[Sativa]

Pima County food banks got a generous helping of freshly picked, bright-red tomatoes Thursday thanks to a marijuana seizure on Interstate 19, officials said.
The 40,000 pounds of tomatoes were dropped at the Community Food Bank at 3003 S. Country Club about 12:30 p.m. Thursday and should help feed needy families for three days, said CEO Bill Carnegie.
"It's really fortunate for us that this seizure took place," he said. The high-quality tomatoes were freshly packaged, he said.
An Arizona Department of Public Safety officer stopped a tractor-trailer rig hauling the tomatoes Wednesday night on Interstate 19 south of Valencia Road, said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a Pima County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman.
The officer requested a drug sniffing dog and sheriff's Sgt. Greg Bargar responded with his dog Rudy, who detected drugs in two locations, Barkman said.
The DPS officer seized the rig and found 2,880 pounds of marijuana, said DPS Sgt. Javier Garayzar, with the Counter Narcotics Alliance.
The driver of the rig, Eugene Alcaraz, 32, of Rio Rico was arrested.
The alliance, an interagency drug enforcement task force, offered the tomatoes on Wednesday night, but the food bank held off on the delivery until the following day.
In coming days, the tomatoes will get spread out through all the county's food banks, which go through about 30,000 pounds of food a day. Carnegie said he's not worried about the drugs contaminating the food.
"We do need to go through each and every pallet before we distribute the tomatoes to make sure they got all the drugs off the truck," he said.
About a month ago, a drug bust netted about 30,000 pounds of squash for local food banks, Carnegie said.



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Source: arizona daily star
Author: Dale Quinn
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Copyright: 2007 arizona daily star
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