Episode 17: The Amazing Transformation of Austin Delgado, Part 1

Hear Austin Delgado’s astonishing transformation from addict to pastor. His past of drugs led him to a double life–by day, a law clerk, by night, a homeless junkie. As God does, He worked in mysterious ways right at Austin’s rock bottom, where Austin’s desperation led him to use Bob Marley songs to pray to God the only way he knew how.

God answered those prayers as Austin’s two worlds soon collided and his fallacy was exposed. Be encouraged as you see how God miraculously heals Austin from his addiction and the lies he tried to hide it with. 

Part 1

Hear the mindset of an addict as Austin takes us through his sad past. Austin shares how he was “utterly enslaved by the needle,” which caused him to lie, cheat and steal for his addiction. See how our times of desperation allow God to do His most amazing work. 

Where to get help: 

Transformation Life Center, NY

Teen Challenge USA

SAMHSA.gov

Other helpful links:

Austin's Church, Riverstone Church

One80 Email List

Cairn University School of Divinity

God can use anything! Exodus, Bob Marley

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Transcript

One80 Episode 17
The Amazing Transformation of Austin Delgado, Part 1

This transcript may have errors that do not reflect the actual audio.

Ryan Henry: With five shirts in his backpack, only Austin Delgado knew of his double life. Trustworthy law clerk by day, homeless junkie by night. Near death experiences from powerful drugs didn't get Austin's attention. But alone in the night, somewhere in the dark of an abandoned building, God used the music of Bob Marley to reach through to Austin's frail heart. Hear Austin's amazing turnaround today on One80. 

Margaret: Thanks for tuning in today. Although our show is really awesome. It might be a bit much for young ears, but bigger kids might never do drugs if they hear the show. 

Ryan Henry: Well, Austin, welcome to our show. I'm so excited to hear your story. God writes your story and it's so important for you to share it. So thanks for agreeing to come and just testify to that.

Austin Delgado: Hey, man well, I'm happy to be here and I agree with you. It's, it's a blessing and a privilege to declare the good works of God and share with others what he has done . Happy to be here. Thanks for the invite.

Ryan Henry: Yeah. Awesome, man. So we always start off our show with a random question okay. What object in your home do you think has the best story behind it? Make you think deep here.

Austin Delgado: So I would say I just bought an object for my wife for our fifth anniversary and it is a, modern style clock. And the reason why I got this for her is because the object that you give to your spouse after five years traditionally, is, is something made of wood, which symbolizes your rootedness and fruitfulness after five years. And, a clock which symbolized enough time has passed for you to have a fruitful, grounded, rooted marriage, and much more time to yield more fruits.

And so I got her a modern clock that's made out of wood end glass and had engraved on it Ecclesiastes 3:11, “That he has made everything beautiful in its time.” That's the first thing that comes to mind.

Ryan Henry: Wow. Well, happy anniversary five years. That's great.

Austin Delgado: Thank you.

Ryan Henry: That's awesome. I think I probably should do a little bit better investigating you know, which years represent what. Cause we're coming up on 15 years.

Austin Delgado: Wow. Well.

Austin Delgado: I don't know. I did a little research, a little bit of thinking I could be sentimental like that,

Ryan Henry: Yeah, that's good. That's good, man. And that's why you're married, you know, you snagged someone quick, so that's awesome, man. Let's get into your story Austin. And I know for our listeners, we like to just go back to the beginning and just kind of really get a picture of like what life was like growing up, 

so yeah. Would you just take us back to childhood, where did you grow up?

Austin Delgado: Born and raised in Northeast New Jersey. Okay. Spent the majority, in a small little town called River Edge, New Jersey, right in between Hackensack and Paramus in Northeast New Jersey, so.

Grew up there born into a into a family of five. I'm the middle brother, two sisters, one older, one younger. And.

Ryan Henry: Okay.

Austin Delgado: , my parents, they, they were good parents and they raised us with, traditional values which I appreciate.

And I also instilled in my kids as well with respect to faith and knowing God, we were cultural Catholics. We were Catholic because we are Irish were Irish and Peruvian actually. And so , we identified culturally as Catholics just because it's in our blood. You're were Irish because we're Catholic and we're Catholic because we're Irish one in the same thing.

That's just part of it. Of our identity. And so, but outside of that, never, never said a word about God, Jesus never prayed together, never opened a Bible ever in my life. So the goodness of my parents , that I'm representing is really God's grace on them and, and them upholding values, 

so I would say a good childhood overall with my family. Yeah.

Ryan Henry: Yeah. That's awesome. So, so you guys never went to church necessarily.

Austin Delgado: We did.

Ryan Henry: oh, you did.

Austin Delgado: yeah, we did occasionally and sometimes regularly to mass. But, and even at a very young age, we went to, CCD which is a Catholic school. Now I was just the most mischievous little kid you could imagine. So , I'd never paid attention to anything.

I always felt very uncomfortable in the mass. And I remember even saying things to my mother and at points and just regarding like what I'm observing and she would quickly scold me, pinch my behind and telling me to just be quiet and sit there. So now let me tell you. Those those years of cultural nominal Catholics just by name and identity with our, bloodline nevertheless, a seed was planted.

A seed was planted. That would be used one day again, down the road. And so praise God for those early years!

Ryan Henry: absolutely. So what was it like? I mean just in the household, like what'd you guys like to do, would you find yourself you know, spending most of your time?

Austin Delgado: , I was a boy through and through in the sense of, mischievous. What I like to do is constantly set up booby traps to trap my sisters or something like that throughout the house and just annoy them. Cause miss

Ryan Henry: I also say it sounds a little, yeah, it sounds a little bit familiar. My kids, my kids. Yeah. 

Austin Delgado: But we were respectful young kids. And so I, I would cause mischief in the neighborhood and I was a sweet little boy. And I would say that my parents raised me well. And so I was a very sweet, respectful little boy, but that's what was so deceiving.

Like, I was one of those boys where my friends' parents would be like, they would literally straight up tell them why can't you be more like Austin? He's a nice, and they would look at them like, are you serious? You don't even know what he's doing. He's the worst of them all.

Ryan Henry: Oh yeah,

Austin Delgado: it was like that we were a good kids in the house, but I was for one was, was very mischievous and devious.

Ryan Henry: yeah. Okay. All right. The truth comes out. Thanks for confessing to everybody here. so you were a good kid and, doing things on the side, , typical mischievous kid things, but , when, when did things start to change, 

Austin Delgado: Yeah, for sure. My enjoyment in mischief, small scale boy hood destruction and lighting fires and stuff. Just the little things that like, things like that. My enjoyment there grew started to focus more when I smoked my first joint in like, it was, it was somewhere in between fourth and fifth grade.

Ryan Henry: Oh,

Austin Delgado: That was the first time I went to and I was exposed by a friend by his older cousin, 

Ryan Henry: yeah.

Austin Delgado: I remember that. And then my older sister was getting into a little bit more trouble, but I looked up to the people that she was hanging out with.

And so by seventh grade, I, I was smoking every day and dealing. And so I was the kid that was on the commercials back in the early nineties, in the hallways, introducing the other kids to this new substance that they could try and have a good time. That was me. And that was by seventh grade. So by seventh grade, , I was dealing smoking weed every day and, this just started to snowball.

So I found great fulfillment and pleasure in smoking weed and laughing and just being stupid and silly. , and then that evolved in high school to smoking weed and doing drugs and experimenting with all sorts of hallucinogenic club drugs. You know, ecstasy, ketamine, mushrooms, things like that and partying.

And so now mingling with girls , and on the party scene in high school. And so now I'm focused. I know what I like to do. And, and I am just, I started at a young age, but I was just, I was a pleasure seeker, a hedonist in every sense of the term, just at a young age, grabbing hold of anything and everything that any, any pleasure that the world had to offer me that was in arms reach.

I was going to take and smoke sniff, do whatever to, yeah. And I was, and I just had, no, there was no like whatever was before me.

Ryan Henry: Yeah. Did you have any sense of, or, or wondering like, you know, is this okay or were you just sold, like, this is what I'm doing. Like no thoughts about whether it was right or wrong 

Austin Delgado: no. I knew objectively speaking in the sense of like, what is socially acceptable and not like , I had a bearing on like what was right and wrong, but I had my own compass and that, which was wrong in the eyes of society was right in my eyes and good , and was fulfilling. It made it, the pursuit of that, which was wrong in the eyes of society helped me grow in my fulfillment and make a name for myself. I had a rep, I was wild. I was fun. I was attractive. I was a social magnet. So clearly society's wrong.

Ryan Henry: Yeah, right, right. I can see. Yeah. You see how you can easily get into that and have that mindset. And so, and so like awareness of God at this point is like, you're not really even thinking along those lines.

Austin Delgado: no, it's not at all, except for operating in this notion of like God is with me. That's my boy, me and God are straight. That type of , false notion of just being who God is. And yeah, and I don't even know why. I don't even know why I would say that because I, I thought of God as, at that point, I would say at best though, I would never articulate it this way.

He is creator and judge of the universe and all people, but like, all you have to do is not be as bad as that person, you know what I'm saying?

Ryan Henry: Yeah.

Austin Delgado: And that was it. And then we're good. And so that, and I, I couldn't even articulate that. Like that was just, that just kept me going that just satisfied the subconscious, basically that that's the best I could represent it in hindsight.

Ryan Henry: that that's, that's perfect. Cause I mean, how many of us, you know, at one point, and I know for me personally, you know, you, you you're raised to be a good kid. It's like as long as you're not as bad as, you know, the next kid. You're doing all right. You know, but like, man, what a, that's a endless scale right there, you know?

And the, the scary thought to see what would happen if society really just adhere to that, you know? So yeah. So how bad, so you're in high school, you're, you're the party scene. You're getting into lots of drugs, satisfying, you know, self-soothing, you know, just, you know, whatever it is, whatever feels good.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So Austin, talk to us about how bad it really got for you.

Austin Delgado: So it depends on how you define bad. Through from high school into college. So here I have this, this my, my social life is blowing up in high school. And then I went to Rutgers university, which is a city of its own in New Jersey. I mean, he got , 50,000 plus kids there. So my social life, my drug usage it exponentially blew up.

And so from my perspective, nothing was bad. It was getting better and better and better in the sense of, I was now through my college years, five years of college . In the club scene, underground rave scene, black market parties made a huge name for myself throughout Rutgers trafficking ridiculous amounts of club drugs out of New York city.

 And, and, and was up for was, would, would stay up for days. So I'm at the I'm at the climax. I'm living it up from my perspective. I can have as much fun as possible. I'm making ridiculous money. I can do whatever I want. I can have whatever I want. And I thought, why would I ever want to be one of these penguins who work nine to five every day and just follow along in line?

Like everyone else? I was thinking from my perspective, this is how I want to live my life for the rest of my life. I'm just more and more fulfilled in what I'm doing. But that took a very quick turn when life started catch that lifestyle can not last. And so it caught up quickly once I started Oxycontin and then heroin.

So at that point I would be up for days on everything in the book, meth ecstasy, ketamine, smoking, crack Coke, like literally richest cycling every day, all day, just to keep going, going, going, moving from party scene to party, scene to party scene. And, and I, and I loved that, but , it catches up and I didn't see what was coming down the pike 

that's when things started, I started. Hitting this is during college still. I, I started having, you know, several near-death experiences was rated by the DEA and ATF, , federal drug agencies and starting to get into trouble, but nothing, nothing happened. And, and I'm telling you like several near-death experiences 

when I finished college, I was full blown, addicted to heroin. And so when I went back home to Northeast Jersey at this point, my parents are divorced. Okay. And there there's, I'm kind of jumping ahead here, but my mother became a Christian after my parents got divorced, when I was a junior in high school and they got divorced, my father moved to Paterson, New Jersey, very different setting than river edge.

Okay. Like night and day. So Patterson is, is an inner city. It's the largest city and has a huge drug and gang population and, and, and reality there. So w I moved back home and, and once I started heroin, which was towards the end of graduate college, my life of people, lights, fun money, keep going having fun.

Quickly spiraled into me and the needle in a deep dark hole. And that was it. I mean, very, very quickly , I am locked and trapped deep in a

dungeon. And so this is where I started to reckon with this has bad, that which has been so good. So I thought has left me empty desolate, utterly enslaved, captive to this needle.

Ryan Henry: Wow. Wow. Yeah. I just can't even imagine. So how quickly would you say that that drop from your highest to like realizing this is not good, you know, is that a span over a week? , a couple months.

Austin Delgado: Couple months set. We're talking like at this point 10 years of thinking that like I am living the life and within a couple months I am the scum of the earth.

Ryan Henry: Oh my gosh.

Austin Delgado: I have nothing.

Ryan Henry: So I mean, our friends like withdrawn at that point.

Austin Delgado: I had so many friends in so many different places that like my core boys from like from high school, like they're all reconnected and post-college, they're all taken off in New York city in business and doing really well for themselves. And I'm, I'm in my own world and I'll dip into their world every once in a while.

But I'm in my own way. I got friends all over, but no one know what may be one or two others who are with me , in pushing this stick into my, into our arms. That's our life now. That's it.

Ryan Henry: Wow.

Austin Delgado: That's it? No, no one. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Henry: So can you, is there a, a time do, would you just cause you know, for me I'm just kind of interested if you don't mind just sharing a specific moment. If you can remember. You know what it is like to be at that low point. I mean, what are you experiencing? What are you feeling? What are you, what are you thinking?

You know, when you're up on heroin?

Austin Delgado: Yeah, for the first several months, you're so blind in your, lustful pursuits of that. Needle. You love it with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. It is, you are literally in love with it. Nothing. Every single everything else fades in life.

You cannot think about anything else because you are head over heels in love. And then you get to a point where you realize, wait a minute, like this isn't a beloved. This is a demon. He's got me trapped. I'm done. There's no, I don't know what to I'm trapped. You start to get exhausted. And, and it happens because you realize this over time.

When you have certain experiences, when you are physically addicted to dope heroin. In between every push of a needle. It's a timer picture. Your life operates , I'm telling you , your physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing , is contained within a tiny little . hour glass 

,. Every time you push and, and you use, you flip the hourglass, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. And if you don't prepare, once you flip, you enjoy for a little bit, but then back, back in pursuit, you have to chase.

You have to, you have to get your next fix, because if you don't, by the time that sand starts to diminish, you start to go through withdrawal. And now we're in, we're in a whole nother category. When, if you have never experienced physical withdrawal from a substance, as strong, as heroin, so deeply ingrained in, in your whole body, every single nerve endings, I'm telling you, when you start going through withdrawal, every minute feels like a full hour, and you are just in full agony from head to toe, like, like complete agony from head to toe.

It is the worst thing. And, and only having experienced that. I can now say, I understand why people kill each other for $5 to get it, to get a bag for a quick fix. Outside of that experience, I would have been like, that's inconceivable. What are you? Five bucks. I get it. I get it because you have no choice.

Your life is being driven by a joystick. And that joystick is not in your hand. It's in the hand of a very dark force at play. That's guiding you and then that's it. So I might be rambling here, but I can give you one. I can give you one or two quick things right here. Quick two quick stories. Let me let's get inside the head of what it was like for Austin.

Enslaved. Two things come to mind spontaneously. I was just entering into withdrawal. I have no money. I need to get my bags. I. I am still a good boy. Mama raised me well, but I need to get my bags. And so I'm sitting on the little, guanhua a little, a little dollar bus that goes from New York city to Patterson and, , my nerve endings are starting to chill.

It's summer time, I'm freezing and sweating on the bus. We haven't even begun. This is just like, yeah, it's coming just a little bit of sand left on your little hour glass till you're in a pit , for the next five days. Like, it doesn't even like, like withdrawal. Doesn't just last a couple hours.

Like you're in it for the next five plus days straight. And so I'm feeling it coming on and all of a sudden I'm hearing in my head. What can you take, look around, look around a bus. Can you snatch that chain right there? Can you grab that? Woman's bra and I'm sitting there. I'm watching this old lady stand up and I'm hearing in my conscience.

Get that bag, get that bag. Get off the bus, get off the bus. Snack that bag. Grab that bag. Get off the bus with her. Grab that bag and run. Grab that. But no, no, no. Austin, you don't snatch old ladies purses. You don't bum rush that old lady boomers, that old lady take that back. You need to have fixed. Are you serious?

You feel where you're at? You know, what's coming tick tock, tick tock, tick, tick. That's what goes on in the mind of a heroin addict every day. Yeah, this is not a beloved anymore. And you start to reckon with that. The second thing that stands out is dang praise God. I did not steal that lady's bag. But anyway, it took a different approach.

 Another experience is getting arrested one day for copying a bundle, 10 bags of heroin. And I'm locked up. This is a Friday afternoon. I'm in a holding cell for three days, a mini cage. I'm not going anywhere. So the hourglasses is, is about out and I'm sitting there tick tock, tick tock, and I know it's coming and, and I, and I know, I know, I know what's coming, but I have no options, so I can't do anything, but embrace what's coming. Those three days before I was actually released to get back out onto, out onto the streets. Every minute was like, was like a full hour of misery. I mean, . Could you imagine being , in a cell, the size of your house bathroom, probably like three of your house bathrooms. Okay.

Legitimately like three, three small house bathrooms with like nine guys, . Most of them are going through withdrawal too. I remember being wrapped up around the little steel hole in the floor. That that is the toilet in that room. Vomiting shivering in agonizing pain, squealing like a pig going through heroin withdrawal for three days and they're slipping purple.

Th they, , they called it bologna sandwiches. I'm looking at these things. They're like neon green. It looked like lizard skin. And like, it's so nasty. And like the guys in the cell, , they're like, you're going to eat that. Like you realize, like, this is me, this is my company.

This is who I am. Like, I'm no different than them. And so I I'm just in agony,, for days while I'm in there. And those were some of the hardest, yeah, this is where you are.

Your beloved. Got you here.

Ryan Henry: Hm. That, first of all, you said neon green. If that's a reason to not go to jail right there. No, I'm just like, I can't even imagine that and

snag. 

Austin Delgado: Oh, I peeled open this slice of meat, the slice of bread. And let me tell you, I wasn't eating anyway. I wasn't, I just looked at it and, and of course that just made me sicker and I was like, yeah, take this.

I didn't eat for four days, man. I mean, it was, I couldn't swallow any way. My body wouldn't have allowed me to. That's what withdrawal is like, you can't explain every nerve ending is in agony.

Ryan Henry: yeah. You know I appreciate you telling me. I mean, just even for our listeners, because you know, when you know somebody who has been addicted to a substance, it's very easy for us on the outside to just be like, well, come on, just get over it and just like, press on and get through, you know, but what you're saying is essentially like the, the consequence for not having it in their blood.

Is so severe and so terrifying that it keeps them, it keeps them in it, you know, until, until they're forced to have a situation where they are putting, it's almost like jail is like a grace, you know, for you to be able to, to go through withdrawal because otherwise you would probably never choose to do that. You 

Austin Delgado: It most certainly is a grace. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. , you cannot, there is no, judgment and control. At least I didn't. And I speak on behalf of many others that, that I know, that may not be everyone, but I know what it's like, you have no country. judgment, no conscious at that point.

Yeah.

Ryan Henry: Hm. So how did, how did you, did you start feeling conviction? How did you start to make a change 

Austin Delgado: yeah. Good question. So everything that I just shared is really like to some degree only the start of discovering how bad things were. I went to several methadone clinics to try to get off methadone is what they perceive is what they give they offer for free in inner city context, to get people off of heroin, they started using methadone clinics, post Vietnam war.

When many soldiers came back addicted to heroin Patterson had several methadone clinics. And let me tell you something like methadone gets you high. Like methadone is strong. It is strong people buy methadone on the streets, just like you would Oxycontin or heroin. It is, it is powerful. It's manufactured dope, but if they use it, it's monitored.

So they're supposed to, wean you off of the heroin anyway. It rarely ever works. , there's so much more that has to change. So I tried several times going on meth. But I would just shoot heroin on top of the methadone. So I got the methadone in my system. I would just shoot. Now there's so much that happened, but I'm not going to get into everything.

Okay. I tried, I tried to pursue other options traveled in Europe with a friend to try to just one for enjoyment, but to also try to explore what could it look like to relocate? What if I just got out of this pit? It's the, it's the city. It's not me. It's the city. And so it's my surroundings. I kept telling myself until I ended up, you know, in Amsterdam, so sick with so sick of having eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms for so long, like poison because it's poison it's silicide, that's what it is.

That's why you hallucinate. That I came back and, and clearly that was not an option anywhere out there because I started to realize everywhere I went, it was just me. It was from within now my best friend from one of my best friends from when I was a young boy, I'm talking to like a brother.

He tried Oxycontin one night and he took his first pill. Someone at work gave it to him. He didn't tell me. And that night he died and I never understood the toxicology report. I never saw that, but I know what happened that night and that killed me. So I plummeted even worse.

Again, every time I tried to get off, I come back harder and harder now insert new step for me. Ironically, I graduated from Rutgers with a degree in criminal justice 

this is the first time at age, like 25 that I'm putting my degree to work. And I got a job at an immigration and family law firm in New Jersey. I'm, I'm a full-blown heroin addict. I'm a functional heroin addict. I can now heroin is my means , of sustenance throughout the day. It's the means by which I sustained by which I like wake up and go, because I've been doing it for several years at this point, like four years.

And this is where things started to get really, really dark where I was on and off the streets. Spend time living with friends, spend times living on the streets, living in squats, living out of my backpack. There were times where I would have five shirts and five ties in my backpack, and I would have same pair of pants working at this law firm for like three years.

Now, this is, this is leading up to your question

Ryan Henry: Yeah.

Austin Delgado: for three years straight. At this point I was on and off the streets, struggling with homelessness. Full-blown heroin addict, living out of my backpack. Working at a law firm and embezzling money from the firm every day to support my addiction. So I was the trusted bank runner and I volunteered myself for that role because in my beat.

Out of control and being led by another force to sustain my addiction. I figured out a way to manipulate the whole accounting department trace stuff. I loved the workers there. They were amazing, and I love them to this day. Many of them were Christians, but I was deceitful. I was robbing the place blind.

Now, keep in mind here. We are in the recession of 2008, 2009. I am , a gaping hole in their business account at this law firm. Two Orthodox Jewish women ran the firm so I'm a homeless heroin addict living out of my backpack, embezzling money from this, from debt every single day to support my addiction.

It was during this time that I begin to pray. Things got so dark being in these squats and these abandoned homes in the hood that were, you know, boarded up when you're driving down hood streets in the hood, and they're all, evicted homes. And I would be sitting, I would shoot up with, with these people and I'm telling you like me with them.

This is not just them. We are like the lowest of the low in, not in the eyes of society. No one will go near us. It, the smells, the sounds, every of these places were unbearable. I'm telling you, they call these dope houses also. And so I would shoot up and what I would do is I put my headphones in and I would.

Listen to Bob Marley, talk about God's sovereign use of things. And this is what prompted me to start praying, bro. Start prompting me to pray. I would listen, I would shoot up and I'd be listening to just a bracket out. I'd be in the corner of my own world, bracketing out. And I was. Exodus send us another brother Moses, and I didn't know.

And I would, and that would, that would prompt me to start praying, God, help me send another brother,

Moses 

Ryan Henry: on.

Austin Delgado: I didn't know how to pray. And I would literally recite these words, send me another brother, Moses. I know what I'm talking about. I'd never opened a Bible before in my life. At this point, I'm dead serious by the rivers of Babylon.

Ryan Henry: Yeah. 

Austin Delgado: To carry us away, captivity require from us a song. How can we singing of a song in a straight? Yeah. And so I'd be like, I helped me save me from this captivity. I'm held captive. I'm dead serious. That's the stuff that was my prayers. Those are my prayers. And so I would pray. And then the last six months, this was the turning point turning.

Darkest place in my life, utterly helpless, utterly enslaved, six months of prayer of tossing up. These Marley influenced from dead, sir. That's all I got. That's all I got tossing up these prayers. And then one day I show up at the firm, which I did every morning early to, to manipulate the head account held receptionist's computer and I would erase my trails.

And so I would do some cleanup the next day. I would have to get rid of my carbon tracing, copies, all this stuff, erased my trails in the head secretary and I'd show up and the, and the lead attorneys there. Okay. And she owns the office and she's there. And I'm like, what is she doing here? Why is she here at 7:00 AM?

She's never here at seven. Am I walk? And she looks at me. She was like, Austin, meet me in the office. I look at my files and the files on my desk where we're all open. And I remembered the day before I slipped a carbon copy, slipped the original that I traced that I use to trace. And anyway, it was part of my process.

I slipped that in a file folder that I would clean up the next morning. She found it. I knew I was caught. I was done. Now you got to keep something in mind here every day, every day that I'm writing, manipulating , the deposit slips, forging the attorney's names, erasing stuff on checks, reworking checks.

I would, there was a, a small voice in the back of my mind for I'm talking about three years, Austin, you know, what's going to happen when you get caught. This is so federal. Forging identity theft grand larceny embezzlement Austin. But I'm telling this is the enslavement I had to just keep going. I would hear that stuff every once in a while I had to keep going.

So I walk in, I'm exposed. What do I do? Do I flee to Mexico? Like every other like fugitives, I guess that's what fugitives do. Do. I just run from my life because I'm done. I'm going oh, away. So I didn't know what to do. I'm so vulnerable, so sensitive and I'm ready to bounce. And she's like, Austin, meet me in the conference room.

I walk in the conference room. I said, yeah, , and she looks at me, she's got all these paperwork out. She's like, Austin, I cannot believe we took you in like family Austin. We loved you with she's like I met with the president of the bank yesterday. I looked over these records. I cannot believe I'm sick to my stomach.

I'm shaking right now. I'm literally convulsing. My head is down. I can't even look at her. And all I'm telling myself is if she steps toward that phone to call the cops, I am out, I'm gone. I'm going to disappear. I'm fleeing the country. This is what I'm going to do.

Ryan Henry: Yeah.

Austin Delgado: She, but something kept me there and she's like, Austin she starts explaining.

And she's like, I worked through it. She's like, do you understand something? I've had insurance with this bank for over 30 years? She's like, do you realize that I could get every dollar you are? The reason why my business almost was completely died. The reason why I could not give my attorneys and paralegals raises over these last few years, she's like, do you realize I could get every dollar back that you stole from.

Do you realize that, but you know, what's going to happen to you, Austin. They are going to prosecute you and you are going to go away for a minimum of 10 to 15 years in a federal penitentiary, grand larceny, identity, theft, forgery, embezzlement um, shaking. Now I'm about to be out and she's like, look at me, Austin, look at me.

And I look up and arise and I'll never forget, bro. This is it. This is my breaking point. She's like, I know that deep down inside, there is a man that you have yet to meet and I am willing to absorb the cost of everything that you stole from me to help you find new life. I want to help you Austin. Talk about the gospel in hind light.

What. What I shattered Ryan D the walls around my heart shattered. I'm telling you this, scale's off my, I looked up in the ceiling. I melted, bro. . You are real. You are really real. That's what I I'm dead serious. I look it up. I'm like you heard you heard

Ryan Henry: Oh my gosh.

Austin Delgado: that was it. That was the turning point. God used the inconceivable grace of this most amazing Jewish woman head attorney to absorb the cost of everything I stole for her to help me find new life.

And I shattered. That was my surrender point.

Ryan Henry: Oh, so good.

Folks, there's more to Austin story. Sorry we left you on a cliffhanger, but that just means you're going to have to come back. Join us in two weeks for the amazing transformation of Austin Delgado part to subscribe to us in your favorite pod player to never miss a One80.

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