Jack-Pot

The white ford pickup truck rolled onto a gravelly pullout next to Highway 97, about 15 minutes south of the Canadian border, and stopped, motor running. It was 7:20 p.m. on Friday, March 5, 2004, in the orchard-lined Okanogan Valley of north Central Washington, an expanse rimmed by pine-dotted hills and rocky ridges.

A stocky male figure stepped down from the four-door pickup, his breath exposed by the icy night, and waded into the woods behind a mailbox post. The driver felt his way through the scrub trees and high grass. About 10 steps in, he froze, reached down, and lifted a heavy black and gold backpack. Staggering, he returned to the truck and dumped the pack onto the passenger seat. The man then slid behind the wheel and eased the pickup back onto 97, a notorious drug pipeline from Canada to California.

As the truck began moving, Deputy Dennis Irwin slowly turned his Okanogan County sheriff's cruiser from the side road where he'd been on stakeout and onto the highway, falling in a safe distance behind the pickup. Irwin backed off as the driver briefly pulled over, apparently checking the backpack's contents. Moments later, he pulled over again. Game's up, an anxious Irwin thought, according to a report he'd write later. He flipped on his emergency lights.

"Sheriff's office!" Irwin announced, after stopping the big pickup. "Turn off your engine. Place your hands outside the window." With no resistance, the driver stepped out and dropped to the pavement. He was cuffed, patted down, and read his rights. Inside the truck, Irwin found the black and gold bag. Its contents were exposed and partially spilling onto the floor—a rolled-up blanket, two boxes of latex gloves, and two military gas masks. That was all Okanogan deputies had been able to scrounge up when they filled the backpack that morning in preparation for their sting.

Ten hours earlier, on that same Friday, Jane Gerth was taking a walk along the woody edge of a Highway 97 turnout near her home south of Oroville. Her morning walks were a habit, and she'd notice the slightest alterations in scenery, she later told authorities. A black and gold bag poking up in the weeds was something that instantly caught her eye.

Gerth, then 52, stepped through the weeds and tugged on the backpack. She couldn't lift it. She untied some straps, and then unzipped the main compartment. She stood back in amazement as bundles of $20 bills oozed out.

There she stood, alone with her dogs and, clearly, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now what? Gerth today won't talk about the discovery, but she obviously faced a number of choices: take the bag home, hide it elsewhere in the woods, or call the cops, among others. The wife of a retired U.S. Border Patrol agent, Gerth would later tell authorities she wasn't naive about what she had found. Given the weight and size of the bag, stashed in the brush here along a stretch of highway known to be a Smuggler's Alley—clearly, this had to be drug money. Turning the cash in would probably be the right thing to do. Then again, she could keep the cache herself and still deprive some trafficker of his ill-gotten gains. In one marvelous move: justice and a Lexus.

But Gerth didn't hesitate. She rushed the short distance home and told her husband. They quickly returned to the scene and, within minutes, Dan Gerth was on the phone with the sheriff.

When Deputy Kevin Kinman arrived at the pullout, Dan Gerth, a slight, 5-foot- 8-inch man who was preparing to celebrate his 55th birthday in a few weeks, waited anxiously with his wife. On Kinman's advice over the phone, Gerth had driven his own pickup into the pullout to occupy the scene and would later tell deputies he was feeling uncomfortable about protecting the bag. Like his wife, Gerth suspected the cash was crime money—and that someone could show up to reclaim it at gunpoint.

Returning to headquarters with the backpack, Okanogan deputies removed 55 pounds of money—$20 bills in $2,000 bundles, bound up in nine vacuum-sealed packages and a blue Wal-Mart bag. The bills, many in serial-number sequence, just kept coming, until they reached $497,920. (A later recount brought the final tally to $507,070.) Eyes widened: a half-million in cash, found in the toolies.

Sheriff Frank Rogers, a solidly built, 22-year law-enforcement veteran, who calls Okanogan drug smuggling "an epidemic," was delighted to hear of the find: If, as everyone suspected, it was drug money, his department could, by law, take it for themselves.

A federal law passed in 1984 allows government agencies to seize money and other assets associated with drug crime and use them to fund the long and often futile war on drugs. The seizures can provide law-enforcement windfalls: Just last month, the federal bust of a Northwest ring allegedly running pot and Ecstasy out of Canada included $5.2 million in seized homes, vehicles, land, and cash.

After concluding the stash was drug money, Okanogan deputies decided they should return the backpack and stake out the drop site. The backpack was refilled with the gas masks and other items, and then dropped back into the woods.