By Donna Leinwand Leger; Photos and video by Jack Gruber

USA TODAY

ALBUQUERQUE – Women juggling espresso drinks and shopping bags bustle past a Jeep parked at a shopping center one sunny afternoon in June as a drug dealer hops into the passenger seat. He exchanges three grams of heroin for $125 from a mother of teenagers. The transaction takes 45 seconds.

It's a scenario that plays out all over Albuquerque and other cities as heroin dealers catering to young, affluent suburban addicts shift their operations from back-alley deals in shady parts of town to delivery on demand at downtown offices, high-end malls and suburban homes.

The operators of these sophisticated enterprises employ MBA techniques for marketing, managing risk and training employees, says DEA Special Agent Eduardo Chavez, a group supervisor for the Drug Enforcement Administration in New Mexico.

"They operate like a multinational business, even using the language of business, talking about minimizing losses and volume discounts," Chavez says. "They operate from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with 30 minutes for lunch."

In New Mexico, where the rate of deaths from drug overdoses is among the highest in the nation, drug traffickers are responding to a new consumer – opiate-addicted suburbanites who got hooked on pain pills that are now in short supply, Chavez says. When they can't get oxycodone, they turn to heroin to satisfy their craving.

Many of these new clients have families and hold down jobs, so drug traffickers have reworked their businesses to maintain regular hours, seven-day-a-week service, a central dispatcher and well-trained drivers in nice cars who can blend into affluent areas.

In Albuquerque, drug traffickers assign drivers to each quadrant of the city, from the swanky, suburban Northeast Heights to the gritty, poorer southwest, so they can respond quickly to their customers, Chavez says. Each driver is stocked with a day's supply of pre-measured and packaged Mexican black tar heroin.

"People are still thinking of the heroin addict as the skinny, track-marked junkie living on the streets," Chavez says. "They don't look like that anymore."

Pain pill addiction reached its peak in 2008, when overdose deaths on narcotic pain relievers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, surpassed deaths from heroin and cocaine combined.

New Mexico has long had a problem with addiction, and for many decades had the nation's highest drug overdose death rate, primarily from heroin, says state epidemiologist Michael Landen. Around 2006, prescription opioids, made from chemicals that resemble morphine and other opiates, emerged as the major cause of overdose deaths, he said. By 2010, prescription painkiller overdoses accounted for nearly 250 deaths a year, double that of heroin, he said.

Federal and state law enforcement officials and state medical boards cracked down over the past decade, shutting down doctors who over-prescribed and pharmacies that filled their prescriptions with no questions asked. Pharmaceutical companies, responding to federal government pressure, created abuse-resistant forms of time-released oxycodone that are difficult for an addict to crush and snort for a high.

New Mexico, too, took steps to curb such prescribing with a drug monitoring program that tracks patient prescriptions, so addicts can't go from doctor to doctor in search of ever more pain pills. The state's program recorded a 10% decrease in opioid prescribing in 2013, Landen says.

This crackdown led to scarcity, which drove the street price up to $1 per milligram, Chavez says — $80 for one 80 mg pill. Some addicts turned to heroin, which offers the same high for less than a third of the price. The transition is made easier by heroin's high level of purity, allowing new addicts to get high by smoking it. Eventually, though, as their tolerance grows, addicts turn to injecting the drug to get a more intense high.

"Our heroin overdose death rates are very high and they have been high," Landen says. "The major changes for our state is that the deaths are increasingly among whites, and increasingly among women."

A heroin business in Albuquerque is often a franchise of a family-run Mexican drug trafficking organization operating from Sinaloa or Nayarit on Mexico's Pacific Coast, Chavez says. The black tar heroin, dark and sticky, comes to New Mexico through California.

Several of the heroin enterprises operate in the city, he says.

The franchise bosses who run the local distribution networks may recruit midlevel bosses and lower-level drivers from Mexico who come on half-year contracts that include a promise to smuggle them over the border and set them up with a place to stay, a car and a per diem to cover food and gas.

One recently busted group employed four drivers working seven days a week, Chavez says. Another group had enough business for three drivers, he said. They kept regular delivery hours, usually shutting down before dark, and employed tactics to minimize loss of product from theft and law enforcement. The top bosses collected the money and spent much of the day "banking" — wiring money to Mexico through services like Western Union, Chavez said.

Drivers went out with only as much heroin as they could expect to sell in a day, based on client records — about 2 ounces or 56 grams, Chavez said. The heroin is packaged by the half-gram in tiny balloons purchased at the local party store, Chavez says.

One of the groups stashed their bi-weekly heroin supply at a rented house where none of the dealers lived. A midlevel boss delivered the heroin to the house, where it was prepared for sale, court records show.

The bosses shipped cash back to Mexico several times a week to evade law enforcement efforts to detect bulk cash smuggling and to minimize the risk of having the money seized if someone got caught, he said.

Miguel Bustamonte Conchas, awaiting trial after a trafficking indictment unsealed June 27, allegedly managed logistics in New Mexico for drug traffickers in Mexico, court records show. Bustamonte Conchas, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, allegedly arranged for rental houses and cars for his employees and instructed the midlevel suppliers, who supervised the drivers, court records show.

His alleged street boss, Baltazar Granados, pleaded guilty on June 17 to stashing more than a kilogram of heroin in his home. When agents searched his home, they found packaging materials and carefully kept financial ledgers in which he recorded drug transactions, court papers show. Records from intercepted cellphone calls show he kept in daily contact with Bustamonte Conchas, fielded customer complaints if the heroin seemed weak or off-color, and monitored the market prices.

The drivers picked up their supplies from another house, where agents found 30 grams of heroin in a Froot Loops cereal box and another 73 grams of heroin under the bathroom sink.

The heroin franchises also invest in employee training, Chavez says.

A new driver is paired with a veteran for a week, Chavez says. The driver gets a map highlighting the service area, a cellphone, a customer list and several hours of training that includes techniques for detecting and shaking surveillance.

In phone conversations, they rarely utter their real names or call their product "heroin." Their clients know the drivers by their nicknames.

Two of the drivers tied to Bustamante Conchas' alleged ring have pleaded guilty to drug charges. Pablo Arturo Felix Sicairos, called "Fofo," and Joel Nuñez Haros, called "El Peso," came to the United States four months before their arrest to work as heroin delivery drivers, they told federal agents. Their supervisors set them up in a house and gave each a car; Felix used an Infiniti and Nuñez drove an Acura. Agents found cash from drug sales stashed in shoe boxes under Felix's bed.

An entry-level driver can make $2,000 to $3,000 a day in heroin sales and clear $500 a week, Chavez says.

For an addict, buying heroin in Albuquerque is as simple as making a phone call and placing an order.

A mother of teenagers, a woman in her 40s wearing fashionable leggings and flip-flops spangled with rhinestones and charms, is a recovering heroin addict who is helping the DEA because, she says, she's upset that dealers will sell to teenagers, including her own.

The woman, who asked not to be named because of her relationship with the DEA, grew addicted to pain pills after she broke her back nearly a decade ago while skating with her kids. She had a good job at a tech company, and she had health insurance. By 2010, she needed more than 80 milligrams of oxycodone a day to keep the pain and her cravings at bay.

Doctors, responding to the federal crackdown, often make pain patients sign contracts limiting the number of pills they can get each month. So when one of her kids stole her pain pills, her doctor refused to replace them.

"Anything in the world is better than withdrawal," she says. "Sweat covers your whole body. There's sweat between your toes. It feels like your guts are coming out of your body. You're vomiting bile."

To stave off withdrawal, she bought pain pills on the street, once meeting a dealer outside a Circle K store at midnight. Soon she was out of pills and money. A friend gave her heroin. It wasn't long before she graduated to needles, injecting the drug into her muscles.

"Your day becomes a quest to search for the money to buy drugs," she says.

With the DEA listening in, she makes a phone call to one of her regular dealers. In less than two minutes, she negotiates a purchase for a three-gram pack of heroin and sets up a mutually agreeable meeting place in a parking lot within steps of a busy Starbucks filled with sharply dressed workers from a nearby office park. The driver will deliver in less than an hour.

Vito Gurule says on a good day, he makes $200 cash.

Gurule once thought he'd like to be a chef. Lately, though, he has been driving around most days from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. delivering heroin to his middle-class customers, he says.

The DEA agents have watched Gurule for weeks. They know his routine, his customers and his girlfriends.

On the day of his arrest, a team of DEA agents watch as he leaves his house in a blue Impala and drives to the commuter train station, where he picks up an older woman with haphazardly dyed red hair. The agents follow him through the sleek office towers and chic restaurants of downtown Albuquerque. A few minutes after 9 a.m., he pulls up in front of Recovery Toolbox, a methadone clinic near the center of town.

The agents grab him as he emerges from his car. He wears a white T-shirt, jeans, a red and black rosary around his neck and a Michael Kors watch on his wrist. The agents find two bags of heroin, each the size of a thumb, and other drugs tucked into a slit in the seam of his underwear. He does not carry a weapon.

Chavez puts Gurule, handcuffed, in the front seat of his car. Gurule sighs and slumps in the seat. He knows what's coming. If you run Gurule's name through the New Mexico court system, more than a dozen criminal cases pop up.

"There are two kinds of people in jail," Chavez begins. "Those who didn't cooperate and those who wish they did."

Gurule's story spills out. Gurule, who is 33, lives with a 17-year-old girlfriend and her 18-month-old son. He has a soon-to-be ex-wife and another girlfriend on the side. He is the father of five, four boys and a girl.

He thinks of himself as a family man, speaking proudly of his teenage twins – one with straight A's. He worries that his young daughter might be at risk at his wife's home — "She's got like 10 dudes staying at my old house," he says — so the 10-year-old girl stays with him and the girlfriend.

Gurule says he started using drugs as a teen in Los Lunas, south of Albuquerque. Nothing to do there but drugs, he says. He's been on methadone on and off for 12 years. He was studying culinary arts recently at the local community college and worked at a bunch of restaurants, but it wasn't enough money.

"I had problems with the marriage. I need to make money on the side," he says.

Chavez tells Gurule they have a search warrant for his house. Gurule says his girlfriend will be home with her son and his daughter. "She won't be surprised," he says.

Gurule lives in a terracotta-colored one-bedroom duplex in a dusty, trash-strewn neighborhood of double-wide trailers and crumbling bungalows in the city's southwest. The agents, weapons drawn, approach the house and pound on the sliding glass doors.

Gurule's girlfriend comes to the door carrying the baby. She can't unlock the iron gate covering the doors. Gurule locks it from the outside when he leaves to protect them from robbery, effectively trapping his girlfriend and two children inside. The DEA agents ask him if he's thought about what would happen if there's a fire. They use his key to open the gates.

Chavez lets Gurule, still handcuffed, out of the car. His daughter runs to him, crying inconsolably, and throws her arms around his waist. Chavez pries them apart and distracts her with questions about school and her artwork. Inside the house, her report card is posted on the refrigerator and a bowl of half-eaten Fruity Pebbles waits on the table beneath a painting of The Last Supper.

In the upstairs bedroom, agents find pills sewn into the seams of Gurule's clothing and bottles of Xanax and Vicodin. They find a kitchen scale — key to a trafficking charge — under a pile of clothes in the closet.

DEA agents hope Gurule's arrest will be the first in the chain that leads them to the big bosses, the ones with contacts in Mexico.

A grand jury charged him Tuesday with five counts drug trafficking. He could be sentenced to eight years in prison.

The client lists for the heroin firms that operate around Albuquerque include people like a 24-year-old woman who arrives at Starbucks in the upper-class Northeast Heights neighborhood wearing oversize sunglasses and turning heads as she tosses glossy blond hair over her shoulder. It is hot, but she is wearing a long-sleeved sweater. It covers arms scarred with needle marks.

The woman asks to remain unnamed because she works as a confidential source for federal agents.

Her drug use began at 14 with pot supplied by an older sister. In high school, she experimented with cocaine, ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms. Her sister developed a cocaine addiction. "I remember thinking, 'Oh, I'll never be like that,' " she says.

Then she stole an oxycodone pill from her father, who had a prescription. She remembers keenly the euphoria she felt. "I loved that feeling," she said. "All day lying on the couch, doing nothing."

Her life stayed on track for a while. She graduated from high school, got a solid job as a bank teller, bought a new car and moved in with a nice guy. Here and there, she would accept an oxycodone pill from a friend.

Within a year, an occasional pill turned into a full-fledged habit. At the height of her addiction, she says, she spent $80 a day on pills purchased from a friend's cousin. She stole from her family. She pawned her dad's tools, her jewelry and her iPad. Her bank accounts were overdrawn. Her credit cards were maxed out.

"I would be late for work because my priority was getting the pills," she says. "I spent thousands and thousands of dollars."

She told her parents and her boyfriend. "They were astonished," she says. "They had no idea."

She spent three months in rehab. During seven sober months, she says, her drug dealers seemed to show up everywhere, as if they were following her. One day, she caved, calling a female dealer she knew. But the dealer had no pills, just heroin.

She smoked a half-gram of heroin that day.

A new job in 2013 brought her to Albuquerque, where a friend hooked her up with a new set of dealers. She took up with one of the drivers, who gave her free heroin. Sometimes she would drive with him to California to pick up kilos of heroin to bring to the market in Albuquerque. "I never thought in my head, 'I'm a drug dealer,' " she says.

When he moved back to Mexico without a word to her, she got involved with his boss, the man responsible for dispatching the organization's three delivery men. He gave her free heroin, too. He also threw around a lot of cash, once giving her $100 to do the laundry, she says.

In October 2013, she began shooting up.

At the mall store where she worked as an assistant manager, she popped into the back every few hours to shoot up. Then in February, her supervisor found her needles in a makeup bag in the employee bathroom. She was fired.

"I was a functioning addict," she says, "I thought I was fooling everyone."

She went into rehab in March.

A month later, DEA agents arrested a few of her former dealers. The DEA had been tracking them for months.

"They could have arrested me. I'm so thankful they didn't. I don't want that life," she says. "I want to go back to school and be something. I want a career."

She wants to have her real friends back, the friends she had before drugs, a girl she's known since elementary school who got engaged a few months ago and didn't even text to tell her.

"I wish I never took that pill. If I never knew what opiates were, if I never tried that pill, would my life be different?"