On Feb. 27, a story in the Pahrump Valley Times stated that Benjamin Swanson was arrested nine days earlier, after two significant indoor marijuana cultivation operations were discovered in homes he was renting in Tecopa Heights and Stewart Valley, Calif.

The report sounds pretty cut and dried, unless your family happens to own both the homes Swanson and his alleged cohorts turned into pot farms.

"I am just getting to the point where I can talk about what happened without crying," said Cheryl Zellhoefer, visibly upset. She and her husband Jon own the home Swanson rented in Stewart Valley.

"If our story helps someone avoid this kind of devastation, I will be happy," said Cheryl. "This can happen to anyone at any time. Tecopa and Stewart Valley are full of good people. The ones who did this didn't live in the community."

Jon Zellhoefer's grandfather, along with a handful of friends from Las Vegas, bought 300 acres in Tecopa in the 1960s as an investment. "There were no roads or much else out there then," explained Cheryl. "It was kind of a mining town."

Now Jon is the trustee of the land that comprises what Cheryl calls downtown Tecopa.

"Jon is clearing and burning brush," said Cheryl. "There's a lot of work to be done. We have an old 28,000-square-foot building with a leaking roof that we've been trying to fix up since 2001."

The couple now has two more projects to fix up: their daughter's home in Tecopa Heights, which was rented to Swanson, and their own home in Stewart Valley, which was rented to a friend of Swanson's.

Eighty high-grade marijuana plants were seized by police from the home in Tecopa Heights and 47 more were found in Cheryl's home in Stewart Valley.

The renters had outfitted both homes with hydroponic growing systems, along with a myriad of other equipment: grow lights, an air-filtering system and fans apparently ran 24 hours a day. In Stewart Valley, where a family of four pays approximately $200 a month in the summer to air condition their home, Cheryl's renters were paying $800.

Drain holes were cut from the room housing the plants out to an enclosed garage in the Tecopa Heights home.

Kathleen Swanson told Cheryl's daughter, Jennifer, she wanted to rent her house in Tecopa Heights to use "as a vacation home," adding: "I want to go to the baths." Before renting to the woman, the family called Kathleen's references and verified she was working.

"I learned later that they were evicted sometime around August from a home in Pahrump," alleged Cheryl. "That's when they decided to rent my daughter's home in Tecopa Heights. Tecopa is off the beaten path. It's a place where people want to be left alone and enjoy their solitude, and it's a place where people don't have to make a lot of bucks to live."

A failed septic system was what finally led the Zellhoefers to discover the marijuana operation.

Approximately six months after Benjamin Swanson moved into Jennifer's home, along with his girlfriend and her children, a 3-by-4-foot sinkhole appeared in the yard.

Swanson said it was from a leak in the landscape drip system.

Cheryl said at the time she wondered why a self-described plumber wouldn't know how to repair a drip irrigation system.

"Now I know all the water and liquid fertilizers for the hydroponic system being pumped constantly through the septic system must have caused it to fail," she said.

The renters temporarily moved out, leaving a key to the property with Cheryl while she and her husband fixed the failed septic system. The Zellhoefers were preparing the ground around the leach field for the backhoe when they heard water running inside the house. "So we entered the home," Cheryl said. "We opened the front door and immediately felt moist, moving air and there was some kind of smell I couldn't identify.

"I just couldn't figure it out. I thought it was a swamp cooler, but it smelled like a nursery. Then I saw huge wires running through the house," said Cheryl.

"There was also old food and dirty dishes and mattresses without sheets. The curtains were pulled off and big sheets of Mylar were on the windows. It was a mess with garbage, too."

Jon opened a door and reached for the light switch.

"The light didn't go on," said Cheryl. "It was pitch black in there. But when our eyes adjusted it was a jungle in there. The plants were everywhere. There was a garden hose with water running.

"Then we saw lesbian porn magazines and pictures torn up all over the place."

The Zellhoefers also saw children's videos in the room. "That just angers me so much," Cheryl exclaimed. "There were four kids living in that house, about 2 to 11 years old, and they were exposed to all that."

Cheryl and Jon called the Inyo County sheriff.

"This has put so much stress on us," she said. "When Ben ran from the police the night they caught him, it was traumatic. It still is. He is out of jail now and still in our house. They still have our stuff in the house."

Swanson was released on $15,000 bail.

"They still hold the keys. The electricity is still turned on," said Cheryl. "And even though they were sitting on $300,000 worth of marijuana, they didn't pay the rent."

The Zellhoefers are in the process of evicting Benjamin Swanson and whoever else is living in both homes.

The process is aggravated by the four-hour, one-way drive to the Inyo County Courthouse in Independence, Calif., to fill out and file the eviction paperwork.

"When the police caught Ben the night of Feb. 18, they had to take him for a four-hour drive ... to book him into jail," said Cheryl.

The Stewart Valley location is the second home rented to Ben Swanson and his mother, albeit by proxy. Initially, Cheryl thought she was renting her home to Jason White, who told her his wife was in a wheelchair and needed a large kitchen, but it was Kathleen Swanson who wrote the checks for the deposit and first month's rent.

"When I asked Kathleen about it, she said Jason was a friend of Ben's who was down on his luck," said Cheryl. "That's all I thought about it. Things like that happen to people. I guess I'm just a very naïve person."

In Stewart Valley, the Zellhoefer's site-built home sits on three acres and has a 360-degree view of the nearby hills.

The Inyo Narcotics Enforcement Team found high-quality marijuana plants in the home's laundry room, inside a walk-in closet and behind shower curtains in a bathtub.

"We will make it work out," said Cheryl. "This has been a learning experience. I don't want to give up being compassionate towards people, but this has been hard on me. They left 55 gallon drums of purified water and grow chemicals, big bags of soil and fertilizers to the max."

She said there were also about 40 cases of beer left on the property. "The biggest cans of a beer I've ever seen are stacked up all over the place.

"The pot plants were in 15 gallon containers and they are here with the leaves stripped off. We can't even assess the damage because we can't get into the house until Ben leaves or we evict them," said Cheryl.

"These people prey on the rest of us. They scattered toys and bicycles in the front yard, because who would think there would be a pot farm where children live?" Cheryl said.