This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Police in Elko, Nev., got more than they bargained for when they found marijuana on tour buses carrying 250 California teens on their way to a ski trip in Utah.
But none of the teenagers went to jail.
"Logistically it was a nightmare,"said Elko City Chief of Police Don Zumwalt.
Tuesday night, high school-age skiers and snowboarders from the Bay Area were traveling to a Salt Lake City-area ski resort in five buses when they took a break off the freeway at a convenience store.
"According to the store clerk, he thought they were smoking dope outside the bus," Zumwalt said.
Dogs were deployed and alerted police there were drugs on the bus.
The police didn't have to fill out a search warrant for each of the teen's bags – the teens were compliant and put all their drug contraband in a big pile outside the buses.
"There was no resistance, there was no search warrant," Zumwalt said.
Police found small amounts of marijuana, plus pipes and bongs. All of the drugs were packaged in small amounts.
"None of it rose to the felony level," Zumwalt said. "All of these situations were misdemeanor issues."
Since there wasn't enough space in the town to book hundreds of teens for misdemeanor offenses and not all of the teens had drugs, Zumwalt said he did what was best "logistically and legally" for the given scenario.
"I could have been writing search warrants all week on all the bags," he said.
Instead, he gave the teens some fatherly advice, took their drugs and let them on their way.
"If it was one bus with 40 kids, we might have done things differently," he said. "My job that night was to make kids safer on their way to Utah … and I think I did that."
Zumwalt said the confiscation made some people mad and doubts they got all the drugs off the bus but said most of the people on the bus thanked them.
No one identified themselves to Zumwalt as chaperones for the bus trip, he said.
Twitter: @CimCity