The "Drug Wars" (22) Los Angeles 1973

Venice High School

The statue is of Myrna Loy, who posed for it as a student prior to becoming a film star. This photo was taken in 1948. For decades, it was a landmark. After years of removal, it has recently been restored.


Back in the mid-1960s, when I was in college, I played baseball on a semi-pro team in West Los Angeles called the Venice Athletics. Aside from a couple of us, all the players were African-Americans. I played for that team for at least a year, and one year, we won the city championship in a game played at the old Wrigley Field in LA.

Shortly before I moved on to another team, a young kid joined the team. He had been a star athlete at Venice High School. I never really got to know him well. Most of the older players, with whom I had been closer, had left the team, and I decided to move on as well.

Fast forward to 1973. I was a young DEA agent working in LA. One day, we executed a search and arrest warrant in Venice. We arrested the occupant and seized a small amount of heroin. The young man we arrested was the same one I referred to above. If he recognized me, he didn't show it, and I didn't remind him.

A few months later, out on bail, he was killed in a car accident under suspicious circumstances. During the same time frame, I learned that one of the older guys on our old team had been the actual head of the heroin trafficking group.

I still remember both of their names, but it is not necessary to mention them here.