Montgomery and Pulaski have been added to the list of localities under the federal major disaster declaration issued in the wake of flooding and wind damage caused by the remnants of Hurricane Helene in late September.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, amended the initial major disaster declaration to include nine localities: the counties of Giles, Grayson, Montgomery, Pulaski, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington and Wythe and the city of Galax.
As of Friday, one week after the devastation, federal, state and local emergency management agencies had determined that 519 homes had been damaged. That number includes 44 homes that were destroyed, 161 that sustained major damage, 146 that sustained minor damage and 168 that were affected.
Those numbers are expected to rise as agencies continue to conduct assessments.
Two Helene-related tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in Pittsylvania County, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said during a press briefing on Friday morning. His team is working to get that locality, along with others, added to the list, he said.
About 200 FEMA personnel were on the ground in Southwest Virginia as of Friday, and more are expected to come over the course of the next week. FEMA will send people out to go door-to-door through the region to help residents fill out the forms needed to receive aid.
What can FEMA aid cover?
FEMA may be able to help people in Southwest Virginia who have been affected by Helene to pay for essential items, temporary housing, home repairs and other needs due to the disaster. Those other needs can include:
Essential items such as water, food, first aid, prescriptions, infant formula, breastfeeding supplies, diapers, medical supplies and equipment, personal hygiene items and fuel for transportation;
Financial assistance to help pay for hotel stays, stays with family and friends, or other options while seeking a rental unit as well as rental assistance if a person is displaced because of the disaster;
Repair or replacement of a vehicle, appliances, room furnishings, personal or family computer;
Books, uniforms, tools, computers and other items required for school or work, including self-employment; and
Moving and storage fees, medical expenses, childcare and funeral expenses.
As of Oct. 5, FEMA has provided $110 million to thousands of people affected by Hurricane Helene across the Southeast region of the U.S. Of that, more than $230,000 has been disbursed to over 50 households in Southwest Virginia.
As Helene passes, central Virginia assesses the damage
Hurricane Helene takes out power in much of Southwest Virginia; New River expected to crest higher than anytime since 1940
Early voting opened Friday. Local registrars have been working for weeks to make sure that their voting machines are ready.
We all know how frustrating it can be when technology doesn’t work properly. Most of the time, it’s merely a pain. But when democracy hangs in the balance, the stakes are higher.
That’s one reason that state law requires all voting equipment in Virginia to undergo so-called logic and accuracy testing before every election. With early voting for the November general election underway now, elections officials and equipment vendors have been busy the past couple of weeks certifying the systems that will collect and tally voters’ choices.
Logic and accuracy testing, often called L&A testing, ensures that hardware and software are in good working order when voters show up at the polls or mail in their ballots. The process also helps assure citizens that elections were conducted fairly and accurately, offering peace of mind in a political climate often fraught with tension.
“There are many facets of election integrity, and this is an integral part of it,” said Veronica Bratton, chairwoman of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee. Bratton has been an observer for L&A testing in Lynchburg since she became party chair in 2022.
Virginia Department of Elections spokesperson Andrea Gaines said that five electronic voting systems are approved for use in the commonwealth: Election Systems & Software, Clear Ballot, Dominion Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic and Unisyn Voting Solutions. All of them must undergo the same rigorous L&A testing.
L&A testing takes place at the city or county level, where a local general registrar and board of elections oversee voting. In guidelines provided for local elections officials, the Department of Elections is clear about who should be present and what must take place during L&A testing.
The general registrar or a member of the board of elections has to be there, and the chair of a local committee for each political party — or a representative in the chair’s place — must also be allowed to attend. Typically, a representative of the vendor of the voting equipment is also present. The proceeding is not open to the public.
The Department of Elections also stipulates that each machine be tested with enough sample ballots to make sure that it has recorded the votes completely and precisely.
That stretches into an hours-long process because making sure that voting machines are working properly isn’t merely a matter of testing a few bubbled-in ballots; voting machines must be ready for anything that’s thrown their way.
Voting booths lined up in the Lynchburg Registrar’s Office on Thursday, one day before early voting was set to begin. Photo by Matt Busse.
Once the machines have been programmed for the current election, registrars insert a set of sample ballots with predetermined outcomes, said Appomattox County General Registrar Patricia Morton. Logically, this includes sample ballots that have been marked to record a vote for each candidate who is running. There are ballots made to test write-ins, too.
“This process simulates an election very closely,” said Jeff Rosner, treasurer for the Lynchburg Democratic Committee, who has served as an observer of L&A testing in previous years.
As in a genuine election, things can occasionally go awry, and those scenarios must be tested to make sure that the machines behave correctly. Sometimes ballots are filled out incorrectly. There are overvotes, when a voter selects more than one candidate in a particular race, and undervotes, when no candidate is selected at all.
Daniel Pense, general registrar for Lynchburg, said that ballot scanners are programmed to reject ballots that show a full undervote (with no candidate chosen for any race) or an overvote. The voter would be given an opportunity to fix incorrectly marked ballots.
State law also requires polling places to have at least one machine that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and those must be tested, too.
Once all the test ballots have been run through, the machine produces the results, just as they do on Election Day. Pense said that because the test ballots have known results, elections officials can compare the tabulation of each machine with the results it is supposed to produce. Most of the time, machines work without issue.
“Generally, they go very smoothly,” Morton said of L&A tests.
A ballot scanner sits near the entrance to the Lynchburg Registrar’s Office on Thursday, the day before early voting started. Photo by Matt Busse.
But sometimes, there’s a glitch, and for that, Gaines said, localities keep extra voting machines on hand to swap out for any that aren’t acting right.
Morton recalls a recent test when the screen on an ADA-accessible voting machine inexplicably went dead. “We used a backup for that precinct, sent the machine to North Carolina for repair, and had it back in time to be a backup machine for Election Day,” she said.
Pense, too, has encountered the rare occasion where a machine doesn’t pass muster. Recently, a high-speed scanner that was used to tabulate absentee ballots created a vote where there shouldn’t have been one.
“We opted not to use that machine for that election as the vendor was not able to definitively explain the error,” he said.
Once it’s been confirmed that all the voting machines count votes accurately, the general registrar affixes to each machine a security seal, which prevents tampering. The next time that the machine is put into service is when the election is underway.
The security seal is one measure to prevent unlawful interference, but other security features are also in place.
Pense, who became Lynchburg’s general registrar last year, previously worked in electronic securities trading — a career that has parallels with running elections in the need for physical and technological security. Understanding regulatory requirements and maintaining a secure networking environment are skills that transferred from his previous job to his new role.
Like election technology across Virginia, Lynchburg’s voting machines “never touch any network anywhere, as they are completely self-contained,” Pense said. “The only way information comes in or out of them is via Department of Elections-approved memory sticks. These are kept securely in locked cabinets until programmed for use in the election and inserted in the machines at L&A testing.”
After L&A testing, and before elections begin, each locality is required by law to file a document with the Department of Elections affirming that its voting machines function as they should.
Although election integrity has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, L&A testing is not new. “Virginia has always tested the machines used to count votes in elections, dating back to the first use of lever machines in the state in 1950,” said Gaines, of the Department of Elections.
What has changed in recent years is the sheer volume of test ballots that must be run through machines to ensure their accuracy, said Dianna Moorman, who has been general registrar for James City County since 2016 and has worked in the county’s office of elections since 2005.
Recent legislation increased the number of ballots that jurisdictions must print because of how results are reported, she said. Until a few years ago, Moorman’s office, like many across the commonwealth, might have had only a handful of ballots to test. Now, she and her colleagues must test scores of different ballots in each machine.
But the added attention to detail makes her all the more convinced of elections’ security. “I have even more confidence in the system now than when I started,” Moorman said.
Because of the large number of test ballots and the thoroughness of the L&A testing, the process is tedious, said Denise Tuttle, chairwoman of Lynchburg Democratic Committee, who observed L&A testing ahead of a primary earlier this year. “They are very thorough and go from machine to machine to machine,” she said. “But in this political climate, when voting accuracy has come into question, this is very important.”
Bratton, of the Lynchburg Republicans, said that L&A testing is also a warm and welcome gesture of unity behind a shared goal, an event where politics are put aside to make sure that everyone — Republicans, Democrats and independents — works together so that elections are accurate, safe and secure.
A bowl of “I voted” stickers awaits early voters at the Lynchburg Registrar’s Office. Photo by Matt Busse.
Scientists are closing in on an explanation for what contaminated Orange County’s water supply — and it’s not making residents feel safer
Weeks after the local authorities lifted the “do-not-use” water advisory for eastern Orange County, Cassi Hernandez, a single mother of three in Locust Grove, still forbids her children from drinking the water.
“I’m completely terrified about digesting the water for myself and for my kids. I am concerned about any health issues this may cause. It may be a delayed effect,” she said in a message to Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Despite the early suspicion that the contamination came from the river, now the investigators from the Virginia Health Department and Virginia Department of Environmental Quality think that it originated in the Wilderness Water Treatment Plant when three submersible water pumps failed in a span of four days and spilled mineral oil in the water in the process.
The crisis began shortly before the Virginia Health Department and Rapidan Service Authority, or RSA, the local water treatment plant operator, issued a “Do Not Use” water advisory on Aug. 21 after residents of eastern Orange County served by the Wilderness Water Treatment Plant started to report a strange petroleum-like odor in their water. Some said their water had a strange taste or turned brown. Hernandez’s water in the Lake of the Woods neighborhood had some of that odor, she said.
The “Do Not Use” advisory, which restricted all forms of use but flushing the toilet, was changed to “Do Not Drink,” which only limited ingestion of the water, on Aug. 24 and then lifted entirely on Aug. 27. But Hernandez still refuses to let her kids even brush their teeth with it.
Now, more than two weeks after the advisory was lifted and the tumultuous investigation into the cause of contamination is easing toward its conclusion, Hernandez is among many residents of Locust Grove who are still distrustful of the water, as well as the authorities responsible for keeping it safe.
More than a dozen Locust Grove residents spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow and expressed their distrust in the water, even after the advisory was lifted. Several said they still don’t drink or cook with it. Some are installing their own water-filtration systems, while others are wondering whether they should move out of the area altogether.
Hernandez is thinking about moving too.
“It’s just kind of hard to trust them with their word,” she said. “I will not feel completely safe or satisfied until the water company takes accountability and is honest about the situation.”
Tim Clemons, Rapidan Service Authority (RSA) General Manager, understands why his customers feel this way.
“We’re gonna have to continue to try to provide as good customer service as we can. I’m willing to talk to any and every customer we have down there. I’ve talked to quite a few through this,” said Clemons.
“There’s nothing that the Service Authority did that created this, but we have to deal with it. We will just have to do what we can to try to rebuild trust.”
It’s not easy to sniff out the cause of water contamination
On Aug. 20, one of Rapidan Service Authority’s water pumps failed. Four days later, two more followed suit. Investigators from the Virginia Health Department now believe these failures, along with the mineral oil that spilled into the water during the process, caused the odor and strange taste that led to the water advisories. Credit: Kori Price/Charlottesville Tomorrow
It appears that all of it might have started on Aug. 20, when one of the three submersible water pumps on the Wilderness Water Treatment Plant failed.
The submersible water pumps are used to pump raw water through the treatment system and usually just one of them works at a time, so when the first one failed, the plant just turned on another one. The second pump failed on Aug. 24, and the third pump, once activated, failed shortly after.
Pumps normally fail when one of their seals do, as a result of the abrasive material coming up from the river, RSA’s Clemons explained during The Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on Sept. 10.
It’s uncommon, however, that all three failed within a span of a few days, Clemons told Charlottesville Tomorrow over a call. These were relatively new pumps, too.
“That is not normal,” he said. “We’re still investigating why.”
Clemons said that the pumps were operating on temporary wiring due to the construction work done at the plant. He can’t be certain that caused a problem until their investigation is over, but it’s a possibility.
As a result of the failures, mineral oil used as a pump lubricant spilled into the water. It’s that heated oil that likely caused the odor and the taste, an expert Virginia Health Department (VHD) consulted in Texas concluded.
“We ruled out everything but the pumps,” said Dwayne Roadcap, the Director of the VHD Office of Drinking Water, in an interview.
The first reports of the odors started coming in on Aug. 21 and resulted in the “Do-not-use” water advisory issued the same day. The RSA, VHD, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management started to investigate the cause — they collected and tested samples from the water treatment plant, the Rapidan River, among others.
The screening analysis quickly showed hydrocarbons, or organic compounds associated with crude oil and natural gas. Later, the tests found bis(2-chloroethyl) ether, or BCEE, a by-product of chlorination used to disinfect water, as well as other compounds. However, they weren’t responsible for the odor, the experts said.
Odors and tastes in the water are notoriously difficult to investigate, experts told Charlottesville Tomorrow, and in many ways the weeks-long investigation into the eastern Orange County water crisis is reflective of it.
“The human nose can smell whatever compound or chemical or contaminant might exist, and the nose can be more sensitive than the lab testing that’s available,” said Roadcap.
We need a new and better and improved plant.
—Orange County Supervisor Crystal Hale
Usually, the public drinking water is monitored and treated for over 90 different contaminants that are determined to be harmful by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. That means that the tests available to public officials are designed to detect those contaminants once they reach a certain concentration threshold. If the tests don’t register any, that usually means the water is considered safe to drink.
That’s why the “do-not-use” water advisory became “do-not-drink” and was lifted before the investigation established the cause of the contamination — the water was found to be safe based on the federal regulations. There are no federal regulations controlling odor or taste, but RSA recommended any customers who still experienced these issues to proceed with caution, flush their water system and, if that didn’t help, reach out to RSA.
The investigation, however, continued hoping to determine the cause for the odor and flavor as well as the hydrocarbons and other compounds found in the water.
“It’s worse than finding a needle in a haystack. You have to find something in the hay that’s not hay, and there is just a little bit of it there. It takes a lot of investigative effort,” explained Andrea Dietrich, a water quality expert at Virginia Tech whose research focuses on aspects of water quality such as taste, odor, and appearance. She is also one of the experts VHD has been consulting.
“It’s really hard to find small amounts, especially since we don’t know what this chemical is,” said Dietrich.
That’s arguably one of the reasons why the investigation has been taking longer than Orange residents wished. When the authorities ran out of regular tests and expertise, they turned to more sophisticated laboratory tests and outside experts as consultants and eventually identified a chemical they believe could be responsible for the smell — isovanillin, a vanilla-scented chemical used in fragrances and flavorings.
Now that investigators ruled out the river and everything else as the possible source of contamination, according to Roadcap, they believe that the pump failures were indeed the likely cause for all of these abnormalities in odor, taste and test results.
It’s likely that these chemicals came from burnt pump components, said Roadcap. The experts, however, don’t have evidence yet that isovanillin came from the mineral oil. They suspect, but it’s not a certainty.
The next stage of the investigation would focus on determining the reason behind it.
“The thing we’re trying to do is figure out how to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Roadcap.
Take Action
Do you want to hear directly from the Rapidan Service Authority Board about how the eastern Orange County’s water was contaminated in August? The Board will give an update on the Wilderness Water Treatment Plant on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 2 p.m. during its monthly meeting in Orange County Public Safety Building Board Room, 11282 Government Center Dr., Orange.
This meeting is open to the public and allows time for public comments.
Residents remain distressed about the safety of their water
During the “do-not-use” and “do-not-drink” water advisories that affected Rapidan Service Authority (RSA) customers from Aug. 21 to Aug. 27, several water giveaways were organized. However, Cassi Hernandez couldn’t leave work to pick up water at the designated times and locations, forcing her to buy bottled water outside her hometown — where local stores had sold out. Hernandez still uses bottled water for drinking, cooking, and brushing teeth. Credit: Kori Price/Charlottesville Tomorrow
It’s all cold comfort for residents in Locust Grove.
“It’s very disappointing the way RSA and local agencies are handling the water situation,” Hernandez said.
“They also need to publicly apologize and come out and test the water with a professional showing that the water is safe to use and educate people on what safe water levels are and how to find out if it’s not.”
She has had to spend a lot of time learning the science to keep up with the updates about something as essential as safe drinking water. In the end, she said she would rather go back to the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when people were wiping down their groceries than to being unable to use her water.
Other Locust Grove residents who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow shared Hernandez’s feelings.
“Would we have even heard about the pump failures if it wasn’t investigated as part of the odor? I have no confidence that my water is safe. We still aren’t using it,” said Jamie Ellison.
She is installing her own water filtration system, which cost her $5,600, and she paid $540 out of pocket to test her house water after RSA didn’t respond to her filed complaint. Her water smelled more like strong chlorine, she said. Her family stayed several nights at a hotel just so they could shower and do laundry.
Cassi Hernandez still relies on bottled water for cooking despite the lifted advisory and assertions that the water is safe. She doesn’t see herself going back to trusting the water. Credit: Kori Price/Charlottesville Tomorrow
Ellison is among the residents who have been keeping an eye on the water and RSA even before this crisis.
Earlier this year, RSA sent out notifications saying that the levels of Haloacetic Acids in the water were above the EPA Drinking Water Standards. Haloacetic Acids are chemicals formed as a byproduct of water disinfection. It’s a standard practice to disinfect drinking water; it just happened that RSA did too much of it, at least in the second quarter of the year when the water tests caught it.
Based on limited studies, one of the notices from RSA said, Haloacetic Acids are not a concern unless the exposure is prolonged or the person consuming it has pre-existing health concerns. Animal studies suggested it could, over a long time, increase the risk of cancer.
With so much attention on reports of chemicals in the water and a weeks-long investigation, some residents are uncomfortable with how many chemicals make it into the water without warranting a water advisory.
“The problem is now, after digging into the samples on the VDH website, I no longer feel safe using the water and have a constant anxiety about what we are being subjected to,” said Sabrina Hakenson Morgan, Locust Grove resident and a mother of three, in a message to a Charlottesville Tomorrowreporter.
“We love our home in Lake of the Woods, but we are considering putting our home up for sale in the spring. I don’t know where we will go, but every time I shower, I wonder what chemicals my skin is soaking up. I won’t let the kids take baths to avoid having them sit in it. They can only shower.”
To address the possibility of the future contaminations as well as to address the higher Haloacetic Acids levels, Clemons, RSA’s general manager, said that the water authority has been looking into the possibility of adding a granular activated carbon treatment process, or GAC, to its water treatment toolkit.
GAC is a standard and widely used water treatment method during which water passes through carbon granules to remove chemicals, tastes, and odors. It would even help with the Haloacetic Acids formed due to the excess of disinfection.
“We learned that if we had something like granular activated carbon, there’s a very good chance this would have never gotten out whatever it was, whether it was oil, whether it was something else, it would have been caught in those filters. So that is something that we are evaluating,” said Clemons.
GAC is, however, expensive to add and to run. Clemons inquired with the Health Department about possible assistance — according to Roadcap, VHD has low-interest loans that could help RSA add GAC treatment.
The matter isn’t “pursued formally yet,” according to Clemons, but, if they decide to pursue it, they will take the idea to the RSA Board and hopefully have a decision within 60 days.
“I think that it would solve two concerns down there. One would be this type of event that just happened, the other would be Haloacetic Acids.”
In the long term, there might be local political will for bigger changes. In fact, county leaders were talking about building a new water plant before this water crisis. It came up in a town hall meeting at the Lake of the Woods neighborhood, Supervisor Crystal Hale pointed out at a Sept. 10 Board meeting.
“Water and the water treatment plant and the water issues are going to be in prime focus,” she said. “Long term, we need a new and better and improved plant.”
Attorney general warns Radford store owner about selling products containing THC
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has warned the owner of a Radford store about selling or giving away products that contain the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana without proper packaging, in violation of state consumer protection statutes.
In a letter to the Good Vibes Shop, Miyares said that selling products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, without the proper childproof packaging and warning labels violates the Virginia Consumer Protection Act. He does not mention state law that forbids the sale of cannabis.
The attorney general said it has “come to our attention” that the store is advertising and selling products containing THC. He added that his office has the authority to investigate possible violations and to enforce the act, which was designed to promote fair and ethical standards of dealing between suppliers and consumers.
The certified letter, obtained by Cardinal News, was sent Wednesday to Charles Aten of Saltville, who is identified in the letter as the store’s registered agent.
Questions sent Friday to the attorney general’s spokesperson — including how the Radford store came to the office’s attention and whether other stores will also receive letters — weren’t answered.
Aten could not be reached for comment Friday, and phone numbers listed online for the Good Vibes Shop were out of service.
This is the same store that Cardinal News visited on July 25 and purchased some CBD, or cannabidiol, a compound found in cannabis; this was accompanied by a baggie of vegetative material. A lab test found that the material in the baggie contained 15.86% THC, well above the legal limit of 0.3%. It tested just under state limits for metals and microbes.
The attorney general does not have general criminal enforcement power over violations of the state’s marijuana laws, which are enforced by local law enforcement or Virginia State Police, according to Greg Habeeb, a former Republican state delegate, president of Richmond-based Gentry Locke Consulting and a representative of the Virginia Cannabis Association.
But amendments to the state’s hemp laws, which took effect July 1, 2023, impacted the sale and regulation of hemp-derived products under the Virginia Consumer Protection Act. The changes included giving civil enforcement authority to the attorney general’s office for products containing THC that violate the act, he added.
“It’s just another way to go,” Habeeb said of the letter, adding that the attorney general can’t file criminal charges, but he can turn information over to law enforcement agencies and he can slap retailers with hefty fines. Miyares could also file a civil lawsuit against them, Habeeb added.
The letter is likely what’s called a “civil investigative demand,” which informs the store it violated the act and requests documents and information like a subpoena, Habeeb said.
Under the consumer protection act, a product that contains THC and is sold for human consumption must be in child-resistant packaging. It must feature a label that lists all ingredients, and that states in English that it contains THC and may not be sold to anyone younger than 21. It must detail the amount that constitutes a single serving, the total percentage and milligrams of THC, and the number of milligrams of THC in each serving. And it must include a certificate of analysis produced by an independent, accredited lab, the letter states.
It appears that the Radford Good Vibes Shop is “selling products … that contain THC incident to the sale of other products” such as CBD, which is also a violation of the act, Miyares said.
“First, the packaging of the THC products sold at the Good Vibes Shop does not appear to be ‘child-resistant.’ Additionally, said packaging does not contain any meaningful labeling that states that it contains THC, including the total amount or percentage thereof; that it may not be sold to those under 21; or the amount of the product that constitutes a single serving,” the attorney general wrote.
He goes on to advise the shop to “cease and desist” selling products containing THC in violation of the act. If the store fails to do so, the attorney general’s office can seek civil penalties up to $2,500 per violation, restitution to affected consumers, reimbursement of state expenses up to $1,000 per violation and attorney’s fees, Miyares wrote.
The letter comes nearly a year after a nine-county search of Southwest Virginia cannabis-related stores by multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Virginia State Police. Radford, where the Good Vibes Shop is located, wasn’t on the list of localities that were part of the operation, according to state police.
Matthew Demlein, interim public relations director for the VSP, said Friday that the investigation remains active and there’s no update to report. Other than drug-related charges filed by the Scott County Sheriff’s Office, no other charges have been filed in connection to the searches, according to state police.
Unsealed search warrants from some of the counties revealed the seizure of plant material, cash, ATMs, computers, cellphones, records, cars and guns. The search warrants in Washington County said police found evidence of a “pattern of money laundering” at some stores.
Although a few stores closed after the searches, a number of others have opened despite the police scrutiny, including in Bristol, where at least five cannabis-related stores operate along 11 blocks on State Street downtown.
The stores have popped up across Southwest Virginia amid confusion over the state’s marijuana laws. Possession of a small amount of marijuana for personal use at home is legal, but a retail market was not set up by the General Assembly, so selling marijuana is illegal.
At this time last year, most of the stores were “sharing” or “gifting” weed when customers bought an item like a T-shirt or sticker, which was deemed illegal in an opinion by Miyares.
However, in recent months, several stores in the region are simply selling it now with a membership that involves accepting a membership card or writing a name in a notebook.
Miyares ends the letter by asking Aten to acknowledge he received it in writing by Sept. 26 and to let him know if he’s following his direction to cease and desist. If he doesn’t hear from him or another representative of the shop, “we will assume that Good Vibes Shop does not intend to cease and desist from engaging in these acts and practices in violation of the VCPA,” he wrote.
How a drug bust in Wythe County pushed Charley Crockett into a country music career
Robert Hafley liked to eat lunch in his patrol car.
The other state troopers in Wythe County that August day 10 years ago went to a Subway in Wytheville; Hafley pulled into the median along Interstate 81 near Exit 72 and chowed down on a baloney sandwich.
His eye spotted a car with illegal window tint headed north. Bingo. Hafley pulled out and turned on the flashing blues.
The driver was a 30-year-old man from Texas with a fedora perched on his head and a gold chain around his neck. The man was quite polite, but the car smelled of marijuana. Today, that wouldn’t have made a difference. When Virginia legalized personal possession of small amounts of cannabis in 2021, it removed the smell of pot as a probable cause reason to search a vehicle. But that law was still seven years in the future on this day in 2014. Hafley had sufficient reason to search the vehicle. He called for backup, standard protocol for a vehicle search.
The other troopers in Wythe weren’t happy with him at the time, Hafley recalls. They’d just sat down to lunch. He told them they’d have to pack up their subs and bring them along. The search couldn’t wait.
The troopers popped open the trunk. The first thing they saw was a guitar. The driver — whose home address was in Irving, Texas, just outside Dallas — said he had left Nashville and was on his way to try to score a record deal. The driver asked if he could have it. Hafley saw no harm in that, so he handed over the instrument. The driver sat on the grass bank strumming the six-string and singing a song. Hafley says he remembers this clearly because “it was just funny, I’d never had anybody playing the guitar while searching.” When the troopers pulled out a suitcase, the guitar-playing driver “immediately” switched to Willie Nelson’s “The Party’s Over,” Hafley recalls. That was the first sign that troopers were onto something.
“We unzip the suitcase; it has 6 pounds of marijuana,” Hafley says — actually 6.6 pounds, to be precise. The threshold for a marijuana trafficking charge — a felony — in Virginia is 5 pounds. “Now it makes sense why he changed the song,” Hafley says. This much pot would bring two felony charges, one for distribution, another for transportation.
Charley Crockett’s mug shot from the New River Valley Regional Jail.
Hafley took the driver off to the New River Valley Regional Jail. At the magistrate’s office, the driver tried to explain that the suitcase full of marijuana was “medicine” and that he had a medical prescription for the weed. The magistrate was skeptical. “Six pounds?” he asked incredulously.
Hafley remembers the driver’s response: “He just kind of dropped his head at that point.”
Unlike some suspects, the Texas man was unfailingly polite throughout the process. “He was good during the whole stop,” Hafley says. “He was obviously nervous and scared of what would happen, but he was never rude. He was respectful.” Hafley says the man was “a good sport about it,” so much so that “when I pulled away from the jail, I thought ‘I hate that happened to him.’”
With that, one Matthew Charles Crockett entered the Virginia criminal justice system with two felony counts and possible prison time hanging over him. At the time, he was a nobody, just another unlucky pot dealer with a colorful tale. Today, he’s better known as Charley Crockett, a breakout country music star with 15 albums to his credit, and that 2014 bust on the interstate figures in one of his newest songs, “Good At Losing,” an autobiographical account of his life before he became famous.
The key verse for us:
Lawmen they caught me in Virginia No need to tell you what I done Make sure you get your act together Before you roll up 81
Actually, Crockett has talked quite a bit about the case in interviews, although few of those stories (mostly in the music press) have said his famous arrest took place in Virginia, and none say it happened in Wythe County. The court case that followed was pivotal to Crockett’s subsequent music career because, had it gone a different way, that music career may never have happened. The maximum sentence for the sale, manufacture or trafficking of more than 5 pounds of marijuana is 30 years in prison. In theory, Crockett could be sitting in a cell in Red Onion State Prison and not striding stages across the country (including recently at FloydFest).
Crockett’s representatives didn’t respond to Cardinal, but in an interview last year with Texas Monthly, Crockett gave a fairly extensive account of his marijuana-dealing exploits. He’d grown up in Texas and drifted all over the country and around the world, even spending time in France, Spain and Morocco — he has a colorful biography of playing on street corners and riding in boxcars. Eventually, Crockett wound up in California, working on a cannabis farm in Mendocino County and looking for a way to self-fund the album he wanted to record. Farm work wasn’t going to cut it, but selling weed would. He told Texas Monthly he’d only started selling marijuana about a month before his Wythe County arrest and quickly found out how easy it was to make money. He pocketed $1,500 from a simple two-hour drive to San Francisco. “That was a lot of money, and it was thrilling,” he told Texas Monthly. “But there was a lot of fear, driving with all that in your trunk. I didn’t even have a license. I was living so far outside society that I forgot myself. I forgot the risk.”
A state trooper in Virginia who happened to prefer a baloney sandwich in his car to lunch at Subway reminded him of that risk.
Crockett gave a more dramatic account of the Wythe County stop than the one Hafley told:
“They pulled me out of the car … and I knew I was going to jail,” he said. “They were making fun of me, these cops.” When they asked where he was headed, Charley said he was en route to a gig. The law didn’t buy it. “They were like, ‘Yeah, boy, you’re a country music singer. I’ll bet you are. Why don’t you play something for us right now?’ ” He grabbed his Telecaster — and froze. “I pulled out that guitar, nervous as hell, and I swear to God the only song I could think to play was [Willie’s] ‘The Party’s Over’ ” — he strummed an air guitar and started singing, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over”—“and they were like, ‘That’s a fitting song, boy.’ Then that dude busted the suitcase open and [found] a bunch of medicinal plants.”
In that Texas Monthly interview, Crockett said he had funded the cross-country trip by selling weed — he’d left California with 50 pounds. “That was his plan to fund his first record, running dope to cities where he’d busked,” Texas Monthly reported. That matches what Hafley recalls Crockett telling him: “He actually had more than that when he started. I think that’s how he was paying his way to New York.”
Crockett wound up spending about a month at the New River Valley Jail until he was released on bond. Austin Monthly says he spent that time doing some hard thinking and realized he needed to get more serious about his music career. He walked out of the jail convinced that the only way out of his drug charges was to establish himself in the music industry and hope that would earn him some leniency. He went back to California and recorded his first album — ironically, in a cabin at a cannabis farm. In an interview posted on the Sunset Sound recording studio site, he told an interviewer: “Had I not gotten busted, I’m sure I wouldn’t have made ‘Stolen Jewel.’ I would have probably kept going and gotten in a whole lot more trouble than I did … So getting busted made me take recording more serious.”
It was March 2016 — three months shy of two years since his arrest — that Crockett was finally sentenced. By the time he appeared before Circuit Court Judge Josiah Showalter, he’d been busy. His first album, “A Stolen Jewel,” was something he did on his own, without the benefit of a record label. He paid for 5,000 compact disc copies, which he then set out to sell at as many shows as he could book. He played lots of shows, landing gigs as an opening act for the Samantha Fish, Lucero, the Old 97s, Shinyribs and the Turnpike Troubadours, a who’s who of acts that weave back and forth between the lines of country and the blues, both genres that Crockett makes use of. That record won him some acclaim — the Dallas Observer Music Awards named Crockett the Best Blues Act. He landed a deal with an actual record label, Field Day Records, a small but respected indie label in Dallas. He had a new album, “In the Night,” nearly finished, with more shows lined up. He also had a big-name attorney: Jimmy Turk of Radford, whose reputation stands tall in Southwest Virginia courtrooms. Some of the legal proceedings were handled by one of the other attorneys in Turk’s firm at the time, Naomi Huntington, who later went on to serve on the Radford City Council. (She referred all comments on the case to Turk, who did not respond to multiple inquiries.)
Crockett pleaded guilty to the distribution charge; the transportation charge was “nolle prosqui,” legal language for it simply went away. Crockett was given a 10-year suspended sentence and fined $10,000. Other than having to check in with a probation officer, Crockett was free to go.
Some accounts in the music press say that Crockett sent the judge a copy of “A Stolen Jewel,” and the judge was so impressed he gave Crockett a break to spare him from prison. The Austin Monthly credits Crockett’s “disarming megawatt smile” and the CD with winning the judge over. That may be somewhat embellished. David Saliba, who prosecuted the case and is now in private practice in Harrisonburg, says for one thing it’s well-known in court circles that Judge Showalter doesn’t like country music. For another, Saliba says the eventual sentence is fairly standard for that type of marijuana charge. “It wasn’t meth, it wasn’t Oxycontin,” Saliba says. “I don’t think he had any prior record. It was on the lower end of a lot of those interstate cases. They pull U-Hauls over every now and then that are loaded up.”
Whether Crockett actually sent his record to the judge as some accounts claim is unclear — the judge did not respond to a Cardinal News inquiry; judges typically don’t comment on the cases they’ve handled. However, Saliba does remember a CD being mentioned or shown in court, along with Crockett’s need to be able to travel to pursue his career, but otherwise, his memory of the case is hazy. It just didn’t make that much of an impression at the time. There are lots of drug cases off the interstate. Neither Saliba the prosecutor nor Hafley the state trooper made the connection between that case a decade ago and Crockett’s current fame until Cardinal contacted them.
Crockett’s own account is fairly straightforward: “I showed him I’d made strides over the two years it took to get to trial,” he told Texas Monthly. He told the Sunset Sound interviewer that the judge “saw I had something else I was doing and not just paying ’em lip service and wasn’t going to be right back into it — relapse.” Whether routine or not, the lack of a prison sentence allowed Crockett to continue his music career. He’s since racked up a bunch of honors — and when his new album, “$10 Cowboy,” came out earlier this year, he was back in the New York that he’d been headed to that day in 2014. Except this time, instead of busking on the street, he was playing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Crockett’s drug arrest in Wythe County may have given him a good verse in “Good at Losing,” but right now, he seems pretty good at winning.
Harris takes slim lead over Trump in Virginia but within margin of error
Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by 3 percentage points in the first public poll taken in Virginia since she replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.
A poll in May by Roanoke College found Biden and Trump tied in a head-to-head matchup, while Biden had held a 2-point lead in a multicandidate field. Several subsequent polls by other organizations also showed the race tied in Virginia.
The most recent poll by Roanoke College gives Harris a 3-point lead in both scenarios, although that is with the poll’s 4.5% margin of error.
Meanwhile, the poll found that Tim Kaine, the Democratic incumbent, holds a lead of 49% to 38% over Republican nominee Hung Cao in the U.S. Senate race. That figure is in line with other recent polls.
In a head-to-head contest, Harris polled 47% to 44% for Trump.
When four other potential candidates were added, Harris polled 45% to 42% for Trump, with 6% for independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2% each for Libertarian Chase Oliver and independent Cornel West, and 0% for Green Party nominee Jill Stein.
The State Board of Elections won’t announce until early September which third-party candidates have qualified for the Virginia ballot. Early voting begins Sept. 20.
The Roanoke College poll also found that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s approval rating has risen to 59%, the highest he’s reached since he’s been in office. In May, it was 52%. A copy of the questions and all toplines may be found here.
