Feeling the Burn of a Sting

"It was a sad day," said Todd Baker of Mebane. "There's just no two ways about it."

Outside the schools, the county's reputation was well-established. Interstate 40 joins with Interstate 85, linking truck stop to truck stop from one side of Alamance County to the other. New York City, the Mexican border. All that traffic's moving through town; not much of it's staying. Who knows who's stopping at the gas stations and the Bojangles? Alamance County, with a population not much more than 130,000, became known as the "drug hub of North Carolina."

"I'd hear that, and it would fry my rear end," said Terry Johnson, the county's sheriff.

"But you know what? . . . In the past, drugs were not a major issue in people's eyes. And the reason is," he spaces out his words, "they were not looking."

Buoyed by surveys of parents and teachers that identified drugs as a major problem, James Merrill, the superintendent of the Burlington-Alamance schools, began looking. Last summer, he met with the sheriff's office as well as the police departments from Burlington and Graham, the county's largest towns. Their plan, "Operation Safe Schools," jumped out of a movie script.

Local officials couldn't use their own undercover officers; they would have been easily recognized. So they recruited young-looking officers from elsewhere. They manufactured academic records in other counties and fabricated driver's licenses. They recruited people from their own community who served as "guardians" for these "transfer students."

They supplied the officers with backpacks and book bags equipped with built-in video cameras. In some cases, they used tiny, James Bond-esque button-hole cameras. They had audio recording devices. Officers could hear everything, see much of it, get the information, track the drugs.

"First, we wanted video -- if we could get it," Johnson said. "And we wanted as many transactions that could take place to take place on the school grounds."

At the end of each day, the officers would meet, record all the transactions -- and head off to do their homework.

On Top of His Game

As the operation trudged forward, so did Curry. His senior year was to be merely the topper to his high school career, the season in which he would finally lead the Eagles to a state championship. In anticipation of it all, the newspaper from nearby Durham sent a photographer to track him through the season. A North Carolina fan Web site traveled to all his games, filing breathless reports, giving Tar Heels fans a taste of what might be to come.

"His ability to shoot the ball," said former North Carolina coach Matt Doherty, "it's just undeniable."

Doherty and his staff originally recruited Curry, inviting him to sit behind the Tar Heels' bench during games at Smith Center, convincing him to commit to UNC in the summer following his sophomore year. They liked his long arms, his big hands, his shot.

"He was just a gym rat," Quartlebaum said. "He loved the game."

So in 2003, as fall turned to winter, Curry, who declined several requests to be interviewed for this story, had already scored more points than any freshman in North Carolina history, more points than any sophomore, more points than any junior. On Dec. 16, in a gym in nearby High Point -- with the man who had held the mark for 44 years, Lawrence "Cotton" Clayton, in the crowd -- Curry pulled up on the fast break, banking home a jumper against High Point Andrews. The record.