Valerie and Mike Corral

In 1973, Valerie Corral was involved in a freak accident that changed her life. A P-51 Mustang, a converted W.W.II fighter plane, "buzzed" her car. The resulting accident left her with a head injury and a friend badly injured. Valerie's injury precipitated an epileptic condition with as many as five gran mal seizures a day.

Valerie tried using prescription pharmaceutical drugs to control her seizures, but her epilepsy did not respond to them without devastating side effects. After her husband, Mike, read about experiments using marijuana to control laboratory-induced seizures in rats, Valerie decided to try it. She stopped using addictive drugs and began to smoke measured amounts and varieties of cannabis. She found she could completely control the onset of gran mal seizures using cannabis alone. For years, the couple grew their own marijuana for her medicinal use.

Five times over the years they were visited by Santa Cruz County Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) officers. During each encounter, they explained her medical marijuana use, and each time their privacy and some of her medicine was spared. Then, on August 12, 1992, they were arrested. Seven and a half months later, Valerie's case became the first to successfully argue a medical necessity defense of cannabis in California. The district attorney told the sheriff that he would not press charges if they were re-arrested. The next spring, they planted again.

In 1993, just six months after winning their historic case, marijuana task force officers arrived in force. Their home was ravaged and they were again arrested. Once again, they explained that she used cannabis to control her epilepsy, and acknowledged that she had been distributing it to terminally ill patients for seventeen years. That prompted the officers to add a felony distribution charge.

Valerie reached out for community support. As a result of her efforts and those of many others, the citizens of Santa Cruz County voted to adopt Measure A, calling for the non-prosecution of medical marijuana patients. Local police have left them alone since its passage, and Valerie has since been appointed to the Santa Cruz County Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission.

Along with the other members at the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Mari-juana (WAMM), Valerie and Mike do research on different strains of cannabis and supply free (or by donation) high quality, organically grown medicine to seriously ill patients who qualify for the co-op. WAMM serves approximately 250 members who suffer from diseases including HIV or AIDS, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, epilepsy, various forms of cancer, and other terminal and chronic illnesses. Membership is comprised of 85% terminally ill patients; the others suffer from chronic pain and illnesses.

Early in the morning on September 5, 2002, 20 to 30 armed DEA agents broke into the Corral’s home without warning, cuffed them and held guns to their heads. A paraplegic WAMM board member, Suzanne Pfiel, who sleeps with an assisted-breathing device, was staying with them at the time. She was awakened at gunpoint, handcuffed to her bed and abandoned.

Less than two weeks later, the Mayor and City Council of Santa Cruz joined WAMM to distribute medical marijuana to thirteen patients at Santa Cruz City Hall. Before 200 members of the media, 1,300 people assembled in solidarity. But that support did not change the grim situation WAMM faced. Since the raid, fifteen WAMM members have died and many more face a hastened and more painful death because of WAMM’s diminished capacity to provide its member-patients with their necessary allotments of medicine.

This crisis prompted the City and County of Santa Cruz to join with WAMM in suing the federal government over the raids. With the Raich v. Ashcroft decision having established that the federal government does not have jurisdiction to interfere with medical marijuana patients and caregivers like the Corrals, they got a preliminary injunction protecting them from any future raids or arrests. Valerie and Mike immediately went out to plant.