache.

But he takes great joy in his daughter's presence and cherishes who 
she's become through it all. Her long strange trip with dad has 
turned her into a person who stands up for change, a person who knows 
sometimes things in this world aren't right. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake