Locked In with Ian Bick - Violence in Prison: Bubba Gets Jumped by The Guards | Gary Shirey

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

In our final episode of 2023, we're joined by Gary Shirey, who bravely opens up about his gripping journey. From grappling with addiction and facing time behind bars, Gary shares not only the challenges but also the captivating tales that emerged from his experiences. Discover how he triumphed over addiction, pivoted to launch a thriving food truck business, and ultimately transformed his life. Join this channel to get early access to new episodes & Behind the Scenes Content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvVklIft6DMelVW18M0oBw/join Big thanks to www.findagreatattorney.com for sponsoring this episode. Are you in need of an attorney? Visit https://findagreatattorney.com/ to find the best attorney for FREE. Follow Ian Bick on Instagram: @ian_bick & Snapchat: ianbick Connect with Gary Shirey: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gary.shirey.77?mibextid=LQQJ4d Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bubsgrubs302?igsh=MWx3dXBodGlocTZ6eg== Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Connect with Ian Bick: https://www.ianbick.com Time Stamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:19 - Growing Up in Delaware 00:04:52 - Giving Back to the Youth 00:07:20 - Personal Accountability and Growth 00:09:48 - The Beginning of Addiction to Drugs 00:12:22 - The Impact of Absent Parents 00:14:51 - Impact of Fatherlessness 00:17:22 - Dealing with a Father in Jail 00:19:55 - The Consequences of Choices 00:22:11 - Living in the Shadow of my Father 00:24:50 - Arrested and Betrayed by a Friend 00:30:00 - Stolen Four-Wheelers and Police Chase 00:32:22 - Running from the Cops 00:34:40 - The Escape and Hideout 00:36:54 - Bunkmate 00:41:46 - Inmate vs Guard Altercations 00:43:59 - Dealing with Life After Incarceration 00:46:28 - Fighting for Custody of My Children 00:51:24 - Strained Relationship with Father 00:53:56 - Issues with Paternity and Family Dynamics 00:56:32 - The Importance of Family Connections 00:59:06 - Starting My Own Business 01:01:22 - Buying the Box Truck in the Rain 01:03:49 - The Scary Brake Failure Incident 01:06:12 - Surprised Supporters 01:08:30 - Building the Best Food Truck 01:10:46 - Overcoming Adversity 01:13:16 - The Essence of the Topic Powered by Creative Evolution Studios https://creativeevolutionstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It admitted me in there, and I was, I got put in a cell with this old man. He was on the bottom bunk. And you know how people are about the bottom bunk? They're like, it's my bottom bunk. And I was like, look, bro, and I know this is going to be a long night. You might want to get on the top. Oh, no, I'm not getting on the top bunk. This is my boy.

How are you going to tell me? You're going to come in this cell thinking. I was like, all right, 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm throwing up. Throw up smack the side of the wall and slid. Man, it's all over the old man, man. He's trying to talk to me. I'm still throwing up.

And I told you, you should have got the top boom. In our final episode of 2003, we're joined by Gary Shiree, who bravely opens up about his gripping journey from grappling with addiction and facing time behind bars. Gary shares not only the challenges, but also the captivating tales that emerge from his experiences. Discover how he triumphed over addiction. pivoted to launch a thriving food truck business and ultimately transformed his life. This episode is brought to you by find a great attorney.com. If you are injured anywhere in the country, visit find a great attorney.com, a free service that can find you one of the best lawyers in your area.

You focus on getting better and they'll do the rest. Huge thank you to my friends at find a great attorney.com for sponsoring this episode. Wow. 2023 is over. What an amazing year it's been when I started this podcast back in January. I never knew it would grow to where we are at now so quickly. I really appreciate everyone who tunes in who shares the podcast to their friends, who leaves comments with tips on how I can improve as an interviewer,

who takes the time to reach out to me on Instagram and message me how the show has changed their life or how they want to come on and share their story. Building this has been the experience of a lifetime, and we have so much more to accomplish and build in 2000. and I can't wait to do it with you guys. And you know, a lot of people ask me what they can do to help this show. Honestly, it's simple. Just share one of your favorite episodes with a friend.

Pick an episode that has impacted your life in a positive way. And just share it with them. Let them know that it changed your life and that maybe that episode can too. Thank you, everyone from the bottom of my heart. And I hope you sit back, relax, and get ready to lock in with Gary Shiree. Gary, welcome to Locked in, man. How are you today? Oh, man, I'm all right.

I'm all right. Andrew Hager introduced us a few weeks back, and we got you on the show today. Where are you coming to us from? Man, Delaware, a little nothing state, man. You could literally drive through Delaware, I think, in two hours. Yeah, I think you're the first person from Delaware maybe on the show. That's amazing. We have a lot of Pennsylvania people, but no one from Delaware.

So you're the first on there. Absolutely. Did you grow up in Delaware or you grew up somewhere else? Yeah, born and raised in Delaware. In Delaware, really? Yes, sir. What was that like? Like, what was your childhood like?

Crazy. Like, all over the place, up, down, and in the middle. I was raised by Strong Mom. I could say that. She was definitely an amazing woman, always willing to put somebody else first before herself. And it trickled downhill to me, because it doesn't matter what I went through.

I got a great heart, and I just love to give back. So I just try to be a positive influence. My dad, he didn't make the right choices in life. He had eight kids. Eight kids? Different women? A few of them are different women. Yeah, a few of them are different women.

He didn't make the right choices. He wound up committing a murder in 2001, and that cost him natural life in jail. He was actually on death road. They overturned a death penalty in 2016. he got resented to life without the possibility of parole. And it's crazy. It affected me a lot.

It really did. I still remember he borrowed an M&M CD for me. It was a CD that I wanted. I really wanted it. And my mom took me and my brother and my sister over there to the house to try to find my M&MCD after he killed this girl and set the house on fire. So we actually walked in the trailer that my dad could. the murder and it scarred me in the worst ways, but my dad taught me a lot.

He taught me a man I never wanted to be like. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be a father to my kids. My childhood plays a big part in where I'm at today. I wanna give back to the youth and give them something positive to look up to. I had a bunch of adults around me that weren't positive influences. It's up to us, you're 28, I'm 28.

When we're great, we're great. Growing up, it's up to us to reach back down to the youth. Everybody wants to help grown and capable adults that have 24 hours in the day just like we do. But I think the most important part is giving them kids something to look up to. I probably started carrying guns when I was 12 or 13 years old, guns that were bigger than me. It didn't bring me nothing positive. My first gun charge at 12 years old, they tried to kick me out of school. They told me that I wasn't able to attend school, even though I didn't bring the gun to school.

But because I called a charge outside of the school that was a felony charge, they put me in front of the school board. They tried to kick me out of the school. Luckily, they didn't get me kicked out. But I wound up veering off from the path to school with my choices. I was in and out of juvenile detention facilities. As I started to grow up, I was surrounded by negativity. Bless my grandmother's soul. I love her to death.

She was into extracurricular activities. She wanted to try to give back to people, but she was in the streets selling drugs. You know, that's... Your grandmother was a drug dealer. My grandmother was a drug dealer. She was a good drug dealer, though. You know what I mean? I don't know if they said they had them, but she was.

She really was a good drug dealer. She had a great heart. How old was she just up? to put in the image in people's mind. Was she older? Like an old grandmother? My grandmother passed away at 54, but she was battling throat cancer since 95.

So my grandmother was very frail, like very, very small. And they had given her radiation therapy, or radiation for cancer in her throat. And the radiation burnt up her esophagus flap in her throat that goes back and forth from your air to your liquids. and so my grandmother couldn't properly eat or drink anything and her voice, it sounded like this.

Like, that's how my grandmother talked. But she was a great woman. I gotta say that. People tend to judge when they say, oh, she was a drug dealer. She wasn't no good. No, my grandmother would sell you drugs and tell you how to get off them and you need to stop using them. But the way she looked at it was,

if you didn't get them from her, you was going to get them from somebody else regardless. And that's the world that we live in. I was a drug dealer myself. I wasn't no kingpin. I wasn't El Chapo out here or nothing. But I was making negative choices to feed my addiction and my way of life. When I outgrew it, I realized that it was negative.

You know what I mean? I understand that I was the one wrong. I had to take accountability for myself. As a juvenile, you couldn't tell me nothing. I couldn't take accountability. I couldn't understand that it was my fault that I was in the situations I was in. It wasn't nobody else's fault. I literally had to grow through what I went through to get to where I am today.

When I was 17 years old, they wanted to send me to this Ferris program. It's in Wilmington. It's a juvenile detention facility. But I knew and my mom knew that if I went to Ferris, it wasn't going to help my situation. It was going to put me around more kids that are doing the same things that I was doing, if not worse.

So I was probably going to come home a lot worse than I went in there. So we pled to get me in this bridge program. It was in Northeast Philadelphia. It's like called Crossing Over to a New Year or something like that. Which it was a great program. You know, I never take that from them.

They sent me to, Bucks County Technical High School and I got a culinary arts degree and they also sent me to Temple University at 17 in Pennsylvania. You can take a GED testing at 17 years old. So I wound up getting my GED, which is equivalent to a diploma. It's not a diploma, but it's equivalency to a diploma. And I got that at 17 years old. So I was coming home at 18 and 2013 the same year that I was due to graduate regular school and I already had my GED. I should have. went on the right track, but no, I did not. That I was already using percocets before I went into the juvenile programs.

I was 13 years old when I started on percocet. I was in juvenile detention facilities on the Medwatch bunks where they have you out. They can't lock you in a cell room. They have to put you on a bunk on the floor so the nurses can come through and check on you. Make sure you're not dead. When I told them how many 30s I used to sniff, I would, I would sniff four or five 30s at a time at 13 years old. And they looked at me like I was retarded. It's I was.

You know what I mean? The choices I was making were retarded, obviously. When I went to this program up in Philadelphia, I had only used percocets before I went in the program. As I came home, that's when the heroin had really hit. Heroin has been around. but it was never really in the lower parts of Delaware like that. It was more so Wilmington, Kensington area up in Philly, those were the areas where the dope game was really popular.

When I came home in 2013, that's when it really hit me that heroin was coming around. And everybody was like, oh, it's just like a percocet. So Curiosity killed the cat, and I wound up trying this heroin. And yeah, I felt the effect just as I was with the Percocets. The only problem is heroin builds up a tolerance very fast. Like, you've never used drugs before. If you started using heroin, it would only be a matter of time that the heroin addiction started to build. And the little bits of heroin that you used to do wound up being a lot.

Just like the Percocet addiction. I started small and it got bigger. at the peak of my addiction I was shooting up 39 bags in a shot three bundles of heroin and a big spoon and I shoot it in my veins and I'm grateful and blessed

that I'm not dead I literally had a needle break off in my arm like that was interesting what happens when that goes down it's still there the needle's stuck in your arm

permanently you don't want to get that removed they told me they would do more damage trying to remove it than if they just left it in there. So if I died, I told them I'd blame the hospital because I went there to get help. But I was just like holding my arm. I was like, it's broken. It's there. I see it.

And then when I moved, it was it. What was that feeling for you that made you want to keep doing drugs? What was like that rush you got from it? It's not really a rush. Like I don't encourage anybody to do drugs. I was mentally going through it. I felt lonely, abandoned, didn't have anybody positive to look up to. Love my mom to death.

My mom always worked so much that she couldn't be there as the emotional parent side of things. My dad, he's a really a piece of work, you know. He's one of them, agree to disagree. He don't want to come to a common ground. He don't understand that, you know, You have a view on life and he has a view on life and we should come together to understand. He's more so. It's my way or the highway.

And if you don't want to talk to me, it's okay. They got a global tell link text app now in Delaware. I don't know how it is over here, but you can text people in jail and send them messages and whatnot. Yeah, they have that in the feds. Yeah. So my dad blocked me, okay? That's like a female thing. You know what I mean?

Like, you blocked me and you're doing life in jail. you need me to be there, not the other way around. And I have to pay to be there to talk to you. You see what I'm saying? So that bothered me a lot. It really has bothered me in my process because out of all the people in your life that should be there for you, your parents should definitely be there to support you. And yeah, he couldn't do much from jail, but he could have been there more than he has been.

My dad has always chose women over his kids, and we know that. You know what I mean? Him choosing a woman, he didn't choose or he killed her, you know, over his own selfish feelings. He could have walked away from that woman. You know, there's plenty of fishing to sea, as they always say. He literally selfishly killed this woman and set the house on fire while he was on house arrest. You were done before you pulled the trigger the first or the second time. You know what I'm saying?

but the ripple effect is I know her kids. I know her grandkids that will never know their grandmother because my dad killed her. You see what I'm saying? That's the deep part that people don't think about is your actions today can negatively impact somebody else. So why negatively impact people when you can be a positive impact of people? And that's what I live for today. And the last month I fed a thousand kids on my food truck. just trying to be a positive influence because I didn't have positivity in my life growing up.

Do you think because you didn't have that positive influence that led you kind of down a bad path? Like if you had a father figure growing up and it was a stable family, do you think your life would have ended up differently? Not that you don't want it to be the way it is now, but do you ever think about the what-ifs of I could have had a much different life if that stability was there? So a lot of people live in regret. I don't.

Everything that I went through made me the man that I am today. It brought me out here to see you. I was nervous, very nervous, like, to be out here on a podcast show, talking to people. But I know that if I would have had that support, it would have changed a lot. It really would have. I can't say that life could have been any different because I've seen people that come from good homes, good surroundings, good father figures, and they veer off to do everything wrong because they think that these people are leading them the wrong way when your parent does care about you. You just want to play in the street. You have a choice in your life, what you want to do. You can be a cool person or you can be a smart person. Cool people don't get nothing in life. You know, people love to be flashy. I'm not a flashy person. I really. People say I changed and I'm this and I'm that.

No, I grew up. I grew up. I don't care about getting recognition from people that are around me that are not doing anything with their life. I'd rather be an impact to kids because that's the important part. I think it's me being a fatherless child made me want to be who I am today and be positive. How has it affected you having a father that's a convicted murderer? Like, are people giving you in your town like weird looks? What was that like growing up?

Crazy. It still is crazy. Me and my dad look like twins. Really? Like, literally, we look like twins. So my dad's last name is Ortiz. I was supposed to be an Ortiz, but my dad said that I wasn't his. Literally, he told my mom that I wasn't his.

and that didn't paint out too well because I looked just like him. In Delaware, when death row was death row before they overturned the death penalty, every year they would post the death row inmates on the front page of the Delaware State newspaper. So back then, when we were going to school, your classrooms got the newspaper every day. So every year when they would post this in my homeroom class, there's my dad on the front page of the paper. murderer. That's how I say he's a murderer. But he's, they say he was a great person, but he just was a bad person too. He's somebody you didn't want to get on his bad side.

My dad has taught me to think twice about my anger before I react. I'm not scared of nobody in this world. I'm scared of myself. That's it. Like, I am petrified that I may respond to a situation and look just like my father. Being a murderer, son, me and my brothers and sisters, we all deal with it. My dad only talks to us when it's beneficial to him. It's never been about us. He used to send us birthday cards and whatnot,

but he'll put all his energy in the wrong things instead of his kids. When you got that global tell link texting, you can call your family and text them and message him. He couldn't even tell you when our kids' his birthdays or, you know what I mean? When you got, you've been incarcerated,

you know one thing you got in jail is time. You got a lot of it. And when you can't even remember important milestones, he blocked me and then he unblocked me and messaged me and told me thank or congratulations because I made the front page of the Delaware State newspaper. And then I message him. I'm like, dude, don't on.

block me to tell me this? Like, forget you. Like, I'm not trying to hear that. You didn't even tell me, happy Father's Day, but you messaged me to tell me congratulations because you're in jail and you seen that paper in jail. It came to

you. Everybody gets papers in jail. Not everybody, but somebody on a tier is going to have a paper. And when that paper came through, it hits your soul in a different way. I look at breaking change. With my food truck in my logo, it has the breaking chains of addiction symbol in the logo.

I wanted to make the narrative different than what my dad did for me and my brothers and sisters. My whole goal is to show people. It's not about what you grew up around. It's what you chose to change. With his situation, he was 28 years old, the same age as us, when he did what he did. That choice, out of anger and impulse, close. He'll storm the rest of his life where he can't get it back. People say all the time, oh, your dad can get out and he's got a chance to fight with Joe Biden and all that.

He's not coming home. Like, he's not. There are ways. We all know there's our ways to overcome the system and find nooks and crannies and whatever, whatever. But not when you did what you did blatantly on house arrest. They knew you were there. Like, you can't say you weren't in the house. It got a monitor on your leg.

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Let's get back into my interview with Gary Shiree. Do you ever look at a situation or look in the mirror and be like, I do not want to become that person because maybe there's a part of you that thinks that you are that person because you're biologically connected? Absolutely. Some crazy person decided to take my dad's jail picture and my jail picture, and he was in his orange DOCs because he was on death row, and I was in my white DOCs, and they cropped them.

and put them next to each other. And they thought that was cool, I guess. It kind of irritated me, very much irritated me, because I have lived in the shadow of my dad, my whole life, because everybody's always, my dad's nickname is Papito, and they've always called me Little Pito. It's saying that I look just like my dad. I'm a little pito with the whole nine,

but I've so badly grew to outgrow that because, yeah, I may look like him and have a lot of similarities to my father, but we're nothing alike. My drive is a lot different. I'm not worried about people liking me. I'm worried about an impact to this world. You live your life trying to have people fear of who you could be or what you might do to them. And I don't care about that.

I used to be. I used to be worried about it, but it didn't get me nowhere. left me in jail alone with nobody. So how did you exactly end up in jail? Well, it was a long story. So I had, I was a drug dealer. I was dealing with heroin, but I was also using heroin. So it was like a cat and mouse type of game.

I made a lot of money selling drugs, but I also used a lot of drugs. So it was like my money was going right back into my habit. I had, um, a fiend was taking my car and going to steal TVs for me from Walmart and he was selling me the TVs for heroin. Well, he got busted for, they caught, of course they called, you know, the tag numbers, they're, they're looking at your tag number. They wound up calling, he got busted, and he snitched on me. It was like, it was like, come on, dude, like, you could have went down for your own stuff. Uh, he wound up snitching on me. And, It was really a crazy situation because his mom called me the night before and was crying,

oh, Rob got locked up and he's going to jail and the kids are here and I don't know what to do. And I was like, man, don't worry about it. You know what I mean? I didn't know he snitch on me at the time. So I'm like, don't worry about it. Give me a call tomorrow. Let me know what his bail is and I'll bail him out. I'll pay the money to get him out of jail.

Not knowing that he's sitting down in the police station. singing like a bird telling them everything. Like, oh, I was, I caught my gun charge at 12 years old. That made me an adjudicated delinquent. At the time that I got busted in 2016, I was only 20 years old. I was not legally able to own a firearm until I was 25. So when he went down, when he was getting arrested and told the cops that I had guns and stolen property at my house, all they needed to hear was guns.

when they heard guns, that gave them enough probable calls to get a warrant signed for the house. I'll never forget that morning. I remember it like it was yesterday. I woke up early and I decided to lay back down. And I said to never lay back down because the second time I woke up, it wasn't nobody knocking on the door. It was Delaware State Police. And it's crazy because my son was in the house.

You know, I battle with that a lot. My son was 18 months old. My son Dominic, he was in the house when I got busted. I was in there with my baby mom. That was a real eye-opener for me because I realized that I was doing to my son, intentionally but unintentional because I was lost on my own. You see what I'm saying? Lost in this addiction.

And it allowed me to get myself busted. and regardless of the dude snitching on me, the choices that I was making was going to send me to jail regardless. But it affected my son to know that feeling of having guns pointed at you and your son's in the crib and they're coming to arrest you. My son was maybe young enough to not understand what was going on at that moment, but I know what went on at that moment. And I went to jail and I sat in there for about,

like 13 days, something like that. Okay, so I got busted January 21st. January 17th, I had filed my taxes. January 17th. So I had a tax return coming in within three weeks. You know, three to four weeks, your tax return will be in. So I called the bail bonds, and then I was like, look, I'll write you a blank check. You know what to be?

I'll write you a blank check until this tax return comes in. and they wound up letting me go. They come and bailed me out for this blank check until my tax returns came. So I bailed myself out of jail. You know what I mean? Nobody bailed me out. I paid my own bail.

And that I needed to stay in there. Like, they should have never let me home. What were your official charges? Like, what were you charged with? Drug dealing. What is it? Theft of Organized Crime. Trying to say I had a racketeering theft

ring going on. I had gun charges, receiving stolen property, selling stolen property. There was five guns in the household. So it was let anybody else get charged with her, me just take the charges. So I took the charges for everything. I wasn't going to allow my mom or anybody else to go to jail for my actions. How old were you? I was 20 years old when that happened. When you were getting arrested, did you have any thoughts of, wow, like, I might be going down the same path as my father? Yeah, I mean, I kind of knew that what I was doing was not right, you know what I mean? But at the same time, I was a strung out junkie, you know? I was, and that's a big word that addicts don't like to hear.

They're like, I don't call me a junkie, bro. I was a junkie. There's not, like, there's no other, I know it may offend people, but why do you hide from what you were? Like, I was a junkie. I did junkie things. Like stealing, robbing, whatever I was doing to get by, it was things that a junkie does. Like, there's no other way to put it. The part that hurt me the most, though, was my son being in that situation.

And these dummies let me bail out of jail. Even though I bail myself out, they let me bail myself out. They should have kept me in there. I wish they could have said, yo, you can't get no bail. But they let me go home. And that was like the start of. Hell, because now I'm out on bail for these charges. And I was still, I hadn't overcome my addiction enough from them 10 days being in there to not pick up.

So I came home, a couple days, I was back getting high again, waiting for court, waiting to go to court. In that process, I decided to go robbing and stealing and doing everything else. So I literally caught four different cases in the midst of me being out on. bail for this case. One case particularly, I stole some four-wheelers, okay? You're not the first person that's been on the show talking about stealing four-wheels. Man, look, what is what the junkies that like to steal the four-wheeler?

Man, if you get a nice one, this is going to bring you some good money, you know? But the problem was, I stole some four-wheelers, and then this other snits drug dealer tone stole the four-wheelers from me, then he got busted with the stolen four-wheelers and snitched on me again. I just got people snitching on me, left and right. He didn't just snitch on me, though. He called me like we were on a normal conversation, you know what I mean? Called me and was like, look, what's up with a lawnmower?

I need a lawnmower as I would steal zero-turned lawnmowers, too. I stole anything. It didn't matter. I could, I would go and take it, and you wouldn't even know I was there. Day or night, it didn't matter. I will get in and get out. He called me about these dagoned lawnmower, and I'm talking to him, thinking that I'm talking to him, not realizing that there's a Delaware State Police detective recording the conversation the whole time. I didn't know this, you know, I'm sitting here thinking that tone's calling me. Well, no, he didn't.

He was calling me to set me up. And I'm like, yeah, I got you. Don't worry, I'll go get you one tonight, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I didn't. get a chance to that same night, the police came to my mom's house, my grandmother's house, and my baby mom's house looking for me in these stolen four-wheelers. Well, I was on the run at the time. I literally, the crazy part was I had a gut feeling, and I was like, I need to leave, like right now. So I pulled out. When I got out, I got to the intersection, I busted a left.

I'm coming down the road, and I can see up to the next intersection. and like 10 sets of headlights come through the four-way stops on without stopping. I mean, it don't take rocket signs to figure out that that's the cops. They ain't having no flashing lights, but they were coming. I passed the cops. Like, I'm going this way. They're going this way. And I called my cousin, because one of my cousins, he was on the run from probation too.

So I called him. I said, look, I don't know if they're coming for you or they're coming for me, but they're coming right now. And he's like, dude, what are you talking? about they're here. I'm in the tree next door. He was hit up in the tree. They come looking for me and me, I'm just trying to stay away from the house. But I decided to go back to Lincoln, even though that's like the dumbest choice to make. I figured, hey, yeah, I'm just going to go down the road through the trailer park away from my house. And as I'm on my way over there, I'm coming up to the four-way intersection and I see a car truck pull up there and he stopped

and didn't move nowhere. And they sat. I'm like a quarter mile back from the intersection, and he didn't move. And when I busted the left on the turn, he wasn't in a marked car or nothing. But I know enough to know that there was no reason for you to be sitting there that long. And as soon as I busted the left turn, he busted a U-turn. And I'm like, man, that's the cops. Like, I just knew it.

It was a cop. Man, listen, they were, I pilt, took a red. I was in the trailer park, turned in a trail park, bust the right, bust another right, pulled into a driveway, jumped out, took off running. All I heard was, we're letting a canine out. I was gone. I literally, that was the first time in my life, proudly outran a canine. But I ran straight into a tree branch and lost my glasses. And if you were no without glasses, it's like terrible. At Hyundai of Glendale, Lisa New, 2026 Hyundai Tucson SC Front Wheel Drive for 269 a month plus tax for 36 months with owner's assurance in America's best warranty. 10-year, 100,000 miles.

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Very terrible. Yeah, I hate it when you're blinded, yeah. Man, it was crazy. I ran into the tree branch, I smacked it, and my glasses fell on the ground. I'm down on the ground like this, feeling all around, trying to get my glasses. I got them. They're all twisted and bent, and I just take off running. So I go to these people's house, Miss Charlie and Miss Della,

Charlie and Della, and I'm knocking on the door. I'm like, Ms. Della, Charlie, can you open the door? Can you open the door? The cops are coming from me. I just need to call my mom. Like, I just need to call my mom right quick. They let me in the house. They let me call my mom.

And then they turned around and said, And she snatched the phone from me and started talking to my mom. And she was like, look, I don't know what Bubba's done did, but he can't stay here. He's got to go now. Like, he can't, he called you, but he's got to go. And she kicked me out of her house while the cops are outside looking for me. And I was strung out of my addiction. I had some crack on me.

I took a hit, got high, and took off running. Like, and I ran over to another trailer. And I called my mom. And I was like, look, I'm here. I got your truck. keys, you need to go pick up your truck. It's parked in the middle with the cops. I know the cops are surrounding her truck.

You need to go get your truck. Well, my mom come and got the keys. She's going to pick up her truck, and the cops were there. The cops know me. They know exactly who I was, and they knew that my mom was on the phone with me. The first thing they did was say, let me talk to Bubba. And when the cop, when my mom handed the cop the phone, and is that this is corporal such inside, I click, hung the phone up.

By that time, they already traced the call. They knew where I was at. They knew I was in the trailer park, and they surrounded the trailer that I was in. And I didn't want to come out. I was like, no, I'm not coming out. I ran in the back room and hit under all this stuff, and all I can hear, I was hired up.

So I went and started unscrewing the light bulbs in the house and turned off all the lights. So when they came in and hit the light switches, there wouldn't be no lights. I'm thinking that the cops are just going to come in and leave, but that wasn't how it was. I love how they call you Bubba. Yeah.

What a day of Ben. It's crazy. That probably didn't fare too well in prison, though. No, no. That's it. A lot of people, they know of me, you know. And I'm not. I tried to veer away from Bubba as I grew up.

And then it just... It's your brand, though. Yeah, I know. It came right back with the food track. It's always the thing that, yeah, that you least expect becomes you and what you own. So how much time did they end up giving you once you're caught and everything? I got two years. For everything.

For everything. For everything. Fast track. Oh, I got lucky. You got a good deal. Yeah, I definitely got lucky. But they were trying to give me a treatment program. They knew I was a junkie.

You know what I mean? If you would have seen me then, you would understand. Like, I was probably 145 pounds when I went in. And I'm a natural 200 pound. I got to be 200 pounds. Like, if I'm not 200 pounds, I'm probably getting hot. Like, simple as that. I'm like 230 right now.

So I got to be 200 pounds or something's wrong. wrong. That's just how it's been. When I went into jail, you could see my bones. Like it was, I was that small. It was terrible. When you got into jail, did you start getting clean? Yeah, I didn't, like, some people go to jail and they, they like to do extracurricular activities. You know what I mean? Yeah, like trying to get the meds in jail and do other people's medication, you know, that wasn't a thing for me. So was it hard for you to detox them? Oh yeah, because see the difference, like these addicts now, they're babied and pampered in jail.

You go to jail, they got suboxin for you and methadone for you and everything else. When we were in there, no. Yeah, describe that process what it was like for you to detox. It was like, okay, so I'll tell you. So they admitted me in there, and I was, I got put in a cell with this old man. He was on the bottom bunk. And you know how people are about the bottom bunk? They're like, it's my bottom bunk.

And I was like, look, bro, you might want to get on the top bunk. I'm overcoming heroin right now. And I know this is going to be a long night. You might want to get on the top. Oh, no, I'm not getting on the top bunk. This is my boy. How are you going to tell me? You're going to come in this cell thinking.

I was like, all right, 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm throwing up. Throw up smack the side of the wall and slid. Man, it's all over the old man, man. He's trying to talk to me. I'm still throwing up. And I told you, you should have got the top bump. I tried to, you know what I mean?

He was mad, but he cleaned up to throw up. Believe it or not, he cleaned it up. I was, like, dead to the world. They used to try to, like, give you vitamins and stuff like that to kind of subsidize the heroin withdrawal. But it didn't help. It didn't help at all. I'm glad that I went through it the way that I did.

I've went through rehabs before, but it was always with a substance. Me going through it that hard without anything, I believe that helped me a lot more than hurt me. It made me realize that the instant gratification you get from getting high is nothing like that pain that you're going through when you're feeling like you're going to die. Like that with a heroin addiction, you're not going to die. Like when you're on alcohol and Xanax, they try to monitor you because they say that you can't go cold turkey without them. They say because you really can die from alcohol withdrawal and X X withdrawal. I'd never experienced that and I don't want to. But with the heroin, you're not doing no heroin and not doing any other drug.

You're going to be okay after a couple of days. Yeah. You just got to get through it. What kind of prison were you in? Just a SCI and Sussex Correctional Institution. Just a regular soft prison. Was it a soft? Was that he giving you a hard time?

Racist prison. They were racist. Yeah, they're racist down there. They act like they're not racist. They're racist. This is the problem with the jail systems. They can mess you up. You can be an inmate.

They can beat you up as an inmate. There's nothing you can do about it. You can try to fight. You can say something to the nurses, whatever. They don't care. They can do what they want. And then they wonder why the system, the world is the way it is. People go to jail and then they got guards in there.

You're already in jail. You know what I mean? You're already in jail. And then you got to go to jail and worry about a guard that's going to beat you up because he's having a bad day or his wife's out getting screwed by somebody else. And now he wants to take it out on you. Did you ever get beat up by a guard? Oh, yeah. So tell us this story.

What happened? Oh, man. Me and my boy, Tate. later, we were back in B-Mod. It's like, it's a lockdown cell before you go to DDA, which is like the hole, which is the hole. So we were waiting in the B-Mod, and they didn't give me my wreck in the morning. Like, you get an hour out on the wreck, use the phone, and mind you, in B-Mod, it's not like you get your wreck and you get to go out to the court and whatnot.

you come out of your cell into this little hallway that's got two phones, and that's it. You just get your hour out of that damn cell. They didn't give me my wreck. So I'm sitting here like, yo, you're going to give me my wreck? You're going to give me my wreck? And it was like, no, next shift change, they'll get you when they come in. Next shift chains came in. They didn't give me my wreck.

Man, I'm in there kicking on the door, banging on the door. I'm like, yo, man, what this is going on? this, I'm kicking the door. I was hot. Like, it's only an hour. First and foremost, I'm not even around to other inmates. You could, any guard could have popped that cell and let me out for my hour. But they didn't care about that.

This one little guard, his name's Neil, he's like a little midget. But he's like a champion wrestler or something like that. But he tries to intimidate people. But he didn't intimidate me. I was just a junkie. I just overcame a hair with a dixon, dude. I was like 150 pounds. Like, come on now.

I'm not. They come in there. Five of them came in there and whooped my tail, boy, I'm telling you. I threw me up on the wall. Like, it gripped me up, slaying me on the wall. Like, literally, I mean, they was trying to do me in in that room. And then dropped me and walked out of the room like it was nothing. What do you do?

Are you trying to fight back? What can you do? You're going to get yourself painted. That's what they call. You're going to get paint. They're going to spray you down with that orange mason. You ain't going to be able to breathe. I'm telling you, sometimes you just got to chuck it up to the game.

How bad were you beat up? Not bad. It wasn't bad. It was just bad enough that they shouldn't, first off, they should have never put their hands on me, period. And this happens all the time in there? Absolutely, all the time. What other fights are you seeing with guards against inmates? I've seen some guards get their tail whooped in there.

Like, you got realized, like, that depends on who you mess them with in there, because some of these people, but they don't got nothing to lose. You get, in prison systems, you get people from all over the world or all over the cities and stuff. And some of these city boys that come down, they don't care about a guard, they'll whoop your ass. Period. Well, in that situation, I remember Neil tried to talk smack to this one dude,

and he was from Maryland. And over there, they definitely not playing with the guards over there. And he's like literally six foot six. And I can't remember his government name, but he had savage tattooed right on his throat. And that boy, he stood in his cell and he said, motherfucker, pop the door. Pop the door. Neal's like, get away from your door. He said, why don't you come up here and make me get away from my door? Like, he wasn't playing with him.

And Neil wouldn't pop the door. You know what I mean? That's the thing. The guards pick and choose who they're going to do it to, whether they want to get their self-handed to them or not. And that's not like me. I'm not worried about getting myself tied up into something that's not going to send me home. They don't play around. You wind up putting your hands on a guard.

You're going to go back in front of the judge. And then you're going to be dealing with another case. And the crazy part about it is the guard can be the instigator. And you're still the one that's going to take the brunt of it. These guards, they want you to do bad. They don't want you to do good. On the way out the door, the first thing they tell you is, don't worry, we'll keep the lights on for you.

I mean, that's crazy to me. What year did you end up getting out? I got out in 2018. And how old are you, like, 22? Yeah, 22. What was your plan when you got out? Did you go back into the life at all, or did you want to... To never go back there was the plan.

I was like up and down on a roller coaster type of thing. I started drinking. Like, I didn't go back to using heroin, but I started drinking and partying and having a good time. but it was not bringing me a positive outcome. I think the hardest part for me was when I got busted, my children's mother, her mom, their drug dealer lived around the corner from me, okay? So she used to get high too.

Their drug dealer around the corner from me called them and told them that my house got busted. Me and my baby mom both got arrested. We were both in the house. Her mom came and picked up my son and turned around and took my son, took him to the courthouse and filed for emergency custody of my son as an active user herself. You see what I'm saying? So that was a tough situation because my mom couldn't go fight for my son with me being in jail because they looked down on my mom because I got busted first from my situation right at my mom's house. So it didn't look good on my mom.

But if we would have went fighting for my son while I was incarcerated, then the only outcome to that would my son would be with the state. So in 2018, when I came home, my son was still with her mom. They wouldn't even let me see my son. Like, I wasn't allowed to pick him up, take him with me. I remember one day specifically, it was my son's birthday. I pulled up there at her mom's house to see my son. And her mom was yelling at my son and wouldn't let him.

my son come outside to me and he's a young boy you know he seen his daddy outside he ran through the door and come right out to me and got a hug and in this process i knew that i had to do something different um my children's mother wound up getting pregnant with my daughter gabriella and for unforeseen circumstances um addiction and stuff she was going through on her end She's doing great now, but she was going through addiction at the time. And her mom selfishly thought if she called DFS on her daughter, that they would take Gabriella and give her to her because she had Dominic already. But that's not how it goes.

You had Dominic through the guardianship thing, but they were going to contact me first. So that's what happened. They called me, and they were like, look, this is the situation. We need you to come here right now. and God works in mysterious ways. I was working on a concrete patio in her mom's development, literally, right around the corner from the house. And I shot over there and I had to sign the safety contract giving me guardianship of my daughter when she was five months old. And at that point, I knew that they trusted me to have the power of my daughter and my care.

Now I need to go through the process of getting my son. So I went to the courthouse and I filed for my son. and that was a scary moment. This is before I had my legendary services business. This is before my food truck. I literally was scared. Like, do you understand how it would be to have to fight for your child with being broke? I was dead broke.

I didn't have no money to pay for a lawyer or anything like that. She got an attorney. Her mom could have, when I filed for my son, her mom could have willingly signed over guardianship of my son. not made me fight, but her mom wanted me to fight. She wasn't trying to let that go. I went to court in Delaware, June 21st to 2021 and represented myself against a paid attorney, and I wore his ass out in court. Like, he called recess in the middle of trial. Like, I knew I was winning at that point in time. He called recess, and he was like, look, I just want to come to an agreement with

you with my client. She wants to allow you to have Dominic on the weekends every weekend and him live with her. And I said, no, it's not happening. This is my son. And we came this for, we're going to finish it. And when they went back from the recess, the judge put my children's mother on the stand and they asked her one question. They said, do you feel as though Dominic would be safe with his father?

And she said yes. And once she said that, it was a rap. The judge ruled in my favor, and I got placement over my son, and I already had placement over my daughter. That's awesome. So I got placement over both of my children right now. And you, the mother is that same woman for both kids? Yeah, I got the same mother. Are you guys still together?

No. So it didn't work out on that. No. Yeah, no. Do you look back on maybe if you weren't an addict yourself, you would have picked a different partner to have children with, or are you happy with your decision? So I want to say that I love my baby mom. She's a great woman per se, but I feel like we were both going through a lot in life at the time. I got with my children's mother, I want to say three days, three or four days before my grandmother passed away.

That was a rough time for me at that point in time. when you deal with a tragic loss you i say get gravitate to people and get close with people in all the wrong ways and i felt like i put up with a lot that i should have never put up with and i'm not one to talk down on her because we both had our problems but i just had to grow up and at some point in time you grow apart with people some people grow together some people grow apart we work better together separate. You know what I mean? My children love their mom

and that's all I want. She's clean. That's all I could ask for. As long as she's clean and sober, I don't want anything. She don't pay child support or nothing like that. She don't have to financially pay for my kids and my kids are taking care of. So you have a good co-parenting relationship?

Or not really? You wouldn't even say that, huh? I take care of my kids. Okay. Your kids are full custody now with you. No, see, I could have went for sole custody, but I didn't want to because she was in her addiction at that time. And I didn't want to kick her when she was down because I know how it feels to be kicked when you're down. So I filed for joint custody.

Visitation is open to mom as long as it's agreed upon between the both of us. And placement is with me with both of them. You're a good man, Gary. Yeah, it was a process. What's your relationship with your father now? Do you go visit him still? No. Nothing?

No. Me and him, we did used to have a good relationship, but no. I mean, the best you can, given the circumstances, but... At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light. I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice.

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trademarks of XCAUS LLC. So, me and him weren't talking for a while and then I decided to talk to him. When I decided to talk to him, it wasn't on his choice or his doing. It was me solely. He never even took the time

to reach out to me, to write me a letter, to talk to me. I remember specifically when I was a kid in jail, I wrote him a letter out of anger, and it was probably like 15 pages that I've written to in front and back. And he wrote me a book right back talking all kinds of, like, oh, what do you think you're tough because you're doing a little bit of time, almost as if I wasn't living up to his standard because I didn't have more time, you know what I mean, like he's doing.

And so with my situation with him now, randomly took it upon myself. I was like, you know what, I'm going to make a visit. I'm going to go see him, try to rekindle this relationship with us. And that was fine. But then when I started, he started dealing with this female that was no good for him. Me and my brothers and sisters all told him that it was no good for him. And he chose her over all of us again, and you're doing life in jail. So all the way to the extent to let this female take our Ortiz last name.

Regardless whether my last name is Ortiz or not, I'm an Ortiz. That's what my bloodline is. I was legally supposed to be an Ortiz. The only reason I'm a shyri is because him and my mom were arguing. He let this woman take our last name. So it's kind of frustrating because you're in jail for the rest of your life. We are out here. So now this woman is walking around as an Ortiz.

and she's not a Ortiz, you know? And then she got her retarded little kids that are trying to say they're Ortiz's. And one of her kids per se, they say, is my dad's son, but he's not my dad's son. I say he's not my dad's son. None of us have ever seen a DNA test stating that he is my father's,

99.9% my father's. It was just one of them things, you know, when they're coming at you for child support, they have, you can sign this page, stating that I claim that 99% is my child, whatever. But there was no DNA test stating that that was his child. And he's the one that don't look like none of us. All of my dad's kids, they're marked.

Like, we all look alike. Like, he doesn't look like any of us. So it was a very disturbing situation. And I tried to rekindle the relationship with him. I took it upon myself to go visit him in jail. I took it upon myself to keep money on my global tell link. I was doing a video chat with my dad sometimes twice a week. And then calls are $8.50 a call.

On top of that. $8.50 a cent? Yeah, per call. And I was sometimes doing them twice a week on top of that message in him every single day, 25 cents a text message. So it was frustrating that I was trying and trying and trying. And then he was willing to throw me out over this. female. And one thing I told him was, I'm hard-headed. I told him, when she folds on you,

don't come back to me, trying to talk to me and rekindle things with me. And that's exactly what happened. She wound up folding on him, leaving him hanging, and then he tries to crawl back to us and talk to us. And I didn't want nothing to do with him. He blocked me on Facebook. And then Then unblocked me and told me, he unblocked me and told me, I remember, he unblocked me on my son's birthday, which was April 3rd. He unblocked me and messaged me and said, go get your grandfather right now and take him to the hospital. He's not doing good. Now, mind you, my grandfather, his name is Poppy. He's 83 years old.

He is the most down-to-earth man you'd ever come across. I mean, if you came to his house right now, Ian, he would cook you a pot of rice. It would be the best pot of rice you ever had in your life. He's very humble, very humble. And he messes me telling him, I get your pup up and take him to the hospital right now. That day, my grandfather had driven down to my house for my son's birthday party.

So he obviously did not have to go to the hospital. The problem is he was trying to start a conversation with me, and it didn't work. It failed terribly because I knew my grandfather was okay. I take pride in the relationship that I carry with my grandfather today. We didn't always have that relationship. When I was a strung-out junkie, we didn't talk like that. So now where I'm at, that man calls me every day.

He called me last night when I was on my way up here. Like, what are you doing, boy? He got that heavy Puerto Rican. Like, what are you doing, boy? I'm not heard from you. I'm like, Papa, I'm just there Sunday. I just see you. That's so sweet.

Yeah, I take a lot of pride to go. see my grandfather because I got a big family, but they're not there for my grandfather. They're not. That's the sad part about it. Most of them live right around him, and they don't even see him to my standards, so to say. Like, I feel like when you got older relatives in your life, you should take pride in seeing them because when they die, they're dead. Like, you can't get that back. I wish that I had more time with my grandmother, but I didn't because I was a strong-out junkie. And when I come home, she literally died two weeks after I got out of a juvenile program. So I don't want to experience that with my grandfather.

I know that there's going to be a day that comes where he's no longer going to be here. And it's probably going to be one of the hardest times in my life. but I've went through some hard times and I've made it through. And I'm grateful and blessed to know that my grandfather has stood next to my food truck. Like, I literally built this food truck in my boy's front yard, like in his driveway. Yeah, tell us about what you do now with the food truck, with your business and what you have going on and everything. Okay, so January of 2022, me and me and, me and, a coworker got into a disagreement because he didn't want to do what he was supposed to do on

the job and didn't come into work for two days. And then his brother, my boy, he called me and was like, yo, what's going on? Why is the job not done yet? And I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, why don't you call your brother and ask him why he hasn't been to work in two days? And he was like, are you kidding? He said he called his brother and his brother started Cussing me, like, you think you run this business, blah, blah, he said, after today, you're fired. I said, after today, I'm going home right now. Like, it was like 1145. I went home, and I didn't go home.

I went down to Harvard business and filed the paperwork to start my own business, which is legendary services. And it's just concrete work, patio, seating walls, a little bit of everything, handyman type of stuff. I don't take on things that are out of my realm. You know what I mean? I know people like to jump out of their comfort zone. That's not me when it comes to messing with somebody's house. You know what I mean? Their foundation, like this is their home.

These business owners are out there, oh, I can do it. And you never did it a day in your life. You're about to make their house fall over, you know? I don't know how they build houses out here, but over there, they're slapped together in a week. It's like, no way. That's funny. I saved up my money.

I would take all of my money. I don't go to the clubs. I don't go to the bars. I stopped drinking. I was on the medical marijuana program. I stopped smoking. I don't do anything at all. I'm completely abstinent from all drugs and substances.

I saved up my money from legendary services, and I had this food truck that I bought back in 2020 when I was broke. Didn't have no money. But this food truck popped up on marketplace, and my self-courcourcourcour. crazy. I was like, yeah, I'm going to buy it. It was like $2,000. But I wasn't buying it for the truck. I was buying it for what was inside the truck. It had a messed up engine and messed up title work. But the inside, it was an 18-foot space that had diamond-plated stainless steel top the bottom,

the electrical system, the three-compartment sink, the whole nine yards. So I bought this truck while I was trying to get the money together to buy it. And nobody, I'd reached out to some people, put my pride aside like look I need a thousand dollars can you loan me this thousand dollars so I can go get this this box truck everybody is somebody left me on bread um another person she told me that she she didn't have it she just couldn't find the funds and they were all lying they had the money they just didn't believe in what I was trying to do and so I was like all right don't worry about it you know I've got the money together you know what I mean and I went up there and bought this truck and had it towed. Like I said, it didn't run. So I had to pay $1,000 on top of the $2,000.

I bought it for just to get it towed down. I literally didn't even have the money to get it towed from Wilmington to Lincoln. I had the money. I got a towed from Wilmington to this other random shop in Smyrna, the guy that I met along the journey. And he was like, dude, get it towed here. When you get up some more money, you can get the other tow to bring it to the house. So Um, his name was James. A great guy. Uh, I told it to the, to James's plot and then turn around and, and took it, took it home. Well, I had this truck sitting.

And when I saved up the money and with my other business, I wound up coming across this box truck online. Um, the guy, the company that had it was this frontier barbecue at a Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. They had like 9,000 followers on Facebook for barbecue. And some people are like 9,000. That's not a lot. Well, it is when I, I. didn't have no followers. So it was a lot to me. The husband and the wife, I called him on a

Saturday. I was like, y'all, I'll drive up there tomorrow to pick up this truck. So I went up there with $5,000 cash. They had it listed at $6,500. They were like, what were you trying to do? I said, I got $5,000 for you. He went back in and talked to his wife. He came back out. He said, she said $5,500. I said, I got $5,000 for you. Like, I was stirring on this $5,000. He went back in and talked to his wife again and came out and he said, look, she's going to let you get it. It's raining, okay, this day. It's raining. And I already left.

I pulled out after I bought this truck on my way home, and I find out that the windshield wipers don't work. So I got a four-hour drive home, okay, in the rain. And my bro, Tim, he's got his own car shop, builds hot rods and stuff. Lucky 13 hot rods. He lives down the road from my house. And Tim brought me up there to get this truck. And we're all like trying to figure out can we rig it up, you know, with a wire and make the windmill wipers move. But the way the windshield wipers were coming up out of the bottom so you couldn't get access to the actual wipers to make a move at all.

And they were froze from it sitting so long. So I drove it. I was like, screw it. I'm going to drive. And Jesus take the wheel. If I die, I die, but I know I'm going to die doing something that I had the motivation to go do. So I'm on my way, and this dagon truck, we're going down the dagon highway, and I hit the brakes, and the brakes go straight to the floor. I'm in a 10,000-pound vehicle, and the brakes just went to the floor.

Like, I thought I was going to hit the car in front of me. I thought I was done. Luckily, the emergency brake worked, and I hit the emergency brake and slowed the truck down. Like, I thought I was dead. Like, there's no, you're in a 10,000-pound vehicle, and I was about to smash straight into the back of this car. And I didn't know. That was literally the beginning of me driving these big old box trucks.

So I didn't, I wasn't very experienced with them like that. So I get this truck home, and I had it at my boy's house, had it parked in the driveway. And I just took everything out of my old truck and put it into my new truck, Just piece by piece, putting it all in there. Most of the stuff went together. It fit in there. A lot of the stuff was I had to buy more stainless steel. And it was a process because I had bought all of my stuff out of money that I had saved up to get me and my children in our own home.

I turned around and put all this money into this food truck that I hadn't seen a dime back in return yet. And at 28 years old, it may not seem like a lot, but when you drop $20,000 into something, it's not loaned money. Nobody gave me a loan. You know, this was hardworking money. And I didn't see what I see today. I seen it at the time, but the mental health and emotion that you go through in a process like that, it's a lot. Because you're putting it all on the line for that for a dream that no one else could see but you, too. That's a hard part.

and your friends are all looking at you, like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. A lot of people said I was biting off more than I could chew that I wasn't going to be able to do it. Your network is your net worth. The people that you meet, I'm not scared to talk to random strangers

and tell them that, yeah, I used to be a heroin addict. Yeah, you were talking to a random stranger about me today at a little close shot. Exactly. Like, in that situation, like, talking to that random stranger, he was like, oh, yeah, Ian Bigg, let me tell you a story about him. I voted him less likely to succeed, you know?

And look at you in life now, you see? Like, it's a perfect example because there's a lot of people that say they support me now. You didn't support me. You're surprised. You're surprised that I did what I said I was going to do and I made it happen. So how'd the truck turn out? It's amazing, man. It's amazing.

Like, I bucked up with the truck that I bought. It was already gloss black. They painted it gloss black. So the only thing I had to do was. was get graphics put on. And I called around to these different graphic places. I called to this sound effects graphics in Delaware. And they, like, gave me a quote, like, $350 to do graphics on my truck.

And I'm like, my truck is 26-foot bumper to bumper. I got a huge truck. I'm like, there's no way that it's $350. You didn't even look. And when they sent me these, like, the prints, like the proofs, for it. It looked like they put Bub's Grubbs on Microsoft Word and got something printed out and sent it to me. So I was like, yeah, this is unacceptable. Like, I'm not okay with this. So I called another graphic place and they were like, what's your ballpark range? And I was like, I'm not going to

give you a ballpark range. You're going to charge me the highest of my range. You give me a price. This is your business. So that didn't work out neither. I went with this lady K&R graphics in Woodside. And she sat me right down. When I went in her office, she sat me down and painted Bubbs Grubbs. Bubbs got started because my bro Tim, when we were down for the first event, March 4th, they got this no prep drag racing event in Delaware. My buddy Tom Benkley is one of the organizers for the event. Me and my boy Rob, we were sitting over at Tom's house smoking.

This is before I stopped smoking. And when you smoke, you start thinking about food. Like, I started thinking about food. And they were like, Tom was like, look, I got an event coming up in March. Get your cooking equipment because I told him I just went up to this church and bought this cooking equipment. He's like, get your cooking equipment, come out there to the event, and you could pop a tent and with your propane tanks and cook right under the tents.

And I was like, no, nope, not going to do it. I said, I'll come with the food truck. And they all looked at me like I was crazy. He was like, you're going to come with a food truck? You know that's three months away, like 90 days. away. And I say, yeah, I'll be there with the food truck. And I literally grinded through the winter. You know, December, January, February, it's cold as shit. Like, really cold. And I stayed out there nights at a time, you know, two, three o'clock in the morning. I'm out there in my buddy's front driveway

constructing this food truck. And when you go in my kitchen, oh, you could eat off my floor if you wanted to eat off my floor. Like, I really take pride in. My truck, everything is stainless steel. The whole, the walls, everything in my truck is stainless. It's a very nice kitchen setup. On the low end, my truck is worth 70, 80 grand, just like it sits. Money doesn't excite me. It's the process.

The fact that I built that food truck. I didn't buy it. Anybody can say I want a food truck and go buy a food truck. I literally built it with my own two hands. It was hard. What kind of food do you do? I got the best cheese steaks in Delaware. I got the best cheese steaks in Delaware.

That's awesome, man. I stand tall on that that I got the best cheesesticks. I don't care. You may have cheese steaks, but you ain't got my cheese steaks. And I went to Philadelphia and got a cheesecake. And Philly ain't got nothing on my cheese steaks. I promise you. And I got old heads.

Like, if an old person comes to your food establishment and they say you got good cheesesticks, then you got good cheese sticks. So, Gary, what's your message, man? What do you want people to take away from your story besides having to be the best, you know, cheese steaks in Delaware. Man, talk to these kids. Give the youth. The youth is the most important part in my message.

I literally, people say the food truck is all fine and dandy. It's cool, but that I don't feel like is my purpose in life. I want to be a motivational speaker to kids and uplift youth and give the youth something positive to look up to. There are so many people that make it in life that don't look back to the kids. They always say, oh, he's young and reckless and he's not going to listen. If a seed's never planted, a flower will never grow. It's up to us to take the time to talk to that reckless young man.

Give him a better insight, that reckless young lady that don't know what's going on at home. Give them an insight to speak life into them and show them that, look, man, I was there. You know, I got, man, my orange. I got tattoos everywhere. And you got needles in you. And I got needles in me, like literally needles in me. Like, I was a strung out junkie. I was at the bottom, you know.

Nail where I'm at today, these kids can relate more to me than they can relate to that man that comes in with a suit and a tie that's never went through anything in life. It's a result back to what you said earlier. Do I feel like my life would have been different if I had structure around me? It absolutely would have. because there is a way in life for you to understand things by what's going on around you. You can fall victim to it or you can overcome it. My little sister, Gwendolyn, has never did no hard drugs in her life. She may have smoked weed and something like that, but she's not a drug user.

You see what I'm saying? But she grew up in the same stuff that we did, but she made that choice to not get high. I want to show kids that just because you went through something don't mean that's the end of your life. You got adults that will sit around you telling you, oh, you're never going to be nothing. My baby mom's mom used to say that I was a white trash piece of shit and I was never going to amount to anything in life all because she blew through her a fortune that they had with a drug addiction. I don't want to be that. I want to show these kids that, look at me. I'm not perfect.

I'm ugly little motherfucker You know what I mean? But I chose to apply myself differently And the same way that I did that It's the same way that you can. I hate when people say That I don't think like you I don't have that thought process like you

Yes you can and yes you will If you believe in yourself The reason why you can't is because you say you can't And you know why you say you can't Because somebody in your life or your time has told you you can't. And you don't remember when you was a kid

take can't out of your dictionary. Absolutely, man. So that's what it's about.