The most deadly recreational drug has become the most popular, in Monterey County and everywhere.

Around 5:30pm on July 16, 2004, Pacific Grove police received an anonymous tip that a man was in his home at 316 Prescott Lane cooking and using methamphetamines. It was an unusual tip, but when officers Daniel Borgeson and Dawn Delfino responded to the call they witnessed 34-year-old Frank Abbruzzetti taking a hit off a meth pipe through the open front door.

Completely busted and totally high, Abbruzzetti made no attempts to flee or hide the large-scale home meth laboratory which cluttered his home like some kind of wicked Rube Goldberg apparatus.

For more than a year, Abbruzzetti had been successfully running the biggest meth lab in Pacific Grove history, but he had gotten careless—as manufacturers who also use meth frequently do. The smell from the chemicals used to make the drug were overpowering; the amount of foot traffic was becoming impossible to ignore; and theft rates were skyrocketing in the neighborhood. By all accounts, it was only a matter of time before he went down. Abbruzzetti had become too complacent, too high, too greedy.

At the time of his arrest, officials estimated that Abbruzzetti had enough materials to make $500,000 worth of methamphetamines.

Police promptly arrested the dazed Abbruzzetti along with the two female “companions” hanging around the house at the time of the arrest. When the cops entered the house, they discovered the extent of Abbruzzetti’s operation. It was unlike anything they’d ever seen in “America’s Last Hometown.”