Mackenzie Cologie spent her high-school career as a popular student at Sheridan High in Thornville, Ohio. A softball and volleyball star, she was an average 15-year-old girl.
But when the sun set, a very different version of the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl emerged. Cologie donned a wire and busted stores for selling tobacco to the underage.
Now a 25-year-old X-ray technician at Ohio State University, she reflected on her yearlong stint as an Ohio Investigative Unit confidential informant.
“It was so neat,” said Cologie, who primarily worked in the Athens area. “How many kids get to go undercover?”
She became an informant because her father works for the unit, but her experience is not unique: Each year, the unit uses more than 20 tobacco and alcohol confidential informants in Athens and more than 200 statewide.
“Many of our informants are teens interested in law enforcement or they have a parent who is a peace officer,” said Julie Hinds, spokeswoman for the unit. “We have received a lot of great confidential informants from church groups.”
Cologie could be used only in tobacco busts because informants must be at least 16 to work alcohol enforcement, but her experience was basically the same as her counterparts’.
Alcohol informants help state liquor-enforcement agents bust bars for selling alcohol to underage people, but the location of the busts is the only difference between alcohol and tobacco informants.
“On any given bust, I’d work with three agents and wear a wire,” Cologie said. “An agent would go into a gas station and make sure the area was safe, and then I would attempt to make a purchase.”
Cologie wore plain clothes and used her own ID for the busts, which happened every few weeks.
“I always felt comfortable,” she said. “But one time, the agent went in (the gas station) and then stepped outside, and the lady threatened to keep my ID and call the cops.”
Both tobacco and alcohol informants are paid $40 for the first four hours of an event and $10 for every additional hour, Hinds said.
The unit recruits many informants through “The Sober Truth” program, which stresses the dangers and consequences of underage drinking to schools and civic groups throughout the state, Hinds said.
Teachers usually refer interested students to agents after the presentation, she added.
Cologie’s time with the unit was cut short because of increasing athletic time demands, but her experience with undercover work was eye opening.
“Once an elderly guy got fired on the spot for selling me tobacco, which was sad, I thought, but you have to follow the law,” she said. “I was making a difference.”
as218907@ohiou.edu
