Ritchie Vergona spent months clearing World Trade Center rubble. Too bad growing a little pot earned him one to five years in prison.
When the madmen came and crashed and left New York shaken and sobbing, most legs headed for the hills -- or at least as far from Lower Manhattan as they could trot, cycle, or cadge a ride. But as the cloud of toxic dust and debris and incinerated citizens began to settle, others instinctively turned in the opposite direction. Back to what would come to be called Ground Zero.

Along with the Bravest of the NYFD and the Finest of the NYPD, rushing south were a pack of roughnecks stamped indelibly with union labels. At first it was a trickle and then a beer-gutted, ham-fisted, cursing wave of hard hats. And among their earliest numbers was a big-hearted, slightly offbeat, recovering hippie named Ritchie Vergona. ...

Ritchie is a crane operator and by all accounts, one of the best in the New York-New Jersey arc of construction. But when he got to the surreal mountain of destruction that once was the World Trade Center, there were no cranes to lift girders twisted like pipe cleaners and none of the claw machines that would soon be ripping away at the carnage. So he joined the bucket brigades gingerly removing debris and searching for survivors. ...

No one ever said Ritchie was an angel. Cherubs and seraphim are hard to find on any construction site, where the hours are early, the work is honest, the steel is hard, and the drinking and drugs are harder. But the truth is, Ritchie is a gentle soul -- a guitar player, an animal lover, a guy who likes to fire up a joint after work.

What Ritchie didn't know was the law. And in the Garden State, as Flood explains, if you are found growing more than 50 marijuana plants, even for your personal use, you're looking at a potential 20 years in the slammer. Last summer was particularly good weather for Mary Jane horticulture, and Ritchie raised 71 weeds.

Thomas J. Reed, the assistant Sussex County (N.J.) prosecutor who handled the case, says Ritchie was caught on videotape watering and pruning his doobie garden. Reed could have knocked the charges down to a piddling offense, but he says he wasn't prepared to give Ritchie any bigger break than he got. A trip to Ground Zero right after September 11 might have changed his mind, but he did let Ritchie plead to a lesser crime.

At Ritchie's sentencing, his boss spoke out on his behalf. And, according to Flood, letters came in from police and fire officials with whom he had worked at Ground Zero. The mayor of Ritchie's hometown, where he had been a star athlete and coach, also wrote to the judge.

Superior Court Judge N. Peter Conforti declined to comment on the case -- just as he had declined to make any waves in sentencing Ritchie. He stuck to the guidelines and handed out up to five years in prison with the possibility of parole in a year and five days.

Formal and informal ceremonies at the site of the World Trade Center massacre two weeks ago signaled the end of the cleanup. Ritchie Vergona, nice guy, father, Ground Zero hero should have been there, and he should have had a good cry with the other hard hats and gone home.

Instead, he sits in a cage in New Jersey, not knowing he's a three-time poster boy: For the inanity of the nation's marijuana laws. For the wrongheadedness of mandatory sentencing. And for the gritty nobility of the American working man.