A Sense Of Purpose (Will Wal-Mart Hire Handy?)

WATERVILLE -- When Douglas Handy heard an elderly woman at Wal-Mart yell that someone stole her purse, he didn't think twice about chasing and tackling the thief.

Being legally blind, he didn't even know the culprit was a woman until he had her down on the floor.

"She was really big and I had to wrap both my arms around her," Handy, 42, recalled. "She was screaming, 'Let me go, let me go!' She wanted me to get up. I said, 'I'm not getting up till the security guards get here.'"

This was at 12:53 p.m. Tuesday. When police arrived at the store, they arrested Angie L. Sousa, 23, of Gardiner and charged her with theft by unauthorized taking or transfer and criminal trespass.

Deputy police Chief Joseph P. Massey said Wednesday that Sousa was not supposed to be in a Wal-Mart, as she had been arrested in March for shoplifting at the Wal-Mart in Augusta and ordered to stay out of the stores.

Sousa and her boyfriend, who apparently was waiting for her Tuesday in a car outside Wal-Mart, are clients at the methadone clinic on Airport Road and had gone there to get their methadone, but the clinic was closed for lunch, Massey said.

They had an hour to kill, so they drove to Wal-Mart, he said. Sousa went into the store, apparently approached the woman shopper and then dropped her own purse on the floor, he said.

"She (Sousa) bent down to pick it up and as she stood up she grabbed the lady's purse out of her cart," he said. "The lady was very startled and hollered out, 'That woman stole my purse,' as she was running toward the door."

Handy, of College Avenue in Waterville, and a friend were at the check-out lane. Handy was holding a box of drinking glasses when the purse was snatched and the victim cried out, he said.

"I dropped the glasses and they all shattered and I just ran after her because no one was moving," he said. "I was right on her hard and I only have one eye -- my left eye is useless -- and the peripheral on my right eye is only 13. I kept her in my peripheral. I dove on her but I thought it was a guy. She was wearing a hooded shirt. She dropped right down to the floor and I held her there."

Handy, who is 5-feet, 7 inches tall and weighs about 170 pounds, has a history of helping others. Last year, he rescued a drowning boy from the Kennebec River in Winslow.

"God has a plan for everybody, and he puts you in your spot," he said Wednesday.

On Wednesday afternoon, Handy headed to Wal-Mart again, this time to apply for a job. He said he really wants one badly, so that people won't look at him as useless.

"All I want is a job," he said. "Nobody will hire me because I'm legally blind. I can't read and I can't drive. The only thing I can do is be a door person. But at least it's a job. That's all I'm looking for."

Massey said police usually do not recommend people get physically involved in subduing assailants, but he appreciates Handy's work Tuesday.

"Police are certainly more effective when the public are our eyes and ears," he said. "I am going to write Mr. Handy a 'Thank-you' letter. We were able to apprehend her (Sousa) as a result of that. There's nothing worse than losing your personal ID -- it can be a real horror show."

Massey said other methadone clinic clients from out of town have been arrested in Waterville, for aggravated assault and other criminal violations.

"It has just been my concern that the taxpayers of this community are having to foot the bill for the issues that come from the methadone clinic for police services," he said.

Sousa, whose occupation on her arrest record is listed as "personal care attendant," was released on $700 unsecured bail for the theft charge. She is scheduled to appear in Waterville District Court on Aug. 10.

Her boyfriend told police he had no knowledge she was going to snatch a purse in the store, according to Massey. He was not charged in the incident.

Massey said other methadone clinic clients from out of town have been arrested in Waterville, for aggravated assault and other criminal violations.

However, the Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy, still report the same data found in a 1994 drug treatment California study that Methadone decreased criminal activity by its users.

In Scarborough, Maine, Town Manager Ron Owens wants time to consider where a clinic might be allowed as it updates its comprehensive plan. Area residents worry that crime would increase and hold worries about patients lingering in town.

In Rockland, Turning Tide Inc. filed a Federal lawsuit arguing the city violated federal disability laws when it changed zoning to force the clinic into a remote area.

So why still the push for Methadone (first synthesized in the 1940s by German scientists)clinics when local police continually report more crime in these often small Maine comm-unites saddled with limited budgets for citizen protection?

On July 2000 the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation that would - for the first time since the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 - allow general practitioners to maintain an opiate-dependent patient on a narcotic, in this case a Schedule IV or V (buprenorphine)an anti-addiction drug.

First methadone clinics were barred from prescribing the pill. Then after an amendment, methadone clinics could prescribe bupe. Proponents of Buprenorphine (discovered by Reckit Benckiser, "the world's number one in household cleaning,") claim Methadone clinics are afraid to be put out of business, and did everything they could to stonewall FDA Approval of Buprenorphine. Bupe had been in clinical trials for nearly two decades,stonewalled every step claim bupe proponents and addicts themselves who believed it was to keep cash in the pockets of "methadone lobbyists".

Before bupe, there was mainly methadone, an amber syrup that offers similar relief from opiate cravings; but was highly habit-forming. By law, methadone must be dispensed at special clinics and, for most patients, only in single daily doses. Methadone users may show up, every day, sometimes within as little as a one hour period, to get their dosage of methadone. Some clinics have a rule that you must test heroin positive (urine sample) in order to get onto Methadone - causing people who have been clean a few days to go out and get high needlessly. That sure sounds like to me a good chance a crime will be committed in order to test positive for a Methadone handout.

Bupe dispersement falls under the under the same rules used for methadone (one dose per visit), which erases one of bupe's major advantages - you don't have to go to the clinic every day.

Some advocates feel that prescription buprenorphine is a first step to getting Congress to approve legislation that would allow doctors to prescribe any anti-addiction drug to their patients, including methadone. Doctor's office vs. Methadone clinics.

The government now reimburses methadone programs for the number of patients they oversee, not for the specific services they provide.

"People get a methadone habit because it feels like what you were taking before,"says Solinda, a former Wall Street office manager, heroin addict, and occasional methadone abuser who also went through bupe detox at Phoenix House.

In New York City, home to an estimated 200,000 heroin addicts and perhaps two to three times that many prescription opiate addicts, 34,000 people were on methadone maintenance throughout 2004, while only about 1,000 people filled a bupe prescription that year. It's depressingly few," says Lloyd Sederer, New York City's deputy executive commissioner for health and mental hygiene. Buprenorphine is presently used in Europe, Canada, and Australia reportedly with great success.

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