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DEALING IN BULK
By Sean Webby Around the time Victor Conte Jr. was allegedly building better athletes in his state-of-the-art Burlingame laboratory, Dan Garcia was trying to make it through the Tijuana border patrol with his life savings in steroids packed into the false bottom he rigged up in his mom's Integra. With $500 left over in his wallet in case he was caught and fined, Garcia drove along the sluggish vein of traffic toward the U.S line. His goal for the trip: to transform himself into a steroid kingpin in his small Northern California city. ``I never saw myself as a bad guy. I was a young businessman,'' said Garcia, a 23-year-old who has never met Conte and described his life from his last days at the Jericho drug diversion program in Daly City. ``My professor told us in business class, `When you're young you can take risks. Go for it.' ``So I did,'' Garcia said. Experts say Conte's multimillion-dollar Balco empire, with its record-breaking track stars and pro ballplayers, is not typical. A far more accurate portrait of how steroids are bought, sold and used in America can be found in the world Garcia once inhabited, one of sweaty gyms, Google searches and road trips to Mexico. Garcia, who chose his diversion program in part because it allows weightlifting, is still a large and powerful man without injections of anabolic steroids. His super-sized T-shirts stretch to contain his chest. He bench presses 455 pounds. His eyes flash and his voice quickens as he describes his old life as if it's a Vin Diesel action flick. The chubby kid - Cruel taunts inspire changes Garcia's ``movie'' starts humbly enough, with the star as a chubby, self-conscious kid growing up in the shadow of the Jelly Belly company in Fairfield. And like many overweight kids, the grief he took for it -- ``Goodyear blimp! Jenny Craig!'' -- intensified as he made his way through school. ``I was taking all this teasing, and saying to myself, `What makes them think they are better than me? There has to be a way around this,' '' Garcia said. At 16, he decided to remake himself through sheer will, to diet and lift weights and turn his large and genetically floppy features into the large, muscular frame of a football player. He consumed broccoli and water, jogged along the creek behind his house and did so many arm curls in the gym he would get nauseous. By the end of his sophomore year, he was obsessed with physical perfection. In his eyes, that perfection was found in the ripped bodybuilders who glared at him from the glossy pages of ``Flex'' magazine. On the Internet, he found chat rooms filled with like-minded people. And many of them were openly exchanging information about steroids. Deca. Stenox. Sustanon 250. There were so many chemicals, so many combinations, and everyone had an opinion about which ones were effective and which ones were bunk. Garcia read American Medical Journal and browsed the Anabolics.com Web site, researching optimum cycles and ways to avoid Internet scams and dire medical side effects. He read of a zinc-based legal supplement called ZMA -- invented and marketed by Conte in Burlingame. Garcia called it a steroid-user's supplement. Garcia's first brush with anabolic steroids came in the parking lot of Gold's Gymnasium in Fairfield, he said. It's the same place he would be arrested two years later. A weightlifter approached Garcia and asked if he wanted some creatine -- a legal supplement but also a code word to determine if he was interested in illegal steroids. Garcia bought $200 worth of Deca and $200 of Sustanon and went home. His mom was at work. Metallica was cranked to 10. Garcia was in the bathroom with his pants pulled down and a Rediject syringe filled with Sustanon in his hand. For more than an hour, he steeled himself to stick the needle into the muscle of his buttock. He didn't want to hit a nerve. Finally, he shot it in, then wrapped the syringe in paper towels and hid it in the middle of the trash. After tinkering with his cycle of use, it happened. Garcia blew up. His biceps went Popeye. His muscles became so engorged that the guy who was dealing to him walked up and said, ``What are you doing?'' Soon, Garcia was buying his ``gear'' directly from a guy he found on the Internet. And he was selling it to a small circle of other guys. The profit was good, so good that it was paying for his own two- to three-month $1,000 cycle of drugs and some change on the side. It didn't even feel like dealing, he said. One day in late 1999, Garcia's Internet source sent out a hurriedly written e-mail. He was busted, out of business, headed for jail. Now Garcia, who was working part-time at Vitamin Adventure in Vacaville, had to come up with a new plan to keep his steroid and cash supply flowing. He would go to Mexico, a trip he described to his mother as a quick ``vacation.'' ``He was working out every day and watching what he was eating,'' said Selena Savage, who didn't think twice of the changes in her son. ``There was no reason for me to think that wasn't the reason. I thought he was taking control.'' Across the border - Cheaper supplies found in Mexico Like most of Garcia's life plans, Mexico was plotted comprehensively. The country directly south is one of the lead suppliers of illegal steroids in California, experts say. The drugs are comparatively cheap, e asy to find and legal -- as long as you stay in Mexico. In Rosarito, Garcia left his girlfriend in the car with $6,000 -- his savings built up from his dealing -- and started hitting up pharmacies. Eventually, he found everything he needed. He had read on the Internet to hit the border at the end of a shift -- early in the morning or 10 p.m. was a good time. Garcia had been told that an aspiring smuggler should try to pose as just another college knucklehead with his girlfriend coming back from the beach after too many margaritas and not enough sunblock. They had Valium in case they got nervous, and the steroids were stuffed in his vinyl seats. Garcia wasn't given a second look. At 18, Garcia figured himself the most knowledgeable, reliable steroid dealer in his city -- a teenage workout guru who could get you the drugs and recommend a precise and comprehensive cycle to take them. He had what you needed. He had eventually worked out a deal with his supplier in Mexico to send the anabolics directly to his home. His mother -- who worked in finance in San Francisco -- never touched his packages or even asked what they were. The former doughboy was now making big dough -- $5,000 to $10,000 a week, he estimates. He was pulling straight A's at Solano Community College, studying nutrition and business. He was also stashing cash in his car and his drugs in his closet. He had a regular clientele. He even started dabbling in ``ecstasy.'' Steroids and club drugs: the cereal and milk of many dealers. Life was so good, it was easy enough for Garcia to forget the e-mail warning from his first Internet steroid source: ``Don't get yourself in too much trouble like I did.'' So it wasn't even the steroids that brought Garcia down. It was the last of his experimental business products -- ecstasy. The investigators at the Solano County Narcotics Enforcement Team knew about Garcia. Garcia denies it, but the investigators said they had information that this guy was dealing steroids to high school kids. That got their attention. ``He was always flexed out, wearing his tank top. He was his own advertisement,'' said detective Scott Whitehouse. ``Danny started using steroids, and at that point to all the other gym rats he was the resident expert. I did a lot of research. He didn't know anything. Just because he had 20-inch arms, he was giving people recipes and prescribing.'' Narcotics investigators started a file on Garcia, casing his movements, monitoring his mail, calling a case agent with the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement for advice. They set up detective John Uldall as the undercover officer who would make the buy. Garcia said he suspected the out-of-shape clueless guy was a cop. But the cops say it was Garcia who had no clue or he wouldn't have sold $1,000 worth of ecstasy -- a drug that made for a far easier case against Garcia than steroids. Steroids, according to the police, was infrequently prosecuted in their jurisdiction and not considered as serious a drug. They busted him on June 15, 2001, right outside the gym, with the red laser dots from their weapons trained on his bulging muscle shirt. ``He was cocky,'' Whitehouse said. ``People that use steroids don't see themselves as dope dealers. They look healthy. They think of it as a health product. They don't see the reality.'' Savage, Garcia's mother, said she was flabbergasted when the officers came to her home and started pulling wads of cash from the seats of his car and boxes of steroids from his closet. ``When he first told me from jail, I didn't think they were illegal except in the Olympics,'' she said. After six months in Solano County Jail, Garcia got out. His goal was to make enough cash to get back on his feet and keep invisible until he had worked himself back into shape. He made a deal with a friend -- Garcia would be the money man and the friend would deal club drugs. And Garcia started taking steroids again. When a girlfriend overdosed on a bottle of GHB -- a club drug -- in Garcia's home, he was arrested. Again. He was sentenced to six years and was diverted to the Daly City drug program. The outside world - War on drugs `a waste of time' Garcia follows the Balco case when he can. He is not surprised at the litany of star athletes connected to the case. But he doesn't think the massive publicity surrounding the doping case has done much to slow mainstream steroid usage. ``It might be tightening up out there a bit; a smart person would probably pump the brakes,'' he said. ``But the war against drugs is a waste of time.'' Gold's Gym in Fairfield closed. Garcia's old Chevy, where the police found some of his money, is fading under the sun in his mom's driveway. Under his probation conditions, he can't help anyone work out professionally. Garcia went to his mother's home late last month, having successfully completed his program at Jericho. His mother sees her son as a smart and disciplined man who used his talents ``selfishly and for the wrong things.'' As for Garcia, who's still on probation, he talks of being a union electrician somewhere on the Peninsula, getting a family, settling down. Garcia said he will never take steroids again -- probably. ``It was just a little phase I went through,'' he said. ``Well, maybe not so little. Steroids are appealing, but I know the bad side.'' But no matter what, he will never be that chubby kid again. ``That's not gonna happen,'' he said. ``It's engraved in me.'' |
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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
