Charlie Niggles spent Friday night tied to a wave-battered trap in 25-knot winds, his sunken boat beneath him, off the north end of Gardiner's Island.

After five cold, exhausting hours, a Suffolk County Police helicopter finally spotted him, and at 4 a.m. a Coast Guard boat plucked the bayman from his trap. Since then, his family and fellow baymen have expressed anger and disappointment at what they say was the failure of the East Hampton Town Marine Patrol to respond.

None of the town's three patrol boats was launched after Ed Michels, senior harbormaster, was informed that a boater was overdue.

Mr. Niggles had left home to lift his pound trap, which extends from Bostwick's Point at the very north point of Gardiner's Island, late on Friday. Normally he would have waited until Saturday morning, but that was when his son, Steven, was going to graduate from East Hampton High School, an event he did not want to miss (and did not).

"He went to lift the trap at 7 p.m.," Mr. Niggles's wife, Lisa, said yesterday. "My son knew it would take him about two hours. When he didn't come home, he went down to Folkstone, where his father launches his boat. He saw the truck, but his dad was not in.

"I said, 'We'll give it till midnight.' It was blowing about 25 knots and we knew it was worse on the island."

Ms. Niggles said her husband later told her that his skiff had taken three waves over the stern. "Everything shifted, the waves lifted the top of the fish box, and with the weight of the fish" the boat sank, soaking the fisherman's cellphone and the engine battery in the process.

The bow remained above water, which is where Mr. Niggles perched, tying himself to the trap for safety.

"He's a licensed captain, a bayman, I knew something's not right," Ms. Niggles said. "He's not out with buddies drinking a six-pack."

She said her son and her father, Harold Snyder, spent most of the night at the Gann Road headquarters of the town marine patrol. "They showed the two harbormasters on duty maps of where the trap was. [The harbormasters] told them they don't go out until first light," Ms. Niggles said.

She said the officers called their superior, Mr. Michels, and were told to call the Coast Guard.

Mr. Michels said yesterday that he received the call from his office at about 1 a.m. He insisted that "the Coast Guard had the case," and that a longstanding protocol had been followed.

At about the same time, Ms. Niggles called East Hampton Town police. The police relayed the message that a boat was overdue to the Coast Guard, which happened to have a patrol boat returning from a routine boating safety patrol in Sag Harbor. By 2 a.m. the Coast Guard vessel was searching for the missing fisherman.

Joseph Billotto, an officer with the State Department of Environmental Conservation police, was on board and called for a helicopter, which the Suffolk County Police Department launched at 3:20 a.m.

"The Coast Guard called me at 3:30 and said they hadn't found him. I was frantic," Ms. Niggles said. "I talked throughout the whole night with the Coast Guard, to the Montauk station, and to the Coast Guard boat. They said they looked in the trap and didn't see him, but they must have been looking in the wrong one."

Pound traps, which are used to catch finfish, are made of netting hung from wooden stakes that extend into the water from shore like a fence.

While the Coast Guard was looking for Mr. Niggles, Donald Mackay, the captain of the boat that runs between Three Mile Harbor and Gardiner's Island for the island's owners, the Goelets, joined the search. He and members of the island's security staff trained their headlights on Mr. Niggles's trap.

According to a spokeswoman for the Goelets, this helped the helicopter locate him and radio his position to the Coast Guard vessel, which picked him up at about 4 a.m.

"His boat was pretty much sunk and caught in the fish trap. There were heavy seas and he was about 200 yards off Bostwick Point," Officer Billotto said. The fisherman was brought him to the town dock at Gann Road on Three Mile Harbor.

"He's okay, but it could have been a whole different scenario. It was not handled right. Steven and my father pointed out where the trap was. He could have been home three hours earlier, but there was nothing from out of East Hampton. Maybe Michels should have come down to coordinate," Ms. Niggles said.

Mr. Michels said the criticism leveled at him and his department was not justified. He said harbormasters did launch at night. "We respond when we have to. We have the ability. In this situation, the search was turned over to the Coast Guard because they had a boat in the area. I kicked it up to them."

The senior harbormaster said that longstanding search-and-rescue protocol dictated that, when the Coast Guard takes charge of a case, it is up to the guard to call for further help if needed.

"I trained the entire Island on this issue," he said. "Their boat was at Gardiner's Island when the call came in. I was told, 'When this boat is exhausted, we'll use [the town's] Marine One to pick up the search. Save the boat for first light," Mr. Michels said, relating his conversation with Coast Guard officials.

The senior harbormaster also questioned why the police, Coast Guard, or his office had not been contacted before 1 on Saturday morning, when Mr. Niggles was expected at 9 p.m. Friday night. He said he had not been told who was missing.

"I didn't know it was a bayman. That's important because we get five or six overdues every week," meaning recreational boaters who are more likely not to arrive on time.

"If [one] is due at 11 p.m., and he's not back at 1 a.m., I'm not sure that's a Mayday status. If I knew it was a bayman, it would be different. I didn't get that information. I did the best I could with the information I had," Mr. Michels said.

"This is a screw-up of major proportions," said Brad Loewen, speaking, he said, as the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association, not as a Democratic candidate for town board in the November election. "Ed Michels did not do his job, and by not doing his job, he imperiled the life of a fisherman. That's it in a nutshell."

"I'm very angry at that. He is the person responsible for search and rescue in this town. The boss. He should have had the boats leave the dock. Three-quarters of a million-dollars worth of search and rescue boats built for such an operation."

"I can't find fault if there isn't a happy outcome, but not to make the search is unbelievable. Thank God it was June. If it had been May, he would have been dead," Mr. Loewen said.

Ms. Niggles said that, while her husband might have made his way to shore by hand-over-handing his way along the trap's twine, "he had his rain gear on, and figured someone would be sent for him."

"He knew he was alive. It was a lot harder for us."

AMAGANSETT

Gilchrist to Frederick Stollmack, Town Lane, $280,000.

Rubin to Richard and Linda Willett, Devon Road, $505,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

HME Dev. to Kenneth Johnson and Laurie Gordon, Long Pond Trail, $595,000.

Woodridge Home Bldrs. to Daniel and Joan West, Becky's Path, $290,000.

EAST HAMPTON

DeFalco to Gordon Avard and Wil Ameringer, Osborne Lane, $399,000.

Nappi to Alan and Barbara Glatt, Egypt Lane, $800,000.

Franklin to Gerald and Sheila Adelberg, Treescape Drive, $155,000.

Kabonac Corp. to Paul and Susanne Ryan, Carriage Court, $1,650,000.

Camara to Joanne DeFranca, Blue Jay Way, $205,000.

McCluskey to Phillip Davis, Montauk Highway, $175,000.

Smith to Monique Knowlton, Barns Lane, $340,000.

MONTAUK

Paige to Eric Olsen, Seaside Avenue, $260,000.

Tylin Realty Corp. to Montauk Communications L.L.C., $1,100,000.

NORTH HAVEN

Thomasson to Lisa Jones and David Hilder, Forest Road, $820,000.

NORTHWEST

Reali to Eileen and Vincent Fitzpatrick Jr., North Bay Lane, $230,000.

Wettereau to Peter and Monica Ressler, Swamp Road, $175,000.

SAG HARBOR

Hayes to Vincent and Diana Carvelli, Hampton Street, $180,000.

Sanders to Bert and Leonard Bennett, Meredith Avenue, $155,000.

Reiner to Vincent and Diana Carvelli, Notre Dame Road, $285,000.

SAGAPONACK

Traganos to Debra Geller, Sagg Road, $398,000.

Mishkin to Kenneth and Joan Miller, Jared's Lane, $1,225,000.

Lloyd to Jonathan Ezrow and Isabel Rose, Hildreth Lane, $650,000.

Schoenbach to Marrie Schmeelk, Bridge Lane, $1,210,000.

WAINSCOTT

Meltzer to Edward and Elissa Annuziato, Town Line Road, $1,900,000.

WATER MILL

Fraser to G. David and Janet Brinton, Deerfield Road, $925,000.

Someone has painted what appears to be a large but fractured American flag on slabs of concrete that fell onto Ditch Plain beach in Montauk from the bluff above. Some residents have wondered whether it is art or graffiti, or if it is meant to be patriotic or a criticism of the state of the union.

The broken flag rests on East Hampton Town-owned beach just east of the border between Shadmoor State Park and Rheinstein Park, which is owned and managed by the town.

Walter Galcik, who monitors Ditch Plain for the East Hampton Town Department of Natural Resources, said that a decision had not been made about what to do, if anything, with the mysterious art.

Personally, Mr, Galcik said, he would like to see it painted over, because it might encourage graffiti. And as a veteran of World War II, "It bothers me. I don't appreciate it."

"It's no big deal. There was a house there. It's not on the rocks, it's on a pile of house rubble. It's going to wash off anyway," said Stuart Foley, who owns the Air and Speed board shop on Main Street in Montauk, and gives surfing lessons within sight of the flag.

Lily Monahan, who runs the popular Ditch Witch food and beverage wagon, said she liked the flag. "I've heard that people complain because it's fractured. I think it's nice. Can't we interpret the flag in many ways, you know, like Jasper Johns?"

The broken concrete slabs that make up the mystery artist's canvas are remnants of the foundation of one of Montauk's grandest windmill dwellings. It was designed and built in 1928 by Richard Webb for Walter McCaffray, a Wall Street broker who held a dozen seats on the stock exchange. He called his estate Sandpiper Hill. Wooden statues of Indians marked its eastern and western boundaries. Beside the front door stood a statue of Capt. William Kidd.

Sandpiper Hill sat atop the present bluff, although it extended much farther seaward at the time. The beach below it was wide enough then for Mr. McCaffray to build a beach house; it was constructed in the shape of a boat, and had showers and a deck for afternoon cocktails. The estate also had a nine-hole golf course; all that remains of the course are drain pipes that protrude from the bluff. Mr. McCaffray committed suicide when the market crashed in 1929.

The estate was later donated to the Jesuit order, which sold it to Sidney Rheinstein, another stockbroker. Mr. Rheinstein died in TKTKTK. By 1976, erosion had undermined the foundation, and the house was demolished, although its windmill was sold to Peter Beard, who moved it to his property farther east. The mill burned to the ground a year later.

The concrete underpinnings, pipe, and tile from the basement sauna and shower room of the original house have found their way, ever so slowly, like a melting glacier, onto the beach. For years, pilings that were part of a bluff-buttressing bulkhead stood apart from the eroding headland. Not only did they indicate the sea's relentless landward march, but they also marked a favorite surfing spot still known as Poles, years after the pilings disappeared.

Tom Dess, superintendent of Montauk's state parks, said he was glad not to have to decide what to do about the broken flag.

"Is it graffiti, or is it not graffiti? Graffiti breeds graffiti. On the one hand, it adds spice. On the other hand, it's the American flag. Flags are not supposed be on the ground," Mr. Dess said. "Would I paint over it? The next winter storm will sandblast it anyway."

Sometime Amagansett residents Paul McCartney, Alec Baldwin, and Kim Basinger, as well as Mary Tyler Moore are lending their support to a Brooklyn-based group working to prohibit so-called "canned hunts" in New York State.

The canned hunt is one in which hunters pay for the privilege of killing animals within enclosed areas, even caged or staked animals including surplus zoo or circus animals.

John Richard, who has for three years led the effort to prohibit the practice, said that, to him, canned hunts include shooting preserves such as the Spring Farm in Sag Harbor, which releases ducks and other wild species of fowl into a large area to be hunted.

"It's a fine line," Mr. Richard said of shooting preserves. "If animals are not naturally living in an area, if they are maintained [for hunting] they are still confined."

Not Far Enough?

There is now no law against canned hunts, nor are they defined, which seems to be the reason that legislation has failed thus far. Mr. Richard said that the legislation has been "hung up over language."

A State Assembly bill and a matching Senate counterpart submitted last spring sought to ban the killing of animals raised in captivity that no longer have the fear of humans.

The proposed law made a special effort to protect "non-native big-game animals," like those that are retired from zoos or circuses.

The language in the proposed billsdrew a distinction between canned hunts and legal hunting and trapping, even that which takes place on licensed shooting preserves, although the latter are not specifically mentioned. The proposed law would also exempt the slaughter of animals as provided by the State Department of Agriculture.

However, opponents of the bills say they do not go far enough to define the hunts themselves so as to exclude hunting preserves licensed by the state.

Mark Lowery, a wildlife specialist with the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said the term canned hunt had different meanings to different people.

Ambiguous Meaning

"For some, releasing pheasants in a large shooting preserve is a canned hunt, or if animals are confined at all, even in a large area, if there is any fence at all."

Others, he said, believe a canned hunt is one in which an animal is caged, or tethered.

Mr. Lowery confirmed there was no state law that prohibited the canned hunting of surplus zoo or circus animals. "Unless the animal is protected as an endangered species, D.E.C. law would not apply. For the most part, animals can be dispatched," Mr. Lowery said.

No Specific Mention

A spokesman for the Spring Farm preserve said, "If they pass a law on canned hunts for old tigers and lions, that's fine with me. Where do they get people to do this? I don't know of any place in this state where people would pay for this. The way the [bills] are written, it does not include me."

Game preserves are defined in the proposed legislation that failed to pass in 1996, as places from which "captive animals are primarily dependent upon human beings for food and water."

However, the game preserve animals the proposed bill would protect are defined as "non-native, big-game mammals."

Another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of parcels that make up Southampton Town's Long Pond Greenbelt has fallen into place. Andrew Sabin, president of the South Fork Natural History Society, announced last week that the group would buy the old Bridgehampton Winery building and convert it into a museum, educational center, and the society's headquarters.

Mr. Sabin said the society had agreed to pay $390,000 for the two-acre parcel, which includes the building and an adjoining barn, and invest another $500,000 into the project to get it ready for opening by next summer.

"We've always liked the place, but the problem was it was going to be a golf course and clubhouse," he said. "It seemed like one of those impossible dreams. Once it became available, we jumped at it."

Gave Up Montauk

Mr. Sabin had announced two weeks ago that the society's effort to put up its museum on state land near the Montauk Lighthouse was on the skids. SOFO had been discussing this with officials for some time, but "basically we just weren't getting enough enthusiasm out of the state," Mr. Sabin said. "It just wasn't moving along."

Mr. Sabin is the owner of the Sabin Metals Corporation in East Hampton. An amateur herpetologist, he is the society's founder and chief supporter and is known for efforts to save the habitats of tiger salamanders.

The museum will require a major fund-raising effort, he said. "I want to see the society go on long after I die."

Joint Purchase

Last summer, the town and Suffolk County teamed up to buy for just under $1.8 million the remaining 70 acres that make up the winery property on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, after JOG Associates, a real-estate development partnership, had proposed a nine-hole golf course and 14 houses for the property.

Although the eastern half of the property, which is home to the endangered tiger salamander, has been eyed for preservation since the early 1970s, the western half was not considered attractive, even though it includes a number of small ponds. It had been disturbed by agriculture and the vineyard.

The town and county are expecting to finalize the purchase early next year. "We want to close simultaneously," said Mr. Sabin.

Town Supportive

"The town has really been supportive," he said. "They see this as a real asset to the community, and, while it may take some time, it's going to be first class."

Besides displays of the society's collection of preserved and live animals, Mr. Sabin said he would like to see "national and global exhibits so it won't get stale" and a regular series of lectures by "local and outside naturalists."

"We've also been discussing ways of working jointly with the Children's Museum of the East End to see if there is any fit between the two groups," he said. The society now offers tours and lectures to school groups.

Interpretive Hikes

The society wants to start a botanical garden of native species at the site. Because the property "has access to probably the most diverse flora and fauna in the State of New York," which is found in the greenbelt, Mr. Sabin said it would like to offer interpretive hikes and, perhaps, canoe trips in Long and Crooked Ponds, if an agreement can be reached with the greenbelt management committee.

"We want it to be a place where people can spend a family day, have a nice hike, and eat lunch on our deck," he said.

The society now houses its collection in a small building on property owned by Mr. Sabin off the Montauk Highway in Amagansett.

Last week, two teenagers were attacked by sharks on the Gulf Coast of Florida: A 14-year-old girl who was belly boarding far from shore was killed and a 16-year-old boy, attacked while fishing, lost his leg. So when lifeguards were alerted to sharks in and near the surf at local beaches over the weekend, swimmers were ordered out of the water, fast.

Strange as it may seem, very large sharks are spotted quite often this time of year between Wiborg's Beach in East Hampton and Amagansett. For reasons known only to them, basking sharks, some up to 20 feet long, like to cruise the area in single file with their mouths open. They are harmless, filter-feeding vegetarians, and as docile as cows, despite the shocks to the system their appearances have given surfers and bathers over the years.

On Saturday at about 1 p.m., a beachgoer at Wiborg's spotted a shark close to shore. Police were called, and they notified village lifeguards stationed at Main Beach. Two guards, Jay Brunner and Kevin Reale, raced to Wiborg's Beach by water scooter.

"Last year, I got in the water with one of the basking sharks - big, wide mouth. This was definitely different," Mr. Reale said. He said the 10 or 11-foot-long shark had a pointed nose and a curved tail fin, and was colored gray and black.

"I touched its dorsal fin and it slapped the side of the boat with its tail. It was three feet longer than the ski. It looked like a mako," Mr. Reale said, although he wasn't sure.

Guards ordered swimmers out of the water at Main Beach for about 90 minutes, so they could investigate further.

Swimmers were also told to leave the ocean at Atlantic Avenue and Indian Wells Beaches in Amagansett on Saturday afternoon to allow guards to investigate a second sighting. This time, it was a basking shark.

Sand sharks were spotted at the Atlantic Terrace beach in Montauk on Monday. Lifeguards went on the alert at Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays on Monday when a surfer said he had seen what he thought was a thresher shark about 150 yards from shore.

Rob Lambert, assistant chief of the East Hampton Town lifeguards, said yesterday that he was still hearing reports of troubling shadows at Wiborg's and Main Beaches. Mr. Lambert said he doubted that the creature was a mako shark, because they prefer to swim in warmer offshore waters. More likely it was a brown (dusky) or blue shark, he said.

A bull shark was thought to be responsible for the Florida attacks.

Mr. Lambert offered a theory about the shark sightings. At low tide, he said, small fish become trapped between a pair of sandbars just offshore - the second sandbar was created by this winter's storms, he said. Because the sharks like to eat the small fish, they follow them closer to shore than they would usually venture.

As Jay Schneiderman walked with a group of Ross School students along the oceanside cliffs in Montauk last spring, he had no idea that the unusual rock he'd found might turn out to be a fossil of an extinct tropical plant, perhaps as much as 65 to 120 million years old.

Mr. Schneiderman, who lives in Montauk, was teaching sixth-graders from the private East Hampton school about erosion and showing them how rain "carves out these incredible shapes in the cliffs there," he recalled this week.

He was pointing out evidence of erosion all around them, even on rocks worn smooth by the sea, when "all of a sudden I looked down at a rock that didn't look like the others . . . . It was quite heavy. It was hard for me to pick up."

Impression Of A Leaf

He lugged the 50-pound object up to the school bus and used a screwdriver to break it open along a thin fracture line.

The surface bore impressions from shells and debris, indicating the possibility of the presence of a fossil, Mr. Schneiderman said, but he wasn't expecting what he found inside: a "beautifully intact impression of a leaf." It turned out to be possibly as old or older than a dinosaur.

Photographs of the fossil - of a cycadeoid leaf about 4 inches long and 1/2- inch wide - were eventually sent to Paul Olsen, a paleozoologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y., who made the identification.

Now Extinct

Though he cautioned that his expertise was not in botany and said a paleobotanist should verify the plant, Dr. Olsen said this week "it was fairly easy" to identify the fossil.

Cycadeoids were tropical, nonflowering plants with very firm green leaves extending from a short trunk, like palm trees, though much smaller. Superficially, they looked like today's cycads, which include not uncommon house plants such as zamia and cycas, said Dr. Olsen.

He based his opinion on the appearance of the extinct plant, the appearance of the rock it was fossilized in, and the place where it was found, said Dr. Olsen, a professor of earth and environmental science at Columbia.

Cycadeoids were found in tropical areas, which, during the cretaceous period 65 to 120 million years ago, included much of North America.

That was before the Ice Age. The fossilized plant could not be less than 35 million years old, Dr. Olsen said, since only then did North America begin to cool off.

"This plant would have seen dinosaurs roaming," said the scientist.

Though it wound up in Montauk, the plant probably originated to the north and was carried along with the southward advance of glaciers as ice caps spread. The glaciers carried rock and other materials across the bed of Long Island Sound that eventually formed Long Island itself.

Shape And Color

The shape of the rock and its brownish-red color indicate that it is unlikely to be of another age group, Dr. Olsen said.

From the photographs he saw, the rock appeared to be silt stone - nothing unusual, said Dr. Olsen, but probably part of the big delta system that entered the Atlantic at the time.

It will take a specialist to say with certainty just what Mr. Schneiderman's fossil is, which will determine just how significant a find it may be. In any event, said Dr. Olsen, it is the only object of its kind he knows of from eastern Long Island.

Andrew Greller, a Queens College biology professor who is currently preparing an exhibit of Long Island cretaceous fossils, agreed that a botanist would have to study the find to know for sure what it is.

But if it is what Dr. Olsen believes it to be, a fossil from the cretaceous period, "then it's a rare find for Long Island," said Dr. Greller.

Larry Penny, director of East Hampton Town's Natural Resources Department, was the first person with scientific expertise to look at Mr. Schneiderman's fossil. He too identified it as a cycadeoid.

The Oldest Ever

Mr. Penny and others said fossilized wood and whalebones have been found around Amagansett and Montauk before, but no one remembers anything matching the potential age of Mr. Schneiderman's find.

Unless a plant specialist deems the fossil to be a previously unidentified plant, it will not add to the body of paleontologic knowledge, Dr. Olsen said.

It will, however, reinforce what is known, he said, and, more important, point to the possibility of other fossils, particularly of animal remains, in the general area.

"I'm sure there will be other fossils," Dr. Olsen said this week. "I'm certain."

Fossil Will Stay Here

However, he said there was no reason to believe more fossils would turn up where Mr. Schneiderman found his (a location The Star agreed not to disclose).

"It could be in a sand pit, or a house excavation," Dr. Olsen said, "not necessarily on the beach."

Mr. Schneiderman, who teaches science, math, and music at Ross and is the chairman of the Town Zoning Board of Appeals, plans to donate half of the fossil to a museum - possibly Yale University's Peabody Museum - but said the other half would stay on the South Fork, perhaps in a local nature center.

In the past, he has advocated building such a center at the county park in Montauk. "That I think would be the best spot," he said this week.

For nine years, while hiding down south from a 1977 police warrant for drug dealing, Moses Langhorne used heroin just once a year, when he came home for Christmas.

A superstar athlete at Riverhead High School, now 43 years old, he kept his habit at bay working as a long-haul trucker, buying his own house and a Cadillac, trying to "live right."

His perceived "control," however, did not help him avoid a second arrest for dealing, in 1996, after he had become a "businessman doper" earning much more than the $40 to $60 a day he was spending on heroin or black-market methadone.

Ten Months, So Far

But instead of being on the run again, or in prison, Mr. Langhorne is spending Christmas at A Program Planned for Life Enrichment, the APPLE drug rehabilitation center in East Hampton.

He has passed 10 months there so far, staring down the addiction that has dogged him for 21 years.

"I convinced myself I wasn't a junkie because I didn't pass out on the streets, but, after all those years of always having to have the drugs or the methadone within reach, it was tiresome . . . I wasn't out of control but I know I wasn't me, either," he said.

Off The Streets

For Mr. Langhorne and a few other residents, Christmas at APPLE is not the isolating experience one might imagine. His family is nearby and visits often, he said, and his years of running from police and driving around the country have steeled him against homesickness.

He and other APPLE residents said they were, in any event, better off "in the house" than on the streets.

"I know this is where I'm supposed to be at this moment. Being here, it's not the end of the world. There are a lot worse places I could be right now. My family loves me, and God will take care of my children," said Randi Perry.

Second Christmas

Born and raised in Southampton, she is 32 and spending her second Christmas at APPLE.

A former postal worker, she returned there three months ago in a second attempt to beat the powerful crack addiction that, during a seven-year downward spiral, cost her her job, car, husband, home, and custody of her small son and daughter.

APPLE is considered one of the more effective treatment programs in New York, although some clients complete the 12-to-15-month program and, like Ms. Perry, still stumble.

Of the 43 there this week, seven are back for the second time.

Extreme Isolation

Addicts have an extreme sense of isolation and loneliness, seeing themselves as insignificant, and teaching them to be responsible, valuable members of society is at the core of the APPLE philosophy.

For some who have never held a job or been part of a family, life in the house represents the first time they have ever functioned as part of a group and been accountable.

They sleep four to a room, share bathrooms, eat three meals a day in the communal dining room, and do nearly all the cooking, cleaning, and yard work together.

Group Therapy

They attend group therapy several times a week, face up to any legal problems, get a clean driver's license and a high school equivalency diploma, and start to learn a vocation.

The residents who are H.I.V.-positive, and a few are, get help controlling the illness and special counseling.

In the process, they make their way through five stages of gradually increasing responsibility to earn days outside the facility and other privileges.

In brief, up to 50 adults at a time are in varying phases of maturity that non-addicts are expected to achieve by adolescence.

"Internalizing a whole new philosophy takes time. Some come back here once, some make it after three times. They learn some things, but not enough to make it work entirely," said Alfred M. (Tony) Endre, the project director since the East Hampton center opened six years ago.

Managed health care and welfare reform have limited the length of stay, and Mr. Endre said he worries too many residents are forced to leave before they should.

Some don't leave even after they complete treatment. Of 10 staff members, six are former addicts.

Gina Donlon was hired by APPLE a month ago as Mr. Endre's secretary. She and Rose Barton, now a therapy aide, continue to live at the center as they take cautious steps back into the world.

Mr. Endre, himself a recovered addict, founded Odyssey House years ago and later designed counseling programs for addicts at Rikers Island. The East Hampton community's support for APPLE is unique in his 32-year experience, he said.

Community Support

Town officials and concerned residents went looking several years ago for a reputable agency to help local people in need. They chose APPLE, the largest in Suffolk, and helped the agency build the sunny, spacious, spotlessly clean center at the end of Industrial Road and start an outpatient counseling program, on Main Street, East Hampton.

Each year, the town has continued its financial support.

"Communities are usually trying to chase us out, but East Hampton is an enlightened and progressive town," said Mr. Endre, adding that APPLE and its clients, about a quarter of whom are from the East End, seek to serve the community and have been embraced in return.

Active Volunteers

Not surprisingly, though, there are many East Hamptoners who don't know there is a rehab center here. And "there are some East Hampton people who are actively avoiding that information," said Mr. Endre, with a wry smile.

APPLE residents adopted the entire length of Daniel's Hole Road to keep it free of litter. They volunteer as stagehands at Guild Hall and camera operators at LTV, just up the road.

They have painted the East Hampton Day Care Center, gone shopping for homebound seniors, marched in the annual Santa parade, and helped move the belongings of dispossessed families.

In The Schools

They and their counselors go to local schools to talk about addiction and recovery, and some clients have come to APPLE as a result of those encounters, said Bob Poli, the center's operations manager and Mr. Endre's assistant.

The East Hampton Presbyterian Church lends its driveway for weekend car washes to raise money for outings and entertainment. On Saturday, APPLE residents helped unload a Home Sweet Home truck full of food donated by King Kullen to the Town Senior Citizens Center.

Volunteerism, said Mr. Endre, is an important APPLE tenet, one way clients are taught to see themselves as contributing members of society.

Holiday Trimmings

"By the time they get here, they are liars and thieves and they have nothing . . . empty shells with no sense of significance. We get them to reflect on what's missing."

One afternoon last week, about two dozen residents helped decorate the house for the holidays. They trimmed a giant tree donated by Treasure Island, a shop in Wainscott, and a few climbed the roof to hang lights and wreaths they had made of evergreen boughs.

Christmas carols, some with a hip-hop beat, were playing on a boom box. A few residents sang along.

What's Missing

Most seemed to be pulling each other into the holiday spirit, even as they were self-consciously eyeing the visitor in their midst. Just one or two - the newest arrivals - resisted, sitting outside smoking cigarettes or alone in the dining room.

"The focus during the holidays is on the things that are missing right now - families, children - and on the positive sacrifice, how they're working to get back to their families," said Mr. Endre.

Relatives are invited to a giant Thanksgiving feast each year but Christmas Day passes with no visitors, a time for shared contemplation. Loneliness, made worse by the season, can be overwhelming, but residents help each other out of the blues, he said.

Drug abuse is a peer-pressure process and so is the way out, say APPLE administrators. "Reach one, teach one" is an APPLE adage that was repeated a few times that afternoon.

"Addiction is selfish and masturbatory. . . . When you bridge the isolation and loneliness and share yourself, well, there's a spiritual quality to being my brother's keeper," Mr. Endre explained.

At 27, Lisa Meguin is making her third attempt to master an addiction to alcohol and powder cocaine. She tried detoxification twice before, in a short-term program at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, once after being hauled into Family Court as a juvenile and once to appease a boyfriend.

Long-Term Treatment

The boyfriend is gone and Ms. Meguin joined APPLE in October, after her family urged her to seek long-term treatment. This is her first Christmas away from her family, who live in Copiague and visit on weekends.

"I am used to celebrating Christmas and I know this year will be different, but I believe it's best for me to be here," she said. "If it takes a year, then it takes a year. After all, for 13 years I was using." She shrugged.

Ms. Meguin lost a job with Cablevision because of "absenteeism," she said.

She is fairly typical of APPLE patients in that regard, although Mary Cannon, the vocational counselor, has seen the broadest possible range, from a medical doctor to residents who cannot read or write and have never held a job.

Changing Lives

The doctor eventually switched to research - "There are too many drugs in a hospital," said Ms. Cannon - but most patients are given math and reading tests, remedial help, and an assessment of the types of jobs they can and want to do.

"Watching people change their lives, that's the ultimate Christmas gift for me," the counselor said.

Mr. Langhorne said he tested at a third-grade reading level when he first came to APPLE and has progressed four grades since then. His plan for life outside the house is very specific: a long-haul trucking job and a "family home" he will build with his two grown sons and an uncle.

"I don't have to be the best anymore, but I do want to be in the game. This is a training camp: When the coach calls, I'll be ready," he said.

APPLE residents will spend Christmas Day singing carols, drinking eggnog, taking pictures, and exchanging small presents - "the things we weren't used to doing in the street, and that some of us never did," said Ms. Perry, citing one woman who came to APPLE this year at 37 and was thrown her first-ever birthday party.

As for herself, said Ms. Perry, crack caused such an intense craving that it made her do "the unthinkable." She gave her children to her ex-husband and his mother, who live in Virginia, and ended up back in South ampton with her parents when she became homeless.

She was eventually asked to leave there as well.

Wait Till Next Year

Now she talks to her children by telephone and sends cards, and her parents visit on weekends.

"I like that. It gives them a chance to see how I'm living now, and hope that they'll have their daughter back in their lives, and for me to make amends."

"It is more difficult during the holidays," she acknowledged. "There's no drugs in my system, so I really feel the emotions."

"I feel sad and guilty because I'm not with my children. It's hard sometimes. But I try to think of next year, when I won't have to be away from my family."

Rudolph Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City who bought a house in Water Mill in January, told the class of 2005 at Pierson High School that graduating is no small feat, and that they should be proud of the accomplishment. "Not everybody graduates," he reminded the class of 58 on Saturday evening.

A student, Alessandra Novak, was responsible for convincing Mr. Giuliani to speak at the ceremony. "I wanted a big wow to end the year," she said.

And a "wow" is what Ms. Novak got, though it took persistence and persuasion. When she met Mr. Giuliani, by chance, at Barrister's restaurant in December, she made her pitch for the first time. "I told her, 'I'll think it about it'," Mr. Giuliani said during his speech. "Then I forgot about it."

With the help of a Pierson guidance counselor, Ms. Novak wrote Mr. Giuliani a number of letters imploring him to accept her invitation.

"She'd make an excellent lawyer," said Mr. Giuliani, an attorney himself. He told the class that every career begins in high school, where students learn "principles that help you get through difficult times."

The class of 2005 was just beginning its freshman year of high school when the events of Sept. 11, 2001 took place. "We went through something together," the former mayor said.

"No matter when you grow up, you grow up in a difficult time," he said. "You are going to face difficulties and you are going to face tragedies. Dealing with difficulty is a part of life."

Mr. Giuliani encouraged the graduates to set a goal for themselves in life. Like a sea captain, "You can change it, alter it, but you've got to have it," he said.

He advised the class to be optimistic. In the face of disaster, perhaps referring to his own experiences as a mayor, he said to "constantly look for a solution" and to become "the calmest person in the room - even calmer than you feel." Those who panic "only see exits that are blocked."

He advised them to always be prepared, and said that the first step in "relentless preparation" is a good education. Mr. Giuliani also advised the group to consider how they can contribute to the community and how they can help others, because, he said, "we're social animals."

The Teachers Association of Sag Harbor recognized eight students at the graduation ceremony on Saturday. Scholarships were awarded to Gabriela Garcia, Per Sandell, Chelsea Stoutenburgh, Jake Haugevik, and Ailish Bateman. Recognition awards were given to Scott Parry, Jared Schiavoni, and Emily Toy.

Outgoing East Hampton Town Board Republicans, in a parting gesture of defiance, last Thursday night approved a hotly debated measure to expand the Town Trustees' authority over waterfront development.

The incoming Democratic majority, however, called the action futile.

Supervisor Cathy Lester said the new board's "first order of business" would be to repeal the Trustee environmental review permit, as the law is known.

Another Hearing

The new law gives the Trustees authority over all waterfront land in town, except in Montauk. And it appears that the law may take effect for at least a month before it can legally be overturned.

Cynthia Ahlgren Shea, the returning town attorney, noted the town was required to file the approved law with the state within five business days, meaning by today.

The Democrats cannot repeal it without a new public hearing, she said, which cannot be held until late January or early February because of advance-notice requirements.

At that time, she said, the comments made at the hearing should be a factor in the board's decision to repeal or not.

Indignant Councilwoman

Still and all, Ms. Lester admonished the Republicans for adopting lame-duck legislation at their last formal meeting as a majority and said overturning that night's 3-to-2 vote would be the Democrats' "first order of business" when they took control at the annual organization meeting, on Friday, Jan. 2.

"It's very unfair to not even give this a chance," countered Councilwoman Nancy McCaffrey, with obvious frustration.

Mrs. McCaffrey, who leaves office on Wednesday, sponsored the resolution to adopt TERP. The idea to expand Trustee powers originated with Councilman Thomas Knobel, who likewise leaves office next week.

Z.B.A. Excluded

The law will, at least temporarily, eliminate the Zoning Board of Appeals from the review of most waterfront projects. All such projects are now reviewed by the Z.B.A., and by the Trustees as well when Trustee-owned land is involved.

Jay Schneiderman, the Z.B.A. chairman, said a few pending applications could be called into question while TERP is in effect.

"Terminated"?

One is that of Dieter Hach, who applied for a variance to build a revetment off Louse Point Road in Springs and was required by the Z.B.A. to perform an environmental study first.

In another, a hearing on Andrew Marks's plan to rebuild and expand a retaining wall on the eastern shore of Three Mile Harbor was adjourned to mid-January.

Richard Whalen, the deputy town attorney who drafted the TERP law, said he believed those and similar applications will be "terminated" by its passage.

The Z.B.A.'s jurisdiction over them will end, he said, and the property owners will have to start all over again by applying for a Trustee permit.

Wait For The Dust

It is conceivable, said Mr. Whalen, that the Trustees could make an entirely different decision from the Z.B.A.'s - in Mr. Hach's case, for example, by granting him a permit and ruling the study unnecessary. But, he said, that was unlikely to occur before the new Town Board repeals the law.

"The smartest thing would be for these applicants to wait until the dust settles," said Mr. Whalen. Their Z.B.A. applications will probably continue when that happens, he said.

Mr. Marks's retaining wall was on the Trustees' agenda Tuesday night.

The public response during an August hearing was evenly split, though both Democrats and Republicans have claimed overwhelming support for their position.

Harks To Trustees

Supervisor Lester and Councilman Peter Hammerle voted against TERP last week. Councilman-elect Job Potter, whose November victory created the Democratic majority, told The Star he too was opposed to TERP and would vote to repeal it.

But Mr. Potter said he heard an underlying message - that the Trustees' authority needs to be acknowledged and strengthened in some way. Perhaps, he said, the Z.B.A. and the Trustees could hold a joint hearing on each application for developing the Trustee-owned water front. There are, he noted, just a few per year.

"And I would hope [the Trustees] make better use of the Planning Department than they do," he said, adding the election of four Democrats as Trustees, just one short of a majority, could make that more likely.