By Scott Brinton
The 36-year-old, of Merrick, came to a stop at Emerson Avenue and Longfellow Street, he said. With no cars in sight, he proceeded across Emerson through the intersection. He was halfway across when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a car driven by what appeared to be a college-age man, headed north on Longfellow toward his rig.
In that instant, Grossman felt fear well up within him. "I was, like, this kid is going to hit us," he said, recounting the day, as he sat in the living room of his Old Lindenmere neighborhood home last Thursday.
The car apparently hit a patch of black ice and skidded, slamming into the rear-wheel section of Grossman's truck. Grossman thought the force of the crash against the virtually immovable garbage truck would have killed the driver, but he survived. Grossman was unhurt and found not to be at fault in the accident, he said.
But the incident was only the beginning of a weeks-, perhaps months-long ordeal that has left Grossman anxious and sleepless as he wonders about his future.
According to federal and state law, municipal drivers such as Grossman are required to take a drug test whenever they're involved in an accident in which someone is hospitalized or a car is towed, even if the crash isn't the city driver's fault.
The accident occurred at 7:45 a.m., and by 11:30 that morning, Grossman had taken a urine test at the Grand Avenue headquarters of Sanitary District No. 2 in Baldwin, one of five special sanitary districts in the Town of Hempstead.
Grossman said he volunteered for the drug test. He had no reason to contest it because, he said, he doesn't do drugs.
That's why Grossman was astonished when he learned days later that his test had come back positive for morphine, and that he was suspended for five weeks without pay.
Grossman insisted to sanitary district officials that he had never done drugs and that he had no idea where to even get morphine. Once in a while he has a beer with friends after work or a softball game, he said. He takes prescription Flonase or Claritin for allergies, but he hadn't used either since August.
His protests, however, were to no avail. The law prevented district officials from looking past the test results. Grossman's time away from work, meanwhile, will put a financial strain on his family. He and his wife, Stacy, vice president of the Old Lindenmere Civic Association, have two young children. Grossman said that between his job at the sanitary district and his personal contracting business, he works 70 to 75 hours a week.
Grossman said he's decent and earnest, an All-State wrestler as a teenager at Baldwin High School who now sponsors a Merrick Little League baseball team through his contracting company. Grossman said he wouldn't think of taking drugs because "I wouldn't jeopardize my family."
His wife, a homemaker who holds a master's degree in education, said her reaction was one of "total disbelief" when she heard that Jonathan's drug test was positive. "He does nothing," Stacy said about her husband. "He's such a good guy.
"He told me he feels like an innocent man being put in jail."
Sanitary district officials and workers said they're pulling for Grossman. Robert Nobel, the district's general supervisor, said, "I know Johnny. I'm confident there will be a reasonable explanation why the test showed what it showed."
On the day of the accident, Grossman's urine sample was divided into two bottles. The first, which registered positive, was shipped to a laboratory for testing. Last Wednesday, Grossman authorized the second sample to be tested at a different lab, believing that a mistake had been made on the first one. Sanitary District No. 2 paid for the first test, but Grossman must foot the bill for the second.
Now he awaits the second test's results, which are due late this week.
Grossman believes that a poppy-seed bagel he ate the morning of the accident may have thrown off the test results. The medical technician who took his urine sample insisted to Grossman that a poppy bagel wouldn't affect the test.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Web site, however, poppy seeds contain morphine and codeine and can cause false positives for opiates in urine tests.
Eating a poppy-seed bagel can produce an opiate level of around 250 ng/ml -- 250 nanograms, or billionths of a gram, per milliliter of blood -- three hours after ingestion. The federal government currently doesn't consider opiate levels below 2,000 ng/ml as substantive because of the high number of false positives found among federal workers in this range. The U.S. military sets the mark at 4,000 ng/ml, according to the U.S. Department of Health. Grossman was told that his ng/ml level was slightly above 2,000 for the first test, which he believes to be a false positive.
Dan Ryan, 23, a life-long Baldwin resident, also believes he was falsely accused of doing drugs after failing a recent urine test at Sanitary District No. 2. Ryan, a business-management major at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, said that he had been a part-time worker at the district for 3 1/2 years to help pay for college.
A $29,000-a-year, full-time position opened in January. Earning $13,000 annually as a part-timer, Ryan jumped at the job, in part because of the better pay with double the hours, but also because of the security of knowing he would have steady work when he graduates from college this summer.
Ryan, too, tested positive for morphine use. "At first, they told me it was cocaine, then it was morphine," he said.
As a part-timer, he wasn't protected the way Grossman is by the Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents Sanitary District No. 2 workers.
"I was given an ultimatum" by sanitary district officials, Ryan said. "'You can either be fired or resign.' To not have anything on my record, I chose to resign."
Tendering his resignation, Ryan said, hurt emotionally. Around Baldwin, he said, "I'm known as a good kid." In high school, he played football and baseball. As a child, he was involved in the Police Activities League.
Ryan also insisted that he doesn't touch drugs, but said that he does drink with friends. He, too, believes that his test was a false positive, likely caused by the poppy-seed rolls that he ate nearly every morning before heading to work.
Ryan said he had considered fighting the drug claim, but realized that he couldn't. Only one urine sample was taken the day of his test because he was simply applying for a full-time job. The result, therefore, was final.
"It's odd," said Ryan, "that Jonathan Grossman had the same exact thing come up, morphine, when we both say we didn't do anything."
Grossman, a CSEA shop steward at Sanitary District No. 2, said he is unsure what will happen next. He hopes the second test will come back negative. If it does, he can return to work with full back pay.
If it doesn't, however, Grossman must enter a drug-rehabilitation program or he will be fired from his job as a sanitation driver. The only way to avoid rehabilitation is to undergo psychiatric testing, he was told.
Grossman said he would give up his job before he would go through rehabilitation. Agreeing to rehab, he said, would be as good as admitting he's guilty of abusing drugs, when he's not.
Grossman said he will do anything now to clear his name, including having his hair tested for opiates, which is reported to be a more reliable gauge of whether a person uses drugs.
"I'm willing to cooperate in any way because this [drug claim] isn't true," he said.
