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Former AKC Judge/Holsteiner breeder arrested in major drug bust
Anyone here ever enter a dog under this judge or his wife Judy Spink?
both were field trial judges, but Judy still shows up active in the AKC field trial judge listing. They bred Golden Retrievers in Beaverton Oregon. The big fall Tuesday, March 08, 2005 STEVE WOODWARD Douglas B. Spink once mesmerized Portland's business netherworld with contentious high-risk deals and a penchant for death-defying sports. His pastime of leaping from bridges, cliffs and radio towers "is the absolute extreme self-reliance in my mind," he once wrote in an e-mail to The Oregonian. "There's nobody there but you, and if you don't do everything right you WILL die. No second chances." Last week, the Reed College graduate's luck, in a sense, ran out, when federal agents captured him near the Canadian border, allegedly smuggling what federal agents estimate to be more than $34 million of cocaine into Washington. Spink, who will be 34 next week, finds himself in a federal detention center at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of possessing more than five kilograms of cocaine with intent to distribute. He faces 10 years to life in prison if convicted.. The arrest is the latest -- and most serious -- chapter in Spink's colorful history of penny-stock corporate takeovers, angry creditors and shareholders, fraud judgments, millions of dollars in unpaid debts and a personal bankruptcy still pending three years later. Spink, the accused drug dealer, forms a picture far removed from Doug Spink, the child of Pennsylvania privilege, who attended a private academy, went fox hunting with his father, played squash and rode in elegant horse competitions. He earned an MBA and, like his father, became a mergers-and-acquisitions man, buying and selling companies. But Spink, who suffers from a mild form of autism known as Asperger syndrome, left a trail of bad blood and lost fortunes -- his and others. And in the past two years, his own emotional world has spiraled downward after the death of his best friend in a skydiving accident. "He's owed a lot of people a lot of money," said Erika Helgesson, Spink's former executive assistant at defunct Worldmodal Network Services. Helgesson said Spink owes her $30,000 for seven months' pay. Spink's enemies exulted at the news of his arrest. "That's wonderful," said one, Kit Kung, a New Jersey businessman who won a $5.7 million judgment against Spink and his companies in the messy wake of a takeover struggle a few years ago. Kung and his partners never collected the judgment. Even Spink's mother, Claire Spink of Harmony, Pa., is a creditor -- to the tune of $80,000. "At least," she emphasized. Spink listed her as a creditor when he and his estranged wife, Judy Spink, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2002. Claire Spink said her money went, among other things, to finance Spink's MBA education at the University of Chicago and to buy expensive show horses. "I'm just stunned and obviously brokenhearted," said Claire Spink, who noted that she and her son have not talked in four years. Douglas Spink and his only sibling, a sister, have not spoken in nine years. Family, friends in the dark In recent months, Spink's whereabouts have been a mystery not only to his family, but also to his creditors and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland. Spink's father, Jack Spink, said he has spent the past 21/2 months trying to locate his son, who canceled plans to visit the elder Spink during the year-end holidays. "I'm completely in the dark," said Jack Spink, a Pennsylvania businessman who learned of his son's arrest from a reporter. He and Claire Spink are divorced. The last time Jack Spink saw his son was in 2003, when he traveled to Calgary, Alberta, to see Douglas compete in an international horse jumping competition. Last April, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Randall L. Dunn ordered Matthew Slayton, Douglas Spink's stepson, to produce documents related to the whereabouts of his stepfather. The public record doesn't indicate whether Slayton complied, and M. Vivienne Popperl, attorney for the U=2ES. Trustee's office in Portland, declined to say. According to acquaintances, Douglas Spink departed Oregon for British Columbia sometime after his bankruptcy, which still is pending in Oregon. In Canada, Spink has devoted himself to breeding the German Holsteiner show jumping horses he bought while living in Oregon. Helgesson, Spink's former assistant, said Spink was in Portland as recently as two weeks ago, visiting Paul R. Peterson, a friend and former business partner. At the time, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were extremely interested in Spink'swhereabouts. Agents begin to track Spink A month before, in January, U.S. Border Patrol agents had run into Spink in the Loomis National Forest, 10 miles from the Canadian border, along a route known for clandestine narcotics smuggling. Spink, who had a satellite phone in the rented 2004 black GMC Yukon, "acted very nervous," according to a sworn deposition by Chad Boucher an immigration special agent. Spink said he was there for recreation, Boucher testified. Afterward, federal agents began to track Spink's various travels in his 1996 Chevrolet Tahoe. He crossed the border from Canada five times in February. On the evening of Feb. 28, Spink crossed for what turned out to be the last time. After he came through the Sumas, Wash., port of entry, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents followed him to Everett, Wash. There, he met an unidentified person driving a truck that the agents associated with a known narcotics-smuggling operation. At 7:40 p.m., the driver of the truck unloaded four large dark suitcases and one small suitcase. Spink, according to Boucher, loaded the suitcases into the back of his sport utility vehicle. He pulled out onto U.S. 2, heading east to Monroe, population 13,795. Alerted by the federal agents, Monroe police stopped Spink for driving 5 mph over the speed limit. A drug-sniffing dog detected the drugs. After obtaining a search warrant, the police found the suitcases. They were filled with bricks of cocaine weighing about 169 kilograms, or more than 372 pounds. For Spink, who remains officially bankrupt, the alleged $34 million drug fortune was short-lived. A federal judge appointed a public defender because Spink could not afford a lawyer. "We certainly had a happy childhood," said his mother, who recalled that Spink started a club of students opposed to alcohol in high school. "It's a terrible waste of potential." HeraldNet The Herald - Everett, Wash. - www.HeraldNet.com Published: Friday, March 4, 2005 Drug arrest follows tragedy Friends say adventurer was grieving loss of friends By Scott North Herald Writer The man charged in what is believed to be Snohomish County's largest cocaine bust has spent much of the past three years in an apparent emotional free fall - publicly grieving the deaths of friends, reportedly losing a fortune, and now, potentially, his freedom. Douglas Bryan Spink, 33, remained jailed Thursday in the federal detention center in SeaTac, charged with possessing 372 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of $34 million. Spink is accused of being caught with the drugs during a traffic stop Monday on U.S. 2 in Monroe. He is scheduled to appear Tuesday for a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Spink lives in Canada, where he had run a Chilliwack, B.C., farm that bred jumping horses. He moved there not long ago from Portland, Ore., where, starting in the late 1990s, he was well known for risky business ventures and a passion for extreme sports, especially parachuting from cliffs, bridges, tall buildings and radio towers. Word of Spink's legal predicament spread quickly Thursday. "He owes me $50,000, and he's burned a lot of people," said Mark Paul, a business consultant in Oregon who said he was among the many creditors who remained entangled in the legal morass left by the collapse and bankruptcy of Spink's businesses in 2002. The arrest created a buzz among people who know Spink through his pursuit of BASE jumps, an acronym that refers to hurling oneself from buildings, antennas, spans and earth formations. "I was shocked, but not entirely surprised," said Karin Sako, an expert parachutist and rock climber who lives in Southern California. She met Spink during 2001 through a former boyfriend, Dwain Weston, then one of the world's most accomplished BASE jumpers who worked as a computer consultant in Portland. In numerous Internet postings, Spink described Weston as his best friend and "soul mate," the person who taught him how to jump from bridges and cliffs. Weston died in October 2003 when he crashed into the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado. He had jumped from a plane and was speeding through the air wearing a "wing suit," a garment he hoped would allow him to "buzz" the bridge. Weston's death came a little more than a year after another one of the people Spink considered his jumping buddies, an Oregon forensic pathologist, died in a jumping accident in Switzerland. "BASE has brought me together with truly the most amazing, beautiful, interesting, complex, frustrating, intellectual, spiritual, courageous, ridiculous, hare-brained, brilliant people in the world. It has then taken them from me, one after another," Spink wrote in an Internet forum three days after Weston's death. He added: "If you join our sport, this will happen to you - it is wonderful, and it absolutely sucks." Spink also knows a great deal about rock climbing and mountain travel, and he used that knowledge in pursuit of jumps from backcountry locations, said Robin Heid, a longtime sky diver and journalist who was a pioneer of BASE jumping. Heid had organized the event at which Weston died. He said it wasn't long before Spink posted Internet messages alleging that the mishap could have been prevented, and that Weston's death was a suicide, not an accident. That triggered a series of unpleasant exchanges between the two on various sky-diving bulletin boards. Spink reacted angrily in July when somebody who didn't know Weston made a passing reference in an Internet posting. When someone also posting on the board asked why he was so angry and bitter, Spink said he had reasons. "Bitter? Yeah, well I'll be happy to hear your feedback on my mental state when you've walked in my shoes for a few miles," he wrote. "That is, take your best friend, have him commit suicide, know you could have prevented it, and stir. That's a start. Mix in a heap more fatalities, then stir with a whole box-full of knives in the back from 'friends' without integrity or respect. That's the appetizer. Then we'll get to the main course." On Feb. 16, Spink posted a message on an Internet bulletin board for climbers detailing how he had jumped off a cliff near Winthrop to honor the memory of a Seattle-area BASE jumper who he said had committed suicide days before. Spink is an intense man and his exposure to death seems to have sparked in him a "volatile search" for meaning, Sako said. "There were times he extended great compassion and caring and sensitivity to me," she said. "I've always, and still do, like that quality in him. I've also been on the other end of some not so compassionate, sensitive things." Whatever happens next, Sako said she hopes Spink benefits from the experience. "For better or worse, I do hope the best for him," she said. "I don't think anyone is a victim in life. We are certainly responsible for our own actions." That's a reality BASE jumpers understand, she said. Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or . Copyright =A91996-2005. The Daily Herald Co. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. |
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