Alarm in Albuquerque Over Plan to End Methadone for Inmates

Mark Holm for The New York Times

Officials at New Mexico’s largest jail want to end its methadone program. Addicts like Penny Strayer hope otherwise.

ALBUQUERQUE — It has been almost four decades since Betty Jo Lopez started using heroin.

Her face gray and wizened well beyond her 59 years, Ms. Lopez would almost certainly still be addicted, if not for the fact that she is locked away in jail, not to mention the cup of pinkish liquid she downs every morning.

“It’s the only thing that allows me to live a normal life,” Ms. Lopez said of the concoction, which contains methadone, a drug used to treat opiate dependence. “These nurses that give it to me, they’re like my guardian angels.”

For the last six years, the Metropolitan Detention Center, New Mexico’s largest jail, has been administering methadone to inmates with drug addictions, one of a small number of jails and prisons around the country that do so.

At this vast complex, sprawled out among the mesas west of downtown Albuquerque, any inmate who was enrolled at a methadone clinic just before being arrested can get the drug behind bars. Pregnant inmates addicted to heroin are also eligible.

Here in New Mexico, which has long been plagued by one of the nation’s worst heroin scourges, there is no shortage of participants — hundreds each year — who have gone through the program.

In November, however, the jail’s warden, Ramon Rustin, said he wanted to stop treating inmates with methadone. Mr. Rustin said the program, which had been costing Bernalillo County about $10,000 a month, was too expensive.

Moreover, Mr. Rustin, a former warden of the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania and a 32-year veteran of corrections work, said he did not believe that the program truly worked.

Of the hundred or so inmates receiving daily methadone doses, he said, there was little evidence of a reduction in recidivism, one of the program’s main selling points.

“My concern is that the courts and other authorities think that jail has become a treatment program, that it has become the community provider,” he said. “But jail is not the answer. Methadone programs belong in the community, not here.”

Mr. Rustin’s public stance has angered many in Albuquerque, where drug addiction has been passed down through generations in impoverished pockets of the city, as it has elsewhere across New Mexico.

Recovery advocates and community members argue that cutting people off from methadone is too dangerous, akin to taking insulin from a diabetic.

The New Mexico office of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes an overhaul to drug policy, has implored Mr. Rustin to reconsider his stance, saying in a letter that he did not have the medical expertise to make such a decision.

Last month, the Bernalillo County Commission ordered Mr. Rustin to extend the program, which also relies on about $200,000 in state financing annually, for two months until its results could be studied further.

“Addiction needs to be treated like any other health issue,” said Maggie Hart Stebbins, a county commissioner who supports the program.

“If we can treat addiction at the jail to the point where they stay clean and don’t reoffend, that saves us the cost of reincarcerating that person,” she said.

Hard data, though, is difficult to come by — hence the county’s coming review.

Darren Webb, the director of Recovery Services of New Mexico, a private contractor that runs the methadone program, said inmates were tracked after their release to ensure that they remained enrolled at outside methadone clinics.

While the outcome was never certain, Mr. Webb said, he maintained that providing methadone to inmates would give them a better chance of staying out of jail once they were released. “When they get out, they won’t be committing the same crimes they would if they were using,” he said. “They are functioning adults.”

In a study published in 2009 in The Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, researchers found that male inmates in Baltimore who were treated with methadone were far more likely to continue their treatment in the community than inmates who received only counseling.

Those who received methadone behind bars were also more likely to be free of opioids and cocaine than those who received only counseling or started methadone treatment after their release.

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Air travel in 2012 was the safest since 1945, group says

Airfares grew and airline seats shrunk, but much more important was the good news about flying in 2012: It was the safest year for air travel since 1945.

The world's airlines reported only 23 accidents — including passenger and cargo flights — resulting in 475 fatalities last year, compared with the 10-year average of 34 accidents and 773 fatalities a year, according to Aviation Safety Network, a private online research group in the Netherlands.

The declining accident numbers are the result of several efforts by international aviation groups to require audits of airlines around the world to comply with safety standards, said Harro Ranter, president of the network.

"I think all of these efforts combined are paying off," he said.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, an agency of the United Nations, has not released its 2012 statistics but it previously noted that airline accidents have been on the decline.

The network's database shows only two fatal commercial airline accidents in the U.S. last year, resulting in two deaths.

The worst accident of the year took place June 3 when an MD-83 jetliner flown by Nigeria-based Dana Air crashed on approach to Lagos, killing 153 onboard and 10 people on the ground.

In fact, 22% of all fatal airline accidents last year occurred in Africa, even though the continent generates about 3% of the world's airline departures, according to Aviation Safety Network.

Hotel chains targeted by NRA critics

National Rifle Assn. opponents are criticizing two of the world's biggest hotel companies because they give discounts to NRA members.

Global advocacy site Avvaz.com has urged its followers to go on Facebook and sound off against Best Western International and Wyndham Hotel Group for affiliating with the NRA. (Avvaz means "voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages.)

Wyndham operates the Ramada, Days Inn, Super 8, Travelodge and Howard Johnson hotels, among others. Best Western is one of the world's largest hotel chains, with more than 4,000 hotels in about 100 countries.

"It's time for mainstream companies like Wyndham Hotels to get out of bed with the extremist NRA," said Joseph Huff-Hannon, a senior campaigner at Avvaz.

On Facebook, Wyndham has responded to negative comments about its connection to the NRA with the following statement:

"Wyndham Worldwide is a hospitality company focused on our service promise to be responsive, be respectful and deliver great experiences to our customers, guests, partners and communities, as well as to each other. As part of our company's core values, we serve diverse individuals and organizations."

Best Western has not responded to the Facebook criticism, but it has received some comments of support for its NRA connections.

"Thanks for supporting the Constitution and the NRA," one person wrote on the hotel's Facebook page.

TSA defends airport screeners

The Transportation Security Administration says airport screeners are not sitting around giggling at naked images of travelers.

Such unprofessional behavior by officers who look at images made by full-body scanners is unlikely because screeners sit alone in private rooms, trying to spot weapons hidden beneath clothes of screened passengers, the TSA said.

"The resolution room is used only for the viewing of the images and is not a gathering place or break room for other officers as the officer viewing the images has to be focused in order to prevent any dangerous items from entering the airport," the TSA said in an online post last week.

The TSA made the statement in response to a post supposedly written by a former TSA screener on the blog Taking Sense Away.

The author of the blog said he had witnessed "a whole lot of officers laughing and clowning in regard to some of your nude images, dear passenger."

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Reality shows may put crews too close to cutting edge

Monica Martino had filmed tornadoes in the Midwest, ship collisions in the Antarctic and crab fishermen in Alaska's Bering Sea. But those experiences didn't prepare her for a terrifying nighttime boat ride in the Amazon jungle.

In February, the 41-year-old co-executive producer was thrown into a murky river after getting footage for "Bamazon," a series for the History cable channel about out-of-work Alabama construction workers mining for gold in the rain forest of Guyana.

Martino says the captain was blind in one eye and sailing too fast without a proper light. He lost control of the boat while making a hard turn, sending the crew into the river, where Martino was knocked out by the impact of hitting the water at high speed.

Pulled back into the boat, Martino regained consciousness. But on the journey back to base camp, the vessel struck a tree, slamming Martino into the deck. Although she sustained a concussion, bruised ribs and a badly torn shoulder, Martino said, she had to wait 19 hours to receive medical care at a clinic in Venezuela because the production company had no viable medical evacuation plan for the crew.

History and the production company, Red Line Films, declined to comment.

"It was a whole cascade of negligence," said Martino, who lives in Santa Monica. "We were put in a situation far beyond what any production crew should be expected to handle."

As reality TV has boomed over the last decade, action-adventure shows have become a lucrative niche in a medium hungry for high ratings. But the growth has also stirred concerns that some reality TV programs are cutting corners on safety, exposing cast and crew members to hazardous conditions.

A combination of tight budgets, lack of trained safety personnel and pressure to capture dramatic footage has caused serious and in some cases fatal incidents, according to interviews with television producers, safety consultants and labor advocates.

Even the companies that provide insurance to Hollywood films and TV shows are reluctant to write policies for some of the edgier programs.

"These reality shows are getting riskier to get more ratings,'' said Wendy Diaz, senior underwriting director for the entertainment division of Fireman's Fund Insurance, one of the leading insurance carriers that serve the entertainment industry.

Records from OSHA and the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health show fewer than a dozen citations and accidents involving reality TV sets in the last five years, including a fatality that occurred this summer in Colorado during production of a proposed Discovery Channel series. But union officials, safety consultants and producers say those numbers don't begin to reveal the true extent of the problem.

PHOTOS: Where the last seasons left off

Many incidents go unreported because crew members sign non-disclosure agreements and fear being blacklisted if they file lawsuits. Record-keeping is further muddled by the fact that many of the shows are nonunion, and workers are often classified as independent contractors. OSHA typically tracks only serious accidents involving employees and has no jurisdiction if the incident occurs in a foreign country such as Guyana.

"Reality has a lot of near-misses and things that happen that you never hear about," said Vanessa Holtgrewe, an industry veteran and former camera operator on "The Biggest Loser" and "The X Factor" who now works as an organizer for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. "On a lot of these shows, you're completely on your own. There is no one you can call if … you feel you're in a dangerous situation."

State and federal OSHA officials declined to comment specifically on incidents involving the reality TV sector.

Fireman's Fund estimated that it would underwrite 160 action-adventure reality shows in 2012, a 25% increase over the previous year. But it passed on about 50 other reality TV programs because they were deemed too risky, Diaz said.

"We had people who wanted to go to Mexico to follow the drug cartels around," Diaz said. "We had one show where they were going to blow up a mine. We told them we wouldn't insure the show."

Reality series — which cover everything from "Survivor" to "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" — have provided a huge revenue stream for cable and broadcast networks. The shows have lower production costs than scripted entertainment and tend to attract the younger viewers favored by advertisers.

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK: Try to believe in the new TV season

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News Summary: Tablet-tailored search engine debuts

TAILORED FOR TABLETS: Izik is billed as the first search designed especially for iPads and tablet computers running on Google Inc.‘s Android software. Free Izik apps for those devices were released Friday.

CAPSULE CATERING: For the more visual format of tablets, Izik displays search results in rows of capsules that can be easily scrolled with the swipe of a finger. This contrasts to showing a stack of blue links, the industry standard for laptops and desktops.

GOODBYE GOOGLE? Blekko, the maker of Izik, hopes people will break the Google search habit as tablets supplant traditional computers for Web surfing.

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Rare color photos of The Beatles to go up for sale

LONDON (AP) — Unpublished early color photographs of The Beatles' first U.S. tour will be sold at a U.K. auction.

The photos were taken during the rock band's 1964 visit to the U.S., when color film was expensive and most images of the group were in black and white.

The collection of 65 slides contains many stage shots, including George Harrison with his legendary red Rickenbacker guitar and close-up portraits from a Las Vegas Sahara Hotel press conference and Las Vegas Convention Centre gig.

The images were taken by Dr. Robert Beck, who died in 2002 and left them in an archive of photographs and slides in his Hollywood home.

Omega Auctions said Sunday the images will be sold March 22 — exactly 50 years after The Beatles released their first album.

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Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

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Don't let mortgage debt wreck retirement

Dear Liz: I have a first mortgage with a current balance of $32,000 at 5.625% interest. This will be paid off in about 24 months, based on regular payments plus $200 a month extra I am paying on principal. I have a home equity line of credit with a balance of $200,000 at 3% interest on which I am paying interest only ($490) monthly with an occasional principal payment when I can afford it. Between the two mortgages I am making payments of about $1,950 per month.

I am about to retire and want to reduce my payments to a more manageable amount. I do not intend to move in the near future. Income is $145,000 annually now but will be reduced to about $76,000 annually upon retirement. Should I just hold on, pay off the first mortgage and then begin making interest plus principal payments on the credit line? Or should I refinance both mortgages now into a 30-year fixed mortgage?

Answer: Ideally, you would retire your mortgage debt before you retire from your job. That's not possible in your case, so you should focus on making sure this debt doesn't wreck your retirement.

A spike in interest rates could play havoc with your budget. Mortgage interest rates have been extremely low for some time, but that won't continue indefinitely. Inflation may pick up as the economy improves, which means that 3% variable rate on your home equity line of credit could march considerably higher.

Consider locking in today's low mortgage rates with a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage. You could get an even lower rate on a 15-year mortgage, but the payment would be significantly higher — about $1,600 a month on a $232,000 mortgage, compared with about $1,000 a month for the 30-year loan. You may prefer the flexibility of the 30-year loan, which would still allow you to make extra principal payments to pay off the loan faster without locking you into a higher monthly payment.

Where to seek help with debt

Dear Liz: My husband and I are in a huge amount of debt. I understand that there are nonprofit agencies that can sit down with us and help us develop repayment plans and strategies. How do I find a reputable one?

Answer: Contact the National Foundation for Credit Counseling at (800) 388-2227 for a referral to a legitimate, accredited, nonprofit credit counseling agency in your area. A counselor can review your financial situation, help you with budgeting and see whether you're a candidate for a debt management plan, which would allow you to pay off your credit card debt over time, perhaps at a lower interest rate.

You also should consider making an appointment with an experienced bankruptcy attorney. You can get referrals from the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys at http://www.nacba.org. A credit counselor may try to steer you away from bankruptcy, whereas an attorney can let you know if it might be a better option.

Unfortunately, many people wait too long before they contact a credit counselor. They may be approved for a debt management plan but find themselves unable to stick with the plan long enough to pay off their debt. In other words, they continue to struggle with debt that they ultimately can't pay. Understanding all your options, including bankruptcy, can help you make a better choice about what to do next.

Can phone affect credit scores?

Dear Liz: I recently heard that not having a land-line home phone number can hurt your credit score because it indicates instability. Is this true? I, like many people, use only my cellphone and no longer have a land line.

Answer: The answers to most credit scoring questions are complex because the formulas are complex. In this case, though, the answer is simple. What kind of phone you use is not a factor in your credit scores.

Credit scores are based on the information in your credit reports, which typically doesn't include information from telephone companies unless you're applying for a new account (in which case a credit inquiry may appear) or seriously delinquent in paying your bills (in which case a collection account may appear).

Lenders typically use other criteria in addition to your credit score to evaluate your application. Those criteria may include your income, your debt-to-income ratio, how long you've worked for your current employer and other information that's not part of the credit scoring formulas. So it's conceivable a lender might prefer people who have land lines, but with so many people using cellphones only, that lender would certainly be behind the times.

Questions may be sent to 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604 or by using the "Contact" form at asklizweston.com. Distributed by No More Red Inc.

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Dumped Christmas trees are a gift for Lake Havasu fish

The ghosts of Christmas past can be found in some unusual places. The bottom of Lake Havasu, for instance.

There, thousands of Christmas trees sunk by wildlife biologists have found a second life as fish habitat in an ecosystem damaged by the damming of the Colorado River decades ago.

What nature once provided — a steady source of organic material such as brush and uprooted trees — disappeared when the once wild and muddy river was tamed.

By the late 1980s, Lake Havasu's now crystal clear waters harbored few places where newly spawned fish could find shelter from predators. Fish populations were a fraction of what they had been a generation before.

"There was no place for the young fish to hide until they matured," said Kirk Koch, a fisheries program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "Instead, they would be consumed by bigger fish."

The solution was a gift that keeps on giving: Christmas trees.

More than 30 million farm-harvested trees are sold nationwide each year. No matter how pretty they're decorated, they all meet the same ignoble fate: ground up as mulch or buried in landfills.

When it began in 1992, the effort at Lake Havasu was the largest fresh-water habitat recovery program in the nation, Koch said.

Over the next decade, $16 million and countless hours of work by volunteers created 875 acres of artificial reefs.

Structures were formed by sinking PVC pipe, concrete sewer pipe and cinder blocks in 42 coves. Then, discarded Christmas trees were lashed together, weighted down and dumped around the structures. Piles of brush were added.

As the trees and brush decomposed, the pipe and concrete structure grew a biological skin of mosses and algae that was then colonized by insects. In addition to providing shelter, the Christmas tree structures also became a source of fish food.

Scuba divers check sites annually and have found that fish are drawn to Christmas trees as much as Santa is.

"When they started, they could count all of the fish at any spot on their fingers," Koch said. "Progressively, they found more fish — way, way more fish — than they can count."

The project turned Lake Havasu into a popular sport fishing destination.

"Before this, the lake was basically dead," said Arnold Vignoni, president of the local chapter of Anglers United, whose members help maintain the reefs. "The bass tournament guys — and we have lots of bass tournaments here now — say the fishing is just outstanding."

It takes a Christmas tree five to six years to decompose under water. So each year, volunteers toss in as many as 500 additional trees and a thousand brush piles to replenish the reefs.

Part of the benefit of creating habitat with Christmas trees is that it's cheap — trash haulers are happy to unload onto others what they pick up at the curb.

This year, Riverside County supervisors approved a plan to transfer 2 tons of trees collected at county landfills to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which will dump them into two lakes that badly need them.

The load will make Quinn Granfors' job much easier.

Granfors, a state fisheries biologist, has been tossing trees into Lake Elsinore and Lake Perris since 2006. Working under budget constraints, he was left to scrounge around on his own after Christmas in search of trees. Now they'll be coming to him.

In the coming weeks, he and volunteers will send hundreds of weighted trees to the bottom of the lakes.

"I kind of joke with the guys that they're now qualified to get a job with the mob," Granfors said. "Because they know how to make organic material disappear."

mike.anton@latimes.com

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Cricketer Herath alive and bowling despite death rumors

SYDNEY (Reuters) – As Mark Twain might have said, rumors of the death of Sri Lankan spinner Rangana Herath which spread like wildfire across social media late on Friday proved to be greatly exaggerated.

Far from lying in a Sydney morgue alongside former test bowler Chaminda Vaas after perishing in a car crash as the reports had suggested, Herath was very much alive when he pitched up for work at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday.

The most prolific wicket-taker in test cricket last year, the 34-year-old leg spinner claimed two Australian wickets to seal a haul of four for 95 and then contributed nine runs with the bat.

Team mate Dimuth Karunaratne told reporters at the conclusion of the day’s play that the team had been dumbfounded by the rumors.

“I heard about it when we having breakfast but I had no idea where that came from,” he said with a laugh.

“Guys from Sri Lanka were calling us asking ‘when is the funeral?’ and stuff like that.

“Rangana is alive,” he added, somewhat unnecessarily.

Herath’s efforts were not enough to prevent Australia taking an iron grip on the third test match on Saturday and move to the brink of a 3-0 series sweep.

That could all change, however, if he and Dinesh Chandimal, who finished the third day unbeaten on 22, are able to dig in on Sunday, inflate their lead beyond the current 87 and give Sri Lanka a decent target to bowl at.

The Sydney track has traditionally offered a lot of turn for spinners in the last couple of days of a test and, as Herath’s 60 wickets last year showed, there are few better spinners operating in test cricket at the moment.

“The wicket is turning a lot now and the Aussie guys are playing the fourth innings, so I think Rangana… can do something,” said Karunaratne.

Vaas has no position with the test team and remains, also unharmed, in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan reporters said.

(Editing by John O’Brien)

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'McDreamy' says he beat Starbucks for coffee chain

SEATTLE (AP) — "Grey's Anatomy" star Patrick Dempsey may be the real "McSteamy."

The actor, who was dubbed "McDreamy" as a star of the hospital drama while his co-star was called "McSteamy," may soon be serving hot, steaming cups of Joe.

Dempsey won a bankruptcy auction to buy Tully's Coffee, a small coffee chain based in Seattle. Among those he beat out is Tully's much bigger Seattle neighbor, Starbucks Corp., which is known for its ubiquitous white cups with a circular green mermaid logo.

Dempsey, whose company Global Baristas LLC plans to keep the Tully's name, declared victory on the social media site Twitter: "We met the green monster, looked her in the eye, and...SHE BLINKED! We got it! Thank you Seattle!

The win for Dempsey deals a rare setback for Starbucks on its home turf. Starbucks has long been both praised for bringing "coffeehouse culture" to the U.S. and criticized for crushing smaller chains. The coffee giant, which had planned to convert the Tully's cafes to its own brand, last month announced plans to expand its global footprint to 20,000 cafes over the next two years, up from the current 18,000.

Dempsey said in an interview on Friday that as the underdog in Seattle, Tully's will need to find its identity.

"It's a much smaller chain that has a lot of potential that hasn't been given the proper care," he said.

But in a statement shortly after the auction on Thursday, Starbucks insinuated that Dempsey shouldn't celebrate just yet.

Starbucks, which wanted to convert the Tully's cafes to its own brand, said that a final determination on the winning bid won't be made until a court hearing on Jan. 11. Starbucks said it's in a "backup" position" to buy 25 of the 47 Tully's cafes, with another undisclosed bidder making an offer for the remainder.

The combined bids of Starbucks and the undisclosed bidder come to $10.6 million, above the $9.2 million Dempsey's company is offering to pay through his company, which was formed in order to purchase Tully's. The other investors in Global Baristas aren't being disclosed.

Tully's Coffee, which is known for serving Joe with a milder taste than Starbucks brand, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October, citing lease obligations and underperforming stores. Tully's wholesale business, which includes Tully's Coffee in bags and single serve K-cup packs that are sold in supermarkets and other stores, is owned separately by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc.

TC Global Inc., the parent company of Tully's, said in a release Friday that it was "encouraged and excited" about Dempsey's commitment to the chain.

Tully's President and CEO Scott Pearson called the deal a "great match" and that the goal is to make sure creditors get paid and to keep as many people employed as possible.

A bankruptcy court document signed late Friday by Pearson and Dempsey said TC Global had determined that Global Baristas submitted the successful bid.

"With this court filing, it's official - our group has been chosen as the successful bidder," Dempsey said in a statement. "We look forward to the court's final approval on Jan. 11."

Earlier in the day, Dempsey said he planned to be very involved in the running of the company, adding that the immediate challenges were to address bookkeeping issues, staff morale and sprucing up the coffee shops. Once the business is stabilized, Dempsey said the long-term goal would be to take the chain national.

"We can pull this off. We just have to take steps that are slow and smart," he said. "I'm going to get behind the counter. I'm going to serve coffee...I'm going to give the company a boost of energy."

Although Dempsey lives in Los Angeles, he plans to spend more time in Seattle, the city where "Grey's Anatomy" is set in. Dempsey said he believed there is room in the city for Tully's and the much larger Starbucks; he noted there might be people who are rooting for the underdog.

"In a society where there are so many big corporations that swallow the little guy, we thought, let's not let this happen to this company," he said.

Dempsey made an appearance Friday morning at a Tully's near Pike Place Market, shaking hands with workers and greeting customers before visiting other stores. Several dozen people, mostly women, came into the store.

Patrease Estelle, 45, works nearby, and came in with a small group from her office.

"I will take whatever I can get. A photo, a hug, a 'hey, how you doing,' a wink," said Estelle, who got a picture and handshake with the actor.

___

Blankinship reported from Seattle and Choi from New York.

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