Chase MedSearch Podcast
The Chase MedSearch Podcast dives deep into the world of the medical device sales industry. We interview industry leaders and experts about their experiences in the industry, the lessons they've learned and the keys for growing and developing your brand. We also offer advice to up-and-coming entrepreneurs on to get in, stay in and evolve in this niche of the industry.
Chase MedSearch Podcast
Detained Abroad: A Medical Device Rep’s 70-Day Fight for Freedom, Faith, and Survival
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What would you do if everything you controlled… disappeared overnight?
In this episode of the Chase MedSearch podcast, I sit down with Ryan Watson—a top-performing medical device sales rep whose life changed instantly after being detained in Turks and Caicos over a mistake he didn’t even know he made.
What followed:
- 72 hours in a jail cell with no light, no time, no control
- A potential 12-year prison sentence
- Becoming the center of an international media storm
- A fight for survival that tested his faith, leadership, and identity
This isn’t just a story about travel risk. It’s about:
- What happens when high performers lose control
- How faith anchors you under extreme pressure
- The mindset required to survive—and lead—through chaos
If you’re in medical device sales, leadership, or high-performance environments, this conversation will change how you think about pressure, risk, and resilience.
🎧 Listen now.
#MedicalDeviceSales #MedTech #caicó #Faith #SalesMindset #newbookalert
Connect with Ryan
Purchase the book
Learn more about Ryan's story at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01N7tXbHCPk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdJ0EPPT4ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QTGjgwJzN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAyCuf6OT20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE60GVn6BVE
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Welcome back to the Chase MedSearch podcast. Most of us think we understand risk. We plan our territories. We manage our pipelines. We book a family vacation and assume the rules will be familiar, even abroad. My guest today learned painfully that assumption can be wrong. Ryan Watson is a medical device sales representative, an American, a husband and a father whose life was turned upside down when he was detained and jailed in Turks and Caicos for having four rounds of ammunition in his bag while returning home from a family vacation. What followed was fear, powerlessness, international headlines and a confrontation with symptoms most of us think we'll never face. Ryan has since written an account of that experience, a story not just about prison, but about identity, faith, resilience, and what really matters when everything familiar is stripped away. This conversation isn't just about travel or injustice. It's about perspective. How we respond when control disappears, and what that teaches us about leadership, pressure and life. Ryan, welcome to the podcast.
#2:Thank you so much for having me, Jordan.
#1:It's great to have you on. Been enjoying dipping into your book and reading it. Very compelling. And I've told you, you're an excellent writer. But tell us, before this incident all happened, who was Ryan Watson? What did a normal week in medical device sales look like? Family travel routines set the timeline for us. If you would.
#2:Yeah. No, I would have liked to have thought of myself as a pretty simple guy, you know, living a pretty simple life here in Oklahoma. You know, we live on a little bit of land. I grew up, on a ranch and rodeo my entire life. And I prayed, feverishly that my kids would follow in that those same dreams and pursuits. But they had nothing of the interest. So, you know, a lot of, football practices, baseball practices, cheerleading practices. We're running to and from. My wife teaches fifth grade at a private Christian school, just down the road from us. And, but, yeah, myself, I've been in, the neuromodulation space for 15 years now. And I manage a market here in Oklahoma City that I've managed since 2019. It's a sizable market. We do a lot of volume. Oklahoma City is a very, very large paying market. So we we stay hooked up. We stay extremely busy. Just kind of family that kept our nose down and you know, lived a quiet, simple life. So
#1:what drew you into medical sales? In the device industry in the first place?
#2:Funny question. I think if I'm being brutally honest, right. And I've been on a quest to be more honest with myself and with others, as of late. Honestly, it was the income potential what initially drew me to it if I'm being blatantly honest. I hope others would possibly admit that as well. Prior to getting in devices, I was... I did sales and marketing for Red bull. So it was not an easy transition to make. There's a gentleman who remains a close friend and mentor and by the name of Dan Froelich who was hiring for an apprenticeship role at St. Jude Medical. I met none of the qualifications. But my resume I actually had a resume that I made into a magazine. of all of the different sales and marketing applications that I had carried out up to the point in my career. And Froelich called me and he said, “Man, I just got to meet you and hear some of your stories. He's like really you have no business in this role.” So I got an interview, and one conversation led to the next. And next thing you know, he says, “Ryan, I'm going to go against my judgment here. I just I want you around. I want to just just run a little experiment here and see how you do in this space. So I'm going to give you an opportunity, but know that you're on a short leash.” golly, you know, I went through the sales training program you know, which was at the time, it was like a four week boot camp. We're, you know, stowed away in a little hotel room in Dallas and at the end of it, I had done really well on my testing and such and some of the executives had come out, and there was a territory that had just been vacated in West, in the West Texas market. They said, “Man, we need to get somebody out there immediately. There's a large population of patients that are going to be abandoned if we don't. And I raise my hands and I'll go, Send me right now. I said, “y bags are already packed, and they're like, man, don't you want to go home to your wife? I was like, we'll have a long conversation on the on the way to West Texas. And so I went out to West Texas and babysat a territory. I had no permission to go call on accounts or do anything. I was just reprograming patients and, finally, I called, my boss, who Daniel Balkcom at the time, he's now a legend in the space. And I said, “Hey, buddy, would you would you allow me the opportunity to just go call on a couple of physicians? Just give me just give me one doctor to go call on.” And he's like, “Dude, don't mess this up. He said, because you'll lose this job faster than you'll roll here.” So I said, “Okay.” I went to a physician a very, very large, neurosurgeon in San Angelo, Texas, and I and I was honest with him. I said, “Man, I don't know much at all about this space except for what I learned in training.” I said, “You know, you're an avant-garde in this space. You have an opportunity to to train a representative in a way that you would feel like you would want a representative to show up and support your cases.” And he latched on to that. And, you know, within about gosh, six months, we were off and rolling and within the year he had become St. Jude Medical's largest implanter. And that is kind of what, springboard of my career into medical device stuff
#1:That's outstanding. So, I mean, you jumped right in. Hit the ball. Your medical device rep in the neuromodulation space, dealing with pain management. You were at St. Jude and then I think you went to Nevro. Was that the next move in your career?
#2:Yes, sir. In 2019, I moved up. My boss and predecessor, Luke Purkey had reached out to me and asked me to come back-fill his role. They were big shoes to fill. Undoubtedly. But...yet Oklahoma was home. It’s where I grew up. I was always itching to get back to Oklahoma and Nevro had some level one data that I wholeheartedly believed in and it was something as a medical device representative, we want to believe in what we're selling. We want to know that we're doing the right thing by patients. And I want to lay my head on the pillow every night knowing that the decisions that I'm out supporting are backed by level one evidence. And so that really kind of gave me the inspiration to to move to Oklahoma and it's not always been easy, but it's been a fun road,
#1:For sure. It's great. Now shifting here a little bit. Had you ever thought about risk while traveling, you know, geopolitical risk, safety risk or was that just sort of routine? Had you done a lot of international trips at that point in your life?
#2:Yeah. You know, I had traveled a good bit. You know, my wife and I..we fell in love with Costa Rica. You know, we've traveled a bit together. But she she and I had never really considered any type of risk whenever it came to traveling. Like anybody, we watch a show, you know, like, <i>“Locked Up Abroad”</i> or one of these shows and And you get a little bit of anxiety about booking the next trip after watching something like that but nothing legitimately concerning about any type of travel. Okay.
#1:Take us to the airport. What exactly happened?
#2:Yeah. So I really the the story begins in on April, the morning of April 7th when we leave for Turks and Caicos. We had packed our bags the night before. We're pulling out of the driveway and we're about halfway down the driveway, and Val kind of has that knee jerk reaction. And she looks at me, I'm like, oh no, I'm not going to like this. And she's like, “Babe, I think my back's too heavy.” I’m like, “You're fine. We're going to be okay. I'll pay the overage if it is.” She's like, “No, no, no no, please just just pull in. Let me grab an extra bag. Not only would that, you know, alleviate the cost of pain and overage” she said, “But then it would give us an opportunity to throw some clothes in there. In case something happens to our baggage.” And she said, “I'll just carry that bag on.” You know, I can't tell my wife. No, she's much more attractive than I am. And so I've learned to just be a good soldier. I put the car and drive and full back up to the house she ran in. She had grabbed a rolling duffel bag that we received as a wedding gift many, many years ago. She she threw it in the car. We took off, for the airport. We get to, the airport running a little bit behind now. And so she were scrambling. She, you know, takes, some of the clothing out of her, checked baggage and throws them into the carry on suitcase. We had checked the bag. I know there's a lot of, internet warriors out there who've, shamed me to to the nth degree about not checking the bag. We had checked the bag. There were the pockets were completely empty. The bag itself was completely empty. So we, get to Will Rogers. My wife takes the bag to the X-ray scanner. Nothing's amiss. Nothing is, you know, flagged. And so we get to, get to the island of Turks and Caicos. Later that afternoon. Skate right past. I mean, they're they don't check bags. They're nothing to get scanned. In fact, can I even mention it in the book? I stop and I think to myself, like, one world like, this is the only country I've ever flown into that they don't scan your bags upon entry. And my buddy, who was really insistent that we go to Turks and Caicos, he turns and looks at me. He's like, it's the Caribbean, Watson. Everybody's carefree here. And so was like, just chalked it up to that just island life. And so we embark on our five day vacation. It was a vacation planned for my 40th birthday. And two fraternity brothers. We're also turning 40 within a couple of weeks of me. And so, you know, us and our wives got together and planned this trip. And so there were two other couples that were with us. Like I said, we had a great time. We lived it up. We acted like we didn't have kids for five days. And you know, we had, you know, left all of our, responsibilities back at home. And then on April 12th, we get, we go to leave Turks and Caicos, we're going through the airport, which was a madhouse there. Something had happened with some previous flights that had been delayed, and the airport itself was just just pure and utter chaos. It's a tiny, tiny little airport. But, once one flight gets backed up, they all get backed up. And so it was pretty chaotic. We had paid for a expedited service that basically had somebody that walks you through the front of the security line. It went in. And so we paid for this service, to try and save some time. We get to the front of the security line, but now it's saved us probably 30 minutes of waiting in line. But we've now, ticked off every person that was waiting in line behind us. And so it becomes a pretty big shoving match, and people are pushing their bins in front of ours. And we all get separated. And somehow or another, I end up on the other side of the security line. I pull into a duty free shop. I just try to, you know, escape the chaos. And I'm sitting there looking at, you know, watches or Cologne or something, and, and, I look through the glass window and I see that Valerie, my wife, is sitting there stuck at the security line. And so I make my way over there and, “Hey, what's going on?” She's like, “Hey, they're going through the duffel bag.” I don't think anything of it. She's got her makeup kit in there I think. Well, she's got some liquid or something, and and they go to work on this bag and they start taking it apart, or they start taking items out of it, scanning the bag empty, scanning the individual items. And then lady comes over and starts taking the lining out of the bag. I had never noticed, you know, in all the years that we owned the bag, the lining had zipped out of the bag itself, and she gets to pull in and, on the lining and I'm watching her and she's jabbing her hands down in between the lining. And next thing you know, I see your eyes light up. It's that. And she pulls something out and turns around and makes her way back to the other airport agents. And they have a conversation, and she turns around and holds up a small package of of ammunition, and I recognize it right away. I hunt with it's a very specific, hunting cartridge. It's a 6.5 Creedmoor. But I buy reloaded ammunition. It's a little bit more economical for that particular round. And I've noticed the packaging that it came in, I thought, oh my God, like, how in the world did this get in that bag? Like none of it made sense. And I'm recounting in my brain like we we carried that through Oklahoma City. Right. Like and I'm looking at Valerie and Valerie's looking at me like what in the world is that doing here? we're both just dumbfounded.
#1:Is your first thought This is a mistake. or are you thinking I’m in trouble.
#2:No, no, no, no, I'm thinking this is a mistake. You know, I've never had this mistake happen before, but, you know, growing up hunting my entire life and having kind of a network of friends that hunt. I’ve had a number of friends that had this happen to them in back in the States. All of them got a finger wag, The ammunition got thrown in the trash, and then they were on about their way. And so, I'm in no way overly concerned that this is going to escalate into anything. I'm thinking I'm going to get a stern talking to, and then we're going to be boarding our flight here in about ten minutes. You know, I apologize emphatically. I'm like, hey, I'm so sorry. I had no idea that was in there. Can we just throw it away? I don't need it. I'm not trying to keep it. And she's like, well, you need to talk to. One of the officers said, okay. So we we wait around at the security line for 20 minutes. And it's like we're just watching people go, come and go, and nobody's really paying any attention to us. And then a guy in plain clothes walks up to me, takes the tickets out of my hand, kind of forcefully, as a little strange, he looks at my ticket and says, hey, I just want you to know you're not making that flight. And that's the first, like little instinct that I had. Man, this is not going to be just a stern talking to you. I might end up having to pay a fine. You know, we get led out of the airport. Our friends are, you know, concerned, but we're telling them, hey, you've got kids at home. Get on the fly. We're going to be on probably the next flight. Like we'll make it back soon enough. So we get pulled out of the airport. We get thrown into the back of it. It's a it's a little Nissan silver beat-up SUV. There's no police car. We've not seen a police badge. We are thrown in the back of this car and taken to this unmarked location. That has this big, so white two story building has a sign that says Nexus on the front of it. I'll never forget that sign for some reason. Just it's like, etched into my memory. And Valerie had been sharing our location with the couples that we were with and said, hey, you know, please track us. You know, like, this doesn't seem it seems a little sketchy at this point. We've not seen any badges. We're in the back of this Nissan beat up SUV. And so they send us a screenshot of our location and this. Hey, this this looks nothing like a police station. Are you sure you're safe? Like. No, we're not sure. We're not sure of anything right now. And so we get led upstairs. We walk into an empty office building. We get taken to a little bitty, tiny room and placed in this room. All the while, I'm still carrying the bag with the four rounds of ammunition in it. And I'm like, I don't know what's going on here. The officers, the two officers enter, and they begin interrogating us, and it gets pretty heated. Pretty quickly. Not heated on my end. I'm yes, sir and no, no, ma'am. And everybody, and they they get to grilling us, you know, who have you been doing business with? What were your intentions here on the island, and why did you bring ammunition into our country? You know, I was like, “Hey, I'm a hunter. I had no intentions of bringing that.” And then, you know, they, laid in, do you not know our laws? And I was like, why in the world will I research your laws I was worried about packing flip flops. At one point I, I kind of stopped their interrogation. I cut them off and I said, “Hey, we've got kids at home. like can I please call my mother? She's watching our children. Let them know that we're going to be late. I don't want anybody to get worried and that's when the room tilted was because the officer begins to laugh. He sits back in his chair and, you know, pushes his chest out a little bit and says, “You two don't get it.” He's like, And the air left the room, in a big way.
#1:So he's the officer and the judge, apparently.
#2:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, you know, my wife begins, to get hysterical, in pleading, you know, we got kids at home. None of this is, you know, having any impact whatsoever. And there's almost a sense of pride that I'm, you know, catching and reflecting off of them. What is going on? Like this just doesn't make sense. Like 12 years initially, I'm thinking and intimidation tactic and and he doubles down again. He's like, “No, we have a minimum mandatory 12 year prison sentence. You're going to prison.” And so my wife, you know, catches her breath and asks the question that I mean, it's still rattles my bones to this day. And she says, “You know, neither one of us have been in any type of trouble nor seen the inside of a jail room, and What’s it like? Will I be cold? And that question... Absolutely hit me in the gut because when we, you know, make a vow to protect our our spouse, like, and, you know, to know that you failed on that proportion and that she is now going to be going to prison with me. It was it was something that I, I don't know if my feet ever really touched the ground for a number of days afterwards after hearing that question, but I stood up, something switched inside of me. I stood up and I said, “Hey, that's not going to happen. And everybody kind of looked at me and I said, I can promise you one thing. I said, a lot might go on here today in this room, but it ain't going to end up with her in prison. And they all kind of looked at each other. The two officers left the room. And my wife was like, what are you doing? She's like, “Are you seriously going to fight these two officers?” I had no idea what I was doing. I was just, you know, it was all emotion at that point.
#1:What was the most shocking thing about being detained as an American abroad in this experience?
#2:Well, I think in this particular experience was As we continue to learn of our situation, we learned that we weren't being detained for a simple oversight. As we gathered more information, we started to learn that we were there was political motivation as to why we were being detained. That did not, seem like real life to me at all. It seemed like somebody had plucked me out of my life and brought me into a Netflix documentary. It became something that I became severely insecure about whenever we would talk to our friends and family back home about what we were facing and what steps we were going to...to take in order to try and get home. But yeah the the reality of going to jail or going to prison, was that you know, that for some reason was easier to accept for me than being able to accept the reason why I was going to jail.
#1:Yeah. What is jail actually feel like? not the headlines but just the day-to-day reality of being behind bars.
#2:It is dark. In my cell, there was no electricity. There's no air light. So there was a small ten, 10”x10” hole cut in the door, of the cell that I was in. And so you start to lose your grasp of time. You have no sense of what time it is. Then you start to have to ward off the dark places that your mind can go. Whenever you start to consider like, hey, most of my days are going to be spent in the dark. And time really has no relevance to me at this point. You know, It's a cold place. You know, the cell that I was in... it was pretty disgusting. there was a lot of Haitian graffiti that was written on the walls and fecal matter. So it was wretched in there. There were cockroaches everywhere. And, yeah, you know, it was just not any place I had ever in my life envisioned I would ever end up. So
#1:I imagine the food was not good either.
#2:No, no, no.
#1:At that point in there, what do you eat?
#2:At one point, I was brought some fish stew. I immediately rejected it. I said, please, I can't even, you know, like, the smell is bad enough already in here. Please don't bring that into my cell. I didn't eat much. They allowed my mother to bring me food one day. which was really strange because nobody told me it was happening. All the sudden this guy just shows up and the cell door with a pizza box, and I'm like, what in the world is this? You know? And bless my mother. She's sweet as can be and she's a savior in my eyes. But She bought me like this chorizo pizza with jalapenos and everything else. I was like, “Mom, my gut, my guts are in a knot right now. I don't know how many eat this thing.” But the funny thing is that when I opened the box, there was a giant bite of the pizza that was taken out of it, and I was like, What in the world? Did someone eat my pizza?...like. And, I would later find out that the guards were would make her take bites of any food that she brought me to ensure that she wasn't poisoning me on the inside, which I thought was the strangest thing in the world. So they would they would make her take a bite of my food in front of them. It was. It was strange, but no, I didn't eat any of really I think they brought me some jerk chicken that I tried to eat once. It had been sitting out for a while.
#1:Did they let you out of your cell to, like exercise in the yard? Did you meet other inmates in there? What were they like? Give us no.
#2:Well, I was only so technically, I was only in a cell for 72 hours. Okay. And so after 72 hours, I was able to secure bail through what they call as surety. So I had to have a local, a trusted local put up an asset, the equivalent of my bail. They wouldn't allow me to pay a cash bail because they said I was a flight risk. And so they needed a local to vouch for me and help keep eyes on me. And so I had to put up the title, the first bail I got was it was actually the day that Valerie and I were interrogated and arrested. The guy that was our driver actually came and put up the title to his car. So, I mean, bless his heart, he's the sweetest person, known to man. I mean, he he was just a blessing to us and our family. But, yeah, he I mean, he he barely knew us, and we we shared a maybe five rides with this guy. We had shared our faith with him. He'd shared his with us. And so we knew we had that in common. That was it. He was only phone number I had of any local. And I said, “Hey, man, I would never want to ever put you in this position. They're not allowing me to, pay a bail like they're saying they need this.” And he was already on his way, like I could hear the the tire screeching as he was making a U-turn to head to the jail. So we got that first bail through surety on April the 12th, and then I got a second bail through surety on April the 25th. And there was a local that had actually put up the title to his restaurant that allowed me out through the Supreme Court bail because my Supreme Court bail was much higher than my my temporary police bail was. And so, so, yeah. So I was remanded to the island, I had to run to the jail cell every day and sign a bail book. To have the strangest thing ever. It was a college ruled notebook. And that's how they made sure that I was still on the island. And so, you know, it ultimately became I had about a five mile round trip to run to the jail and back to sign in to prove that I was still on the island.
#1:So you're out on bail, but you have this 12 year sentence hanging over your head while you're on the island because is there going to be a trial, I assume? Is that what you were waiting on?
#2:Y eah. Yes. I had to go through their court system, my trial, Anything dealing with ammunitions on that country or firearms, has to be through the Supreme Court. And so, so I had to have a hearing through the Supreme Court, which obviously takes time, which is part of the reason that they they were lenient to allow me a bail, so that I could continue to secure attorney and defense. However, it's a matter of liability. So did you have the bullets, yes or no? Yes. You know, and so the other thing was, is in order to secure Valerie's release, I had to I had to go and give a recorded interrogation that it was my bag and my bullets. It was, you know, it was something, you know, the night of April 12th, I... I laid awake, and I told Valerie, I said, “I can't allow you to go to prison.” And neither one of us are dishonest people, I said, “But we've got to work on the best lie we've ever told right now, and that has to be my bag.” And so we laid awake all night long. I practiced being an interrogating officer. Why are your items in that bag? And why aren't your husband's items in that bag? If that was, you know, why were you next to it? We went through all of it. And we. That was the one lie that we told was that that was my bag ...that I was carrying that bag, when in actuality, it was her carrying tihe bag but. So on April the 15th, I gave that recorded interrogaton saying, “My bag, my bullets.” They kept us both on bail through the 22nd because they were still trying to see if they could figure out a way to make charges stick. against Valerie to put her in prison for 12 years as well. And then on April 22nd is whenever they decided that because of my recorded confession that they weren't going to be able to have charges stick for her as well. So they allowed her to to return home to our kids.
#1:And so how long was she on the island in total?
#2:So she was detained for ten days. She never, thanks be to God, she never saw the inside of a jail cell during that time. So she was on bail. had her passport...was confiscated, but she never saw the inside of of a jail. But she was on island detained for ten days post vacation.
#1:So as a sales rep, you're used to having control. You control your territory, you control outcomes. What is it like to have zero control in that situation for you? How did it feel?
#2:There is a moment of panic. There is a moment of disbelief. And then there's this sobering moment. There's a time where you have this sobering moment that said, hey, okay, here's the reality of my situation. I have to start to assess what my options are. But first, before I can even assess what my options are, I gotta I got to fully understand what's levied against me. And so that's when kind of the research phase starts. What what is this? What's the purpose of all of this? You know, before we got on this call, I, I mentioned that, you know, our first obvious divine intervention that took place in the course of the 70 days and the night that we were arrested. Valerie's father had sent out a prayer request to all of our family in North Fort Worth and said, “Hey, you know, please pray for Ryan and Valerie. This is what's happened.” Her cousin was at a fire station and pulls out his phone and reads the message aloud. There's a gentleman who he'd never met standing behind him and says, you've got to be kidding me. My best friend is a guy named Michael Graham. Michael Graham was the first American to get sent to prison for this exact same thing there in Turks and Caicos. Let me put you in touch with him. And and he had just gotten home just a few weeks prior. So we reached out to Michael. And Michael becomes a wealth of knowledge for us. He helps us to understand the politics of the island. What's going on in the island? And so we say, you know, we asked him we are like, “Is it money?” And he said, “No, man, I wish I could tell you it was that simple. It's not about money.” He said. What happened in August of 23 whenever I was sentenced to prison, the local families here all stood up and celebrated, me going to prison. In fact, the the newspaper on the island read American exceptionalism finally ends today. The leadership whose constituents are truly only the original family. So only the original families can vote. So the leadership, which is ran by a gentleman by the name of Charles Misick, Unfortunately, his family has a very, very long documented history of corruption. And he sees this, he sees what is gaining favor from his constituents. And his response was to go to the Appellate court, and enforce a 12 year minimum mandatory prison sentence for this infraction to be applied to travelers alike is what the original drafting of that that law read this.
#1:So I'm going to interrupt real quick. Yeah. This is really strange. This island, I assume the vast majority of revenue that it has is from tourism. And I got believe American tourism forms a significant percentage of that. So
#2:87% of their GDP is American tourism.
#1:Yeah. This seems like economic suicide to enact that, and this guy lives on the island. He's one of the original members of his family is of the island. What could possibly be behind that motivation? That just seems wrongheaded.
#2:Yeah. You know, if the there is always been, This, Not always. It starts back in the 1970s whenever the island is under British rule. And then you start to have American development come onto the island. You know, it's an island that doesn't have any resources, right? Like, they they import 90% of the food from Florida that they consume there on the island. So there really are no exports. So tourism became the hand that fed them quickly. But also the hand that was holding them back, right. So they became sequestered to it. So American developers were coming in and taking up all the land. And, you know, they were getting pushed into these interior parts of the island, which really held no intrinsic, intrinsic value. And so it started to, to breed this, resentment towards the British rule and Americans alike. And, you know, in a lot of ways, I can somewhat empathize with some of that resentment. You know, if you if you study your whole life or you have these aspirations to be X, Y, or Z, and yet 90% of your GDP is American tourism, the likelihood of you serving an American on vacation for your job is is pretty high. And so, they became a victim of...of the tourism that that was created. And, so, yeah, so there was some resentment. if you look at Michael Grim or if you look at Brian Hagerich, who is from Pennsylvania. Both arrests happened prior to mine. And then there's actually about five other Americans that were arrested prior to them all basically just extorted, for lack of a better term. There was a long history of those Americans that have been arrested, none of which you could find on the internet. They did a really good job of suppressing this. And so as we're having this conversation with Michael and I'm saying, “Hey, what are my options here? You know, is it paying somebody off, I hope. You know. I'll do it right now. Like, yeah. I will get home. I'll start selling some stimulators; We will get back to work, We will pay this off.” He was like, “No, Buddy, you know, you're a political pawn now and, you know, really, your only option is to flee. And do you have it in you to get on a boat tonight?” And my wife broke down in tears. I said, “No, that's not an option.” I said, “Well, what about the embassy? Will the embassy helped you?” And he said, “Ryan, I hate to tell you this, but no, he said, go the other direction.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “I'm going to send you an email that was sent to my family from Usha Pitts, who was the Charge d'affaires of the Embassy.” And it was a very nasty email to his family, to his mother saying, “Lose my email. Your son is of no interest to me.” And so I was, you know, once again, I'm running out of options, right? Like, I, like you said, I'm learning that I have no play. I have no control over this situation. And about that time, my wife's. What's that?
#1:How do you survive mentally in that? What is what is holding you personally together at this point?
#2:Faith.
#1:Okay. Talk about that.
#2:I had an overwhelming sense that God was working ahead of me in all of it. And I and I had some bit of calm whenever I would stop and, you know, go into prayer, you know, I, I just for some, there was something pulling on my heart that said, hey, take a breath like God's got this. You're here for a reason. and you start to wonder, well, is that reason for me to go share the gospel with somebody in jail, or in prison? And is that the reason I'm here? And if so, I'm going to have to get to a point where I can accept that. But I just felt like God was working something else out, and while we're having that conversation with Michael I said, “What about the media?” And he's like, “Don't do it, man.” He said, “They're going to kill you.” He said, “I can promise you they'll kill you in prison.” He said there were multiple attempts in my life. I was the only American inside. To them, that meant one thing is that I had money. They use desperation against you. You have no contact except for one five minute phone call a month to your family, which is made by the prison cell phones. And once you dial up your family, they have their number in their call log, and they will extort your family. ror any type of money that they can get to try and keep you alive. And so he said, “Don't do not go to the media. I can promise you you'll get killed. It's they're going to protect their tourism.” And so, yeah, he's telling me this, I'm like, you know, like, of course they would. You know, of course they're going to have that type of reaction. But about that time, Valerie's phone dings and it was a a girl, named Melody Mendez and Melody is married to one of my childhood friends from Shawnee, Oklahoma. She had become the the head anchor of NBC Boston. And she said, “Hey, Ryan and Valerie, I just want you to know I'm praying for you. You know, I know this is all top secret right now.” because we were trying to keep everything from our kids, she said, “But if, there's anything I can do, you know, please let me know, you know, if I can share your story, I will. And that's when we turned to Michael and we said, “Hey, I think media is the way I felt like God caused that message to be sent when it was And I said, “This is this is our way off the island. And he said, “Man, that's a bold move, but you need to, you need to consult with Bryan Hegerich. Bryan Hegerich was from Pennsylvania. He was arrested in February, just, you know, six weeks prior to us. He said, “That move is going to put his life in jeopardy just as much as it is yours.” So we contacted Bryan. we brought him in, and we had a sit down, and I said, “Man, I think this is what we need to do. I think this is our way off this island.” He said, “No way man.” He said, “I've been told that I'd get killed for doing it.” He said, “We're not doing it.” And that's when I put my sales hat on I tried every trick in the book. I did every effective questioning model that you could think of. And, and I have to say, I have to give credit where credit's due. It was Valerie that that ended up selling him on the idea. And she said, “Bryan, let me ask you for a second.” She said, “If we are looking for the world to respond, do you think the world is going to respond in a bigger way if they know that I'm here on the island with you guys as well, or two American fathers, right? Like two white guys, you know, just average Joe’s. Like how much care or is that going to drive from the the general population versus a private school Christian, you know, private Christian school teacher. And he stopped and he thought about it and he said, “You know what? You're right, A lot more sympathy And he looked at me and he said, “Are you willing to risk this? Like, are you willing to put your wife's life in jeopardy?” And I had thought about it, and I had actually just done some research and was reading up on what an embargo was and how to enforce an embargo. And I said, “No, I'm not but what we can do is we can we can prerecord all these interviews. We can force ABC, NBC, CBS all to sign embargoes that they won't release the story until Valerie's on the plane." And that's what the plan was, you know. And from that point on, it was how do we run the biggest marketing campaign ever known to man? How do we call something to go viral? And how do we put enough economic pressure on this island that they reconsider what they're doing? And so we put our hands in the middle of a coffee table. We all prayed on it and Then we got to work. You know, the next day, we started recording interviews and contacting media outlets. And, you know, we had to do so very, very systematically, though, just so that it wouldn't leak without them. Without them honoring the embargo or agreeing agreeing to the embargo. So it was it was a lot of, you know, six degrees of separation. Who do we know that know somebody else? And, you know, the entire time, not only where we not only did we need velocity with the story and we needed it all the pop all at one time. But we needed to protect our kids who thought that we were just stuck on an island because a storm had blown in. And so.
#1:And it certainly did pick up, I mean, ABC, CBS, NBC affiliates, I think, some of your Facebook posts had over 10,000 comments on them, were shared hundreds of times. It became a big media story in 2024. Yeah, so your plan worked
#2:Yeah,
#1:in terms of noise. Did you end up getting threats because of it?
#2:Oh, yeah.
#1:Tell us about that.
#2:Yeah. You know, there, you know, it was people started, you know, there were a lot of threats towards me, a lot of people commenting that, you know, I deserved a death sentence. And a lot of people following up in those comments saying that they would carry it out. Then pictures of my house started circulating and people started circulating our address. I did my best to stay out of any type of social media, like, you know, I would I never posted anything, but I would forward things to, other friends. We had a network that we had established of any type of person with any type of influence that. You know, it. There's like a Rube Goldberg machine where it was like, I text this person that this text, this person. And so, but, yeah, you know, I wasn't aware that it was going on to that degree. I was tipped off whenever my friends showed up at my house, I could see on my ring doorbell camera. They showed up at my house and started installing gates and started installing other additional security. friends from our church group would show up and were staying the night with Val and the kids. And I was like something's going on. But they were they were doing their best to keep me from all of the details, because they knew I was they knew I had a million other fires that I was fighting at the time. But yeah, it had blown up. whenever I got out on Supreme Court bail. So whenever I was out of jail, the very next morning, I woke up to an email. It was an old colleague of mine from my my days at Red bull, who's big into PR, and she was running metrics on the story that actually reached out to her to help Valerie and my mom kind of keep tabs on everything while I was in jail. And she sent me a metric, she sent me an email that had some metrics included And she said, “Ryan, you did it, buddy, But like, now it's time to carry on and figure what else you're going to do next.” In that email, there was a metric in there. In the first 72 hours, the story had generated 2.9 billion media impressions. Whenever you looked at every media outlet that had picked it up, every magazine, every social, you know, they I don't know how they run those metrics, but 2.9 billion media impressions, in 72 hours. And so it was...it was on at that point.
#1:You might be in the wrong business as a medical rep. You might have made it as PR, You know.
#2:I think I have also like. One. Of those in me and. I don't know if I could do that again.
#1:While you were out on bail and awaiting trial and sentencing and all of this. You know, I heard you spent 72 hours in jail, and then you're out. Where are you staying while you're out? Is that a safe location? And did it turn unsafe once this story hit the media? I mean, what about you personally and your safety during this?
#2:Yeah. So, you know, we were in an Airbnb initially. whenever I went to jail, we came back, We were in the same Airbnb, but things had gotten pretty, pretty sketchy. Bryan Hagerich was on another part of the island. We moved him in with us because he was getting threats as well. We were public enemy number one, I mean on the island. So number one and two, my wife instituted a hard and fast rule. She was like no cowboy hats. She sent me a box of different baseball caps that I could wear around the island, to switch them up because I was becoming recognized, constantly. The physical threats didn't. I mean, it didn't start until May 9th, on May to early May. May 6th that it kind of hit its peak. Someone started calling in bomb threats to the Howard Hamilton airport. there at Turks and Caicos. They actually ended up calling in 17 bomb threats in a matter of like ten days. Every time they mentioned my name and Bryan Hagerich, his name, which then the local media started saying that we were orchestrating all these bomb threats. Then on WhatsApp, which is how most of the island communicated on WhatsApp, there were hits put out on us. And unfortunately for me, I had to go check into jail every day. So I had a two and a half mile run there, a two and a half mile run back, and I was running to jail on May the 9th, I believe it was. And I'm cutting down the path that I had taken every time. And all of a sudden I see a flash of something and, you know, my right periphery. And I jumped to my left and next thing something grabs my heel, spins me around to land. I'm scuffed up. I kind of it did. Nothing hurt. And it just it happened all so quick and I think shock was already setting in and I turned and looked and. it was a car that had tried to jump the curb to hit me, and it was sitting in the middle of the road at this point. Luckily, the curb was high enough that it And it was a little four door sedan. And, next thing, you know, I'm scrambled to my feet and they throw the car in reverse, and I tried to scale of fence the fence collapsed underneath me. I realized, man, that's not going to work. So I turned to fight. I was like, this is, I guess, my only my only option. And I turned to fight. The next thing you know, they put the car back in and they they took off, and I kind of sat there for a minute and looking at myself and my scrapes and bruises, and I'm like, I'm alive...like I'm okay. Like that didn't hurt. But did that really just happen? In fact, there's a reason that I don't have my right AirPod in is because my right AirPod got damaged during that time, so it crackles now, and I can't hear anything out of the the right earbud. So, but yeah, I threw my AirPod in, ran as fast as I could to the jail. And, of course, nobody believed me or cared about, you know, that. And but at that point, I was like, okay, I'm going to have to be smarter about this. I can't run with AirPods in anymore. because I have to hear oncoming traffic. I have to change my routes up every day. And so, I would try to get creative, change up my times a day that I ran and yeah, it got...it got sketchy.
#1:Did the police attitude change toward you at all once the story hit and made national. news and all that? Well, I can't imagine what that would have been like coming back the next day after. this is everywhere, and you've got to still check in and see these folks at the jail.
#2:Y eah, well, the the story broke on. So Valerie lifted the embargo the moment she got on a plane. And, I had no idea. I started getting an inkling that something was going on because they came into my cell looking for a cell phone. I was like, you guys strip search me on the way, and I don't know where you think that cell phone would have been. But, yeah, they they started rummaging through all my stuff, and, and they, they started they as opposed to prisoner Watson. And they started coming up with these other you know, back handed prisoner diva, and all these other names and, you know, I mean, something's going on in the outside world, and I didn't realize what it was. It wasn't until I was walking down the steps of the Supreme Court house when I got out when my mom looked at me and she said, “You know, son, this is...this is blown up. You've got you've got a responsibility in front of you.” And so.
#1:Well, it's an amazing story. And I think we can't wrap up this podcast without knowing how you got out of... How did you get off the island? Yeah, well, I want to stay on the island. You want to get off the island.
#2:Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, we had we had accumulated enough economic pressure on the island. And then it was also, you know, there was enough of an outcry here in the United States that we had a number of political officials, that started to join the fight for us, led mostly in part by Senator Markwayne Mullen. He's actually written the the forward for the book but he, you know, he and I spoke daily, and on May 19th, he of he had formed a congressional delegation task force to fly to the island. And they flew to the island on May 19th and forced to sit in with the government on May 20th. When they had that sit in, there Premier Misick, their president, was pounding his chest quite a bit. And he told Mullen that he was going to sue the United States, the monster landings. What are you gonna sue us for? And he's like, “For manufacturing the firearms and ammunition that end up in my country.” And so Mullen pulls out a report and he says, “I'll show you exactly where it's coming from. It's these two Haitian gangs right here. And he said, “The reason we have this information is because our Coast Guard patrols your waters as a favor to the United Kingdom. Sue us. And it goes away tomorrow. Like and the UK. Luckily for that congressional delegation task force had flown in their Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he he took notice once Mullen had made that threat. So the CODEL meeting didn't go very well. In fact, you know, afterwards, Mullen called me and said, “Buddy, I got to figure out a plan B because they're they're hellbent on putting you in prison for 12 years. And he’s like, “they're trying to make a political stance here. And you know, within 24 hours, the UK had reached out to Mullen and said, “Hey, hold up right there. So, we're going to get involved now because for the longest time, the UK kept throwing their hands up and they say, but we gave the control back to them, in 2013, they control themselves now. And so we're not getting involved. Well, they finally decided to get involved and then that plus the economic pressure that the media was having. On June 19th, five minutes before my hearing, I'm walking into the courthouse and my attorney, pulls me aside and he pulls out his thumb and said, “Hey, buddy, I want you to see what you just did. And it was it was a notice that they had just repealed law that morning five minutes before my hearing. So it no longer mandated the judge to sentence me to a 12 year minimum mandatory prison sentence. So, yeah, June 19th was a BIG day. And then, two days later, I was given a suspended sentence, and allowed to fly home.
#1:You know, looking back on it, I mean, your perspective has to be, Well, I don't even know. I I'm not even sure I can articulate what it is or I, you know, even assume that I know what it is, but I'm just thinking, how do you how do you look at Turks and Caicos now? If you hear friends are going there or someone you know is going there, what goes through your mind?
#2:I stop them and I say, “hey, look, I get that I'm I have a biased opinion here. I know, but I really want you to do some research and not just what you're seeing on Instagram. Right? Like, last year, Turks and Caicos had the highest per capita murder rate in all of the Caribbean.” you can read about the the Misick family and the corruption. In 2009, the UK disbanded that government completely because it was so corrupt. We're not talking about that long ago, right. And the guy who was running it at the time, oh, by the way, his older brother is now running the country. And so long history. And Michael Misick, the younger brother who was, who had fled to Brazil and was extradited back 16 years later has still not been sentenced for his crimes that he had committed. So, yeah. And it is a very corrupt place. Look, you can count fish from the shores, right? Like it is some of the clearest water you'll ever see. But there's some other clear water in the world, and I would, I would just encourage greatly, you know, anybody that that ever considers that, you know, or any destination for that matter is, is start to peel back the layers don't just look for, you know, what might be your favorite restaurant. And then you need to look and see if there are other things, you know, boiling underneath the surface, in some of these destinations, because it was nothing, nothing that I had ever given any thought to.
#1:Well, last question for you. How on earth do you come back to medical sales after that? More confident? Detached? I mean, how do you does it affect how you handle rejection or pressure or quotas? or...
#2:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had to come back pretty quickly, so I was a little bit of all of that. Right. So I was well out of vacation days whenever I got home. So, So I get home on a Friday and I went back to work on Monday, you know, and, so, yes, I was detached and we were still doing a number of interviews and we still had camera crews in our house. And so life was chaotic. So I can't say that 100% of me, was showing up for those first few days. But yes, it undoubtedly changed... You know, if I see a wall in front of me now, it is no longer, grief about the wall. the size of the wall, the breadth of the wall. It is. It's now it's okay. Let's assess the situation. What are we going to do to get through it, under it, over or around it, right? Like...and so I kind of have redefined my idea of what's possible, what I'm capable of. Never in a million years did I think that I could sit by this, sitting here saying that I helped influence a country to change their law. You know, after 70 days and and yet we did. And I'm home. And thanks be to God. You know what I mean? It was his design. It was. It was him working ahead of us. But I think that that takes place in all of our secular lives, in all of our secular careers is is, you know, he's going before us. And so, yeah, my mantra now is, see where he's working in my life, and I'm going to meet him there, and I'm gonna put all the trust in that. So...I love it.
#1:That's a great final word for all of us. The name of the book. And when is it coming out?
#2:Turks and Chaos. So it should be available in March. Senator Mullen, his office just got back to me today, and it's going to the Senate Ethics Committee right now for his his forward, his contribution to the book. And so, once we have that, it's kind of ready to go. We got to get it, published through Amazon. And, so, yeah, I'm self-publishing the book. I wanted the ability to tell the entire story and from all components, right. The faith component as well as I mean it's written it feels like a true crime because I was the the true crime documentary. And so, you know, it hopefully will be available, I'm hoping the beginning of March. Great.
#1:Just in time for me when I'm going to the Bahamas with my family. Read it there. Yes, yes. Prepare myself.
#2:I've got a couple people. You can deliver some copies to the Bahamas. I think as you read further along in the book, you might you might understand who that is. Got it. Got it.
#1:Well, thank you for being on, Ryan.
#2:Thank you so much for having me, Jordan.