Contrary to what many cops will tell you, many meth addicts have jobs, and not all of them are in illegal enterprises. A federal study found that almost 75 percent of adults who say they have used illicit drugs are employed. Those 8.5 million people represent about 6.4 percent of the entire work force.

After Congress approved the Drug Free Workplace Act, drug testing by major companies of new or prospective employees dramatically jumped, from 22 percent in 1987 to 80 percent by 1994. But more recently, those numbers have dropped, to about 60 percent. One reason, analysts say, is the booming economy has made it tougher to find new workers and therefore made employers less picky.

Still, there are drugs, and there are drugs.

Sue Ramsden, owner of a Sacramento company that conducts drug screenings for Central Valley companies, says employers most worry about the combination of meth and marijuana -- one to get up for work and the other to come down. Even though applicants are warned of upcoming drug tests, about 17 percent still test positive for meth.

Says Ramsden: "You're looking at those who are addicted or dumb."

Alan Jordan's employers didn't think he was addicted or dumb.

Every weekday morning for at least a decade, Jordan's routine was the same. His alarm clock awakened him at 4 or 5 a.m. He jumped into the shower, dressed, kissed his sleeping wife goodbye and left for work. Jordan, a 200-pound former Navy Seabee, drove backhoes and other heavy equipment for a living, a job that usually meant long hours and long drives to work.

So every morning, after grabbing a cup of coffee from whatever convenience store was on the way, he dipped his pocketknife into a baggie of white powder, scooped some crank onto the blade and dumped it into his coffee, adding it to the sugar and creamer -- "a little sweetener." Then he drove to work in his black, 1990 Chevy half-ton pickup, sipping from the coffee cup nestled in a holder in the center console.

Jordan, a 5-foot-10-inch bear of a man with a full beard and a barrel chest, says his daily habit never increased over time, never rendered him incapable of work or made him homicidal. The boost he got from his daily pinch of crank, he says, probably was akin to slamming down a pot of coffee. Sometimes, if the day was long or the work especially exhausting, he supplemented it with a quick line at lunch. Occasionally, he snorted it on weekends, as the social scene dictated.

"It doesn't turn you into a monster," he says, shaking his head at what he perceives is an overkill of anti-drug messages. "In construction, it's seasonal work. People are trying to get the most out of the day. They get up early, and they work late. I'd say  is fairly common."

At least nine of Jordan's business associates would attest to the fact that he was a reliable, competent and tireless employee, even writing letters of commendation for him.

"He is a hard worker and does whatever it takes to get the job done," wrote the owner of Tony's Excavating, who hired Jordan for five years in the early- to mid-1990s to help build a subdivision near Calvine and Power Inn roads in Sacramento.

"He never complained about the long hours and/or weekend work," wrote Rick Eimers of RC Enterprise in Penryn, northeast of Sacramento. Others described him as a valued journeyman employee who drove massive backhoes that cost more than $100,000 and professionally worked with business owners and homeowners at job sites.

Those letters were written to a federal judge. In late April, Jordan was convicted of manufacturing meth in a sufficient enough quantity to earn him two life terms plus 20 years in a federal penitentiary.

"I hope they run concurrently," he quips, grinning as he rubs a giant hand across his beard. After four years in Sacramento County's jail awaiting trial, his skin has turned sallow and he has added 30 pounds.

The lab was discovered by county, state and federal drug agents in a tiny, wooden, rural home Jordan said he had rented and then vacated in Amador County. Behind the home, detectives found empty containers of Red Devil lye and Western Family lighter fluid and empty boxes of medications containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. An informant told cops that Jordan sent him to an Oakland company to buy chemicals for cooking meth and directed that the chemicals be dropped at the front gate of the Amador property.

When they got a search warrant, agents found 4 ounces of finished crank and about 80 pounds of the unfinished drug suspended in solution, plus a lab and thousands of dollars worth of lab glassware and equipment. Heavy staining on the walls and throughout the rooms indicated the lab had been operating for some time.

When detectives went searching for Jordan, they found him living with his wife in the Sacramento suburb of Orangevale. They also found 4.1 grams of crank in his car, an electronic scale, small clear plastic baggies and a hidden, loaded Ruger .357 handgun.

Jordan denies the lab was his. But even if it were, he questions how cooking drugs could be considered a greater public threat than murder or other crimes.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, the size of the lab was enough to earn him a life sentence for his first felony conviction. Adding to his troubles are enhancements for being the drug ringleader (an allegation he also denies) and for obstructing justice and several prior misdemeanor convictions for driving with a suspended license.

His point total -- the basis for federal sentencing -- comes to 44, just one less than that of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski. Total sentence: two life terms plus 240 months.

In the same week, in the same federal courthouse where Jordan drew his double-life sentence, a 22-year-old man was sentenced to 18 years for the shotgun murder of another man in a civil rights case.

Jordan protests the disparity: "The guidelines were supposed to be set up to make things more uniform. It seems to me that in my case, it's backfired."

Need a little more irony? Jordan's parents gave him a nickname when he was born on Friday the 13th. They call him Lucky.

"Methamphetamine is the worst drug that has ever hit America. Ferociously addictive drug that is spreading ... it's hard to imagine overstating the magnitude of the the meth problem.
-- U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey

No one is certain how many meth addicts there are. Federal officials say meth is the fastest-growing major drug in the country.

The 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse estimated 9.4 million Americans 12 or older had tried meth. The actual numbers may be higher, experts say, because the survey didn't count people in jail, in homeless shelters or on the street, groups in which illicit drug use is more common.

California's rate of meth use was highest among the eight most populous states, the survey said, possibly reflecting the product's availability. One out of 15 Californians 12 and older had tried meth, whereas Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania had meth-use rates about half or less of California's.

Men were more than twice as likely as women to have used meth, and whites were more than twice as likely as African-Americans or Latinos, the survey estimated in 1998. And up to a point, the more educated people were, the more likely they were to use meth. Adults who didn't finish high school were less likely to use meth than high school graduates, who were less likely than adults who had attended college but did not graduate.

Because meth has figured in a number of high-profile violent crime cases -- Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Polly Klaas killer Richard Allen Davis were both meth users -- there is a popular perception that its users routinely resort to violence. Actually, statistics on people arrested under the influence of a drug show that marijuana users are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes than meth users. But there is no question that meth, like all drugs, contributes greatly to Valley crime, violent and nonviolent.

Sandy Miller flashes a toothsome smile when she says her name on the street was "Sunshine." She's wearing a tight-fitting flowered dress on her slender figure, with her dark blond hair pulled back into a bun. On the left side of her neck she wears a tattoo of a single word: "Dollar."

The attractive 30-year-old sits with perfect posture, talking eye to eye about her years as a prostitute and a pimp and a meth addict. "I did just about anything for money," she says. "I have a lot of terrible, terrible secrets." Her worst secrets involve the minors she used in her escort service. She doesn't say any more than that.

The daughter of a preacher, Miller first used meth at a high school party when she was 15 and attending Casa Robles School in Orangevale in Sacramento County.

"It always starts out as a social thing," she says. "You're young and trying to fit in. It progressed until I had to have it every day. Inside, it makes you feel you can do just about anything. It's false control. It's false pride."

After high school, Miller got a job as a property manager for a real estate group and did well ("I was a functional addict") for several years -- until they fired her because of her drug use.

At age 24, she opened an escort service. The first three years, she says, it was a legitimate service. Then she started going on calls herself and providing more than a date. Eventually, she had a full-scale prostitution service. But there was no way to do it without the drugs.

"You numb everything up around you," she recalls. "The only time I didn't use, I was asleep . . . The things I did I would never do sober."

First thing in the morning, Miller would drop a fingernail full of meth into a cup of coffee, then force herself to eat a candy bar and drink a glass of milk. She'd go on binges when she'd use and stay up for four to five days. She'd sleep for another four or five days and then start again.

Miller says she would use $40 to $50 worth of meth a day, snorting between five to 10 lines a day. "My life centered around getting and using dope, getting and using women, and getting and using men."

Most of the women who worked for her also used meth. Those who didn't, she tried to get started on it because they were more controllable with a meth habit. If she couldn't manipulate them into trying it, she'd put some into their soft drinks.

Now it is late spring, and Miller is sitting in a South Sacramento drug treatment center, trying to put behind her felony convictions for drug possession and escape from jail, trying to lose the meth demon. She shows off photos of her hugging and playing with her 10-month-old son.

They were taken when she last saw him a few weeks ago. She didn't know at the time that a court had approved his adoption by his foster family. The family didn't want to tell her during the visit that it was the last time she'd see her son -- at least until he was 18 and old enough to seek her out.

Her drug use has cost her dearly. Of three children, two have been adopted, the 10-month-old by strangers through child welfare services and her 3-year-old daughter by her brother who won't let her see the child. Her other daughter is with the father, but Miller isn't allowed contact.

"I have two daughters, and I can't have either one of them, and I just lost my son," she says. "I couldn't stop using to get my kids back."

"I'm on a roll, no self-control.
I'm blowing off steam with methamphetamine,
Don't know what I want, that's all I've got
And I'm picking scabs off my face."
-- Green Day,"Geek Stink Breath"

The front door opens slowly, and darkness and sunlight collide. The thin silhouette of Jacqueline Hughes appears in the doorway. A sliver of light shines inside the house and illuminates a half-empty jar of peanut butter resting in a pile of broken potato chips.

She moves onto a concrete step, squinting fiercely like a miner emerging from a hole in the ground. As Hughes struggles to acclimate herself, the details of her life give her away. Tragic hazel eyes. Missing teeth. Endless fidgeting.

Occasionally, she removes her hat to reveal patches of missing hair. Blood hasn't completely dried in the newest sores on her face. Hidden beneath a man's long-sleeve shirt are fresh needle marks in the fold of her left arm. A fresh dose of meth flashes through her body, leaving Hughes feeling awkward and naked outside the safety of her room. Daylight isn't as kind to her as it once was.

"I used to be a pretty gal, but now I'm a dog," she says. "I used to be a Sears model."

Without explanation, Hughes runs up the steps and disappears inside her home. She returns a few minutes later clutching a picture of two strangers. In the photo, a woman and her daughter are smiling. The woman has on makeup and is dressed in a nice jean jacket. The girl seems innocent and happy. Hughes looks at the picture and forces a toothless smile.

Five years ago, the woman in the photo was her.

"The reason I did drugs is to hide all the pain and suffering," she says. "It keeps you busy so you can't think about your childhood. It gets me away from depression."

She pauses, takes a drag on her cigarette, then works to remove stray strands of tobacco from her gums.

"Is that weird?" she asks, waiting sincerely for someone to give her an answer.

She doesn't have many of her own.

A drug agent discovers meth in the home of a Modesto resident. Bee Photographer- Hector Amezcua

Spruce is a dead-end street in a low-rent district in west Modesto. There are no sidewalks; a heavy rain leaves the street flooded for days. Most who live on Spruce are hard-working and law-abiding, but poor. Many are lost souls who keep drug dealers in business.

Jackie Hughes moved here about two years ago, the exact date escapes her. She lives in the back unit of a duplex near the end of the street. There is no electricity or running water. The rooms are musty and smell of old clothes, body odor and cigarettes. Sheets cordon off every doorway for privacy because sometimes as many as 12 to 15 people, adults and children, have called the four-room place home. Flies and mosquitoes navigate the stale air while fat spiders wait at the windows.

Garbage has been swept into the corners and has long since been replaced by new detritus of crank life: hypodermic needles, empty Coke bottles, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, scattered books. Hundreds of boxes, some stacked to the ceiling, clog the walkways.

In the back bathroom, pieces of the wall tumble into the bathtub. Stacked in the sink are dried dirty dishes, rags and discarded plastic bags.

It's the cleanest room in the house.

Behind the sheet covering another doorway is what used to be a laundry room. It's roughly 6 feet wide and 6 feet long, dominated by a mattress lying diagonally across the floor. Sprinkled around it are cigarette butts, crinkled rolling papers, hacksaw blades and dozens of coffee cans full of everything imaginable.

Modesto resident Jackie Hughes, 34, cries as she shows a dress that was donated to her. She's also shown in 1995 at age 28 with daughter Jessica Lee Hughes, then 3 years old. "I used to be a pretty gal, but now I'm a dog," Hughes says. -- Adrian Mendoza (credit only for photo of Jackie with dress)

The room is muggy, and the stench of lifeless air is unbearable. Another sheeted doorway leads to the largest room in the house. Hughes' room. The only one with no windows. Things are piled anywhere they'll fit. A propane lantern hisses like an AM radio caught between stations.

There's a mirror on her nightstand covered with flecks of powdered meth. Hughes' red pouch rests a few feet away, full of crank, needles, a burnt spoon and empty baggies. On a bookshelf, next to several burned-out candles, is a bill from the Health Services Agency seeking $278: "You have not responded to our previous billing . . ." the note announces.

Resting on top of the bill is an old syringe.

Hughes smiles, nervously running her hands up and down her legs. It would be easy to discount her as another unemployed druggie. The label fits. But trapped beyond the mess she's willingly made of her life is a lost, good-natured person. She hugs everyone she sees, grateful for the contact. She's an odd mix of playful little girl and an old woman whose ravaged body aches.

Crank has tossed her memory, though Hughes still can recall scattered details of her 34 years. Most of these events probably shouldn't be remembered. Perhaps the saddest aspect is that she has no idea how the hell she ended up like this. Or how she'll make it out.

It's a terrible day in a small Louisiana town. Jackie, a seventh-grader, is raped by her friend's older brother and three of his friends. Afterward, they pour boiling water over her body, giving her second- and third-degree burns on her arms and stomach. When they're finished, they dump her in a ditch. A woman finds her and drives her to the hospital, where Jackie is treated for burns, broken ribs and a concussion.

"When I got out of the hospital, my dad got mad at me and broke my stereo," Hughes recalls. "He slapped me in the face and busted my lip. It's hard to explain my father."

Hughes was born June 6, 1966, in New York City. Her family moved to Louisiana, and she grew up there and in Texas. Childhood was rarely sweet. "My dad was always drunk, and my mom was always knocked out on Valium," Hughes says. "My dad used to hit me and my sister and my mom."

Hughes was in her mid-20s when she married a man who displayed emotions like her father.

One night, her husband pushed her down a flight of stairs, rupturing her uterus. She required emergency surgery. Shortly after that, Hughes and her youngest daughter, Jessica, moved to California. Her other daughter, Christina, 13, remained with her parents.

Hughes and Jessica arrived in Modesto in 1995. They found a small apartment not far from Modesto Junior College. The landlord gave her one piece of advice: Don't associate with your neighbors. She didn't follow it.

One day, a neighbor asked Hughes if she knew anything about crank. As the sun set the next night, Hughes found herself leaning over a mirror with a short straw in her right hand. Surrounded by a few strangers rooting her on, Hughes looked beyond the line of crank to the reflection of her face. She stared into her eyes, unaware the new her was looking at the old her for the last time. She bent down, and the line disappeared into the sweetest rush she'd ever felt. She immediately loved it.

Hughes made many new friends, and they ingested loads of crank. A few months later, everything was different. Her body started to change. One night, she woke up screaming.

As she held the side of her mouth, her companion, Bob Hicks, a drug veteran himself, dug around Hughes' purse until he found the only thing that can ease the pain of her rotting teeth.

"You put fingernail polish on a tooth, and it seals off the root," Hicks says. "Finally, a dentist pulled out the ones that remained."

It's a sunny Mother's Day in Modesto. Hughes sits on her bed with a pencil in her hand, looking down at a blank piece of paper. The words don't come easily even though she's written this letter before.

"To whom it may concern," she writes. A tear soaks into the paper. "When you find this letter, I'll probably be gone. Please don't be mad. I love you all, and you don't have to worry anymore about me letting you down."

Hughes signs it, then reads it several times before crumbling it and tossing it into the corner. She leans back and disappears into her pillow. Her thoughts drift to the conversation she had with her mother a few hours earlier.

Hughes had called to wish her mom a Happy Mother's Day and to ask if she'd be receiving anything special from her kids, who now live with her parents. Hughes' mother scoffed.

"You're not much of a mother."

There's a small house on the corner of Vine Street and Martin Luther King Drive. Located about a block from Hughes' home, it sat vacant for some time; then a flier circulated. "The Vine House presents: The Caring Coffee Café. M-F, 9 to 11 a.m. Free coffee, snacks and fellowship."

When it opens, two people wait at the door: Hughes and Hicks. The numbers quickly grow as the hungry, the homeless and the habitual straggle in. There's a popular table full of coffee, hot chocolate, potato chips, cookies and buttered toast. But what the Vine House really peddles is hope.

At 10:15 a.m., Hicks walks into the room with an odd, frustrated expression on his face. He whispers to Hughes, and the two walk outside.

Hughes reappears 10 minutes later. An old friend had come to the Vine House and asked Hughes to drive his wife across town. He said they'd make it worth her while. That meant crank.

"I told him no," Hughes says, her heart racing. "It's tempting. I'm not going to lie about that."

The Vine House is a sanctuary they visit for two hours a day to escape drugs. Yet, like the devil trying to sneak into church, meth follows them even here.

Hughes sits on the concrete steps of her back yard, talking about hope. Hers is to live with her kids again. And to be able to wear the dresses from the women at the Vine House. "Can I show you?" she asks, as she hops up and runs inside the house. Hughes reappears, cradling two new dresses wrapped in plastic. "I've never had something so pretty before," she says, her lip shaking uncontrollably. "I'm too ugly to wear them. I don't even know how to act in a dress."

Hughes walks back into her room and hangs the dresses in a closet. She grabs a cigarette, lights it and returns to visit with her friends.

"The landlord left us a note," she says. "He said he's going to evict us. Where are we going to live? Probably in the car, I don't know."

She folds her arms, then turns to go inside.

"Thank you for not looking down on us."