Criminal - Mother's Little Helper

Episode Date: April 24, 2015

Sandie Alger is a 71-year-old woman with a very long rap sheet. She was in and out of prison throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and upped her game each time she got out. Prison, she says, is where you move "up the criminal ladder, just like the corporate ladder." Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey

involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. I couldn't be a criminal now because I'm not that computer savvy.

So I'm so glad. Sometimes I say to people, thank God I stopped before they got, you know, all this stuff going. Because, boy, I don't know what I would have done. This is Sandy Alger. She's 71 years old and has a very long rap sheet. I remember the last time I ever got arrested. I was sitting in the back of the police car, and he was asking me questions. And he had that little computer sitting on his dashboard.

And I was like, oh my God, and my whole life was just coming up on the screen. I mean, you can't, before that you could lie and tell him all kinds of stuff. I gave them so many different names over the years and would get away with it. You can't get away with anything now. I'm glad I'm not a criminal. It would be way too hard. She was in and out of prison for most of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. And while Sandy was locked up, the world changed around her. She's like a bad guy from a nicer time. Times really did change.

People got more violent. I was never violent at all. Never carried a gun or any of that stuff like that. I always knew I could never, like, rob somebody at gunpoint, that they would take the gun away from me and shoot me with it or something. Sandy was born in Los Angeles in 1943, the oldest of eight children. She had a lot of responsibility around the house, not just because she was the oldest, but because her mother was in bed a lot.

She had what they called then nervous breakdowns, and she would have to be hospitalized every so often. And so she took lots of medications for all different things. She took dexedrine, which were a dexamil and all the different Dexa this and that and they were amphetamines to get up and then she would take Miltown which was a benzo that was before Valium and when Valium came along she took Valium and she would take sleeping pills, barbiturates and she had so many pills she had two medicine cabinets in her bathroom.

She had a lot of pills. But Sandy's mother didn't keep those pills to herself. And that's where this whole story begins. She was having a party. And she was not a good housekeeper, so our house was always a mess. And she wanted me to get the house all cleaned up for her party. So she gave me a dexedrine to give me more energy to clean the house. And it made me feel like queen of the world.

And I loved it. When the drugs come straight from your mother when you're only 12 years old, you're pretty lucky to make it to your 70th birthday. So here's the story of a smart-mouthed little girl in the 1950s, addicted to pills and hell-bent on doing what she wanted. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. I could talk. I loved people. I was friendly. I started losing weight so I wasn't chubby anymore because, I mean, they were diet pills. Anyway, I loved them. I mean, they were just, they were the answer to my dreams.

Sandy wanted more. She stole from her mother and asked around at school to see what other people's mothers had in their medicine cabinets. She says it wasn't hard. These were pills that would come to be known as mother's little helpers. This went on for years. Then she got six weeks into the 10th grade, dropped out, and ran away from home to reinvent herself. I went and got, I got a job at this little hamburger stand, and I got a room in a rooming house

where there was just, you paid by the week, and there was me and some old men who lived there, and the bathroom was down the hall, and those old men never bothered me. Amazing, when I look back on it now, I think, oh my god, you know, But then my mother found me, though, and tried to make me go home, and I refused. So they put me in juvenile hall for a few months, and then I got out of there and went home for a couple weeks and left again and never went back after that. By the time she was 17, Sandy was pregnant. She got married and gave birth to her son Billy.

But she didn't have a lot of money. Other people did. Okay, so in the very beginning I just used to go like to grocery stores and it was personal checks and I would buy some groceries and get cash. Basically, Sandy stole

someone's checkbook and had a fake ID made so that she could look like the account holder. It was before ATM cards, but you could still do the same thing with checks. So I would do that a lot. Were you terrified? Were you scared? What were you thinking? I was high. So, you know, I was probably bulletproof. And I know I was high, so I was probably bulletproof. And I know I was excited and thrilled when I got the money, always. I was always thrilled when I got the money. The thing about jail is it's really scary until you go. And then it's not scary at all. Because, I guess like jumping out of an airplane,

you know, it's really scary until you do it. She wasn't afraid of anything. She didn't care if she got caught. And she got caught an awful lot. In 1964, she was arrested for the first time and sent to the Los Angeles County Jail. That year, check forgery was the most common crime committed by women. But at 20 years old, Sandy was the youngest one there. So they just kind of took me under their wing, these old ladies, these old criminal ladies. Like if I were in jail today and some young girl came into jail that was like 20 years old. I would make sure nothing bad happened to her. And I think that that's how these old broads were with me.

That first time, Sandy was in jail for 67 days. The first time I got out of jail, I was still using pills. And then by the next time, I was shooting heroin and amphetamines, methamphetamine. So she moved on to heroin, and the other women in jail had taught her new ways to rip people off. Up the criminal ladder, just like the corporate ladder. I mean, that's what you do. I got caught. I went to jail. And that's where you meet more sophisticated criminals and learn and make connections to do more serious things. She was now walking into banks and presenting her fake IDs and withdrawing sums of money from other people's accounts. Large sums of money. $10,000.

As far as I was concerned, I had nothing to lose ever, and I wasn't hurting anyone but myself. Sandy's son was being raised by her sister, so she was on her own, shooting heroin and stealing money straight from the bank. And I felt that getting arrested and things like that were just an occupational hazard. In 1968, Sandy was sent to the California Institution for Women in the San Bernardino Valley. This would be her on-again, off-again home for the next 20 years. She was in and out of there like a revolving door.

The California Institution for Women was the only women's prison in the entire state. This remained the case until 1987. And so even though Sandy wasn't a violent criminal, she was in there with killers. She served time with some of the women in Charles Manson's so-called family, including Patricia Krenwinkel, who's still there today. By the early 70s, Sandy's criminal record included forgery of checks, forgery of prescriptions, possession of heroin, burglary, But were you a criminal? Were you doing these crimes because it was a way in which to get the drugs? Or which might be, you know, we hear that a lot. One becomes a criminal because they're desperate and they need the fix.

But it sounds to me like you really, you love the crime a little bit. I did. I loved both. And I think I was addicted to the crime as well as the drugs. In 1976, Sandy was arrested for possession of counterfeit money, a federal offense. First I started out, I was buying it. I was passing it, you know. And then I started just wholesaling it.

And that was fun, that was a lot of fun and exciting. I mean, there were times that I would have money strung across my kitchen and I would dye it with gray-rit dye and coffee to age it and crinkle it up and stuff, and then I would have it hanging up there with a blow dryer and blowing it off. She was sent to a federal women's prison in Alderson, West Virginia, where she found herself living alongside more women from the Manson family, including Lynette Fromm, aka Squeaky Fromm, the woman who attempted to assassinate President Ford in 1975, and Sandra Good, who carved an X on her forehead and sent 170 letters to corporate executives threatening to kill them because she believed they were polluting the earth.

Yeah, they were still nuns for Charlie, they called themselves. When I was in prison with them in the late 70s, they didn't have contact with him, but they still loved Charlie Manson. Sandy's stint in federal prison had done nothing to slow her down. When she was released, she landed herself right back in the California Institution for Women for possession of heroin. By the late 80s, she'd been addicted to heroin for almost 30 years.

That means a lot of her heroin use went on in prison. You have contact visits, so you can get it that way, and guards smuggle it in for money and things. So, yeah, it's pretty readily available in prison. And in federal prison, it was really readily available. All those smugglers, I guess they like to keep their hand in, you know, of stay in practice, whatever, I don't know. But, yeah, it was very readily available. All those smugglers, I guess they like to keep their hand in, you know, of stay in practice, whatever, I don't know. But, yeah, it was very readily available.

At one time I was in a co-ed prison. That was really nice, you know, for a drug addict girl. Why? Why was it really nice? Well, there was about 200 women and 800 men. That's why. I mean, I would just be whoever's girlfriend had the dope. That's what girls do when they're drug addicts. A lot. All told, Sandy was in and out of prison eight times. You know, I'd never been a grown-up that wasn't a criminal or a convict or a drug addict. Sandy was released from prison for the very last time in 1988.

Just a few days later, she checked herself into a rehab program called Delancey Street. She remembers the exact date, December 8, 1988. I knew it was the hardest one in the whole country. I didn't know anybody there who I'd gotten high with. I knew it was the hardest one in the whole country. I didn't know anybody there who I'd gotten high with, and I didn't know of anybody who was actually there getting high, like you do in a lot, or we did in a lot of programs,

people that were in the program, but they were still getting high all the time. I mean, like, what's the point of going to a program and trying to pretend like you're not high and being high? I mean, that just ruins your high. So I didn't want to go to a drug program and get high. What was it like? You said it is the hardest, it was the hardest. What is it like? Well, it's way harder than prison, I'll tell you that. Because you have to follow all these little piddly-ass petty rules. Everything is a rule. You can't talk to the men, you can't wear any makeup, you have to dress conservatively, you have to be polite all the time to people, whether you feel it or not.

All that stuff is hard when that's not what you're used to. She stuck with it. Sandy did her two years, and at the end of it, she didn't trust herself to leave, so she stayed. Not for two more years, but for 12 more years. Why did you stay there for so long? Well, at first I really didn't plan to stay two years, even though I said I would when I went there.

I just was going to stay as long as I could. And my real goal was to stay long enough to get off parole so I could be bailable if I committed a crime. But by the time I could have gone anywhere, I was changing. And I was starting to believe in it. All told, she was at Delancey Street for 14 years. Sandy's been clean since 1988, but that doesn't mean she doesn't think about it anymore. There's nothing else in the whole world like heroin because heroin is, nothing matters. It's no big deal, no matter what. If the house burns down, it's like, oh darn, the house burned down. That's one thing about heroin that even though I haven't used any for

what, almost 30 years, some days on really bad days, I can remember that feeling, and it would just be nice to be blank. Like if something horrible happens in your life, you would just like to blank out for about four hours or something. So did you have a ritual? Did you always shoot it in the same spot? Did you know that your veins were... No, you can't always shoot it in the same spot

because you burn that your veins were? No, you can't always shoot at the same spot because you burn out your veins. Like I have a terrible time right now when I go and have to have a blood test. They hate me at the clinics and I have to explain to them and apologize to them. I'm so sorry, but I was an IV drug user. And so you're going to have to go in this little tiny vein right here on my hand or something. And, you know, so, yeah, everything comes back to haunt you. Do you ever say to them, if they can't find a vein, let me take care of it? I don't, but I'm tempted a lot of times, you know. Just give me that.

At 71 years old, Sandy's living in Durham, North Carolina, and working with a program called TROSA. That stands for Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers. It was founded by a former addict Sandy met at Delancey Street. He invited her to come help him start a program for women addicts. There's nothing that a woman here can say to me that shocks me or makes me judge her or upsets me because I've done all the bad things already. The most important thing for my women is that they feel safe at all times. Many of them have never felt safe before they came here, ever as children or as adults. And so they have to feel safe.

There are 540 residents at TROSA. Only about 80 of them are women. So Sandy wants them to feel physically safe and taken care of. But she's in some pushover. She knows she's from a different time, a time when it was easy to give a cop a fake name or walk into a grocery store, smile, and hand over another person's check. Being a crook, at least one who deals with money, has become much more complicated. But being a drug addict, that hasn't changed so much. As convincing as addicts are, when you've been one, you can see through it all because you've done it, you've told all those lies already. Do you ever, does someone ever try to pull something on you and say, well, listen, I... Look, they try to pull things on me all the time because, you know, I'm 71.

I look like just some cute little old grandma. So they cannot imagine, you know, especially when they're new here, the lives that I've had. So sometimes I do have to tell them, honey, I was running that game so long before you were born, you know, before your parents were born. You know? Thank you. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Check out the other shows at radiotopia.fm. One of those is The Illusionist, which is a wonderful show about language

and how language is used. You should check it out. Radiotopia is trying to understand how you listen to this show and what we could do better. We've got a survey up at surveynerds.com slash criminal. It's quick and easy. Radiotopia from PRX is made possible with support from the Knight Foundation and MailChimp,

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