Kane Deputy Ron Hain is to be commended

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Updated: January 19, 2012 10:48AM

Kane County Sheriff’s Deputy Ron Hain has the kind of experience, attention to detail, imagination and intuition that make him a very effective law enforcement official.

Here are just a couple examples of Hain at work.

On Super Bowl Sunday in 2007 he saw a motor home with Arizona license plates in the parking lot of a hotel near Aurora. He wondered why someone from Arizona would bring a motor home, generally a vacation vehicle, to Illinois in the winter. After some investigation he found the motor home’s owner, got permission to search the vehicle and eventually came up with 660 pounds of marijuana that had been hidden in a false bottom below the luggage panel.

Last year Hain was in a store shopping when he viewed a distinctive truck in the parking lot. He remembered it matched the description of a vehicle owned by someone involved in a string of burglaries. That crook is now serving an eight-year term.

And last week, as the result of a stop Hain made in Elgin, a judge sentenced a Texas woman, 42-year-old Claudia Chagoya of El Paso, to 20 years in prison for bringing more than seven kilograms of heroin, with a value of more than $2 million, to Kane County. Chagoya was a mule, a drug carrier, presumably for a Mexican drug cartel, and according to evidence presented at the bond hearing for her April arrest this may not have been the first time she transported drugs from Mexico into this country.

The deputy pulled Chagoya’s pick-up truck over when she made a turn without signaling, and became suspicious when she told him she didn’t know anyone in Chicago but was here for a two-day vacation.

Hain asked to search the truck and found bolts and fresh tool marks near the rear axle.

The deputy tapped on the drive shaft and got a dull thud, suggesting that the normally hollow shaft was filled with something.

The car was towed, and deputies found 14 bags of heroin hidden in the drive shaft, making this one of the largest drug busts in Kane County history.

We agree wholeheartedly with Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon, who praised Hain’s work.

“Thanks to Deputy Hain’s specialized training, keen observation skills and excellent detective work, a large amount of a highly addictive and deadly narcotic — which no doubt would have been distributed not only through the Chicago area but through the region — was removed from circulation before it could be ingested,” McMahon said.

Some believe that the war to rid the U.S. of dangerous, illicit drugs is a lost cause, and maybe they are right.

But the case to be made for continuing the battle can be seen in the victims of drug overdose, often suburban teenagers, and in the anguish of loved ones.

If the war is going to be won, it will be because of the intelligence, dedication, experience, and intuition of officers such as Kane County Sheriff’s Deputy Ron Hain. We salute him.