Stephen Frey was put behind bars for the sake of cough medicine and cold tablets. He is far -- in most people's minds -- from a drug runner.
In fact, he's about as well-intentioned as they come. But that didn't stop the Canadian medical missionary from spending almost four months in a Mexican prison, only getting out little more than a week ago.
The story of how he found himself behind bars, facing 15 years in jail -- prosecutors are still going ahead with their case -- is enough to make anyone who crosses a border rethink their good intentions and what they're keeping in their overnight bag.
Frey, a 48-year-old, divorced father of three from southern Manitoba, has worked as a Mexican missionary for five years.
"This is a guy who's been helping the poorest people of Mexico get basic medicines -- stuff which you and I take for granted," says Duane Jones, executive director of the U.S. based Cornerstone International Missions. "This guy can't be confused with a criminal.
"Just the opposite."
Working under Cornerstone -- an established Houston Christian ministry -- Frey's been bringing needed medicine to the impoverished in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.
The donated supplies are antibiotics and the kind of things most people can pull off a shelf at their local Wal-Mart.
On Aug. 19, while driving 30 km inside the Mexican-U.S. border, Frey, and a 16-year-old daughter of a Mexican pastor, were stopped by customs officials.
The Mexican authorities confiscated 12 bottles of cough syrup and another dozen bottles of Sudafed cold pills. Suddenly, he was a drug trafficker.
"The fact I was headed south, into Mexico, rather than north, didn't seem to matter," Frey says.
They arrested him -- put him in a stifling-hot local jail cell with nine other men and no food and water, other than what outsiders could provide.
A chemical analysis of the cold pills found they contained common pseudoephedrine -- a decongestant.
"They could have saved the trouble by simply looking at the side of the bottle," the missionary notes.
Apparently relying on an old Mexican health department edict, rather than the country's list of controlled substances, prosecutors in Reynosa -- up the Rio Grande from the Gulf of Mexico -- charged the Canadian with transporting banned substances.
His most pressing concern was the young girl arrested with him. After three days, she was released.
"There's no question of corruption and graft," he says of the Mexican system. "But I think it started as confusion, and then they had to save face."
It may also have to do with an uneasy relationship Mexican officials have long had with missionaries bringing medicine into their country.
Especially missionaries who avoid paying custom taxes on items they bring in -- a minor offence, which, in Frey's case, meant a fine. Frey's arrest saw a freeze on others bringing in similar shipments for the poor. Even the used clothing he was bringing in was frowned upon by Mexican officials.
An American government official, familiar with the case, said it was the quantity of medicine -- more than personal use -- as well as avoiding customs, which has angered officials in that country.
A spokesman for the Mexican embassy noted laws controlling prohibited drugs have to be applied, no matter who the offender is.
To help with his defence, supporters in Mexico simply walked to several nearby Mexican stores -- including a 7-Eleven -- and bought similar pills and bottles of cough syrup next to Pepsi and chocolate bars.
But in the Mexican system, notes supporter Mark Russell, director of the Benita Juarez orphanage in Mexico, "You are guilty until proven innocent."
A grassroots campaign, which spread among Christian missionary groups, was kicked off.
When he was shipped to the Mexican federal prison, he normally should have spent months in an observation cell.
The lockups are notorious. As many as 40 prisoners can be housed in a space built for five.
"I don't think I could have survived," he says. "I'm not built that way."
Instead, he was put directly into the prison population, and stayed with the local chaplain, and other Christian prisoners.
While he says God and fellow Christians were on his side, he can't say the same about Canadian officials.
"I was given a free call home (via a toll), ask me if I was being beaten -- which I wasn't. But that's it," he says.
"I don't think they really wanted to dirty their hands.
"At one point, (foreign affairs) officials in Ottawa had my mother in tears, saying 'Well, what do you expect if your son is a drug trafficker.'
"I understand being neutral. But I don't understand taking the position I was guilty."
Released more than a week ago, while prosecutors pursue a case -- likely looking at a substantial fine -- Frey is now driving back to Canada with his family.
He hopes to soon return to his work in Mexico, after finding a compromise with Mexican officials.
"I don't want what happened to me to scare anyone," he says. "Ninety-nine percent of Mexicans are wonderful people. They're people who still need help.
"I'm not ready to give that up."