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“The purpose for this scientific investigation was to find which dog would find the cocaine fastest using it’s [sic] sense of smell,” Emma, 10, wrote in her abstract.

To pull off her experiment, Emma enlisted the help of her father, Detective Douglas Bartelt, and Detective William Pedraja and Sgt. Samantha Machado, according to her acknowledgments. They provided the dogs: Roger, a springer spaniel; Levi, a golden retriever; and Franky, a retired chocolate Labrador whose penchant for sniffing out pot grow houses is the focus of a pending Fourth Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

They also provided the cocaine, which is not specifically banned as a material by district science fair rules, according to a district spokesman.

Here’s how the project worked:

Put on plastic gloves. Place 28 grams of cocaine in metal box and hide box inside “Room A.” Release canine into room and begin timing. Stop timer when canine finds box. Move box into “Room B.” Repeat.

“It was kinda my idea, because I wanted to do my dad’s job,” Emma said Saturday, donning a blue ribbon pinned to a white dress and clutching a science project board beneath her arm.


“He handled the drugs,” she said of her husband. “He’s always very meticulous about how he handles drugs.”

Detective Bartelt was out of town on a training exercise Monday and unable to answer questions, according to Detective Aida Fina-Milian, a Miami-Dade Police spokeswoman. Fina-Milian said the cocaine in the experiment was a training aid used by the department’s canine handlers.

In a statement, school district spokesman John Schuster said the project “fits in with principles of investigation outlined in the handbook” for science projects.


Emma, he said, documented the search.

So what did Emma learn from the experiment, which showed that Franky, while retired, can still sniff out an ounce of cocaine in a mean time of 43 seconds?

“Hard work pays off.”

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