Couple on the firing line: Drug Enforcement Administration agents Robert and Veronica Baker fight fire with fire

Ebony, August, 1989 by Richard L. Haywood

COUPLE ON THE FIRING LINE

ROBERT and Veronica (Ronnie) Baker look like one of those couples you're sure you know but can't quite place.

Bob, as almost everybody calls him, is a handsome man, who wears a salt-and-pepper beard that accentuates his appealing features. Ronnie is petite, with reddish-brown hair that complements her bronze skin. Both are gracious and approachable. But when they're "under" as authorized Drug Enforcement Administration undercover agents, they're as cunning, as calculatingly manipulative and as double-dealing as any outlaw on the FBI's "Most Wanted List."

Ronnie, petite and curvaceous, worked for two years on an investigation that led to the apprehension of one of Fort Worth's most prominent night club owners on drug distribution chages. And Bob played a major role in a Harlem drug sweep that ended with the arrests of numerous drug dealers and the closing down of several PCP distribution networks. Bob now works at DEA headquarters in Washington, D.C.; Ronnie works at the agency's Baltimore, Md. office. The Bakers are fighting the same war from different command posts.

"One of the first things you have to understand," says Bob, "is that although we walk around in suits and nice dresses, this can be a dirty job."

There was, for example, the time Ronnie was making a heroin buy and found out later that "one of the two violators had a gun in my back during the entire transaction and intended to get the money either by selling [the drugs] or by shooting me." Her husband, on the other hand, remembers the time he signaled a back-up team to move in on a dealer from whom he had just made a buy. "And this guy," he says, "put a gun to my head to blow my brains out but out of nowhere one of our agents popped him."

While the DEA mission is the war on drugs, undercover work is only a part of its overall strategy. The agency uses a variety of tools and methods to accomplish its mission. "We use the expertise of accountants, lawyers, chemists, pharmacists and others," Robert Baker says. "Using a variety of methods, we penetrate a drug trafficker's operation and bring him to justice. And we find out that he's no more a bad-ass than my six-year-old son."

Both Bob and Ronnie were born in Harlem and grew up in the inner-city, children fortunate enough to have deep roots in strong families.

Robert attended Queen's College, while Veronica went to Herbert H. Lehman College. After graduation, both found work in local law enforcement. Robert joined the DEA first and met his future wife at an agency-sponsored seminar in Albany, N.Y. They married in 1977. Much of what they have become can be traced back to Harlem, where they saw people dealing in drugs and death on almost every street corner.

"Our work is really important in that respect," says Mrs. Baker. "As a child I saw street-corner dealers conducting their business. When you get a little older, you see these kids getting messed up. i have these two little boys and i would just be devastated if anybody gave them drugs. That's why this job is more than a career--it's a commitment. There's a real human side to what we do. We don't just knock down doors and put 'cuffs on people."

Perhaps the best example of the human side of the DEA was the month the Bakers had legal custody of the two daughters of New York's Nicky Barnes, one of the country's most powerful drug lords, who was known as "Mr. Untouchable" until he was sentenced to life imprisonment. It was a trying time for the Bakers as they tried to adjust to these street-wise children. "Bot brought the dauthers home,c Mrs. Baker recalls, "and all they had were the clothes on their backs," She can still remember the girls talking in their bedroom at night, discussing drug deals and the participation of their parents.

Despite the trials and tribulations of the job, the Bakers remain committed to the DEA mission.

"It's difficult to explain," Bob says, speaking for himself and his wife. "A person who orginally joins dEA may not be committed but eventually he becomes committed to DEA and its mission of winning the drug war. You touch shoulders with United States presidents, congressmen, senators, legitimate businessmen and, on the other side of the coin, you wheel and deal with the scum of the earth."