Vendor Faces Trial in Sale of Drugs at Swap Meet

In what state and county officials believe is the first California prosecution involving burgeoning sales of black-market prescription drugs at swap meets, a Sun Valley vendor is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office filed misdemeanor charges in June against Santa Elba Hernandez, 43, for selling dangerous drugs to the mother of a sick boy who later died. The charges, to be detailed at Thursday’s arraignment in Los Angeles Municipal Court, carry a maximum sentence of six months and a $1,000 fine.

Hernandez’s business was first investigated last summer by the Los Angeles County district attorney after the death of 2-year-old Jesse Gonzalez of Northridge. On June 10, 1987, Jesse’s mother, Angelica Lugo, took the feverish boy to a lay healer known as a curandera who injected him with an antihistamine bought from Hernandez. Eleven hours later, the boy died.

But when the coroner determined that the boy had died from a lung abscess and not from the medication, the district attorney’s office concluded that there was no basis for filing criminal charges against Hernandez.

Ruth Kwan, an attorney with the city’s Consumer Protection Division, said her office decided that the crime was serious enough to pursue. Her office took over the case in December, she said, but did not file charges until June because of the difficulty finding an expert witness who was familiar with the medication that Hernandez sold.

“It’s sad, because not only was she selling dangerous drugs, but people out there . . . went to her as their own doctor,” Kwan said. “Who knows what would have happened to this boy if, instead of being taken to the swap meet, he had been taken to a hospital earlier?”

After the boy’s death, Los Angeles police officers seized hundreds of boxes of drugs, including penicillin, antibiotics and anti-depressants, from Hernandez’s stall at the Sun Valley Discount Center on Penrose Street. But, Kwan said, the charges involve only Bexedan, the drug sold to Lugo.

Bexedan, like most of Hernandez’s stock, is produced in Mexico and is not widely available in the United States, which Kwan said complicated the case.

“We had to determine the kind of drug that was sold was actually a dangerous drug,” she said. “It is real difficult to find an expert to say that when it’s not approved here or widely used.”

Kenneth Sain, supervising inspector for the state Board of Pharmacy, said he has his “fingers crossed” that the courts will rule against Hernandez and thus open the door for future legal challenges of swap-meet drug vendors.

Twice, Sain has been unable to persuade authorities in other counties to file charges against swap-meet vendors, he said, adding: “If this works, there might be some more interest.”

Sain said he first observed the sale of Mexican drugs at swap meets about five years ago, but in very small amounts. Although the practice is not yet “totally out of control,” he said, he worries about the increasing availability of the more potent prescription drugs.

“I think you could probably find at least one stall that had a few drug items for sale at almost every swap meet,” he said. “We get a little cranked up when we see things like injectable drugs, birth control pills . . . antibiotic eye drops and ear drops.”

A sizable hurdle is the transience of vendors who travel from swap meet to swap meet, and back and forth across the border, said Sain and Stuart Richardson, chief of the Los Angeles County Health Department’s food and drug branch.

State Board of Pharmacy and county food and drug branch investigators tend to confiscate and destroy swap-meet drugs rather than seek prosecution of the sellers. Sain said he takes that tack primarily because he has not been able to persuade prosecutors to get involved, but Richardson said the Health Department prefers to use a softer approach when possible.

“Our effort is to get permanent resolution to it, not to take somebody who doesn’t know the rules and regulations and slam them,” Richardson said. “Of course, when we have repeat offenders, those who know the rules and do it anyway, then we’re going to take action.”