Active Meth Lab Discovered at Adult Foster Care Home

Three adults removed from this Mason County foster care home — after police found a meth lab inside.

It’s one for the books. The Mason County Sheriff and Department of Human Services say they have never dealt with a situation like this before.

Last night, a Northern Michigan drug team discovered an active meth lab at the Wallager Adult Foster Care home off of US-10 in Walhalla.

Mason County Sheriff, Kim Cole says, “Clearly it’s disturbing that you have meth labs in the first place in your area and of course when you put the component of people that rely on others for care that certainly adds an added danger.”

The drug team went into the Wallager Adult Foster Care home last night and say they found an active meth lab and arrested Russell Wallager and Alice Ramirez. It’s unclear how those two are related to the home. Sheriff Cole says, “The SSCENT Team secured the residence and then called in their state version of hazmat to come in and clean it up.”

The Department of Human Services says three adults who were being cared for were in the home at the time. They were immediately removed from the home. Bob Wheaton. spokesman for DHS says, “Usually what we want to do is first determine if the residents are safe and are okay after something like this and then we need to find an alternative place for them to live because at this point we can’t guarantee obviously that the place where they had been staying is a safe place for them to be.”

DHS says they have never dealt with any cases involving possible meth making in an adult foster care home and are now taking action. Wheaton says, “We investigate and then determine what we feel like is appropriate action regarding the license so in a lot of cases like this it’ll be a summary suspension of the license for a period of time or if it’s determined that it’s serious enough it could be permanent revocation of the license.”

Those who know the family say it’s devastating finding out what was going on. Lawrence Burns, a friend of the family says, “Russell, I guess is just a bad apple. I just hope they don’t let him out of jail.”

Russell Wallager and Alice Ramirez were charged with operating a meth lab, making meth, and two counts of having a firearm.

Wallager faces double penalties because of prior drug related charges.