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Over the course of several hours, she told the story of their life together. According to h.er
<br />statement, Estes didn't start his new career dealing medical pot --but cocaine. "After
<br />selling the tanning salon, Estes earned income by selling cocaine," Arcado wrote in his
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<br />summary of Trainor s interview. Trainer [sic] said the income from the cocaine business
<br />ran out. in 1993, and Estes switched to selling marijuana." Estes vehemently denies the
<br />charge and claims that Trainor, who declined to comment for this story, is lying as part of
<br />achild-custody dispute. "That's false, not true at all," he says. "No, I didn't sell th.e
<br />salons, l didn't sell cocaine. She was lying because she thought she was moving to
<br />Canada with. the kids, and she thought that before she left, she could throw a bunch of
<br />stuff in the rnix to mess me up in court, Because she downright hates me for dumping
<br />her." It was bad enough when neighbors watched police raid the club and kids line up for
<br />weed -- then the robberies began.. On the evening of Friday, October 12, 2001, the club
<br />was winding down. after a long day when someone knocked on the door. An employee
<br />pulled the door open and stared straight down the barrel of a silver handgun. "We opened
<br />up the door, same as for everybody: 'Hey, what's up?"' Estes says. "The guys came in.
<br />They put everybody on the ground and took everything." Time was running out for
<br />Estes. The kids and the police raids were bad enough, but now men were waving guns
<br />around and racing off with drugs. At the time, Estes had no security guards, no iron gate
<br />on the door, just a l.ot of cash and pot. Soon, the other pot-club operators came a-callin'.
<br />The robbery put new heat on alt of them as City Councilinember Linda Maio started
<br />.making noises. Don Duncan from the Berkeley Patients Group visited the club and found
<br />it pleasant enough, but Estes had clearly failed to implement even. basic security
<br />procedures. "There weren't a lot of people around, the club was fairly deserted, and that
<br />was a security challenge," Duncan says. "And the front gate was a problem." When
<br />Duncan suggested retaining security personnel, Estes responded by hiring a couple of
<br />g~.rys he knew from around town. Neighbors and police representatives claim that this just
<br />made things worse. The men were not professional guards, and scared people away from
<br />the neighborhood by loitering on the sidewalk during business hours. Estes says the
<br />neighbors are giving way to their own racist fears. "If you tall: to them, they're big, soft,
<br />easygoing guys," he says. "But unfortunately they're black. And in this society, you think
<br />of black as criminal. So the moment you see black people standing around, looking at
<br />your ID, I guess it looks like a crack house. I have black friends, and that seems to be
<br />held against me. None of the other clubs seems to be scrutinized as much as me." Not
<br />only did the guards not sit well with the neighbors, they also didn't stop the crime. On
<br />the evening of December 13, 2001, as the guards had drifted back into the club and Estes'
<br />employees began stacking the chairs, one last patient, a young woman, knocked on the
<br />door. As an employee opened the door for her, he glanced down to his left and saw three
<br />men crouched low. The woman turned and walked back to the sidewalk and the men
<br />rushed through the door. One pulled out an Uzi submachine gun, and the second robbery
<br />in two months was under way. The thieves probably wouldn't have kept coming back i.f
<br />there hadn't been so much to steal.. Estes refuses to say how much pot was lost during the
<br />first robbery, but he says he kept an average of three pounds of dried marijuana in his
<br />store at all times. "Some of it was in ounces, some of it in eighths, prepackaged in a
<br />variety of amounts," he says. "Plus we had hash, we had kief, we had oils and other
<br />extracts from marijuana. We had baked goods, brownies, carrot cakes, Reese's peanut
<br />butter cups that were done like that.
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<br />75A-58
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