‘Compassion. And love.’

“I want to get as many hugs in as I can.”

Heather Schafer says this to her mother, Dr. Marion “Mollie” Fry, while embracing out front of downtown’s federal courthouse on a breezy, sunny Monday afternoon. The mother and daughter are joined by family, friends and nearly 100 protesters. Everyone’s gathered because, in an hour, Fry and her husband, Dale Schafer, are going to federal prison.

Fry and Schafer’s nightmare began nearly a decade ago—just days after 9/11—when the Drug Enforcement Administration raided their home in nearby Cool. Local law enforcement had given them approval to cultivate, but the couple, both in their 50s, was convicted in 2007 and denied appeals in November 2010 and this past March (see “Cali-nullification” by Cosmo Garvin; SN&R News; August 23, 2007).

And today, Monday, May 2—oddly, the day after President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed—Fry and Schafer would say goodbye to their three children and grandchildren and surrender to authorities, forced to serve five-year sentences each for conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana.

Heather puts a necklace with a cross around Fry’s neck and places a wedding band on her finger. Fry says she will give the jewelry back to her kids as a symbolic gesture later during a press conference.

“I can’t believe they’ve got this many cops out here,” Fry adds. “Quite a few, just to watch us.”

During their trial, federal Judge Frank Damrell denied Fry and Schafer the right to use what is called a “medical-cannabis defense,” which basically meant that the jury was not allowed to take California’s marijuana laws into consideration while forming a verdict.

Fry, but a half-hour before surrendering, tells SN&R that this is what upset her the most: that patients were denied. “No one really understood that these are lives, these are patients, these are people,” she says, “and their lives are better because of this medicine, which causes no harm.

“That’s what it’s all about. Compassion. And love.”

Protesters pleaded that Obama grant clemency to the couple and that the feds stand down on medical cannabis. Dale too remained defiant: “When is helping sick people a felony? I could have killed somebody and gotten less time.”

And then it was time. Dale, in khakis and a gray T-shirt with an American flag on it, and Mollie, hair pulled back and sporting a “Free Doc Fry” shirt, share last hugs and goodbyes. The crowd, including many local medical-cannabis dispensary owners and even famed cultivator Ed Rosenthal, chants, “Doctors, lawyers, not felons,” as the couple approaches the courthouse. Dale raises his arms in the air before the door swings open.

And they’re gone.