BAILEY — Meth was found and kids were evacuated, but camp went on.
“The kids think it’s a big adventure,” said Jennifer Bahr, the National Farmers Union director of education who was with the displaced campers at Platte Canyon High School on Thursday.
When they arrived at the school on buses about 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, they had their sleeping bags. By Thursday night, cots had been brought to the gym.
The 67 middle school girls and boys will go home at noon today as planned, she said.
The kids were moved after trace amounts of methamphetamine were discovered in three buildings at the Rocky Mountain Education Center, owned by Farmers Union, said Clay Pederson, the union’s administrative vice president.
A camp caretaker, James Laird Higday III, had been arrested in March. Drugs were found in the trailer home he and his wife lived in on camp property, and he was charged with possession of firearms by a felon and drug possession. The camp later fired him.
The camp then hired a sheriff’s deputy to work part time as caretaker, and he recently recommended a search of the facilities. A private company conducted the tests June 12, Pederson said, and the camp staff was alerted to the contamination at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
One canister with meth in it was found in the trailer where Higday had lived with his wife. Traces also were found in the A-frame building that housed the camp kitchen and in a home on camp property.
The kids were evacuated as a precaution and the buildings won’t be used for a month until they are decontaminated, Pederson said.
Diane Kopetzky is a counselor at the camp and one of the 12 camp staffers evacuated. She said that when the order came, “the kids went out calmly — nobody cried.”
Camp cook Anna Curtis agreed. “The kids were great,” she said.
The meth evacuation is also disrupting the annual Bailey Days celebration, but not canceling it.
The Platte Canyon Area Chamber of Commerce will not hold the dinner and dance at the camp at 6 p.m. today as originally planned, said Ron Thorne, chamber president. The dinner and dance will be on Main Street instead, the chamber is telling dozens of concerned callers.
The chamber will hold festivities Saturday and Sunday on the campgrounds because none of the activities will be inside buildings where the drugs were found, he said.
Parents who received late-night calls Wednesday didn’t flock to Bailey on Thursday to get their kids.
Virginia Temmer is the mother of a 13-year-old girl attending the camp. She was startled to get the call and worried for her daughter at first.
“I thought: Is she in danger? Is she sick?” she said. “They assured me she was OK. I believe they’re doing the right thing.”
Camp officials said a background check was done before hiring Higday a year ago; they were surprised to learn he had an arrest record including felony criminal mischief and first-degree burglary.
“It would be safe to say” Higday would not have been hired had the union known about his past criminal background, Pederson said.
Deputies were searching Higday’s trailer home in March in a theft investigation. They didn’t found stolen goods but did find two shotguns, a rifle and three baggies of white powder believed to be methamphetamine, according to court records.
The Sheriff’s Office said no evidence was found that meth was cooked there, although Higday told an investigator at the time that “he liked and used methamphetamines.”
It took two months before the camp was searched for drug traces after Higday was arrested and fired because Farmers Union officials didn’t suspect any additional contamination, Pederson said.
He added: “This is the first time we’ve ever dealt with this kind of thing.”
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
