| Photos: San Mateo County Sheriff |
| Virginia Pon, 65 (left) and Aleen Lam, 72, were arrested after police found more than 800 plants growing in their San Bruno, California home. |
Two elderly women are in a California jail after neighbors called the police to report a burglary at their San Bruno residence. When police arrived, they saw, through the broken front door, nearly 800 marijuana plants inside the home.
Aleen Lam, 72, and Virginia Chan Pon, 65, were arrested Friday afternoon, reports Erin Sherbert at the S.F. Weekly. Police, searching the unoccupied home, found $3,000 in cash as well as an electrical bypass that allowed the grannies to steal electricity from Pacific Gas & Electric.
| Photo: S.F. Examiner |
| Doesn’t get out much: San Mateo County D.A. Steve Wagstaffe said “I’ve never heard or seen of women in their 60s and 70s running a growhouse” |
”I’ve never heard or seen of women in their 60s and 70s running a growhouse,” San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, who evidently doesn’t get out much, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I certainly hope it is aberrational rather than a trend. I suppose profiteering in illegal enterprises crosses all the generations.”
“This has not happened in the 34 years that I’ve been here,” Wagstaffe said, reports AP.
The two women face a variety of drug charges including cultivation of marijuana, maintaining a house for the sale of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and unlawful theft of electricity from a utility.
Both women pleaded not guilty in court on Monday at their arraignment. They were ordered to come back to court for a preliminary hearing on May 13. Both elderly ladies are being held in the county jail on $100,000 bail each. Neither has a lawyer, but they will be provided with court-appointed attorneys, according to Wagstaffe.
They haven’t been able to bail out yet, because prosecutors have filed a motion requiring the two women show “a legitimate source” for any bail theyt post.
Police also arrested the two losers who are accused of breaking into Pon and Lam’s home. Not long after the burglary, officers reportedly found them in a BMW in South San Francisco with $12,000 in cash, “marijuana packaging material,” and seven tablets of Ecstasy.
Kitae Chae, 38, and Kenny Kong, 34, were arrested on suspicion of burglary. Ironically, they are being held in the same jail as two two ganja grannies.