Chopper schools look to weed out smugglers

BY KIM BOLAN, VANCOUVER SUN           AUGUST 5, 2009

VANCOUVER — A Kelowna helicopter school is considering criminal record checks on potential students after a recent trainee pleaded guilty in the U.S. to cross-border drug smuggling.

Johannes Vates, chief flight instructor at Okanagan Mountain Helicopters, said there was nothing amiss about Jeremy Snow, a quiet student who completed about 80 hours of training before disappearing in March.

Snow, 29, was later caught flying a helicopter full of drugs into the U.S. He pleaded guilty in Seattle last month and will be sentenced in October.

"We are thinking about maybe requesting a criminal record check, so that's a thought that we had because it came up twice now," Vates said Tuesday.

A helicopter found near Kelowna in 2006 — and under investigation for smuggling — was also linked to one of his former students, he said.

One of the co-conspirators in the Snow case, Sam Brown, trained at Abbotsford's Chinook Helicopters, owner Cathy Press confirmed Tuesday.

Press said there is little that schools can do to prevent someone from misusing their training.

"For example, Sam Brown, I would have had no idea he was even thinking about it. He was a normal student and he had a job lined up after he was finished," Press said.

Last February, Brown was arrested near Spokane, Wash., after landing a helicopter loaded with pot and ecstasy in the woods.

Four days later, the popular 24-year-old hanged himself with bedsheets in the Spokane County jail.

Some of those training have told her they have been asked to make drug runs.

"Many of the guys have told me that at the bar they have been approached, that kind of thing. Money makes the world go around for people," Press said.

She thinks there is less helicopter drug-smuggling than a couple of years ago because of high-profile cross-border investigations like Operation Frozen Timber and Blade Runner, the probe that netted Snow and Brown.

"In the Lower Mainland it has really cooled off. If anything, it is more in the Okanagan and that is what the police are kind of watching," she said. "We are actually very heavily monitored.

"Even our aircraft, we get regularly intercepted if we get close to the border."

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service