GOLD FEVER BURNS IN WEST PITTSTON MAN By Sandra Schimmel, Staff Correspodent for West Pittston News   Steve LaTorre caught “gold fever” in 1980.   After battling heat, insects, and the taste of crocodile while on a gold search in Peru, he’s still eager to take on the wilderness in search of the precious metal.   LaTorre, 41, spent years as a self-employed contractor in the Wyoming valley. He first began hunting for gold while in California in 1980. At that time, he was only looking for something pleasant to do with his children, Lori, 16, and Sammy, 17.   While working a dredge (a device to extract gold from a stream bed) along Empire reek in northern California, he found a half-ounce nugget.   “The excitement and enthusiasm of finding it were beyond words. I decided that I would try again.”   He made the nugget, which he estimates is worth $400, into a pendant for his father.   He returned his hometown of West Pittston and opened Latest Fashions Outlet, a women’s clothing store, but found himself frustrated by the day-to-day problems.   “As I sat by the phone and listened to all the traffic outside and complaints inside, my thoughts would wander back to that clear stream and the nugget I found,” he said.  So he dug into his savings to go to Peru in 1982, to a river known as Madre de Dios, said to hold some 35,000 tones of gold. LaTorre joined a 10-man expedition into the Amazon jungle.   He was aware of the dangers. A prospector may be cheated, harassed, even attacked, and the men were traveling into an area where no white men had ever gone before.  “It’s unsafe to search for gold with someone you don’t know well and trust completely,” says LaTorre seriously. “There’s something about a discovery of that kind that can bring out the worst in someone.”   The expedition found gold, but the take was disappointing because needed equipment was lost or delayed by the Peruvian government. LaTorre said he found enough gold to make a profit on the expedition if he had sold it, but that he kept the nuggets as souvenirs because it’s hard to get full value when selling gold.   “South of the equator, it’s hot and infested with bugs,” he said. “We’d gone through four cans of repellant, but the bites were all over everyone. My feet were so swollen from the sun that I had to keep my boots on.”   There was even a shortage of food. For two weeks, the men ate only rice and beans. Finally they shot a crocodile, partly to give them something to eat and partly to keep the crocodile from eating them.   “I hated to do it,” admits LaTorre, “but our guide said he was bad news in the water since we would be dredging just downstream. I wouldn’t take part in the kill unless we ate him, so that’s what we did.”   However, he didn’t care much for this exotic cuisine.” If I’d cooked and eaten my shoe, it would probably have tasted the same,” he laughs.   He was glad to be back home where he still operates the fashion store, but his “gold fever” is still unshaken. He’s planning another trip, but no farther than the southern United States where he says once-profitable fields were abandoned during the California Rush.