Home's now jail with murderers, models

The U31 SPF Prison in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Sharon Armstrong is being held on drugs charges. Photo / Bevan Hurley

It is supposed to be a fresh start. When her job at Pacific Law in Wellington ends unexpectedly last July, Sharon Armstrong headed across the Tasman to be closer to her family.

At first life in Queensland is idyllic. She finds a place close to her sister Leanne and daughter Ariana in Brisbane's southern suburbs, and catches up with her 8-year-old grandson.

But when she can't find work, she retreats into the virtual world of Facebook.

"Whether that added to my vulnerability or stupidity at the time that I made contact with this man, I don't know. I have asked myself that question a hundred times," she says in a prison cell interview this week.

"I have been a pretty strong, independent woman and chosen to live like that and put my whanau first. And then this person came into my life and promised the earth."

She accepts the man's friend request. Facebook messages turn to instant Chat, to Skype and then to phone calls. He showers attention on her and they are making plans to meet.

He suggests she should come to London so they can celebrate her 54th birthday.

By this time, Armstrong has moved back to Wellington to take up a short term contract with Maori education company Haemata.

The man buys her a return ticket to Buenos Aires, via Sydney, so she can pick up a highly sensitive work contract for him.

He isn't sure when it will be ready and says he will buy her onward ticket to London once she gets there.

He knows a place she can stay, the Hotel Caoca, and she takes a taxi there straight from the airport with her black suitcase.

Over the course of a week she doesn't see a great deal of this city of 15 million people, teeming with life.

Armstrong says she is worried about street crime and mostly stays within a three-block radius of the hotel.

Every day she speaks to her friend by phone. Just a few days more, he tells her, and the papers will be ready.

Lying awake at night with the horns blaring outside, she must wonder why this businessman had put her up in a mosquito-ridden, $30-a-night hotel.

But mostly, her thoughts are firmly fixed on the romantic reunion ahead.

The staff at Hotel Caoca remember her well.

"She was like my little grandmother," says the night manager, Pedro. "Always smiling and laughing, a lovely woman. She smoked a lot, and was always talking on her phone."

April 13

Finally the call comes. She buys the ticket, and heads out to the airport, tingling with excitement. All she has to do is pick up the case, and jump on the flight.

Then her bubble is burst.

An officer from the Policia de Seguridad del Aeropuerto pulls back the false bottom of her new case - to reveal a cavity packed with bricks of cocaine.

Armstrong almost collapses and has to be helped by medical staff.

"Shock doesn't quite express it," she says. "I have never, ever seen anything like that in my life. They told me that when they tested it, that if it turns blue, it was cocaine. And it did. It was surreal."

The next three days pass in a blur. She can't eat. Barely sleeps.

That night she is taken to the Unidad 28 central remand prison, and placed in a grotty cell. She spends the night on the concrete floor, wide awake.

The prison she's in now is the Ritz, she says, compared to Unidad 28.

April 14

In the morning, Armstrong is taken to a federal court building near Buenos Aires' main train station, Retiro.

She gives a full statement to an investigating judge, describing in detail what she knows - or what she thinks she knows.

Then she gives another statement to her publicly-appointed lawyer. Again, she tells the lawyer every last detail.

Her iPhone is confiscated so officials can check whether her calls and texts match up with her account of the past few weeks.

April 15

Calling from the prison, she finally manages to get hold of her family to tell them what has happened. She is taken back to the temporary cell, where she spends her 54th birthday.

April 16

Armstrong is taken to Unidad 31 where she is held in a cramped cell with 20 others, only one of whom spoke English.

After the horror of the past three days, she is a wreck.

The routine of prison life sets in. No breakfast, except maybe a cracker or a piece of fruit from the night before.

Lunch between 1pm and 2pm. Dinner between 6pm and 7pm. Three cookers where prisons make their own food. A prison cantina where they buy pretty much anything.

The bed has a thin mattress. At first she has nothing, but other inmates give her blankets.

The prison has a courtyard, 10m by 10m, where the inmates can stretch their legs and hang out washing. Prison officials bring in the phone each morning at 6am and take it away at midnight. That is her lifeline to the outside world, the only thing that keeps her sane.

Lights go out at midnight.

April 20

The story breaks in New Zealand. Then come the calls from journalists. New Zealand embassy officials visit her. They give her a journal, up to 27 pages. But she still hasn't been able to write about the first week.

April 21

Armstrong is placed on a special diet with no salt.

"I spoke to a nutritionist, I was concerned that so much of the food was really high in carbs," she says.

"One of the good things that might come out of this is that I might lose some weight. They have put me on to a special diet so I am getting vegetables and fruit and nothing with salt."

She meets a panel from the prison whose members ask her if she wants to work during her time there.

April 26

The New Zealander endures the "day from hell" - 22 hours being taken for a "routine medical check-up". She has creepy men breathing down her neck and nutty women for company while handcuffed for five hours in the back of a prison van.

April 27

I call in the morning and tell her I will be coming to visit that day. She wishes me luck.

I make it out to the prison at 10am. Five hours later I am thumbprinted and shoved into a wooden cubicle by a guard, a rugby fanatic.

Conversation turns to the Rugby World Cup as he orders me to strip naked. He jokes that the All Blacks might even win this time, as he prods suspiciously at the contents of my out-turned pockets.

Welcome to Unidad 31, home to murderers, mules and models.

In the wide open space of the gymnasium, some of the couples are having picnics, some are getting amorous.

Another inmate brings over a ham sandwich and a glass of coke.

"That's the kindness of the people in here," says Armstrong. "They really do want to help."

We head out for a cigarette in an outdoor space which doubles as the prison playground for children of the incarcerated.

Over the course of two hours our conversation ranges from her happy childhood growing up in a state house in New Plymouth, to the death of her mother when she was pregnant, aged 22.

"It turned my world upside down," she says.

She can't wait for the photos of her family to arrive, but knows it will be a bittersweet moment.

The former Maori Language Commission boss hopes to get an iPod on which to learn Te Reo.

She asks after the earthquake relief effort in Christchurch.

We go back in, the guard calls her name and she is led away. We share a hug and she's gone.

The guard takes my thumbprint again and tries to match it with the indistinguishable smudge she took on my way in.

April 28

The slim hopes Armstrong had of being let out are dashed.

She returns to the Argentinian court house where the judge confirms she will face a full investigation.

She is advised not to speak to the media any more.

In our final conversation, she wishes me a safe journey home.

"I would rather be locked up in here than have taken those drugs to their intended destination and caused all that damage to those people," she says.

"I couldn't have lived knowing I had done that."