David R. Mendoza, owner of the well-loved Pazzo's in Eastlake, has been extradited from Spain and pleaded not guilty yesterday to smuggling over a ton of pot from Canada:

He came under investigation in September 2005, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents saw him and two other people at the scene of a 500-pound drop in the Okanogan National Forest in Eastern Washington, court documents say.

Mendoza has owned Pazzo's Restaurant in Seattle's Eastlake neighborhood since 1998, as well as the Liberty Theater in Bend, built in 1917. He grew up in the affluent gated community of Broadmoor in Seattle, and was class president at Garfield High School before graduating from the University of Washington in 1989.

But he also has a long history in drug trafficking, federal prosecutors say.

He was convicted of conspiring to import hashish, and to distribute cocaine and hashish, in 1993 in Seattle, and he was convicted in 1990 of cocaine possession.

Pizza and pot are the two great tastes that taste great together—so maybe Mendoza should be considered some kind of saint to local stoners? Resident pizza expert Bethany Jean Clement says Pazzo's is "totally decent" and "exceeds pizzeria-front quality." And Stranger readers love Pazzo's:

With all the “authentic” Neapolitan or New York-style pizzerias that have opened in Seattle in the past three or four years, bragging about their wood fired pizza ovens, Pazzo’s already had one, at least for the seventeen years I have lived in Seattle.