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2001-05-11 | 5:34 p.m.

Okay, here's what happened on Wednesday.

I don't know if I've ever spelled it out here, but my sister Diane (who is 14 years older than me) has been sober since last July after being a relentless drunk for the last 15 years or so. Before she embarked upon her career as a drunk, she was a crank fiend. She managed to hold everything together reasonably well until a Big Terrible Thing happened about 12 years ago and she went to jail for a while and never really recovered from it. Until now. Last year she went into the hospital a few times because she got so messed up that her vital organs were failing and she would get to the point where her stomach would revolt and she would start throwing up so bad that she couldn't keep anything down, not even alcohol. So then her system would start going wacko and she'd end up in the hospital. And still she would insist that she had gastritis, or gastroenteritis or an ulcer or whatever, and she'd say it so convincingly that you'd wonder if maybe she had that for real, on top of the alcoholism-related conditions. But because she wouldn't admit that she had a drinking problem, I never had high hopes that she would go into a treatment program. I remember talking to her about it in her hospital room, after a social worker had visited to tell her a bed was open at a local women's rehab facility, and her arguing that it was too expensive. And we weren't allowed to check her in ourselves because they don't want to take them unless the person is committed to sobering up. A lot of times, I admit, I just thought whatever. But surprisingly she did end up checking herself into one, and she lived there for about three months, or five months, I can't remember now. But it was good. And of course while she was there she went to tons of AA meetings and NA meetings and so on.

So after she checked herself out of there we were all kind of on the lookout for signs that she had been drinking. One thing she did pretty soon after leaving was stop going to AA meetings. So that seemed like a bad omen. But on the other hand, she did get a job, cleaning houses, so it made sense that she was tired at night. Once or twice, I noticed her smacking her lips drily, the way she used to do, years ago, when she was using meth, but I didn't think much of it because she never started to exhibit the other notorious symptoms of crank use, like becoming a raging asshole or staying up all night.

This is getting long, so let me try to be brief. Lately, she's been using our second car. She had signed up for a DMV course that she needed to take to get her license again (because she has an old DUI that will never go away until she takes the course) and was working on getting a restricted license that would allow her to go to work and back. She had also just gotten approved for disability payments (because she broke her leg in an accident years ago and it's never healed properly--that's a big huge story in its own right). She had checked into getting insurance and set the money aside to pay for it. So things were really looking up, and she was really close to being completely a citizen again, or however you want to put it, and we were letting her take the car even though she doesn't have a license because she's a good driver and frankly, not to sound like a lazy jerk, but it's a bit of a pain to drive her to work and back every day. Plus, because she was getting to use the car, she was taking my kids to school for me, which I loved.

So on Wednesday morning I get that call from my Mom saying that Diane's boss had called and said the police arrested her in front of work, put her in handcuffs and took her away, and that the other women who work there had said it was because of the car's tags. Well, the car was registered, but my Mom said it was probably because someone had pulled the registration stickers off the license plate (a chronic problem at their apartment building). I also remembered that Duff had the registration to the car in his backpack, not in the glove box of the car. So I called Duff and told him to hurry home from work and then called the police department to tell them that the car was ours and I could provide proof of registration, etc., and to please not transport her to the jail until I got there with the paperwork. And the woman I was talking to was like, Oh, the car charges aren't really a big deal, it's the narcotics charge that's the problem.

And I'm like, "Narcotics charge? But that's not possible!" sounding all Gomer Pyle and the chick's like, whatever, lady, that's what it says on my paper here. So I try to get more information out of her and she tells me to call the jail after Diane is transported.

So I'm like "God DAMN it, Diane!" I was so mad. I had to drive down to BART to pick up Duff and while I was down there I went to see Bambi at work to tell her what had happened. Both Duff and Bambi were open to the possibility that Diane had been railroaded in some way but I was certain she had brought it all down on herself. So then we all go into overdrive trying to arrange bail (had to get $1000 cash non-refundable to make $10,000 bail, luckily Diane still had some of her disability money left in her bank account, but we didn't have her ATM card so we had to forge a check because nobody had enough to cover it) and get the car out of the impound yard. While Duff was working on that, the police told him that the license plates were not original to the car, but that the car was salvaged and somebody had just put the plates on the car. This was amazing news, given that Duff had registered the car without any problems and that he had even been pulled over for failing to register it and a license-plate check at that time had turned up nothing. So now I'm boiling mad at Damien, my nephew, who sold me the car (for $800, but we've put like $2000 into it since) and has a passel of unwholesome friends like you wouldn't believe. And the thing I remember most about the sale was Damien saying there was a little hangup with the registration and that his friend had to take care of it before he could sell it to us. And I remember saying, "Just don't screw me, Damien," and he said, "I won't! I won't!"

Duff has to pay $110 to get the car out of impound and then, because the police have confiscated the old plates, he has to go to the DMV to get new ones. At the DMV, the clerk tells him the police are wrong--the plates he had originally were the correct plates. She insists there is no mistake on her part, and repeatedly advises him to file a complaint. So by then I'm not sure what to think.

By now news is filtering in via Mom from Diane, who is making collect calls from the county jail at the rate of about one every half-hour. She tells us that she was not in the car at the time it was searched, but was getting work supplies from the day before out of the trunk. She insists that the drugs were found in her co-worker's apron, not hers (I'm still not sure what to think about that one), and that she took a drug test immediately afterward and it was clean. After we make her bail, I drive up to the jail with the bail bond and wait for four hours for her to be released. It's hot when I get there so I go to the library, where it's cool, and check out a bunch of weird books to read while I'm waiting, like How to Turn Your Boyfriend into a Love Slave.

When Diane finally gets out of jail, she is happy, mad, revengeful, and contrite. She vows that she will hire a lawyer to fight it out. "I always say I'm going to fight these things, only I never do. Only this time, I really am!" she says. And the next day, the police officer calls to tell Duff that the whole thing was the result of a typographical error: he got one of the numbers on the license plate wrong, and that's why it came up as a different car, and that's why they thought she had stolen the car or whatever. And the way Diane tells it this guy was pretty smug with his catch.

So now I am back to driving Diane to work every day and hoping against hope that somehow she can get the drug charge thrown out. She really doesn't want it on her record, but when it's her word against theirs, it's hard to be optimistic about the outcome. And I'm still not 100 percent certain the drugs weren't hers. I'm about 50-50. However I do think that it ought to count for something that the whole reason behind the search was bogus. But I'm not a lawyer, so what do I know? And she won't be able to hire a good lawyer, either, because all her savings went toward the bail money. It just sucks to think that she may be dragged down into the muck again just when things were going so well for her.

So now you know.

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