Sitting in a police cruiser in Norwich this summer, he was trying to hide how quickly his heart was beating.

The Waterford native, who preferred not to be named, was about to walk into a liquor store and make a purchase — a small feat, were he not 18.

"The first time I did it, I was very nervous," said the teenager, now a college freshman majoring in criminal justice. "Being a minor, you don't know a store as well as someone over 21 may. You're looking around, trying to find the cheapest thing and just want to get out of there as fast as you can."

The first store he entered didn't sell to him, he said, but the next did. With that, his jitters faded away.

The 18-year-old is just one of many underage volunteers who participate in undercover alcohol and tobacco compliance checks in the region, complex operations that often involve multiple agencies.

Since 2008, the Southeastern Regional Action Council — a nonprofit that helps 20 local municipalities address substance abuse and addiction — has been one of those agencies.

For compliance checks, the group's role is to find and train the youth who will participate.

Often, those participating also are involved with the SERAC Adolescent Learning and Leadership Institute, or ALLI, where about 65 high school students from seven schools meet monthly to discuss health issues and risky behavior prevention.

Sometimes, the volunteers are members of law enforcement groups such as the Groton Town Police Explorers.

In other cases, a minor who participated and enjoyed the experience will recommend it to a couple of his or her friends.

For all of them, the spiel is the same. They're to dress as they normally would while avoiding things such as Yale or UConn clothes that could make them seem older than they are.

They're to use their real, vertical, state-issued IDs and answer questions about their age honestly, and should make purchases with cash the police provide.

And, if a situation goes south — an overzealous clerk screams at a minor for attempting to buy alcohol, for example — they're to leave their IDs on the counter and leave the store.

"We are not trying to entrap them in any way," explained Michele Devine, executive director of SERAC.

In Norwich, for instance, she said, the stores were warned ahead of time. The municipal police departments, however, make the decision about whether to publicize the checks.

The 18-year-old, who also performed checks in Griswold Dec. 4 and in New London Dec. 10, knows that clerks' reactions can vary widely.

In Griswold, where an organization called Griswold PRIDE requested and funded compliance checks for the town using a portion of a SERAC grant, he walked out of five of the eight stores with alcohol in hand.

"Some clerks will say, 'Can I have your ID?'" he explained. "Sometimes I'll get, 'You're not 21, what are you doing, why do you need to drink?' But I had one (clerk) in Jewett City ask for my ID, say, 'OK, thank you,' hand it back and still sell to me."

He also knows the operations themselves can vary.

During the Griswold run, for example, police added the Best Way Gas Station to the original list of seven establishments after being tipped off that the store, without a permit, was selling alcohol.

When police discovered that the owner was indeed selling alcohol, they decided to see whether he would sell to a minor.

He did.

In that case, Griswold Resident State Trooper Adam Chittick said, police stepped in, arrested the store owner and temporarily shuttered the station on the spot.

More often, offending clerks end up with misdemeanor summonses and stores end up with a fine to pay. It's different in every place, Chittick said, but in Griswold the state Liquor Control Division determines the severity of the penalties.

It's extremely rare, Devine said, for the minors who participated to be called in to testify at a hearing.

In New London last week, a New London Community and Campus Coalition grant made the checks possible.

Now on his third go-around, the Waterford native gave the two other minors in the car tidbits, doing his part to make them less nervous than he was his first time participating.

To him, the plusses of his work with the checks are threefold: it could look good on a résumé, it's made him more confident in "life in general" and it has helped him build relations with officers in surrounding towns.

In Norwich, for example, he said police said he could come back for a ride-along any time he wanted.

"Most people think of officers as what you see on the news all the time, that officers are bad people," he said. "They're not — they're just doing their job."

By the end of the night, four of the 13 New London stores that were checked had failed. Police charged the following individuals with sale of alcohol to a minor:

*Eric's Liquor Store: Suellen Walz, 58, of 23 Fifth Ave., New LondonMontauk Ave. Package Store: Suryakany Patel, 60, of 35 Giovanni Drive, WaterfordThames River Wine & Spirits: Kyle Hatch, 29, of 209 Bank St., New LondonThe Packy: Pamela Jean Mercado, 56, of 23 Brainard St., New London

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Devine said SERAC is working to make compliance checks a more regular occurrence in the area. The more often they happen, she said, the better establishments seem to perform.

SERAC, she said, does offer Training for Intervention Procedures, or TIPS, to package stores and anyone else selling alcohol both ahead of time and after they have failed.

A typical TIPS session covers things such as how to identify whether someone is intoxicated and how to check IDs properly.

"This is not just going in and trying to catch them doing something wrong," Devine said. "We're offering plenty of opportunities for them to do the right thing."

l.boyle@theday.com

Twitter: @LindsayABoyle