Community Corner
GQ: ‘Coronado High’ Smugglers — Successful and Brash Before Fall
An excerpt of the upcoming GQ article covers the successful years of the drug operation said to be the focus of a planned film by George Clooney.
A group connected to Coronado took their incredibly lucrative drug ring across country, amassing millions in what became a shockingly sophisticated operation, according to an upcoming article in GQ magazine.
GQ is previewing “Coronado High,” the article about the Coronado Company, as the drug dealers were known. The piece is said to have been optioned by Oscar-winning star George Clooney for an upcoming film.
The writer, Joshuah Bearman, is behind the story that inspired Argo, the 2013 Oscar Best Picture winner.
According to Bearman, the Company, which got its start in the '60s, eventually was so successful it “was practically corporatized,” a criminal enterprise that relied on a code system for contact, and one that could go underground and fool the DEA. The original members were a former Coronado High School Spanish teacher and his one-time students.
The author writes:
“The Company could disappear for months at a time and then re-emerge, at the ready. ‘These kids were the best in the business,’ Special Agent James Conklin says today. ‘They were ahead of their time. They operated almost like a military unit.’"
The magazine has offered up a 10-paragraph excerpt of the story on its website, about the Coronado Company during its high-flying years, when the operation spread all the way to Maine. By the '80s, it has collapsed, following investigations and in-fighting.
The full story is due in GQ's September issue.
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