Leon Nunn stepped out his front door one recent afternoon only to be waved back by a squadron of drug agents using a battering ram on a neighbor's home.
The US$500,000 home in the quiet subdivision was stuffed with high-grade marijuana, plants covering nearly every square meter.
The bust is one example of a phenomenon that has come to light recently in subdivisions around Sacramento, the capital of California.
Marijuana growers with suspected ties to Asian organized crime have been buying suburban homes -- many in newer developments -- because of the anonymity drug dealers believe the neighborhoods afford.
They close the blinds and get to work gutting the inside, converting otherwise nondescript tract homes into the latest battleground in the state's campaign against marijuana cartels.
Police are bashing in doors at more homes virtually every day as they develop new leads or are tipped by suddenly wary neighbors.
More than three dozen homes have been found to be hiding marijuana groves in just the past seven weeks, most in Sacramento, Elk Grove and Stockton.
Like the others, the home on Elk Grove's Mainline Drive had been converted to what law enforcement officials call a hothouse, with 1,000-watt lights for growing and irrigation networks feeding high-tech hydroponic growing systems.
Walls and ceilings were smashed to allow for complex ventilation and air filtration systems that vented the telltale odor through the attic.
A web of extension cords and makeshift electric panels illegally tapped into the outside grid to avoid detection and save thousands of dollars in power bills.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to convert each of the homes to so that millions of dollars worth of marijuana could be grown in them.
The phenomenon began in the province of British Columbia, Canada, where organized crime outfits gutted houses to grow potent "B.C. Bud" that can sell for US$5,000 or more per 450g in the US, said Corporal Pierre Lemaitre of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Growers headed south to avoid increased border protections after the Sept. 2001, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"It's definitely a concerted effort by Asian organized crime groups in Canada to move part of their operation down to the [US]," said Rodney Benson, the Drug Enforcement Agency's special agent in charge of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Idaho.
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