Broker Now Counsels Addicts : Drug Dealer’s Reform Eases Term

A securities broker who pleaded guilty to selling a kilo of cocaine to an undercover officer in North Hollywood was sentenced Thursday to one year in County Jail on a work furlough program and five years probation.

Richard C. Chiaro, 45, who could have been sentenced to four years in state prison, received the lighter sentence because he kicked his $2,000-a-week cocaine habit, started a new career and is now counseling other drug addicts, San Fernando Superior Court Judge Robert D. Fratianne said in pronouncing the sentence.

“This defendant has taken giant strides both for himself . . . and for educating the community,” Fratianne said. “He’s going to be punished, but not by imprisonment.”

Chiaro, who had spent 14 years managing rock bands and performing artists, pleaded guilty in December, 1983, to one count of selling cocaine, a probation report said. Chiaro, who was arrested in September, 1982, after he sold the cocaine to an undercover officer for $64,000, also pleaded guilty to being armed with a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun at the time of his arrest, the report said.

Rehabilitation Program

After his arrest, Chiaro immediately entered a drug rehabilitation program and began studying for his securities broker license.

More than a dozen friends, drug counselors and Chiaro’s employer wrote letters of support for him, urging Fratianne not to imprison him.

Playwright Arthur Miller, who said his son had been a friend of Chiaro, wrote that Chiaro was “an earnest, saddened young man, a fellow trying to communicate with himself and the world. . . . The interests of society, as well as his own, would be better served if he were allowed to continue treatment for his addiction outside rather than within a prison.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ed Feldman, who asked Fratianne to impose a state prison sentence, argued that the magnitude of the transaction called for prison time.

“You don’t just walk into a one-kilo cocaine sale armed with a gun,” Feldman said. “I understand that this case is unusual because of his improvement, but in my view any case like this calls for state prison.”

$7,500 Fine

Besides the jail time and probation, Fratianne gave Chiaro a four-year suspended prison sentence and ordered him to pay a $7,500 fine. If Chiaro violates probation, Fratianne can order him to serve the prison time.

Fratianne granted a stay of the jail term until July 30 to give Chiaro time to apply for the work furlough program, which will allow him to leave jail to go to work.

Feldman said the cocaine was 80% pure, and would have been worth “something in the hundreds of thousands of dollars once it was broken down into individual hits on the street.”

In spite of the large amount of cocaine involved, Chiaro’s attorneys argued that their client’s efforts to turn his life around and help others warranted a lighter sentence.

“To disrupt the progress he has made up to this point wouldn’t benefit him and wouldn’t benefit society,” attorney Harold Vites said.