Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Inside the Mind of a Thief | Burglar Confessions

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Inside the Mind of a Thief | Burglar Confessions

I became the first person, it started in a prison cell to participate in the Olympics. If you saw us, you would not think, oh yeah, these are criminals. These are dudes that are going to go to prison. This one's going to die. We go in, we're standing in the garage. I turned in my co-defendant, and he was like shaking. And I'm like, what's wrong? He's like, I'm nervous, bro.

Yeah. And I'm like, don't say nothing. Count to three, follow my lead. So he counts to three. One, two, three. I came from a pretty ideal family. upper middle class but my parents you know started in a trailer dad dropped out of high school he dropped out of high school because grandpa said if he didn't have five thousand dollars in the

bank he couldn't marry mom so my dad loved my mom and said i'm getting out of school and i'm going to get to work and i'm going to get to five thousand dollars he got into trucking and that was how he started and he got to five thousand dollars and said i'm going to marry your daughter and he married my mom they started in a trailer together saving money working and they both got into the industry moved to Orange County for work where I was born originally and then moved to a place called Fresno County which is the ad capital of the world 30% of the world's produce has grown from the area that I was raised in they moved there for work trucking a trucking company opened up there and you know we never I did not know what it was to want for something right I wouldn't

quite say that I was spoiled to the to the degree that I was showing up to school in a $70,000 car but I always had food. We always had a roof. I read the lights were always on. Mom and dad had been married 47 years now. So in terms of how good was my childhood, it was pretty ideal. But, you know, like any other family, my family had our struggles. You know, mom and dad were workaholics.

So that was, you know, out the door 5, 6 a.m. in the morning coming home, 9, 10 o'clock at night, raised by Vera, who was my brother and I was babysitter. And I think that was really where it started a lot of my internal struggles. early on you know sometimes people change and their struggles come later in life mine started to show up in my early teens when I was struggling with myself and a lot of that really kind of stemmed from not really having my dad around as much as I wanted him around and then just being a person that was had a lot of emotions that I didn't quite understand and was like fighting within myself and then I hated my sports gift I was a really good athlete but I hated that I was good at sports because I didn't like

being better than other people but it was like the only time I ever felt any kind of relief for myself was while I was playing sports. But that was also the time when I got kicked out of school for selling weed. A girl came around and said she was looking for some wiggins. I was like, shit, this guy in my guitar class is always talking about being high and showing up high and smoking weed all the time. And so I hit him up. And the dude was like, yeah, meet me tomorrow morning.

And I'll get you the week. How old were you? 12, 13, 12, 13 years old, 7th grade. Right. And that whole experience, I wrote it in my book, was a little bit weird because, like, looking back on it now, that wasn't weed. But I grew up in a very conservative pocket of California, right? And so I went to Clovis Unified School District, was a very strong zero-tolerance policy. So really what I was already presenting to them, even if it wasn't weed, was that I wasn't going to get onto their assembly line and perform the way a Clovis student performed.

I mean, we're talking about a school district that didn't allow guys. to have hair past their ears and you couldn't wear sports teams you couldn't wear college sports teams gear we didn't have uniforms but you also couldn't have jeans that were four inches wider than your knee when you pull them out so it was like here's this kid who's come into our office because a girl said that I'm the one that sold her this well I sat in this guy his LD Bennett Todd Bennett was his name and he was like the the learning counselor okay so he's he's he's works with certain wings of students out of this middle school that's got 1200 students right

and uh i still to this day don't like this guy there was just something there was just something dude there's good people and there's bad people straight up right like i've met good people in prison and i've met really fucking bad people that have never been to prison and this guy just had that aura to him and even i picked up on it when i was a kid that's just something ain't right with this guy, right? He interrogates me for like three hours. Doesn't let me call my mom, doesn't let me talk to anybody. And I'm like, yo, I didn't do this. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. There's some guy behind the apartments that's probably selling it. And, you know, then they send the cops out and they couldn't find the guy. And then they come back

in and they're like, you're lying. I'm 12 or 13 years old. Right. Like looking back on it, this is illegal. Yeah. Like my mom should have been called. My mom should have been there. They should said hey do you want an attorney present like how do you want to do this and then we would have said show us the and then we would be able to say this is leaves right dried leaves you're not kicking my son out for selling that's not even weed right um but so yeah i ended up confessing that yeah i did it after three hours it was just kind of exhaustion as a kid you just want to get it over with yeah but that was kind of like the beginning of okay i might have these struggles that are going to pop up later in life. I ended up getting on the straight now right after that because I my brother

raised BMX and my dad was like, you know, go out to the BMX track with your brother. My parents kind of gave me maybe too much freedom before this and then they were going to kind of rain in some of that freedom with me being with my brother. And so I got into racing at 12, 13 years old and I was on the cover of the BMX racing magazine at 18 was sponsored by Fox Racing, Airwalk shoes, spy sunglasses, companies that didn't endorse amateur athletes. were backing me because of my skill set, my ability to ride a bicycle. But that only lasted so long

because I didn't even really want to ride a bike. You know, I really wanted to make money. Right. And that's kind of what I thought. You don't make any money riding in a year? 10 to $15,000 a year. Really? Yes.

But what are the sponsors doing? That's it. There's no money in the sport. It's like track and field. Most people think that track and field, you know, runners, because we see them at the Olympics, oh, they've got to be making millions of dollars. Sure, if you're Lolo Jones, Allison Felix, or Usain Bolt, but everybody else makes about $10,000 a year.

And they have parents that fund their trips around the world. And that's how they actually got to a position where they could get funded by the United States Olympic team. And then it can open up an opportunity. Well, BMX is no different. The average guy makes $10,000 and $15,000 a year. And their parents are funding it. There's a small pocket of guys that can make 60 grand. grand a year, maybe three.

Right. And one girl that can do that. So the average person is just out there as a hobby. Right. And, you know, the whole consumerism dream was kind of like coming alive in the early 2000s. You got the dot-com boom, access to the internet starting to roll around. And then this idea of, you know, just I can obtain all of these sparkly things and have a

big home and a nice car is like what the American dream was rapidly becoming. And that's what I wanted. And so I took this computer gift that I was developing. to build corporate computer networks. I wanted to be a network administrator and manage corporate networks. The idea, the reason I liked that idea was mainly because I could lock myself in a closet. I didn't really like talking to people. I had social anxiety really bad for most of my life.

I still do in a lot of different ways, and this would not be one of them. But I was, you know, learning how to build Citrix Metaframs, Cisco certified my high school year, and then I got offered a job in San Diego to be a network administrator for a guy that was starting a company that ended up being a Ponzi scheme. Scam artist, which is perfect for this show, right? It's just one twist after the other.

And we just did an interview or talked to an FBI agent that you just missed. And we went over like three or four different Ponzi schemes he had investigated. Yeah. And I had no idea because my aunt knew this guy's wife. He was entrepreneur the year of California at 23.

He, quote, unquote, invented this VPN box and then was monitoring all of these corporations around San Diego County with this VPN box, had a big server room up in his office. Like, well, you wouldn't know it, right? Well, he was then taking the stature of that entrepreneur award in this VPN box, and then he was canvassing these other people for investments towards this internet company that he was going to start. Right. And here's this young hot shot network administrator that I'm getting who understands backbone infrastructure, managing networks, setting up networks, and is going to do all of this stuff for me. And I remember sitting down at a table with these people, one of them owned a telco company. And that was the only meeting we had. So when I moved down to San Diego, like the job wasn't working out.

But before I moved down there is when I quit racing. And that's when I like started dabbling in smoking, and partying with people. And I guess trying to find my footing is what I tell people, because I love the psychology of why people do what they do. Right. And I've done a lot of work on myself. But I struggled a lot with my mental health. And so when I gave up on racing, I lost kind of my community of really, like, healthy support. And then I started going around kids that were partying and stuff.

And I was the odd man out because that's what I told me, I'm not going to do this. And I started giving in, but we didn't really do shit for me. It just made me super paranoid. made me feel like I was outside of myself. But before I went to San Diego, I tried to knock on for the first time. And that was something that I can't explain. It just changed me. You just tried it like at a party?

It wasn't. Yeah. So when we had bought in Vicodin. Right. And the yellow Vicodinum was like the top tier. And then this new drug got comes out. My buddy says, yo, this guy. that we buy this dope from he's got these new pills he's out of ikenen he's got these new ones he said

they're called the 80s and he's like he said we mean you can just split it that's how good it is and he's like you want to you want to split it with me and i'm like yeah fuck it let's do it and uh we literally go into this small um powder bath right attached to his entryway of the garage right and you you is you got a sink in a toilet. And we've got this green 80 milligram box cotton. At this time, we don't know how to effectively take off the time release because that's what you do.

You don't just pop this thing. Yeah. You got to take the time release off. Then you got to smash it and then you snort it. Or if you get later down the road where I was at, you start shooting them. We got a knife to smash this fucking pill. Right.

Like the tip of a knife on this round pill. And he puts this pill on top of the toilet shooting. shut the fucking thing all over dude right like oh like we're trying to figure this out like like trying to rebuild the transmission with no knowledge like you're just wrong tools don't know what you're doing finally we get it figured out we get it figured out and that was when my life changed like bro i have never felt so connected to myself so assure of myself so confident um and i felt valuable. I felt capable. It was like, you know, I had a guy on my podcast years ago that said it was like the warmest hug from God that I've ever felt. I've heard that exact exclamation before.

It's so good. It is really so good because if you believe in God or if you could imagine what a God would be, that touch or that presence would be so overwhelmingly good. You would be in a place of absolute contentness and that's what it was for the first time in my life you know I struggled feeling okay with myself I struggled with anxiety I struggled with self-hatred in these things and it was like all of a sudden I could split this pill and it could change and alter the way that I felt to the way I always wanted to feel which was always the way I thought everybody else got to feel I was the odd man out that never got to feel right I was going to have to take this drug to try and fix me well that day, obviously my life changed an understanding that I liked the OxyContin did it a few times

when I moved down to San Diego. The job didn't work out. But while I was down in San Diego, I was smoking a lot of weed. Did the job not work out because the FBI showed up? No, because he was just running the scam of getting these people to give them the money, right? So we show up, we have a big meeting one time and he says, this is Tony. He's going to be my network administrator. This is going to be the phone number. This is going to be the website. And these guys are investors. Oh, so there really is no job. Is that it? Well, so he has, and this is crazy, because he worked for a company called All Basis Covered, which at the time, Tim Mott's was the CEO. And if you know anything about Tim Mott's, he helped start Apple computers with Steve Jobs.

He also was the CEO of EA Sports. It's in the game. And he told me this. I met him on an elevator, cool little old, short guy. And he says he was the CEO of EA Sports. It was crazy. I didn't have a little interaction with him. But when I moved there, looking back, all the stuff was set up that this wasn't going to go the way, we thought.

So we go to dinner. We go to this sushi restaurant. And he's like, so the company's not quite ready yet. I'm going to interview you tonight to see if you can be a consultant for All Basis Covered, which is basically all basis covered, which is basically all basis covered. So instead of having an in-house IT guy, they call All Basis Covered, they send out Tony. He works on your network, works on your computers. He asks me all these questions, and he's like, all right, yeah, you'll be fine. And so he puts me on the payroll at all basis covered, making $20 an hour in 2002,

which was actually a really good pay for 2002, you know. But the problem was, I don't look 40 right now. Right. At 18, bro, I looked like I was 12. Right. I went into this law firm, and a lady came up right on my back as I'm working, grabs you on the shoulder and said, sweetheart, can you stop working on the the computers she called all basis covered and said we don't want him working on the computers he

looks way too young there's no way this kid knows what somebody that's older would know about working on computers so then i wasn't getting hours and i'm down in san diego by myself young 18 year old i got no friends but i've got a second cousin who lives at the bottom of this hill my aunt was pretty wealthy she lived on top of this hill in uh rancho uh rancho san die and he lives in a trailer and he smokes so I go down there and start smoking with Zach and next thing you know

these Chaldean dudes rolling and I'm like what the fuck are they doing he pulls out this big old duffel bag fucking boom full of week and it's this shit called P91 and it's specifically run by these Chaldean which are Catholic Iraqis

that migrated to a pocket of San Diego go. P91. They run it. They own it exclusively and it is still to this day some of the best I've ever smoked in my life. And these other guys meet up there and they're thousands of dollars of cash ounces of wheat. And you're just there to smoke some weed. I'm just there to smoke some wheat, right? And so I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm down at the beach. Right. There's a lot of money going back and forth here. I hang out with these college girls that I went to school with. They're going to USDA's a lot of money there's all the parents are paying for all these kids

apartments front me a quarter right I'll take it down and see if I can sell it um and at this time you know wasn't really a party drug so the college kids just wanted to drink that was one thing that's changed in the years is smoking is you know just as acceptable as drinking alcohol but at this time it was still a very like you're doing if you're smoking weed right so it was still difficult for me to sell more than I was actually smoking for myself and with the girls that I grew up with and at their apartment on the beach. But that was what opened up the door for the wheel of me selling to people. Supplying something that somebody needed was something that I felt was of high quality. I'm a very detailed-oriented person. Looking back,

me getting into the way I got into selling it, makes perfect sense. I'm just a detail-oriented person. I pick up on the small details. And so it was like, I don't want Colombia from Canada. And I don't want from Mexico. I want weed that was grown in a hydro tank or grown up north. And you can tell the difference between those two types of weed. And I want to sell people the highest quality. And they're going to come to me for the highest quality weed.

So this started this whole, I could sell this stuff. Right. Then the job doesn't work out. Like I'm not getting any hours. anymore with all bases covered and I ended up telling the guy I was like you know I'm going to go home like clearly something's not happening and I think I'm just going to go home I didn't find out that he was wanted by the FBI until I was in prison several years later my dad actually sent me a article from Yahoo they believed he was hiding in Spain and took off with his money and had

basically stolen millions of dollars from people including his in-laws he got his in-laws for a million and yeah but I'm a kid I don't know right I remember this guy working on a computer one time at his house and literally smashing it with his hand and thinking you're a computer guy yeah and that's what you do something ain't right you know but he lived in a million dollar house and drove a Mercedes-500 Brabis Benz you think that's easy to do when it's Ponzi scheme money yeah but you think when you're young that people work hard yeah and he achieved that yeah and then you become an adult and you start seeing people with Lamborghinis and you see people of these stuff and you wonder, I wonder how they got that. Yeah. Because that lifestyle takes a lot of money. Right.

And when they're running and gunning like that all the time, usually something's up, right? So I go back home and I start looking for a dealer. I'm going to start selling to my friends. Getting a job was not something I wanted to do. I couldn't sit down at a desk, bro. And I still can't. I can't work for anybody else and I can't let somebody else define what I'm worth. I'll create my worth through the work that I do and the value that I bring to help the people that I help with what I help them with. And so I find a dude to start selling me with him. And at this time, I'm making money and I'm starting to buy these dacotons. Not thinking much about it other than it's this pharmaceutical pill that makes me feel great. I'm going to buy them as much as I can and I'm going to sell as much

as I can. You know, started working up my, up the ladder to where I was, you know, picking up three, four ounces at a time, five ounces at a time. I was never a big, uh, 20 pound dealer. I wasn't putting shit in a mailbox and sending it to Atlanta where they didn't have good back then. Right. I was selling to my friends. And I started getting hooked on these pills more and more. It starts building up a tolerance. Yeah. Not really realizing what's happening. Yeah. Well, now I'm taking three a day. Yeah. That's not good. And, and it's, and it's not one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening. It's usually one at two, one at seven, one at ten. I'm, you know, really cutting down the time that I'm taking them. Well, I try

for the first time. And I tried and I didn't like it, but I couldn't stop doing it, which was weird. But that's how it works if you've ever done it. You go up, you come down really quick, so you want to go back up really quick so you're not feeling down. And I know, I end up thinking to myself, well, maybe I could sell this shit. And this is when things start to really get out of control for me in terms of like selling and bringing in cash. I was originally buying small amounts, tints and eight balls from this guy in my neighborhood. And I was like at one point going back like five or six times in a night picking up tints and eight balls to sell, turn around, make some cash. And then I was going to save that cash, buy more and then buy more

pills right well finally one time i leave this guy's apartment and there's this dude on a street bike just down the parking lot and he's like come here and i walk over to him and uh he says here's my number don't fuck with this guy anymore he started to realize this guy ain't the one buying the right is this dude the motorcycle guy motorcycle guy he's like call me for it well next thing you know he's like I'll front you whatever you want you know now I'm picking up six seven eight ounces driving around fucking this really super conservative part of California called Clovis where you know you get pulled over for being a Mexican a black person an Asian person or a white dude out past 1030 at night just to see what you're up to right and you know I'm

making two three thousand dollars in a night sometimes two two three days a week well now my pill problem goes through the roof because now I can use four or five and six pills but what we were doing at that time was mainly getting them from a kid we went to school with his mom had multiple sclerosis and at this time like you've most everybody that's listening to this probably has seen one of the documentaries or shows that kind of outline how the opioid epidemic started right was doctors became willing to prescribe these things so freely that the demand went through the roof when the addictions started and then it was just like, well, prescribe them more

because the withdrawal symptoms are just breakthrough pain and you stop that by taking more. Well, yeah, shit. If I don't want to withdraw from hair, I just shoot more. Right. If you don't want to withdraw from my car, which is pharmaceuticals, take more icon. So the night that I tried the icon with my friend in the bathroom,

we walked out of the carton, out of there and we were when we got high we were so pumped and our friend says my mom's got thousands of these things at home and we were like bullshit motherfucker showed up with a freezer bag filled to the top is she not taking them or she's just getting the the script filled every single month and just taking what she needs and has the leftover so it's just gaining correct it's got to be Yeah. That's the only explanation. Freezer bag, filled.

These are the 40 milligrams, so they're like a yellow mustardy color. Right. And he says, just give me $5 for each one. They're $20 for a 40 milligram. Right. So all of us, many of them which are dead now, start buying these pills because who doesn't have $5 on them? Right.

Well, over a short period of time, it goes from who doesn't have $5 on them to like, yo, Yoshi's hawking his Xbox right now. Right. Or he's stealing shit from his parents to buy these pills. And she caught him. She finally figured it out. Well,

the brother got into it too. And then all of his friends. So it was like you've got two siblings going to the same medicine cabinet, draining the only supply that exists for us at this time. And when she caught him, That was when we were introduced to the highest level of withdrawals, because now we can't get them. Right. And like I told you earlier, to me, how I explained that is the worst flu times 100.

Right. I had the delta variant of COVID, and it put me in bed for, I don't know, 13 days. Like, I was sick, sick. I would rather have COVID every four months than ever have to experience an opioid withdrawal ever again. Like, I'm totally cool of being in bed 13 days and an excruciating pain from that. versus what opioids do to you. Because the opioids, the part that really messes you up is knowing that you can stop the pain that you're in.

Just get the drug. And because of that, you become willing to do things that you would, you promise yourself you would never do. You never saw yourself doing. You become willing to do things to stop this pain that you're in because you know once you get the drug, It instantly stops and the pain is gone. So we can't get the pills anymore.

So we're trying to find new dealers. Well, we find new dealers, but if you've watched the opioid segments and stuff, there was a period when Purdue Pharma wasn't producing enough for the demand. They were overprescribing. Then the demand was far more than the supply was. And this is when regular folk were showing up at the pharmacies, pounding on the desks and yelling at the pharmacists, Where's my fucking prescriptions?

One of my best friend's dad's was one of those people. He was being prescribed it, and he's going to the pharmacy, banging on the thing. Like, where's my fucking pills? Well, we don't got any, like, we're waiting for them to show up. So we would keep going through these droughts. And it had been several months, had gone by, and we were withdrawn. I was living with some kids that I went to high school with. My parents kicked me out of the house.

They found me a quarter pound up in my backpack when I came home from San Diego. and my mom's going to flush it down the toilet. And my dad's like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, you don't know whose that is. Right. Don't you dare. Put that in his car and he can get out of here. And my dad was like, we don't do this.

This isn't how we run our house. Get the fuck out. But I don't want to get you killed either. But I don't want to get you killed either, right? My dad, he was a professional motocross racer, and he's even got a story, his best friend, Wardy Ring, which was his mechanic. They went to Mexico and they were going to do a big what he was going to do his one big last drug deal for like seven is the last big for 70. I think my dad said it was $75,000 that he had hidden inside an motor of a motorcycle and they found Wardy dead and my dad goes back to the motorcycle to see if the cash is there and it's gone. So I know my dad knows. He's never really.

disclosed like what it was like when he was younger and he's kept that tight-lib probably because he doesn't want me to follow his path but he's but he's done some stuff he's done some stuff enough to know don't you dare flush that down the toilet like if he owes money for that they're going to come looking for him so they kicked me out of the house and I was living with these kids and if you saw us you would not think oh yeah these are criminals these are dudes that are going to go to prison. This one's going to die. This one's going to be 40 years old in and out living on the street. This guy is also going to go to prison. You wouldn't think that because up to this point in the early 2000s, any education that we got on addiction was a person that had darker

colored skin or no teeth. This is what addiction looks like. They didn't show you the alcoholic doctor and surgeon. They didn't show you the pharmacist who was struggling with a fentanyl. Dermine addiction because they had body dysmorphia and needed to lose weight. So they were stealing the fenermine pills from the pharmacy, right? They didn't show you that highly educated people or light-skinned people or just regular people could become addicted to anything and that addiction could take you on this whirlwind, right? So these kids that I'm talking about are kids that at that time you would look at me like, what?

These are good kids. The reality was we were up to shit. I was going to say I was going to mention that remember that the book I told you I wrote Generation like all four of the kids were white kids blonde hair blue-eyed some were lower middle class but most of them were upper middle class there was like five of them all of them were on the their high school wrestling team four of them went away got scholarships and went away like you would never look at at the, and that's really why I wrote that story, because I was like, it was so unique,

because I'd heard the same types of stories, but you're right, it was always black kids, Hispanic kids. It was always, it was, it was never like these clean cut all American white kids that they're so desperate for the pills. They're, they're doctor shopping, they're picking up homeless people, they're paying for their MRIs, they're sitting them here. And this was before they had, uh, the, um, the, the, the statewide registries. When that happened, then they just went out and started to get just multiple people. It was the same thing, like you were talking about, the first guys they were buying them from were people that were legitimately had like back problems, but were getting the maximum pills, but they were like, I don't take them all. Like they don't, they know there's a, it's an issue.

So they're like, I only need this many. So I have this left over. And these kids are giving them $500 for the pills. And they're selling them for $15 or $1,800. So who doesn't want an extra? or $500. Right. Or for us, you know, at the time, when we get developed into the story, the cheapest pill that you could get from the pharmacy was about $9.50 at Walmart on Kings Canyon. Everybody else, every other pharmacy was between $10 and $12 a pill. That's per pill. That's straight wholesale.

The person goes, they want at least the cost of that prescription plus $1,000. Right. So by the time you're getting a good deal on these pills, it's about 18 to $1,000. $20. If you can get an 80 milligram for $18 to $20, you're scoring super cheap because you're going to turn around and make 100% or you're going to take the route where you're going to sell more and make up the money on selling more at $30 than you would selling fewer and slower at $40.

Right. Right. But now the interesting thing you said was these people didn't take all of them. When I first met my first big connection, which kind of spiraled into this whole thing of being a wild shit show of organized crime, basically. I'll never forget.

He'd be like, you fucking white boys are crazy. He's like, I take a small sliver of this thing and I'm fine. You guys are eating these things like they're baby aspirin. He knew like just what that pill was and he would go over just cutting

into a small piece of it, of an 80 million, and he was getting 380 of a month like the guy didn't he knew that he didn't need all of that for his his struggle and so somebody that actually needs it they're getting way more dope than they need to keep their pain at bay you know right and so well and some people that you know that they just don't if you're smart you realize you're going to have to live with some pain it's the people like I don't want any pain well now you become you very quickly become a drug addict yeah if you've got a back problem that well here I'm going to give you these pills and it's going to go away like the the smart choice is there's a smart conversation to have with your patient is it's not

going to go away you're going to have to live with some pain yeah because they'll keep up in the dose until they have no pain and next thing you know it's a full-blown drug addict yeah you know you can't function yeah it's but back in the day how are you going to know yeah well and per and per like you said Purdue pharma right they're telling you take what the the solution is for it not lasting the full 12 hours is take more like yeah and and you know what uh your dad my dad um the boomers they all believe that doctors are the smartest people in the world absolutely they understood every aspect of these medications they were prescribing and why would they give us something that would cost us our life our freedom or our ability to logically make decisions

anymore. And at that time, there were no documentaries explaining that they're pushing it, that it's, they're fighting over getting, getting that doctor as a client to push it. And they're paying the doctor to push it. And he's getting a piece to push it. And they're giving him speaking engagements that he barely shows up for at all. Yeah. That they're, they're sending him on junkets, on these great vacations. Like there's all these things that they're doing to, like, you know, to pad their, to pad their pockets to get them to push more and more. and more yeah it really uh has been good to see so many documentaries bringing awareness to you know something i saw happening in the early 2000s um but i didn't understand how it was happening

the only thing i knew was there's this thing that came out of the orange bottle which my perception of the orange bottle was that it was safe right as long as i don't do he cp lsd the things that DARE program told me to stay away from, then I could never be the person without the teeth. Yeah. You know? And so we couldn't get the pills. And one day, I woke up and I just said, you know, we should go rob dude's mom. That was a leap.

I mean, that's a hell of a jump. It's me, two of my co-defendants, my girlfriend, and one of my co-defendants girlfriends were there. and they're like oh yeah we should do that there was nobody nobody was the voice of reason to go we're all coming down maybe we talked to our parents trying to get to a drug rehab no there wasn't none of that no and at first it was kind of tongue and cheeky right like we could go get them we should do that and then next thing you know like we're how would we do it oh it's getting bad you know and we the biggest hurdle was how are we going to get the brothers out of the house because they know you yeah you're still you're trying to do it not yeah we don't want them to

know yeah we was i mean right so this and this is where it gets it gets fucked because you're you're scheming on well how would we do this right you know and and there's a threshold once you cross that threshold of this is possible right you're planning you're going to do it and that was what it was. Yeah, this isn't a hypothetical. This is a plan. No, this is a plan now. And one of my co-defendants that died at 28, he called the brothers over.

He's like, hey, yeah, come by. Let's hang out. When they leave the house, we leave our house, me and my co-defendant. The girls stay behind. We leave our house and we go. We got to get guns first. We pick up guns. His dad was a cop, and he didn't lock the guns up.

So we go to his house. Because do you think mom's going to put up a fight? Or she going to even be there? Well, and that's the thing. I could have used a souvenir baseball bat. Yeah. You know, like, I'm the first to tell you, I'm not, I didn't go to prison because I'm some hardened criminal that was willing to do these crazy things and shoot and stab people.

Right. You know what I mean? I armed myself with a gun and committed a home invasion. robbery with a mom in the house yeah um there's nothing courageous about that right everything about that speaks to desperation but in that moment the only thing you're thinking about is i gotta get these pills i'm gonna get these pills so we go to get guns my gun literally said clovis pd on it etched into this gun and we we go to this neighborhood where the house is we park around the corner we both have hoodies on and we're walking up to this house and I asked my co-defendant how do you want to do this and he's like let's go around the backyard and we'll bust a window and we'll jump through this window and we'll get in the house that way and I was like that's not going to work and he's like well why don't we knock on the door when she answers we'll kick the door in and we'll go that way I was like bro this is fucking Clovis right there's a neighbor there's neighborhood

watch signs every corner somebody's going to see that happen call the police we're going to prison and he's like what do you want to do i was like let's go in the backyard first so we go up and you know california has six foot fences that separate all the houses we open up the backyard fence to the right of us was a door and i checked to see if the door was open it was this is actually i tell this is a really nice neighborhood yeah this is a story this is a story i tell um to high school students I usually will detail this out. We go in, we're standing in the garage. I remember seeing like a Pontiac Sunfire type car in there.

I turned in my co-definite and he was like shaking. And I'm like, what's wrong? He's like, I'm nervous, bro. Yeah. And I'm like, don't say nothing. Count to three, follow my lead. So he counts the three. One, two, three.

And I like grab this door, turn the knob, push it open, and we're in the kitchen. Immediately, the lady's sitting at the kitchen table. And she's not alert. Like, when she looks at me, it's like, she's high. She's like high as a kite. And she, like, looks up at me. And I tell her, get up. Get up right now.

I want all the on inside this house right now. Get up. I was like, we have all the pharmacy paperwork. We know there's on in this house. Take me to it right now. So she gets up from the kitchen table. She makes her right down the hallway. There was family pictures on both sides of the,

well in the hallway. We get to the end of the hallway. We make a left. We make a left. We're walking into the master bedroom. I remember looking to the back and there was a dead ball lock closet. I knew that that's where the pills were because that's where she started locking him up when she caught the brother stealing him from her. Right. I said, so go open the closet. Open that door right now. So she goes to open it up and she steps back. Several times I tell her, I don't want to hurt you. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to get these pills and I'm out of here as soon as I get them. So she says they're right here. and they're like on this little cabinet or like uh shelf it's bottles and i'm like looking at

them and there's like nitrates i'm like i don't want your nitrates like i want your so i grabbed these cotton bottles and there was a morphine pill prescription that had like half filled the morphine pills and i looked at her and i said where's the liquid because that she had liquid too and she's like i don't have any i was like where the fuck is the liquid i know you have it and she goes to goes it's up there it's like a uPS box bro sealed brand new with 12 liquid bottles brand new it's liquid so i grab this i tell my code of finit um get me a pillowcase he gets me a pillowcase i put all these pills inside a pillowcase this idiot dropped the clip out of the gun on the ground i pick it up put it in my pocket he's that he's just that nervous yeah he's just just

nervous you know and like look i'm not a pro fucking criminal either but like i know not to eject the fucking clip yeah um so i go immediately when i leave her room i go over to her or i leave the closet i go over to the room and i grab the house phone and i put it in the um the pillowcase so i could buy us more time when we leave before she can actually alert 911 right she'd have to actually go to a neighbor or something which would give us enough time that we would be far enough away from the neighborhood that you wouldn't be able to figure out who was who right and i told my coat of finna go get the car i'll be right out that's when i grabbed the phone put it in the pillowcase and i start walking back through the hallway go through the kitchen i'm out in the garage open up that garage

door go out open up the wood fence and as i'm walking down my park car pulls up it's like perfect in and out two minutes open up the passenger side door close the door we looked at each other and we were like, you know, high-fiving each other, we drive off and we jet straight to the country. And we start divining it up. 440 milligram cottons, 13 liquid bottles, 12 of them brand new and a morphine pill prescription, half filled with morphine pills. What happened with the, did she? She called the police. Yeah.

She called the police. But they couldn't. So then it was, the brothers were like, yo, my mom just got robbed. They didn't put it together at all? No. It took him a while. Okay. I was going to say. It took him a while. In fact, the cops had no leads. She couldn't identify anybody.

She said, I caught my son, but they were involved when the son caught it. So they asked the son if he knew anything. He's like, I don't know anything about this. And this is how we get caught. So I knew I was never going to rob somebody ever again. The feeling I got afterwards, I might have been pumped. I was going to get high, but I also knew, like, you know, this doesn't work long term. Yeah, yeah.

I don't want to go to prison for 20, 20 years, right? This could have gone bad, and I terrified a woman. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I wasn't thinking about that for many years. Right. I'm going to be honest with you. At this time, I'm 21 years old. I'm very self-centered.

I'm addicted to egotistical. The last thing I'm thinking about is somebody else's feelings. Yeah, yeah. You know, and toward today, it's a totally different. conversation right like I do what I do today as a living amends but at this time no the only thing I could identify with is the feeling of shame and guilt from doing this and knowing it was wrong and what the consequences were for this especially because this I use a gun and you're done was a thing in California at this time three strikes law 10 10 20 life when you use a gun is is a real

thing yeah yeah and so I'm able to think about that and I say I'm not robbing anybody else again What I ended up doing was taking my portion of pills and I sold them right away. I kept a few for myself, but I was on my way to San Diego to get out of town because I had connections down in San Diego when I was living down there for that computer job. And so I'm just going to take this cash that I'm going to hold on to and some pills that I'm going to hold on to and I'm going to go down to San Diego and I'm going to lay low for a while. Well, when I come home from San Diego, I go back to that house that I was in and my two co-defendants sent me down. And I'm like, yo, bro, we got this plan. And I'm like, what plan? They owe one of my friends $1,800.

They got to pay him back. And they don't have any money. And they're like, we, we're going to, you know, do some licks. And I'm like, on who? How old are these guys? We're all 21. You're all 21 years old. 19, 20 and 21.

We do some licks. Like, you're not gangsters. You're fucking, you've got a drug problem and you're 19 years old. Yeah. Like, what do you? No, right. Yeah. And I'm like, well, what is, what are you doing?

Well, we need you to be the getaway driver. And I'm like, for what? They're going to call pizza delivery people. These are so low brow. Bro, I know. I wish I could tell you that I was some white collar policy scheme guy that ran the rate of $20 million, but no, bro. A bank or something.

No, yeah, no. You know what's so funny? Like, you rob a pizza guy with a gun. You're going to prison, you know? but if you walk into a bank with a note that says give me the money there won't be any problems the most you're probably going to get between 3,500 maybe 10 grand and you're maybe looking at three years in a federal prison like I'll take federal over state prison Jesus for sure you know and you can really get in trouble like if it's a carjacking or if you pull them out of the car

oh my God yeah and you're in California California oh no I don't want to go to California state prison yeah we can talk about that no because I've been there and I know all about it it's no good bro I don't I haven't been. And I don't hear any good things. It's probably a lot lighter now, but what you've heard is probably accurate to the depending on who you've heard it from, because there are some cats that are, you know, very prominent Internet figures that have exaggerated some of the stuff.

Yeah, but still. They're going to invite, they're going to call order pizzas to model homes that are just finished. Lights on, address, light works, but nobody's inside and the doors get left open at this time. because it's the early 2000s. In a small community like this, you could still leave your doors unlocked. You could still leave the keys in your car overnight

and nobody's going to get in and leave with your car, right? So when the pizza person gets there, they're going to rob them at gunpoint, take the money they have on them, steal their car, drive it to me as their getaway driver, and then dump that car and we're going to leave. And I was like,

you're fucking going to prison. This is never going to work. And I was like and how much are you going to get from a pizza delivery driver a hundred dollars if he's made several stops before this one right like you're going to do 18 of these to pay this guy back like have you thought about this? I was like I'm fucking out of here. You know after the second one I think even even the local cops would go I think maybe somebody's robbing pizza people. Maybe we need to call the pizza delivery people like this seems like it might be a thing. It's exactly. what happened. Are you serious? Yes. They did the first one. All right. Remember, this is a small community where you get pulled over at night just to see what you're doing. So they do the first one and I remember they came back to the house. They were all excited and they had their me and Ed's pizza. They took the pizza fucking from the dude too. Well, I can't play. I love pizza. Yeah. The pizza, that was a foregone conclusion and I'm taking the pizza. Get the pizza.

go that's like get the get the canoles yeah you're he's got the godfather he shoots the guy and he goes get the canoles sorry yeah don't forget the food yeah and they're all excited they do another one and this is when i completely split out so when they do i they come home they've got the pizza they're excited i split out well i end up homeless right after this because people know i committed the robbery now with the home invasion they started talking and so people don't want me in their house they don't want me near them because they know cops are going to come looking for them yeah so i'm spiraling out of control in that direction i got no money i'm not able to sell using way more and i can sell and i've got this girlfriend who i'm trying to keep high as well so i've got two

drug addictions that i'm trying to figure out how to take care of they pull a second robbery the girlfriend's involved in this one one of my co-defendants he's still alive his girlfriend is involved in this one they're a they dump the getaway car they're now in his little toyota pickup and of course the cops are like okay this pizza style robbery is a robbery that will happen again we're going to start building up a per a perimeter of uh officers that are working waiting for a call for another one of these robberies to possibly happen well they happen and there's a random truck driving at 10 10 30 at night which is in this town nobody's out they pull them over nothing on them says that they did the robbery cop shines his light to the back of the truck and says what's that

pill bottle oh i thought you're going to say is that a pizza is that a pizza is that a pizza no is that a No, because the other guy has that. Okay. The other, the other, the other, uh, co-definant has that, right? Like, I'm still, I, okay. Shines a light, what's the pill bottle? Right.

Hands it to him. Guess who's names on it. Oh, shit. I mean, obviously the original woman that you guys robbed. Yeah. Like they didn't dump the fucking. Nope. Get out of the car.

And it's a small, small town. They know about the robbery. Yep. And there's a light bulb. And I know now, they now know that this kid also just committed the robbery that was called in. They just don't have the missing component to worse the stuff that you stole and who else is involved. Right. But the pill bottle gets him out of the car, puts him in the back of the cop car, and they're able to take them in.

Right. They take them in. Well, the girlfriend says, that's him. Yeah. He did it. They let her go. And then they need more information. So what do they do?

they go re-arrest her we need more information you know more right okay yeah here's here's some more stuff next thing you know the other code of finnick gets arrested during this time it's like christmas of 2004 2004 correct and i'm i'm sleeping on the street my first three nights on the street i got a shopping cart with like a five thousand dollar computer my michael jordan shoes in and i'm not ready to give these up yet this is swear to god honest truth my mom will come in here tell you the same thing i have not seen my parents in three years at this time i go to a johnny quick gas station which is a my buddy's dad owns this thing called johnny quick which he attaches to chevrons um it's like a race track or whatever right his their name is johnny quick i walk to this

johnny quick i'm pushing the shopping cart i'm coming down big time it's the middle of the winter but i'm sweating bullets like it's 110 outside and i walk up to these guys originally because i'm to call my mom and I say you got any change I'm going to make a phone gone I'm like now we I got any change well these kids pull up in this truck and they're like hey bro will you buy some alcohol inside I'm like yeah I'll do that to you to give you an idea how bad a condition that I was in those same kids came back in while I was in there looking for the alcohol and they're like hey bro just keep the money don't worry about it get food and stuff that you need like and I didn't ask him for anything they were like this dude's bad just let him keep the money right so i walk out and then

the guys that said they didn't have any change say well i'll hear some change well they didn't know i also got some money from inside so i get on the pay phone and i call my mom and uh my parents house and my mom answers and i said mom and she says anthony and i'm like i need help and she's like where are you and i'm like i'm a cedar and knees at the johnny quick and i was like can you please pick me up and she's like yeah i'll be right there so gotta wait 20 minutes because it's outside of the edge of clovis almost fresno county now and my mom pulls up and i'll never forget the look on her face man because she like sees the shopping cart and i'm like rail thin you know i got no weight on me i'm clearly look like i have the flu because i'm coming down from opioids right and i've

got a safe in this shopping cart as well we load the safe up we load the computer up my shoes that I had and we go home and I'm sitting down on this brick fireplace my parents replaced the wood fireplace with one of those pellet stoves you load the little wood chips into the top and then it dumps into the thing and the flame goes and then it blows the hot air I'm sitting right next to this thing which is right across from my dad's lazy boy chair and I remember telling him I'm in trouble and my dad says what do you mean and I said said the cops are investigating all my friends right now. I committed an armed robbery and they're going to be looking for me soon. I know it. And my dad's like, well, what did you bring here?

Is anything from that robbery? Did you bring any of that stuff here? And I'm like, yeah. And he was like, well, what? And I'm like, that's safe. Anybody that could give some type of police statement could say that pills were hidden inside this safe. And he's like, well, we got to get rid of it. and that's a tough situation right you could say oh my dad's a piece of shit but at the same time my dad's a father to a son he doesn't want to lose going to prison and no i think that he i mean that's a i mean that's a i don't think i would say i would make a judgment call either way like to me having been to prison and knowing what's what the ramifications are and that it's all coming down like to me i wouldn't know i i i I probably would have been like, look, you got to, I'm sorry, but you have to leave. The safe has to go or you have to take care of that because I can't be involved. But I think night, but that's because of prison experience. I think 90% of fathers would say, I got to get rid of the safe.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? That's what, but be being in prison. Yeah. And that was a hard thing for me when I was writing my book because my editor was like, we have to tell this story. And I'm like, I really don't want to bring that type of judgment to my father because he's a good man. I think that's the example of a man that I've ever been given, you know, but at the same time, you know, it's your, it's you. Yeah. It's your son. Yeah. And, and my dad, you know, as much as he get out of here, we don't do that. I'm not going to be a part of this. There was this component of my father where he stepped in and he did what I would hope any father would do is try and protect their family. Right. He got rid of the safe. And I ended up getting a job for a flooring company during.

this time i went and saw what they would call as a mat doctor now medication assisted treatment which is suboxin clinic they would also call a fucking um methadone clinic matt right right right suboxin was the softer version of what methadone is to help people not withdraw and wean off of these opioids uh because that's what i needed to do and so they got me into this doctor and then i started feeling better and i went and got this job at a flooring company and you know every day me and my dad would take me to work and he'd be like what are you going to tell the cops you're just waiting for him to come you know they're coming yeah well first of all all your buddies like sorry i don't mean interrupt but no you're fine um i was going to say that that book

i read like i remember at one point his buddies had some other guys had been arrested and i was like well were you concerned they were going to say something and he goes he said there he said he said he's let me tell you what happens he said you're addicted to you're addicted to he said even if you were to try and be strong say I'm not going to tell you anything he goes they'll just wait two hours he's two hours later you're throwing up in a in a in a garbage pan or sorry you're throwing up in a garbage barrel yeah in the interrogation room and they walk in in and they'll give you a soda if you'll just tell him something he goes you're ready to tell them anything you're coming down you're you're going through withdrawals you've never been in so much

pain you're you need sugar you need something he's like and he's like you'll tell him anything Because he was in the same thing. He's like, look, when I came down, he's like, I'm ready to do anything. That's exactly right. He's like, even if you think, well, I would never. Well, bro, then you don't have a clue. Wait, three hours. You might not be able to because you're balled up into a corner crying, you know.

When I first got the jail, I was so anxious because I was feeling all my emotions and body again. But I was so exhausted as I couldn't sit still. But if I tried to get off my bunk and take 15 steps to the pay phone, or the phone, it was like running 20 miles. It's the weirdest thing ever, dude. Like you're so exhausted and tired, but at the same time, you feel like your internals are crawling outside of itself

and running at a million miles an hour. So I get this job, and I got one friend who's communicating back to me what's going on. Right. And he's telling me it's getting closer. It's getting closer. They're calling this dude, and they're calling this dude,

and they're getting statements from everybody that's close to us. us. February 4th at 11 a.m. I'm just getting up. I'm fucking butt ass naked. I'm about to get in the shower. And I hear the doorbell. Did it do you need to do not. Somebody just like ringing it over and over and over and I hear this thud. And I'm like, what the fuck? And I'm thinking it's my buddy coming over and he's just being an idiot pushing the doorbell, right? So, I'm just, I walk down out of the bathroom and I walked down this hallway. We've got these like little arches through our hallway and then it opens up into the master

bedroom or the family room and off the family room are the two big sliders that take you into the backyard. And as I'm walking out, I look through the corner of my eyes and there's four cops in my backyard and I'm like, oh shit. So I go up to the front door and we have a screen that you can't see through and they say is Anthony Hoffman here we have a warrant for his arrest and I open up the screen door and I'm like yeah and they're like where's he at I look nothing like my my photo like I look like a 10 year old than my my driver's license right so they didn't even recognize me from this and I'm like I'm Anthony

and they're like step outside all the way and put your hands behind your back at this time I've only got underwear on all right so they've got to take me back in the house and I've got to put clothes on they had cops lined up and down the street there was like 15 squad cars and i was like did you guys really need 15 squad cars and they're like do you know what you're wanted for all right like we don't know what you're gonna do yeah if you're gonna shoot out with us or do whatever we consider you somebody that's armed and dangerous used a weapon in your your crime yeah i mean even the term home invasion sounds horrible yeah so they they uh they take me to they interrogate me um a guy that looked like Patrick Swayze and uh I'm like handcuffed to the chair right and uh I was like man

when are you gonna let me go home and he was like Mr. Hoffman why do you think you're handcuffed to this chair right now and I was like I don't know but you don't have anything on me and he's like I've got Bob next door what do you think he's saying about you and I was like I don't give a fuck what Bob says about me that dude's a snake in the grass and I was like I was like and he was like and I've got your fingerprints on a pill bottle and he puts it right here and I was like I can guarantee right now my fingerprints aren't on that pill bottle they weren't right they had nothing on me the only thing they had were these hearsay statements that said that I was involved in this robbery my parents this is the one thing my dad will tell you he ever did for me he won't ever do anything again until he dies that's the last dollar ever get from him he he spent this money on this guy Michael a yard who at the time was the best defense attorney in Fresno, one of the best defense attorneys in the state of California. So I go to court with this big wig attorney, and he says, I'm not here to be your friend. I don't care about you.

I just need to know what happened, if you did it, how you did it, so we can figure out if we can get you off of this or not. So I tell him the story. And he says, if your girlfriend tells or your co-defendant rolls, this is over. If we don't get statements from them, this is easy. out of here. They're not even able to get you on anything because she can't identify you in a photo op and she was the one that got robbed. Everybody else's statements can't pin you actually inside that house. So I spent five months in jail and then my co-defendant turned state's evidence because he had three strikes against him for the three robberies and they said, if you turn state's evidence

and you become a victim of this crime and you tell us what Tony did inside that house, we'll drop a strike and we'll let you out of here and he all of us none of us did prison time right out the gate this is crazy I never told on anybody and a lot of people that have been to prison

hear my story and they're like you told them like no you don't understand I went in with white skin with one of the best defense attorneys in the state of California best defense attorney in Fresno County

my parents spent a ton of money this guy's reputation is what got me the deal that I got which was five years felony probation a strike on my record and 90 days in a treatment center. He told me, I'm going to move you out of the courtroom that we're in right now because this judge is a no-go.

And he goes, I'm going to put you in my best friend's courtroom. We play golf with each other every single week. Jesus. And they knew nothing about this time. I remember the judge saying, what's the gun to the DA. Because they had no idea. Do you think that worked for you or against you? Yes, it worked for me because somebody I'm friends with now came in behind me and his

family's attorney tried to use my case as special circumstances like hey you can't sentence this guy this and then give my son five years in prison and they denied the special circumstance sentencing based on how I was sentenced because they recalibrated how they would sentence crimes he was robbing people at ATM machines soon as they would go get them the money he would rob him at gunpoint at the ATM machines another guy that I went to high school with robbed seven CBS pharmacies he was a pharmacy technician right just got hooked on biking and then next thing you knew he knew how to jump over the CVS counter and go straight to the people like him is why they started putting them in safes and had signs

on the windows that said cotton is locked up or we don't have any stay out of here because so many people started doing these types of robberies just to get these damn pills so I get out and I don't change about 60 days after I get out the magic team raids my apartment which is the multi-agency gang consortium. It's like a mini-task force. It's mini-swat team, but it's like Fresno County and then all the little cities

pull like their best cops for this gang and drug task force. They raid my house. So you're still, so you're selling pills still? Yeah, get out. And 60 days later,

I end up getting some pills. Okay. And this guy I get pills from me. He's like, why don't I front you, eight of these pills right and i'm like all right i don't want to do this but fuck it and then i can get them for free so i started selling these pills i go to re-up on my second one as i'm leaving my apartment there's a magic car at the front office and i tell me the guy in my car i was like

that magic car's in here from me and i was like you got anything on you he's like i got half a pill i was like take it right now he's like why dude i was like that that's for me bro i promise you There's no gangs in here. And as soon as we drive by him, a dude runs out of the office, a cop, jumps in that car, gets behind us. I was like, bro, take that fucking half pill right now. And then right up the street, dude, 10, 12, 13 cops blowing up the street. They were just getting ready to come and raid my apartment as I was leaving.

Right. Little did they know I was out and I was going to pick up. If they would have waited two hours, they would have got me with everything that they wanted. So when they pulled me over, they pulled me out of the car. They're pulling all the vents out. lifting up all the mats trying to find the dope and the guy's like we're going back to your apartment and we're going to find exactly what I know we're going to find and I'm thinking no you're not all right let's go did your buddy take the pill yeah he took bill and he had a little

grinder but you can't do anything with a grinder so they take me back and they don't find nothing and then over the course of that moment where they don't get anything and if you know anything about the cops if they raid your house and don't get anything the chances of them coming back right away are very slim you have to be like big time for them to spend the money and resources and have a warrant signed off where they can come in and even do that so when they left i was in the clear for years and that was when um i got introduced um to the west side of fresno somebody knew somebody on the west side of fresno in the projects and uh i had cash that could get me in over there with some folks and uh that was when things started to really like

get out of control in terms of like how many pills we were seeing and what was actually happening because what was happening over there on the west side was they knew where the doctor was and they were creating a team of people that would go in and get these prescriptions and then everybody was putting their pills inside this big pile and then distribute them to the white kids that were in Clovis to make profits and so everybody came together with this organization of basically buying out a doctor like professional, these are professional doctor shoppers. Yeah. And not even shopping, but they're going to the one. And then you work through the one guy

who is the one guy, the doctor trusts. And then the team knows what to say when they come in. So the doctor knows that you're a part of the team. There's cash incentives for you to make sure that this team's getting their prescriptions. And everybody's working together to take all of these pills, put them in a big pile, split them up. Everybody gets portions of the profits. But the main guy is getting the most. And then the pills go back into the white community. communities. And it's not a black strand of destroy white communities. This is just how it worked. And of course, I wasn't able to stay up because I'm a drug addicted person. Right. It goes downhill to the point that I started to lose my connection over there because they couldn't trust me. Right. And I finally get arrested on January 22nd, 2007 after being homeless for six months.

So you weren't living at home, your parents' house? They were like, no, they were, yeah. After my apartment got raided they didn't talk to me again after that so it was almost two and a half years that I didn't talk to them and they violated my probation they found me in a house that was up for rent that was empty a person came in to show it to somebody and I was laying down on the floor with my needles next to me and they thought I had overdosed and died so they called the paramedics that was on January 22nd 2007 and 30 days later you know because it was a violation probation it was pretty cut and dry I'm on my way to prison I've got a form and a half year term and that was you know i started in cell living so when i got to california prison

i got to see what california prison was all about so it's a pretty cut and dry thing i in 30 days they violate my probation and and i'm on a bus to the california penitentiary i started in a level four yard which was cell living so i was on lockdown for 23 and a half hours a day i'm grateful that i got to experience that first um because i told you when i before we started i actually met a couple solid guys before I hit the mainline prison. So this was just reception the first 90 days. And I'll never forget this. And anybody that tells you they're not scared when they're going to prison for the first

time, they're fucking liars. I don't care if you're a bulldog gang member, a blood, a Crip, a Nazi lowrider, or a skinheaded, you're scared the first time because you don't know what's going to happen. You're in a paper jumpsuit. I'm in a paper jumpsuit. My arms are shackled. My ankles are shackled.

and I'm sitting on a bus for three hours going to this location when I get off the bus the first thing I hear is that the whites and bulldogs are at war with each other. I don't know if you heard any of that when you went to the Fed Pen.

No, the first day I was there, though, if somebody did get stabbed and they screamed lockdown that somebody got stabbed in the rec yard and I thought this isn't good. I'm not prepared for this. Yeah, and I think that we probably all have some type of moment where you realize

what my cellmate, Raiwright from Ventura County said, you know, this place is fun sometimes, but it's still prison. And that means we never know what's going to happen. And so I'm like, what does that mean? The whites and the bulldogs are at war with each other. In Fresno, we have the bulldog gang members.

It's a Hispanic gang that doesn't claim to be northern Hispanic or southern Hispanic. They claim to be bulldogs and they're not run by a shot caller. They just do whatever they want. So I get educated on what war means. What war means is if I cross a bulldog or I see a bulldog, I have to try and kill that guy. If I don't try and kill that guy, my people will kill me for not taking off on him because that's the way the politics and the rules are currently for this. And this is this is some type of vengeance for some type of white and bulldog happening that happened at some point when

they were on the yard together. Something happened. A white and bulldog went after each other. Then the two cars, the two groups said, okay, we're a war. Now anytime one of our guys see each other, we have to, we're going to try and kill you. and you know they did we went through the whole strip down thing it takes hours i get to my cell at about 10 30 at night and i remember walking into the cell block and all as you could hear was bulldogs barking and they were on the lower tier because if you put a bulldog in the upper tier they would clog the toilets and they would flood the tier like they were really interesting people when it came to prison like they were not there to do time they were there to disrupt everybody and

anything that they could because that's what they like to do right but they also their call is a bark and some of these guys barks sound like real ass dogs so you walk into this cell block and you're listening to ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro ro roo and then you're hearing you know blood swooping out the door and a crip's got their call the only ones that aren't doing anything are the southern Hispanics and the whites that are up on top and they say uh i got cell 24 top bunk and i remember looking up seeing my cell man as i go up to staircase and as i get closer he's got to big white power on his stomach and on the back of his head he's got a big swastika they call him dizzy from antelope valley he's an antelope valley skinhead and i'll never forget this i shut the door behind me he pulls out a piece and uh he says there's a no hands you there's a no hands policy on this yard youngster if you got a problem with me you have to stab me with this piece if i got a problem with you i'm going to stab you with this piece he goes you can turn around and lock it up right now just bang on that door and tell that cop you want out here and you want to go PC

And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. But what a no hands policy meant was you can't fight with your hands. If a problem exists with this person, it has to be a problem to the degree that you're willing to stab them over it. If you fought somebody with your hands, you'd get served the punishment for breaking the rules. That night, though, I sit down on my bunk and I read this quote that says, be careful what you think because your thoughts become your words. Be careful what you say, because your words become your actions.

be careful what you do because your actions become your habits. Be careful what you make a habit because your habits become your character and your character becomes your destiny. And I just kept reading it and it made so much sense to me. And at that time, I wanted a different life for myself. But I'm in this environment where you don't get a different environment. You're here. And so I started thinking about what that meant for me.

And really what it meant for me was that my perspective on life at that point had been completely miscalibrated, that most of the problems that I had in my life, and the reason I even reached out for my perception of things, my perception of self and my safety, my perception of anxiety, what that meant, my perception of friends, my perception of cops, teachers, everybody was miscalibrated. I always put myself in a position of lacking power. And so I started to realize that, you know, maybe I have an opportunity right now to start changing my life while I'm in here and be prepared to get out because when I went to rehab after

I was sentenced for the armed robbery I wasn't paying attention to rehab I'll never use again I'm good I don't want to go to prison that's it all right not realizing that's not the way it works so while I'm here though in this cell block I'm introduced to these things that are just completely blowing my mind with how prison actually is my neighbors were skinheads and they were reporters, but they would try to not lock the cell door because if they could keep the cell door open, they could get a bulldog that's going to med call or a bulldog that gets to leave the cell to go somewhere. Sure shit, one day, dude. They didn't close the cell door and the cop and the tower didn't notice that their cell wasn't closed. And if he did, then he was in on it. Right. And a bulldog comes out to go to med and this dude, TR, goes down there, squares up with him and starts fighting. this dude and they're spraying them with the pepper spray and I'm sure you've been around that pepper spray it's not like the shit that you buy a dick sporting goods that pepper spray is like so strong it was choking us in our cell and we were 50 feet away from it still don't stop

cop in the tower get out get out get out get down still don't stop get down get down still don't stop bow shoots the gun hits to do boom fight stops and like Everybody's on their cell windows like beanbag gun. So a block gun. Okay. We use block guns in California. I think they have beanbags, but only for the right for right groups. But the gun of choice is a block gun.

It's basically a cork, an oval cork with a racquetball, half a racket ball on the tip. Okay. But when that thing has velocity on it, you should see the bruises at least. That stops the fight. Right, right turns around and he looks at me and he goes, I told you, bro. you can have fun here he goes but this you never know when this is

going to happen and he was like and he was like and I hope you understand you cannot stop until you get shot or they get shot he was like if you stop at the pepper spray or you stop at them telling you to stop that person's going to kill you bro and I just remember thinking to myself

what the fuck am I doing here right you know I get transferred to the main line but now I go low level I'm level two I'm in a dorm. And the politics are looking totally different. And I was cooking wine to start.

Ryra taught me how to make wine. We were getting drunk once a week. My parents weren't helping me. And I'm thinking, you know, he's like, you've got to sell wine to make money. That's how you're going to feed yourself because the state isn't going to feed you enough. So I get caught making the wine.

And I think to myself, you know what? My friends aren't in here. My friends on the street didn't have my back. I'm telling my parents that I'm going to change and they're finally answering my phone calls. And I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? Right. And I took this process of learning how to brush my teeth,

make my bed and organize my stuff every single day. If you follow me on Instagram, I post my bed wherever I'm at in the country. It's the first thing I do. My bed is made. I brush my teeth and my room is organized. And that was something that I learned in prison and you probably learned it yourself.

You're a good. Your personal space. My wife and I, every, I mean, every single morning, the bed is made, every single morning, like we wake up, we wake up at like 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, because that's when they turn the lights on. Yeah. You know, that's when the guards turn the lights on. And then we go work out in the morning.

We very much have a routine, and it's because it's because of prison. Never did that shit before. Never. No. And it's been five years. I'm still doing it. Yeah. But it was, but it's right.

It helps you organize your thoughts and your day. And it's a great measure of how your day will go. You know, it might seem stupid, but, you know, it's not stupid. Bro, if you listen to me and my philosophy on life now, so much of it was built behind what prison was teaching me without saying, learn this. Discipline, structure, routine, being okay with little, not needing much. right sitting with myself in a way that I couldn't I can't leave I can't hide I can't do things sure

I could have used dope because I've seen more people come into prison alcoholics and meth addicts and leave porn addicts than anything else right like there's more dope in California prisons than there is on the street fortunately for myself I had made that decision that I'm done this is my opportunity to get this right because if I don't I'm going to die on the street and that's just not going to be my story you know and so um after the wine charge i start tightening the bolts on my life you know figuring out and you know really reflect reflecting on myself and what i was doing wrong and what i was doing right and i think that there were great qualities about my drug dealing desires right is to serve other people but the the instinct and how i was doing it was what was

miscalibrated so it's like i'm an entrepreneur at heart like i need to create things that help other people and by giving in a way that I've been gifted, then I'll fill these voids that I've had in my life. And so I started really to reflect on like what my needs were and what I was doing and then disciplining myself and like, you know, being able to abstain from what everybody else was doing for me wasn't so much of a challenge because I was so beat into the ground when I went in.

Had I gone in at 21 when I committed the robbery, I would have left a wreck. I would have got involved in the gangs I would have tried to be that guy for the older guys and really just got run through in terms of being taken advantage of and taking my stuff

and getting me to go do work on the yard that I didn't want to do but I wanted people to think that I was about the business and stuff like that you go with four years you fucking you leave 15, 20 years later because you stabbed three guys

and you've seen that you did enough time that you did there was a guy from Bakersfield, I mean, he was stacking on four years, and I'm like, dude, you only go home? Right. You know, these people that you don't even know, you're trying to impress them, they don't care about you.

They don't care about you either, you know? Your friends in the street didn't care about you, these guys don't care about you either. Yeah. Even though I'm, like I said, like some of my closest relationships with guys now are all guys I met in prison. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

You know, there's good guys there. Oh, no, yeah. You can meet the good duns there. They're very few. Yeah, they're very few. I met two. In two years, I met two. You know, you did 13 years. You got enough time to probably meet 10 maybe. Right. And some are still in there and some are. Yeah. And that's okay because the ones that are in there that are good people are, you know, calculating all of

their mistakes and writing their wrongs with what they do in there today. Right. You know, and one of my greatest mentors, Toby Wade, who was actually a black guy I wasn't supposed to talk to in prison, served 21 years for murder. And he's out now. But everything he was doing while he was in there and then helping me and not asking for anything in return was to to to make an amends right like he didn't want to get out make an apology tour his apology tour was how he was going to change himself inside and then the work that he was going to do when he got out to be a family man a father to his kids a husband to his wife a taxpayer to the government if you want to consider that a good thing all of the things that he does today that keeps him out of prison and that that was really what

what I was aiming to do but I started it with just brushing my teeth making my bed organizing my stuff learning how to do all of the things I knew I could control because I had learned in 23 years in my life at this point that there are many things that are going to happen in our lives that are out of control and so for a limited time at McDonald's enjoy the tasty breakfast trio your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants price Flavored Ice Coffee and Delivery. I mean, there was situations that I would see things in there

that, you know, would falter as you're going in there because, you know, you said you saw somebody get stabbed. I remember one time I'd work out on the yard and there was a dude just sitting there, like three laps. And I'm walking the yard, just in a puddle of blood laying there. And I'm like, fuck, dude. Nobody's going to say nothing. You can't say nothing.

You're just waiting for him just close the yard. Yeah, like who, you're waiting for a cop to finally see it hit the alarm and then everybody close the yard and go in you know and i've and the fights you know it's no holds barred whatever goes goes i remember i watched a uh a southern Hispanic gang member in a black dude fight and uh the black dude was a two striker and he took a lock off of one of the uh lockers and he just like turns around gets up side arms it and i'm like on my bed watching this fight and i watch he's throwing it towards me and it just

boom right on this dude's forehead and just blood and I remember thinking I was like oh my God that was so sick he couldn't do that again if he tried a million times like that was like right in a pipe

to his forehead that struck him out doing life in prison for throwing a lock out although like the the bloodiest fight I saw what wouldn't consider a fight attack was a guy with a lock

that hit a guy four or five times in the back of the head. With a sock or just the lock of his hand? No, no, he had a, you know, the belts. He had a belt wrapped around his arm looped through the lock. So it's, the lock is here. Yeah. So, and I mean, just walked up the high and the blood was everywhere. Yeah.

And I remember first thing I thought of was, because there was so much blood was, did I get blood on me? Yep. Um, anyway, fell down. Guys tried to stand up again. But, but I, butah, but I, but your scalp blades so much, you know, like I, I just remember thinking that you know it certainly wasn't a fight it was just intact like I had no idea yeah and it was over something that really needed to be taken care of it was over a punk oh yeah that seems legit that's the one I watched was over a bag of chips yeah of course so that's that's

reasonable of course can't believe you waited so long yeah seems legit um and you know what that was that was prison life and by that time you know um I was a model inmate and I tell people you know what the war stories is cool and as entertaining as they can be when you get to prison there's a lot of motherfuckers that can do what everybody else is doing that's the easy thing to do i only saw a few people the entire time that i was there on the same wavelength that i was on like i'm going to get out stay out and i'm going to do something with my life right it was what what can we do today to make a difference for tomorrow and um something inside of me the spiritual experience i had and something inside of me just I wanted something different for myself and I wanted to get out and see what I

could do with that you know I came from a great family raised in a good neighborhood went to a really good school like I have everything at my disposal then to throw that away would be what you know there's people that dream to grow up in a neighborhood like I do have a family like I do have some people don't want to be the color of their skin and think of how easy I got it because the color of skin that I got like and here I'm going to throw it away and end up in prison right And spend my life here, uh, hooked on and shoot dope until I die because that was what was going to happen. I was going to die in a hotel by myself or be found on the street, you know, and I would just be another, another statistic, a person that wasted their talent.

But I got out and I started racing BMX professionally. Um, my parole agent thought it was all bullshit. I told my mom he was going to re-arrest me in 30 days. Why? He didn't think he said, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'm going to, I've been training for the Olympics. And I was, and I was. I was like, that already sounds, yeah, already thought,

oh, Jesus, a dreamer, another dreamer. You had a better chance if you'd said, I'm going to be a rap star. Oh,

how many times I hear it? Oh, yeah, dude. Well, so here's what I tell people. In a California prison, if you're black, you're a rapper.

Yeah. If you're white, you're an MMA fighter. And if you're Mexican, you're connected to the cartel. Yeah. I've heard every story. Yeah.

And they're always that. I'm a rapper. I'm a fighter. And I'm connected to the cartel in this. It's like, dude. get out of here you're none of those right your person addicted to or you're a criminal and you're in prison just like me he says what are you gonna do i said i'm gonna race my bike professionally i brought on the magazine i was like like i've been on the cover of magazine like i can ride a bike i was like but i've been training for the olympics since i've been in prison and i really had and uh and i was like to start a non-profit for kids at some point and i and i'm really want to tell my story as a speaker and he like looked at me and he was like who brought you here He must have thought you were just insane.

Oh, yeah. I said my mom, and he's like, go get her. And I'm like, you want me to bring my mom in here? Right. And he's like, yeah. So I go out to the parking lot of the parole office, and I don't know how the Fed parole office is, but state parole office is like a zoo.

There's so many people out there, pissing and showing up for parole. And so I go out and I tell my mom she's got to come in. My mom's absolutely embarrassed like she should be and would be. Right. And this guy says, you know what your son's telling me he's going to do? and she's like you're talking about riding the bike and she's like he's like he's like your son says he's going to the Olympics he's training for the Olympics and he wants to

start a nonprofit for kids and he's going to be a speaker and my mom says that's right he's been working on this since he was in prison looks are dead in the eye and says your son's full of shit ma'am and he goes I brought you in here so I could tell you to your face your son is full of shit and he's going to go back to prison in 30 days and I'm going to re-arrest him and it's going to be you and your husband's fault for being stupid enough to believe this story and my mom just looked at him going on his truth and he's on my mini-documentary he gave me that I was like you owe me this and he said I told you he we reenacted that whole thing and that's great oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah

He says, yeah, I, I, so he's all right. No, yeah, he's all right. He turned out to be all right. Years later, he came back into my life through a random message on Instagram. And my mom looked at him and she's like, you don't know my son. This kid can ride a bicycle. And I was like, and if he says he's going to the Olympics, I promise you, he'll be there. And we just walked out.

Five months later, I raced my first pro race. Hadn't touch a bike seven years, but I've been training my ass off. riding every day you know i was already physically fit when i left prison you know there's a lot of people get physically fit i was getting physically fit to get back on my bike though and i took third place that first year i won five races in the lower pro division moved up to the olympic level um i was on the cover when i was 18 and it wasn't on i wasn't on the cover because i was lucky right i truly could write a bicycle and it was sports was my gift and my dad was a professional motocross racer racing's in our family we just our brains understand racing and i had the talent and

the speed to make it work and I got invited to the Olympic Training Center my second year so I started training down to the Olympic Training Center and this at this time I'm like building the speaking thing I'm trying to get this speaking thing going but it's not really a career it's just I just want to help people right I just want to tell my story and stop kids from making the mistake that I made and they need to know that that orange bottle is dangerous right I'm not a criminal I'm not this dude that comes in here and I got a ton of people I want to hurt or have hurt like I was a person who struggled in his early life and he found in an orange bottle what felt like was the answer and that orange bottle was a fucking lie right like I just wanted to stop kids from gravitating

towards that because in my town there were tasks force everybody was going to prison people were starting to die but there was no talk about it like people still weren't talking about it so I end up blowing my knee out my second year of racing which ends my racing career and I'm like, what the fuck am I going to do now? There goes my Olympic dream, you know. And my speaking started to take off and I started to build up some momentum. And I thought that my knee injury was a great opportunity for me to start my nonprofit and switch gears from racing to coaching. And that's kind of what I did starting around 2012 to the point that we were able to build up, you know, about $120,000 a year that we could raise for the nonprofit.

it, which, you know, for a dude with no education and just a passion to help people and no connection to the chief of police and all these rich people in town, like, it was good. Right. You know, we're giving away $40,000 worth of bikes, $10,000 with skateboards. Do kids would camp out at 5 o'clock in the morning for my summer camp signups because it was free. Right. And you would leave with a $400 bike, a helmet.

Like, we were really trying to do good work for the community with that. And my coaching was what, you know, became the big. thing and I finally got these athletes to start trusting that I knew what I was doing because in the beginning it's like dude you just got out of prison and were homeless the fuck do you know about training people well one of my athletes Brooke crane a little blonde girl 2012 asked me to be her coach and she was one of the best writers in the world for females she made the Olympic team in 2016 and that was really what dubbed my story from prison to the Olympics was I became the first person that started in a prison cell to participate in the Olympics at any level

Obviously, I wanted to go as an athlete, but I made it as a coach. And did the media pick that up? Was that like a... No, it wasn't. It wasn't. And it's mainly because this is, and this all rolls back to BMX is such a niche sport. And highlighting things is really about the highlighting of the athletes. And even the BMX athletes aren't getting any type of...

At this time, they were playing it late at night. The recognition that I got was actually from the United States Olympic Committee, which to me was one of the coolest. We went to a dinner and Rio and there was a bunch of people there with me, Brooke and her family that were from the Olympic committee and Brooke and her family really pumped me up a lot.

I didn't like to talk in that environment about my stuff, but they would bring it up and talk about how proud of it they were. After the Olympics, a guy named Dave reached out to me on Instagram and said I had no idea about your story. Send me your address

on behalf of the United States Olympic Committee, I'd like to send you something. And so I've got this letter from the United States Olympic Committee. They gave me a special coin that only a handful of coaches that were selected got to have this commemorative coin from the Rio Olympics. And basically thanking me for my service to Brooke Crane and the Olympic team and the United States and trying to help the advancement of their placements in the Olympics, and then the coin that I now get to hold on to. outside of that though at that time there was no media attention around like kind of what I was doing and what my story was all about and I was okay with that you know it's about Brooke not me right I'm just there to help her and do what I can and she's like a little sister to me now but since then my my speaking careers you know catapulted to where I'm on the road 200 250 days a year and I'm speaking the governments high schools middle schools colleges health care organizations you name it about mental health and addiction um

And then I started my own treatment center, Ph. Wellness, two years ago. We're in Southern California. That's what the pH is for. I was wondering. And that's Matt Paws, Tony Hoffman, but it's a play on words. pH wellness, our slogan is find your balance. And we really have created something unique in that we only use master's level clinicians. And we have this huge fitness component.

My thing has really been the clinical part is when somebody comes to pH wellness, I want to make sure that these individuals are. wrapped around the best of the best. We have one of my guys as a lifer. My program director is a lifer that served over 20 years, but he's been sober and he gets it. My clinical directors have PhDs and master's degrees. So when they sit down with somebody and they have complex childhood traumas and things that have happened to them, that the people that they're working with can actually help them

through some of these situations that are the root cause for why they're using. But the fitness component is what really makes us unique. We have a 5,000 square foot fitness center, and every week clients are engaging with certified fitness instructors with our actual treatment center. And so being able to engage with a certified trainer and getting people moving and trying to get active. And, you know, when you get to prison, you start finding yourself doing things that you would have never done before because you have all that time to get creative and get the body moving and kind of spark those endorphins and stuff that can be really beneficial. to you either which you probably like you said you still make your bed you still do some of the stuff that was in prison because it became a beneficial part of like your routine to life right and so we've started with 12 beds we're about to be licensed for 18 beds and my my dream really is

to scale this thing across the united states and create the macdonalds of treatment and not that McDonald's quality is high but you know what you get when you go to McDonald's right whether it's in rio de Janeiro or in beverly hills california McDonald's is McDonald's yeah you know the same cheever yeah and so and i've just been on this journey now where it's um you know we talked like i i don't want i don't need to apologize for my past right do i have some regrets robin the lady yeah yeah for obvious reasons but my past shaped me to who i am today and i'm okay with that and what i do today is is my apology um and nobody can make me feel any different you know because i know why i get up and do what i do um and i'm always grateful for an opportunity like

this because some people want to hear about all the shit that you went through because they never lived that life oh i can listen i i can already hear the the the comments you ought to go into the comment section when this thing plays because people would be like such it was so inspiring oh my god this guy's story yeah they'll go on and on like because it's funny because they do that like every once while i'll have a story and i'll i'll just kind of almost shrug it off like you know and then but then again people constantly tell me that my story's inspiring this and that like And I have no, I have no desire to be inspiring. Like I don't, I don't even try, you know, but they find it.

So if somebody actually has like a real turnaround story where they've really said, hey, you know, I'm going to make a conscious change to do all this and help other people. Yeah. Then that's, you know, that's the people love that. Yeah. Why it's, and the way I look at it is there's somebody for everybody. Yeah. I'm not everybody's cup of tea.

You know, some people love that your inspiration is not that that was your life purpose and you were going to change that. You know, just you doing what you do is an inspiration because you're not who you used to be. Right. You don't interest until you go into that process, right? That wasn't working for me. Yeah.

You know, it wasn't working. And I definitely in prison realized like that this is like, I just can't do this. Like this is like I'm better off staying in someone's spare room working at McDonald's than I am coming back here. Yeah. You know? For sure.

I had to, you know, there's a, there's the opposite spectrum of how I talk about addiction and the psychology of it, right? is there's a guy in Pennsylvania and his is great because it works for a lot of people he's like no you didn't use because you were sexually abused you used because you fucking liked it okay that's it you got to stop using because you realize that it doesn't work for you anymore there's no mechanics to that some people don't need the mechanics right they just need the surrender to that this doesn't work for me I'd rather sleep in a closet and work at McDonald's then come back here

You don't need the rest. All right. It's all the same, though. Whether I break it down. I was going to say, I actually did sleep in a closet. I always say the spare room, but I'm going to be honest with you. There was the spare room was a studio that had a large closet that was just big enough for my bed to fit in. And I slept in the closet and used the studio to paint.

So you're, this is on the comeback. Yeah, this is after I went from the halfway house to the spare room and stayed there 18 months and slept in the closet. But it's too hard to explain the. closet thing but you actually said the closet thing i thought yeah that's actually i didn't exactly what happened i did sleep in the closet and your willingness is why you're you're you haven't gone back well my cell didn't have a it was cozy in the closet um yeah no not everybody can do that though create the parallel and perspective i think the problem that i think the thing is is that i fell so far and and after 13 years realized like you don't need all this shit you know and i got humble

for the first time in my life. Sorry. Bro, I've been on the fucking version of tears the whole time you've been talking. I'm kind of a pussy, so I cry easy, so it's not that bigger. No, you're good. But, yeah, like I just got super humble and appreciative

of just the everyday things. You know, being in prison, it's like, I'm just happy to have, I can turn on YouTube, I can watch it, I can watch Netflix, I can turn the channel without having to put it on a form and ask guys, hey, do you guys mind if we watch this on Tuesday? Fuck you, Cox, we're watching this

on Tuesday. All right. You know, so you get appreciative and you realize like, fuck, I'm better off doing anything than this. Yeah. And I think being appreciative and like you said, following those basic kind of rules that simplicity of life is why everything has come fairly easy. Like my wife thinks I work all the time, but are you fucking serious?

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like just like you, you're like I live on an airplane. Like walking through the airport. with your bag walking up and getting on your Delta flight

man the first time I did that fucking nothing cooler and I'd only been out of prison like three months because you have to wait three months before they'll let you travel

and you have to get permission and I had to do all this shit jump through those hoops got on that plane and I thought fuck bro three months ago you were

you were sleeping in a bunk bed yeah like this is the coolest fucking thing ever totally worth 15 years later right no different to me

yeah going through that airport So cool. Gratitude, bro. If I can share with you. Yeah. It hit me like a month, 11 to 13. I was hand washing a Dickie's white t-shirt because a Dickie's white t-shirt was what the ballers had in prison.

Right. You couldn't put that in the laundry shoot. It turned gray. It would turn gray or they would steal it. So I'm washing this thing with my hands, right? And as I'm scrubbing it, I'm thinking to myself, this white t-shirt. this white t-shirt is like a million dollars in here and if i can find value in this white t-shirt how much more value should i have for my freedom my ability to watch netflix my ability to go

through an airport my ability to get to do all these things that i don't get to today and from that day forward i've never found myself out of gratitude for longer than a day i've just always been able to calibrate back to what matters the sense simple life, having my life, getting to go home, getting to have a house, being able to buy a meal, being able to not be strung out on, have friends that I know that have my back. If you've got a wife, a wife that supports you, even with all the shit that you've been through, you know, it's always something we can find gratitude for. But until you have that moment, in my opinion, you truly can't fully grasp how amazing

life really is, like in all the good shit, even with all the bad that we're hearing about, going on right in front of us. It just skips over us if we don't know how to be grateful. Right. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor if you like the video, hit the subscribe button. Also consider joining my Patreon. Plus, if you look in the description, we're going to put all of his links will be in the

description, which include the pH, pH wellness. He's got Instagram. He's got, we're going to have all the social media links and ways for him to get to his website And please check it out. I appreciate it. See you.