Surely, police must have been on the trail of a major theft ring when they arrived Thursday at an apartment complex in San Jose, only to trip over one of the biggest stashes of methamphetamine ever seized in the United States?

Not exactly.

Palo Alto police were apparently looking for a single stolen iPad when they arrived Thursday at The Woods, a sprawling apartment complex on Snell Road, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

The cops had tracked the iPad via GPS, said Assistant District Attorney David Tomkins.

The officers didn’t have a search warrant, so they knocked on the door of the apartment and asked the occupants for permission to come in. They consented, Tomkins said.

“They probably thought if they didn’t, we’d suspect something,” Tomkins said. “Or they thought, ‘I’ll let them in — they probably won’t find anything.'”

Much to their amazement, the officers found 780 pounds of crystal meth scattered around the place, worth about $35 million.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen said roughly 100 pounds or a little more of meth are recovered annually in the county, making this seizure “easily at least six years worth,” he said.

“I told my dad about the bust,” said Rosen, “and he said, ‘They have $35 million, and they can’t go out and buy an iPad?”

Police immediately arrested three people, whom they declined to identify Saturday. They then contacted the district attorney’s Major Narcotic Vendor Prosecution Unit, which drew up a search warrant.

Chemists from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, suited up in protective gear, performed initial tests on the drugs, then packed them up in large boxes and brought them to a lab for analysis.

Amassed in one spot, the contraband would fit into a space about the size of a walk-in closet, Tomkins said.

Apparently, the drugs were not all converted inside the apartment from powdered d-methamphetamine into crystal form.

“It was mostly finished product,” Tomkins said.

He said investigators didn’t smell anything outside the apartment, but noticed an odor inside.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, crystal meth is produced using a “washing” technique that involves dissolving powdered d-methamphetamine in a solvent such as acetone or denatured alcohol.

The mixture is allowed to evaporate, causing crystals to form around the edge of the container in which it’s being mixed. Large crystals form when the solution evaporates at room temperature, and small crystals form when the solution evaporates in a cold environment such as a refrigerator or freezer. The crystals then are collected and dried, typically on a paper towel. The purity of the finished product depends on the amount of washing and the laboratory operator’s level of experience.

Also known as ice, crystal meth looks like broken glass or shattered ice and is ingested by smoking.

Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482.