Nov/090
Drugs in Dillsburg: Heroin Hits Home
AMANDA PALLESCHI
Of the Patriot-News
He'd walk or hitch a ride to work at McDonald's and lived with his sister in a house on Chestnut Street.
She's the granddaughter of the founders of Baker's diner and a Northern High School graduate who once rode horses in the rural hamlets tucked behind the main drag of Route 15 in Dillsburg.
Authorities say the two would pool their money, find a car, grab a few friends and head to Philadelphia a few times a week to buy 30 bundles of heroin -- $4,000 worth in street value.
Bradley Hancock, 23, of Dillsburg, and Hillary Baker, 20, of Dover, are in York County Prison, awaiting trial on possession charges stemming from a multimillion-dollar heroin sting.
York County's location between major metro areas has long made it ideal corridor for drug trafficking. Now, heroin operations that have been run in other parts of the county are creeping into rural and suburban communities such as Dover and Dillsburg, authorities say.
The drug can be smoked, inhaled or injected.
Jack Carroll, executive director of the Cumberland/Perry Drug & Alcohol Commission, calls heroin's decade-long spread from the inner city to the suburbs and rural areas the "biggest drug trend from the late 1990s to the present."
Authorities say Hancock and Baker were among key arrests in a yearlong heroin sting that concluded recently. Both were charged with felony-possession counts. Hancock also was charged with criminal conspiracy.
The sting yielded 73 arrests, 26 vehicles, three firearms and $271,000 worth of heroin.
Brittany Jones, 20, and Shelly Heinzig, 29, both of Dillsburg, were charged with possession. They were arraigned and released on unsecured bail.
Heroin emerges
Dillsburg's neighbors, who prize their small town's nature and its proximity to several cities, are taking notice of the drug in their midst.
"We all watch each other's backs around here now. We know we need to," says Deb McClain, who lives on North Chestnut Street, a few houses down from the home where Hancock was living with his sister at the time of his arrest.
She bought the home -- it's just around the corner from Dillsburg's town square -- 10 years ago after divorcing her husband. She wanted her kids to stay in the Northern York County School District.
Her biggest concern then was living near a funeral home. Now, she keeps watch when she's walking her dogs. She locks her home and car doors, something that still hasn't become a habit.
"Everybody thinks this is Mayberry, definitely," McClain says.
But within the last few years, McClain said, she has noticed suspicious activity: strange cars coming and going at odd hours, people congregating in nearby alleys and parking lots, cops showing up.
"I came home one day and went, 'Oh, my god, I'm witnessing a drug deal,'" McClain said.
Detective Craig Fenstermacher of the York County district attorney's office, has witnessed the evolution of the area's drug culture, particularly the emergence of heroin as the "it" drug among teens and twentysomethings.
"When I first started working in drugs 25 years ago, heroin was an urban problem. But about 10 years ago, it really had a resurgence. It became the drug of choice for young, rural white kids to do," he said.
He mentioned Lebanon County's bout with heroin-related deaths in 2008. The county, too, is mostly rural and suburban.
Unlike the criminal drug culture in large cities such as Philadelphia, the main players in Dillsburg's heroin scene tend to be what law-enforcement officials call "user-dealers," because the criminal activity occurs solely to sustain an addiction.
It doesn't help that the heroin market in the midstate is a deadly concoction of addicting and cheap.
“It's just so addicting, people can't help themselves. Heroin just ruins," Fenstermacher said.
'The kid needs help'
Just ask Dean Baker.
The single father who owns his own business in the Dillsburg area tried everything to save his daughter, Hillary, from the addicting throes of the drug.
Hillary Baker's attorney did not return phone messages left at his home and office.
During Hillary's junior year of high school, officials from a military school in South Carolina took Hillary away. She stayed there for a year. Things seemed better for awhile after her return, Baker says. Baker says his daughter did well in school and enjoyed horseback riding.
She graduated from Northern High School in 2007, and her father helped her find jobs in town, one at a grocery store and another at a chiropractor's office.
But she had trouble getting up in the morning and couldn't seem to keep a job. He estimates that she has stolen $3,700 from him.
"It didn't matter how you helped her, once these kids get involved with that, once they are on it, they're hooked," Baker says.
Last spring, Hillary told her father she had a drug problem. Dean Baker took her to the inpatient program run by York and Adams counties.
A day later, he got a call saying she'd hitchhiked back to the home she shared with her boyfriend.
Baker says he's content that she's in jail. "I'm on the tough-love program now," he says.
From July 2008 to June 2009, more than 300 people in York and Adams counties sought treatment for heroin addiction through inpatient and outpatient programs offered through a drug and alcohol program.
In nearby Cumberland and Perry counties, 88 clients of county-provided treatment services listed heroin as their primary drug during that period. In 2006-2007, the number was 101.
Carroll said high numbers are most alarming compared to the number of residents seeking heroin addiction treatment in 1995-1996: 18.
"There are people -- I'm talking about young people -- who wouldn't consider using a needle, but start with other forms available here ... snorting and smoking. That's led to a continuous increase in heroin use outside of cities," Carroll says.
As for the midstate's role in the heroin trend, education and programming can only go so far, Fenstermacher says.
"It's how we bring up our kids, and it's all the choices they have," he says. "I don't like hearing 'There's nothing for the kids to do.' Do you have to use drugs? No. You surround yourself with good people."
That's what Baker, who runs a commercial refrigeration business between Dillsburg and Dover, hopes for his daughter.
"The kid needs help," he says. "She'll end up killing herself if she doesn't get it."
