Episode 40 — David “Menace” Stamper | From Chaos to Choice

In this raw and unfiltered episode of the Rain Brings Growth Podcast, I sit down with David Stamper, better known as Menace, to unpack a life that started in chaos and found its way to purpose.

David opens up about a traumatic childhood surrounded by meth labs, abuse, and addiction at a young age. He shares what it was like running away from home, spending three years in juvenile detention, and navigating early adulthood—including working on fishing boats in Alaska—while still battling destructive patterns.

As the partying escalated, so did the consequences: DUIs, jail time, and ultimately conceiving his child while sitting in county jail. David spent seven years in prison, a stretch that forced him to confront the man he had become and the father he needed to be. He also explains how he earned the nickname Menace, and what it represented during that season of his life.

This conversation is about accountability, hard-earned lessons, and the decision to change when every statistic says you won’t. David shares why he chose a different path, how fatherhood reshaped his priorities, and what becoming a better man truly looks like after a past like his.

If you believe growth can come from the darkest places, this episode is proof.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yeah. And then so I went and I was like, who is this guy? And then I went and looked and I just I found one of your one of your reels and I liked what you were saying on it about like childhood stuff. And I was like, let's hear this dude's story. And then come to find out you're from the same area. So I think I just said like I'd love to hear your story one day, and then I just messaged you and yeah, you were in the same area. I was like, perfect.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Yeah. Um, I live maybe 10 minutes away from here.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

You know, if it wasn't for construction, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

But yeah, um, I I liked your videos. Um I personally, like like I was telling you before, I don't hold it against law enforcement for me being incarcerated or any of that stuff. So I'm actually interested in what it's like from the other side as well, right? Like I lived through the prisoner experience. Um I have family that were guards out there and that are law enforcement here in the valley, but we don't really talk. So I don't get it from their perspective. But watching and seeing what you guys just normal guys, like honestly, you guys are like a DUI away from being one of us, basically. Yeah, so that's what we say.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, you should have been caught a couple times.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Yeah, so I mean, honestly, like just regular guys. I don't I don't hold a grudge against like COs from out there. There's one there's a couple that I don't like. If CO sergeant ever sees this, fuck you, you know, but um honestly, like I don't hold a grudge. I I know it was my fault I was locked up.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing in life is just taking ownership. Like, I'm sure some of us were dealt a bad hand, as we'll go over in a little bit, but at the end of the day, like you gotta play with the hand you're dealt and use that as an advantage.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

A lot of the chaos that people have gone through as their childhood, they can use that for some powerful stuff later on in life and then help others that are going through stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

So yeah, I've noticed like um in high stress situations, some people might say tragedies. I I feel like I handle myself better than most people do. And I think it's probably like you said, from some of the things that I had to go through when I was younger.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, your baseline of chaos is so much higher than everybody else's.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah, I'm like, okay, so it's Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Right. Exactly. Well, let's just start back from where are you from, man?

SPEAKER_02 2:59

I was born in uh Soton, Washington, which is literally like you can pick up a rock and throw it from Lewiston to Asotin. Okay. Um, Lewiston, Idaho to Asotin, Washington. Um, my family actually lived in Winchester, Idaho. I think they were just shopping or something when my mom happened to go into labor with me. Um the town that we lived in, Winchester, it was very, very small town still, but we lived in like the very first house ever built in Winchester. It was an old rock house. Um that house burned down, so my family had to move. And I don't know if it was the stress of that or what, but my parents decided to split at that time. But my my father was super abusive to my mother anyway, so I guess you could say it was probably more likely that. Um my mom moved around from town to town to town all over the Pacific Northwest for about the next six years, just like trying to get away from my dad. And um she eventually got married to a guy named Mike. He's a pretty cool cat, but didn't really want kids. And so even though she knew my dad was incredibly abusive, she was like, got rid of us to my dad. And um man, that like looking back on it, that was hell. Like my dad was super abusive, he didn't have a right hand, he had cut it off in a sawmill when he was like twenty one and he would beat people with that hook on a regular basis. Like it it's kind of weird because the hook had a cast, right? And the hook could plug into the cast. So he'd take the hook out sometimes and beat the crap out of you with the cast, which is like still steal, right? And then claim he's not beating you with the hook. It's beating you with the hook, right? Yeah, so um, you know, that started at like I think I was six.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Really?

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Yeah. Um, my mom sent me to live with him, me and my older brother. So I'm the youngest of seven. Um only one of them's full-blooded sibling. And my mom sent the two of us to go live with my father at that time. And uh that was in Hermiston, Oregon. And he already had my three sisters and one brother living with him at the time. And when we showed up there, it was really, really apparent that we weren't wanted, that it was just required of them to let us be there.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Just that you two weren't wanted, yeah. The others were welcome, but you weren't.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Right. And um, I mean, it was hell for like, I want to say two years just being treated like dogs by all the other siblings, their mom, my dad, all of it, right? But something happened. I'm I'm almost certain it's just my dad flipped out and beat their mom really bad one night. Because we woke up and they were all gone. Um the bad part of that is then he doesn't have anybody else to focus on. Yeah, I know that sounds bad, right? But when there's when there's six kids versus two, you can spread those beatings out a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Um when those kids left, it got really, really bad. And on Christmas Eve, when I was eight years old. I I should back up. My dad let us smoke, drink, whatever we wanted at that age, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:52

At eight years old?

SPEAKER_02 6:54

At six to eight.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah, so my brother is three years older than me, and I would follow him around like a puppy dog back then. But yeah, my dad would let us like I'd get sick all the time drinking, trying to drink with my brother. Um, we smoked all the time, like packs of cigarettes, not a problem. I remember I remember going down to the store trying to get cigarettes, and the guy's like, ah, I can't sell you cigarettes, you're kids. And we were like, We're getting them for our dad. He's like, Oh, okay. Sell us cigarettes, you know. This is yeah, I'm 46 now, you know. But um in a small town? Yeah, in Hermiston, Oregon, you know what I mean. And so we smoked, no big deal. Well, on Christmas Eve one night, my dad had left his pack of cigarettes out. He and his new girlfriend were in the back doing their thing. Me and my brother were playing video games all night, right? And we saw the cigarettes, we took a couple cigarettes. Well, he came out and apparently had counted the cigarettes before he left them there. And he's like, I want my cigarettes back. And we smoked like five or six cigarettes. We're like, uh, we smoked them. He didn't believe us. And he's like, I'll tell you what, if those cigarettes aren't back out here when I come out in half an hour, then I'm gonna do to you what I'm gonna do to your Nintendo. And he went over and he took his uh hook and he pounded that thing into like tons and tons of pieces, right? And slapping us around, kicking us the whole time and screaming at us, right? On Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve, yeah. And at the time we were staying at his friend's house in Hat Rock State Park, which is just outside of Hermiston. And me and my brother were so scared we were like, we're gonna leave. Like we're not taking this beating. This is one that's gonna be too bad, you know? So we decide we're gonna run away. But my shoes are in the bedroom with my dad. And it's Christmas Eve, it's middle winter in freaking Oregon, it's freezing. But we did it anyways. We ran in the snow all the way back to Hermiston, Oregon from Hat Rock, and I don't know, like I think it's 11 miles maybe or whatever. But went to a friend's house and and called my mom and finally got uh got my mom to come and pick us up on Christmas Day. But yeah. It was um really, really scary, and we'd we'd been pretty badly beat. I by by that point we'd been beat on a lot. I'd watched my brother get one by fours broken over his back. Um I'd been choked unconscious, I don't know how many times. And my mom, my mom wasn't a great mom, I'll be honest, right? But she didn't she wasn't physically abusive, like beat the crap out of us. That was really the introduction to it. Um from there, went back to my mom's house. But now we have behavioral problems, you know, like I think a month after my mom came and picked us up, my brother caught one of I I think it was me, had stolen cigarettes from my mom or her husband. And uh my brother found it, my older brother, not not my blood brother, but my half-brother.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Your blood brother was the one that you ran away with?

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Yeah, so me and DJ, my my blood brother, we were thick as thieves for a long time. Um Jeff, my older brother, has a different dad, kind of grew up different than we did. Um, and really, like, we just didn't get well at the time, you know. And um, he would catch us and rat us out to our parents and stuff. But I think it was like about a month after we got back, my brother went off the rails. Like, my blood brother started breaking into places, doing all kinds of crazy crap, and I'm right there with him, you know, following him around. So he goes to juvie um for breaking into a school and a few houses, right? Honestly, during that probably three years, life's pretty good for me. I'm enrolled in sports, I'm doing good in school.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Um when your brother's in juvie?

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah. And like I'm the only kid at home now. My other brother, um, he's off in college or living with his dad or something, I don't remember exactly. And the other four siblings never lived at my mom's, like they never went to my mom's or anything like that because they were from a different woman. Um, so life was pretty good for me for about three years. Started doing decent school, you know, enrolled in sports. But then something happens between my mom and her husband, and again, he doesn't want me there. So again, my mom decides that I gotta go. And she sent me to live with my dad.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

How does that go down? Your mom just says you need to leave or talks to your dad first and gets you to go, or how's were you seeing your dad at all at any of this times, like visitation?

SPEAKER_02 12:17

No, um, but I'd been seeing my brother DJ, and the way that that was arranged was basically he had gotten out of Juvie to go live with my dad. So my dad would like bring him, drop him off at a friend's house, and then DJ would come and visit us. Right? Then DJ would go back to his friend's house, take off with my dad. So I got to hang out with DJ. I didn't want to be around my dad. Like, that's why I didn't go like hang out with him. I was scared of my dad. Like, scared of my dad. And um, yeah, just my mom called me into the room one day and said, Hey, Mike doesn't want you here anymore. You gotta go. Like, where am I gonna go? She's like, Your dad's on his way to pick you up. So I said, Oh damn. You know, here we go again. Um, but I knew my brother was living with him, and so I was talking to my brother on the phone. He's like, Yeah, it's you know, it's good, he's he's changed, blah blah blah. I knew it was bullshit. Like in in my heart, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

But man, I I loved my brother too, you know, and I wanted to be around my brother, and so I was like, Yeah, screw it. But I don't think it was two days before I got knocked out by my dad. Like, knocked unconscious. Um, and I remember what it was about. Like, when they took me to the my dad lived in a camper trailer, man, you know, like and he lived in a camper trailer behind my uncle's house. So he's hooked up to my uncle's electricity, and and um I guess he and my uncle had had some kind of argument in the past about the amount of electricity my dad was using. So when I got there, um bedtime, we all go into the camper trailer. It's freaking hot. Hey, dude has a heater cranked up, has a uh gas stove burning for extra heat in there. I can't sleep, it's so hot. So I go in the house, just gonna watch TV. My uncle's like, hey, it's late. What are you doing? Why aren't you in out there sleeping? Oh man, it's too hot. I can't sleep. I didn't know about this argument before, you know? Yeah. But dude, my uncle went on and yanked open the camper door and started screaming at my dad. I didn't know this before this, but my dad was scared shitless of my uncle. Bro, when that door came flying open and my uncle started screaming, my dad was, yes, yeah, okay. I ain't never seen nothing like that, right? And so I was like, Oh, I'm dead. I knew right then and there, I was like, oh, I shouldn't have told my uncle anything about the heat in the camper. And sure as shit, my uncle said, You let me know if he gives you any shit. And he turned around and he walked, and I turned to go in, and my father knocked me out. Cold. Unconscious, one punch.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Like How old are you at this time?

SPEAKER_02 15:28

11.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Jeez. Um What'd your uncle do about that?

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Did he take nothing? I I like I I don't know if if they even had words at that point. Right, you're unconscious. Yeah, I was I was out for a while. Um, and when I woke up, I was still out in the grass. And my brother and my dad had gone back into the camper trailer. And so like I thought about running away, man, but I was too scared to, honestly. Um when when I was watching your video, like when you're trying to explain to that guy why you why you never told people, or I guess it was his video, but you were on another chaos something.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, well, chaos?

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah, like I totally got it. The moment he asked that, I was like, he don't get it. It is fucking scary.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Like when you're being abused by somebody and they have that much control over you, it's scary, man. You know? Um I was so scared of my father that when he got mad, I couldn't move. Like my brother DJ would run. Like I always thought, oh god, I wish I could run. Because he'd see my dad get like he would see it coming, and DJ was gone. Like smoke in the wind. Just gone. I couldn't move. I couldn't make myself move. So I'd just stand there and take it. That's the way it was for years. So at 11, like it started again, right? But I think I was 12 years old, 12 or 13, when DJ was like, I'm gone for good. Yeah. Um, but that meant that I was the only one left. And just you and your dad in the camper trailer. Well, like so my dad, it wasn't always in the camper trailer either. I should be clear about that. Like there were good moments and bad moments. My dad was a dope cook, you know, and um he ran around with a motor club a lot of the time. And so we that's why we're in a camper moving around doing that. But when he wasn't able to do that, then he'd have to go get a job and we would live in an actual apartment or uh trailer house or sometimes in the camper trailer, but actually have food for a week, or you know what I mean? Like it it changed all the time because he was constantly trying to figure out how to feed his habit without having to really work at it.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

So were you always around when he was cooking what was it, methamphetamine?

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Yeah, it was crank, so like uh meth was like the good shit that came after crank, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, uh I don't know. I I never got too far into drugs.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

What's the difference, I guess, is so pretty much the difference would be the uh ingredients and quality. Like um they called crank crank back in the day because bikers stored it in the crank shape uh crank case of their uh motorcycles so that they wouldn't get busted with it. Yeah. Um it was there was a lot of different ingredients used to make it. Yeah, it was really unhealthy, like nasty crap. Meth came along, right? Meth was uh more pure, higher quality stuff, so crank kind of went to the side, but essentially the same stuff is nose candy.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Did you see him cooking it? Like was it around you, or did you just knew that he was doing it?

SPEAKER_02 19:06

I used to steal it from him and stuff all the time. Really? Yeah. So that was the one thing I I don't know, it sounds stupid, but to credit my dad with that was the one thing he wouldn't give me. Like, wouldn't sit there and watch me do. Like, I could smoke weed, I could drink, uh smoke cigarettes, um, did mushrooms in front of my dad. But meth was something that he was always like, no, no. He wouldn't even talk to me about it. Did he do it himself? Oh yeah. Yeah, that's why he's I feel like that's probably why he was so bipolar. He's just constantly trying to find his next fix. Um he wasn't a big dude, but man, he was meaner and shit. He was scary, like super scary, because you just never knew what he was gonna do. It's like it's like having a mean dog that you know is gonna snap at you eventually in the room with you all the time. Yeah. You know, it's horrible.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

What was your first experience with the the drug making then? Like how early in life were you exposed to that? Was it something?

SPEAKER_02 20:16

I think that was when we were in Hermiston.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Really?

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think that I I know I wasn't doing it back then, like doing it on a regular I don't think I ever did it back then, but I may have. I just don't remember doing it until I was like 12.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Did your mom know what she was sending you into with that part of the drugs? She knew about the anger, but does she know about like the drug part?

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Man, that's a that's a good question, right? Like, I don't know because my mom my mom's not really honest about the past, you know. Um They have a skewed version of what you've seen? She just likes to fabricate it to try and make it to where it's not as bad as it was on her end, honestly. Um I love I love my mom. I love my dad too. Like, he is a horrible person, but I guess I'm just that dumb, you know. Like uh I still have a place for him in my heart. Um my mom, she's still alive, but it's hard to be mad at her, dude. Like, my mom has been in incapacitated since uh 17 years old. Um she had an aneurysm in her brain. And if I I should back up and be more fair to my mom and say the whole time that that um she was sending me off to live with my dad, and her husband didn't want us around, she was also dealing with a lot of health issues, right? She had a brain tumor removed, um, she had gone deaf in one year. Like she had a lot going on. Doesn't justify it in my in my eyes, but she did have a lot going on, and I imagine her husband was like six months into the shit you know I now I'm supposed to be the dad to these two freaking brats while you're gone getting brain surgery and shit. Yeah. So I whole lot of you know I guess I'm not very fair in that I don't try to see it from their perspective. But at the same time she wasn't a great mum. Yeah. You know she knew about the abuse I don't I don't know if she knew about the drugs for sure or not, but I don't see how you couldn't know.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yeah. So did you dad ever have like a criminal history of drugs or anything like that? Was he pretty good at hiding stuff?

SPEAKER_02 22:38

I don't he didn't hide squat man. They just didn't do shit to him. It was so crazy to me. The child abuse so many DUIs that like dude my dad was pulled over so many times absolutely just all over the place on the road slammed drunk and they follow him home. You know like the world was completely different. And that's I think a lot of people now don't don't think that the abuse is still as rampant in the world today because the world's changed so much but it is.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah it's still definitely there.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Yeah it's just different ways of getting away with it but they still get away with it.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah. So you're 11 years old and then your dad just said you can't he didn't care what else you did with no meth and then what else?

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Um you know my dad both my parents have been married several times but my dad had this way of like manipulating women into accepting a trailer house life I guess or not even a trailer house camp trailer life and he would move women and their children in and then it was like where do I go? Oh you can sleep in the tent outside and that was the coldest worst experience ever because by now we've moved around so much we're in southern Idaho like southeastern Idaho do you know where uh Lava Hot Springs is okay so between Pocatello and Lava Hot Springs there's a little town called McCammon. McCammon is literally just in this valley of cold shit in the wintertime is horrible it is like super frigid area that's where we lived and I stayed in the tent outside of it for two years. And then when I was 14 my dad had married yet another woman and we moved into a trailer house in Nava Hot Springs and um one night her son woke me up crying saying your dad's killing my mom I look out the door and sure as shit he's got her knocked out and he's just choking her he's like he's on top of her to where she can't even move but she's already unconscious and he's not moving. He's still on top of her choking her so I didn't know what to do and kind of freaked out and ran and pushed him off and as soon as I pushed him off he looked up I I don't know what I was thinking but I was like just gave him a solid one and he hit the ground but as soon as he did he like he started popping up I knew he was gonna kill me so I ran. Um I ran away at 14 and never went back um I never saw my father again after that wow like I went to juvie like after I ran away I was sleeping uh under a park bench in the park in Lava Hot Springs. I had taken a tarp and basically just made it into a tent by putting it over that and uh I was like I gotta do something different like this this sucks you know and I'm not gonna keep doing this winter's coming so bro I started robbing places I was at 14? Yeah I was breaking into places um I knew who owned businesses in the community and I'd wait for them to leave and then I go break into their house. I did a couple of home invasions like armed home invasions um I was horrible I eventually went stole a bunch of dope from my dad's house when he wasn't home and was out selling that apparently some guy didn't like the quality of it or something but he started a bunch of shit with me and told everybody he was gonna kill me and um all kinds of stuff and mind you at 14 years old I was pretty I was pretty wild bro like I didn't care if you were an adult if you wanted to scrap we could scrap you know the only person I wouldn't fight was my dad like I was too scared of him right but um I was doing all kinds of crazy crap like going to bars and beating people up in bars that owed me money for dope at 14 years old it at the green tea in Pocatello. Um and then one guy owed me some money so I beat him down really bad and then I burned his car to the ground and that was kind of it the cops were looking for me I was hiding out in different people's places sleeping on the couch and whatnot and eventually got caught and went to juvie um and stayed in juvie until I was 17 met a lot of uh North anyals from here in Nampa back then in juvi and when I got out of juvie I started hanging out with all them and just got in a lot more trouble.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Where'd you get a gun at and everything when you were 14? Did you just steal it from your dad or something?

SPEAKER_02 28:00

I broke into a so I'm still friends with the guy actually um I was friends with this cat and he's like hey my dad's got a shitload of guns like if you steal them we'll get all the insurance money and then you can just split whatever you get them for him with me and we'll call it good. And I was like cool so we went and robbed his dad's house basically just opened the door and loaded all the guns in the back of my my car I got caught with all those guns too when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Really?

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Yeah was that at the same time that you had got arrested for the yeah I got busted for everything at once and this is actually kind of a wild story. So uh I had taken my dad's dope and you know you trade up it's it's so it's all about trying to make money. Um and I couldn't get any more dope so I took that money and I went to Salt Lake and I got a bunch of acid and I was selling that over in that area and I was super high on acid. I was tripping balls. I was at my friend's farmhouse between Lava Hot Springs and McCammon sitting on the porch and I was like oh man look at that storm and see this cloud coming and you can see all like lightning strikes in it I was like that's crazy. It's coming right up the road bro you know like I think I'm all cool it's not a it's not a storm it's a cloud of dust from all the police vehicles because there's 15 ATF FBI and local law enforcement vehicles all coming up I was like oh my god oh shit as soon as I saw the first car come through the dust I was like oh my friend owned a ranch so I was like oh dude I'm gonna run out I'm gonna get on this horse and I'm gonna get away and I got on the horse and I started riding you could see ATF coming out of the the woods on horseback like they knew where I was at they've been watching me for days and they came and got me wow what an arrest story geez so when I got arrested and they took me in um I got 13 counts of Grand Theft of for the firearms I got battery I got arson I got possession I got a bunch of different robberies so when I went when I went in at 14 like I knew I was gonna be there basically until I was 18 you know and I was bro in a way I think I was thankful for it because then I knew my dad couldn't come beat me up and shit.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

And at least you had a roof over your head.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yeah so um I did basically the next three years in juvie and about four months before I turned 18 I got out but they sent me to live with my mom. She had gotten a divorce by then and was living on her own and so I kind of thought it was going to work out because then it was just me and my mom and not all the other drama so I went to Ontario Oregon and uh started high school there. I think it was two maybe three months later my mom had an aneurysm in her brain and she had to go to uh Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and she would be there for the next eight months basically trying to get her brain right be able to walk again all that stuff two weeks after she had her aneurysm though my father drowned to death so might have been a week but no more than two weeks so then I was like oh crap I'm homeless and then my PO came and he's like hey either you have a place to live or you gotta go back back to juvie and I was like I don't want to go back to juvie so um I said screw this and I went to work on a fishing boat in Alaska at 17 years old? Yeah man it was kind of wild but um I'd been going around like applying for jobs at ranches yeah because I was hoping to get a job where I could work and live there. Yeah because at the time I was bouncing around from friend to friend's couch you know and somebody said hey why don't you do the fishing boat the fishing boat you can live there you make a shitload of money you can't spend it because you're out at sea might work out for you so I was like yeah that's what I'm gonna do but this was 1997 bro and the internet wasn't really that big of a thing back then so all the information wasn't on it yet and there was no like how do you get a job on a fishing boat. Right so I just got plane tickets and I went to Dutch Harbor Alaska not realizing how freaking cold it is and um nobody would give me a job so I walked up and down the docks for a week before finally somebody gave me a job.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Where were you staying at?

SPEAKER_02 33:09

I was literally staying in my tent on the shore. In the middle was this wintertime I'm taking it or no it was a summertime but it doesn't matter it doesn't still yeah it's still pretty cold yeah like really cold. And like I wasn't used to it because I'm from down here to how cold it was in the summer I went up there with summer clothing. So uh I think more than anything the captain had pity on me called me to his boat said hey check it out I can't let you work on my boat. You're not 18. So but that boat over there by the time that you get back in and fill out your paperwork you'll be 18. So if I can get you a job on that boat I can take you out to them and then you can work when you get back in you'll be 18 by the time you fill out your paperwork. So I was like cool he goes and if you make it through that then you can have a job on this boat.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

What was it for?

SPEAKER_02 34:04

Was it like crabbing or oh no so uh I started out with Alaskan Pollock they make sure it I don't know if you know what that is but like imitation crab imitation fish it's all made out of the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Yeah so uh that's Pollock that is basically like a 710 foot processing facility it's not really a fishing boat. All the fishing boats bring the fish to it and so I worked that for seven months and then when I got off of it I went to go home the same captain came and picked us up he's like oh you're going home I was like yeah he's like oh man I need a crew for this and that are you interested so kind of just took off from there you know um I think that in that environment having the ability to scrap at my age and work as hard as I did kind of set me apart and I had a good reputation you know um but then I started drinking really bad started doing a lot of drugs uh got into dope really heavy myself and I partied I want to say like two summers my entire checkout just traveling around Mexico with other dudes that worked on the fishing boats and doing nothing but buying drugs and drinks and um the third summer I came back here and I got three DUIs in like two months and they weren't they weren't like oh you were swerving a little bit um the first DUI kind of was it was kind of like that um I was swerving and not following the speed limits so they gave me the DUI no big deal second DUI I went through the windshield of the car I I was uh I'd gone up and got my brother DJ in Lewiston just uh I think if I remember right just to come down and party honestly like partying was everything to me for a long time right and uh on the way down I'd already been drinking pretty heavily before I stopped and got him uh we had a bunch of weed and I think I bought a bottle at that time but on the way down we got to council and council's different now than it used to be but council going into council used to be two 90 degree turns yeah yeah the first one I just totally didn't see coming because I had passed the police station but I didn't know that that was a police station I just saw a shitload of cop cars out there and I was like pfft because I was doing like 120 miles an hour. Oh geez that's like six I started looking up in there and then when I look back at the road that bend in the road is there. So I lock up the wheels turn just in time to hit somebody else head on I'm not wearing my seatbelt I go fine through the windshield um get life fighted me and my they took me and DJ in life fight which I thought was weird when I thought about it later but yeah they took us both from uh council to St. Alphonsus in Boise and I remember that they cut all of my clothing off and woke up and I was like are the cops here and uh there's a nurse a dude that was a nurse and he's like nah they're not here yet but they will be were you on the helicopter flight when you woke up or were you already in the hospital? Like I I woke up for a few seconds a few times throughout that whole process I remember standing there talking to the cop I remember seeing the helicopter blades and like looking around the helicopter but I don't remember a lot you know but I remember waking up and that's when I was like uh are the cops here and he's like no I was like okay I'm out of here fuck this and he goes you can't go anywhere and he went to push me down and I grabbed his face threw him back I stood up and I was like I had nothing but that hospital gown on so I'm trying to like grab my clothing from underneath the bed where they had it at and I noticed that like the pant legs are cut all the way so I was like ah throw him down I told my brother I was like we gotta go he's like you can't go anywhere I was like shut up pussy get in the car right and so we go running outside and I realized oh fuck we don't have a car I don't know where we're at right now but I see a Texaco and I was like all right went over to the Texaco I'm gonna call my my buddy to come and get me and when we get to the Texaco and I try to call my friend my friend's like I can't come get you so I'm in a hospital gown I'm unrecognizable like my face is so swollen I had torn this is how fucked up I was I'd hit the windshield and the impact from the windshield pushed my face so freaking hard that it ripped my face off of my skeletal so all this crap was pushed up like this. Oh jeez so from here up I look normal but from here down just a big bloody mess at the time right and I'm begging these people at the gas station like hey I'll give you 20 bucks for a ride I'll give you 50 bucks for a ride and finally some dude's like alright you had pickups so me and my brother lay in the back of the pickup go to the north side of Nampa my buddy lets us in um I end up staying like three or four days at my buddy's house to kind of recuperate and then I got me and my brother both tickets I got him a ticket to Lewiston and me a ticket to Seattle because I was just gonna go back out on the fishing boats. But I ran out of drugs before I got to Seattle and by the time I got to Seattle I was in so much pain that I checked myself into the hospital and when I went to check out I got arrested geez and got extradited that was the worst Washington sucks bro like don't go to jail in Washington if you're gonna go to jail anywhere don't don't do it in Washington. The extradition was terrible but um county jail in Washington was 23 hours a day lockdown and one hour out I was like this is like max yeah like solitary yeah I was like this is bullshit so I was happy to get extradited out of Washington honestly but it took like three and a half four months of to get extradited and then um I came back and went to court and when I went to court it was in council and they called all these people to be witnesses against me and not one of them could recognize me so they had to let me out on my own recognizance.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Really?

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Yeah so I was like I was like oh party so you got away with the DUI then no I didn't get away with it but um they oh what were they trying to charge you for for aggravated DUI okay yeah I didn't get away with it it's just at that time none of the witnesses could positively identify me so the judge was like okay well I'm gonna release you on your own recognizes because you know you got a pretty good chance of getting off on these charges anyways yeah and um they released me and bro two weeks l was it a week or two weeks? Maybe two weeks later right over here on the north side in Nampa um I'd been out partying with my with my friends and I had one of my friends in the car with me we go and pick up my son because how did that work out yo you had a kid at this time by this time no so no so the third dui was at while I was already going through all the crap with with these other two I apologize um I'd gotten these two DUIs and gotten a writer right but while I'm while I'm in county jail waiting to go to court for these two DUIs and waiting on the third can we let closer a little bit sorry um while all that was happening um they sent me to pay at county jail where they made me a trustee was not a good idea um as a hormonal meaning what what is a trustee exactly uh trustee is gonna be an inmate that has access pretty much to all the jail they trust that person to go and provide meals do laundry things like that for the other inmates to kind of mitigate the amount of work that they need to do.

SPEAKER_03 43:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

Um I was a trustee several times in Payack County before that but this this time they made me like the main trustee of the jail and they put me in the kitchen so I was in charge of the kitchen and uh so was my son's mother she was in the kitchen too so um you know they left us unattended for like at least a couple weeks all day every day right and my son was conceived in either the dry storage or the restroom in Payette County jail right on yeah it was kind of wild um my son's mother kind of a crazy chick herself um ended up getting pregnant she went off to prison we already knew I was I was gonna go do my rider right um go up to Cottonwood yeah that also did not work Out, but she was gone and they let her out to have my son. But after that, she didn't want any part to do with him or me or anything. She was just kind of again smoke in the wind, you know. She just took off. I guess she's in Alaska somewhere now. But um I've never I've talked to her once since then. My son was 12 years old when he met her, and she's like, Yeah, I didn't feel connection. Weird. Yeah, I was like, You are a crazy bitch. That's crazy. Yeah, like to me, how did how do you not help feel a connection to your own child? Like it's weird. Is that her only child too? No, she's got three. Oh, geez. That I know of.

unknown 44:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

But she knows, yeah. It's like I got one that I know of.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Right? Just wave every time you go by an elementary school just in case.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

But no, in all sincerity, like uh Payette County Jail was super relaxed on rules. Like, I think probably still to this day, you can probably buy chewing tobacco on the commissary there. Um at one point you could buy cigarettes and chewing tobacco on the commissary there. Uh our drug dealer lived across the street from the jail, so we would just have him throw shit over the fence. Like, you know, it was it was pretty podunk. And um yeah, my son was conceived. I went to do my rider. I lasted like a month on a rider.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Uh before. So what's that like? You get your first you go to court and you find out you got a felony and now you have to do time. Like, what was that like the first time we went to well?

SPEAKER_02 45:39

I mean, I'd already been through juvie. Right. You know what I mean? And done a bunch of county time as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

What was your jubie time like, too? I was gonna ask you, like, you had three years in juvie, so I mean Yeah, uh juvie sucked.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

I will say juvie was the worst time that I've ever had to do in my whole life. Um here in Idaho, not so much as like whatever. You know, Idaho is pretty easy, but I went to St. Anthony. Oh I was 14. Yeah, I was 14 years old when I went to St. Anthony. By the time I I was 15, they'd already shipped me out to uh Shelby, Tennessee. I don't know if you know anything about Shelby, Tennessee or not. There's a youth correction facility there, it's the scariest freaking facility I've ever done time in. Really? Why'd they ship you out of state? Because I injured a staff member.

SPEAKER_03 46:33

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

I'd gotten into a fight uh with a kid. Kid annoyed me, so in St. Anthony, your behavior used to earn you points. It was their way of trying to bribe you into being good, and you could use those points to buy candy or a movie ticket or whatever, right? And I saved up my points and bought two Charleston Chew candy bars and taped them together and beat a kid to a pulp with them. Jeez. And uh one of the staff members like jumped on my back. I didn't know it was staff member. I don't think it would have mattered if I did, honestly. But I was really good at wrestling, and so I hooked his uh underarm right here, flipped him over my head, and when I did he landed on his neck and it messed him up for life.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Sorry, Mr. Kalani. I've apologized, I've ran into that dude here in Nampa since.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Yeah, like he was an old man, and I was like 19 at the time and saw him. I felt bad about it, but you know.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

So you get sent off to Tennessee, and what's what's that place like?

SPEAKER_02 47:45

So a lot like ICC in the layout, but it was three tiers tall instead of two, three stories, and the second and third story have uh chain link fence so that you can't throw each other off of there. But when I walked in, everybody started beating on crap. Kids were lighting toilet paper and throwing it through those spots on the fences.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

I was like, what the like you see in the movies, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

It was crazy, bro. Like and literally all as the minority never had experienced that before. So being the white boy on a tier with mostly blacks and Mexicans was scary as shit, I'm not gonna lie. Right. At 15 years old, yeah, and it was already like they're all gangs. And at this time, the only gang that I'd ever known was my dad's motor club, you know. It did not run like that. So it was scary. And a lot of the times I was powerless, you know. Watch a white dude get beat up and want to be able to help him out, but you know that if you do, you're gonna catch up whooping instead of him. So you just gotta stand there and watch it. Like, that sucked. So I did a year on my best behavior there before they sent me back. Then but yeah, I was on my best behavior in Shelby.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

I didn't know that St. Anthony used to be a juvenile, it's just a word camp now.

SPEAKER_02 49:13

No, there's still a different place? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

Oh, okay. I thought maybe they just converted it.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

I think it's still out there. Oh no, it's it's a different facility completely from from the one you you're talking about. Okay. So um, yeah. I as juvenile did that time, um, when they sent me back, they sent me back to St. Anthony, and this time I was like, yeah, I'm good. And so um after doing a little bit of uh classification, I guess you would call it, in St. Anthony, they sent me to the Idaho Youth Ranch, which was a ranch that's out in the middle of the desert. I don't know if you knew about that at all, but um, it was this great big ranch that was out in the middle of the desert north of Rupert.

SPEAKER_03 49:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:00

And I stayed there until six, six or seven months before they released me. I went to the Idaho, or excuse me, the Nampa boys home. And I'm trying to think of the name of the road that's on. But it used to be out off of Robinson and some like south-south.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

But uh went there, went to Skyview High School its first year of opening, and then like I said, got out there and went to live with my mom in Ontario.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

Yeah, yeah. So then you you conceived your kid in in a in the county, and then shortly after you got sentenced and went to Cottonwood then?

SPEAKER_02 50:44

Yeah, well, I'd already been sentenced.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

We all have been sentenced, but you're just waiting for the bus to pick you up pretty much.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Yeah, at that time, I don't know if it was like I think Cottonwood was the only uh rider program in the state at that time, and so it's just like when you got sentenced to a rider, you had to wait in county until RDU cleared enough spots for you, and then you could go.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Okay. Um how long were you at county for?

SPEAKER_02 51:09

I was in county for a long freaking time, dude. I was in there for 13 months waiting after being sentenced, and I was a trustee 12 and a half.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

Yeah, it's a small county.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Yeah, um finding out that my son's mother was pregnant was kind of wild. So there was a cop and uh his name was Josh, I don't forget his last name, but hilarious guy, always trying to catch me because he knew what was going on, right? Couldn't catch us for crap, but when he came back with the letter, he is smiling, he's like, You son of a bitch, I tried to catch you.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

So what did you I mean, they can't charge you for anything, right? I mean, that's just that's on them for Yeah, they rolled me up.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

I was no longer a trustee. Oh and spent the last like two or three weeks of my stay in in the hole. It's worth it. Yeah, I was like, totally worth it, right? Like uh it was it was kind of weird because before she was shipped out, I was like, I think she's having morning sickness every morning for the last week. She's been getting sick, and she's fine the rest of the day. I was like, uh maybe I'm just reading too much into this. Then when he came back and I got that letter, I was like, I'm not gonna lie, bro. I was I was happy about it in a way.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Like and how old were you at this time? 19?

SPEAKER_02 52:41

No, uh 22.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

Oh no, you said yeah, you said you did a few summers out.

SPEAKER_02 52:47

Yeah, so uh like 22. Okay. And uh kind of wild thing about working on a fishing boat and then coming back and being the trustee of a jail is like I don't think I ever cooked a damn thing. I ordered pizzas, I paid other people to do stuff, but they let me have commissary at the wazoo. Like, I had it made for county jail, bro. Like, I'm not gonna lie. And then they should me off to prison. I was like, oh damn, I don't have nothing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

At least you went to Cottonwood. But so Cottonwood didn't last long then, huh?

SPEAKER_02 53:20

No. Um trying to think of David's David Archuletta. So there's a boxer from here in Nampa, a name David Archuletta. Um, me and him were in there together on baseball diamond. He's a bully. Like to punk people out constantly. So, like the way it worked up there was you would take off your name tag and clip it to the fence in batting order. And this kid would come and move it around all the time so that he could bat as often as he wanted and stuff. So I went and moved it back. He comes over and he's like, Oh, moves it back. So I grabbed it and threw it off in the distance. He started making a big deal of it. He's like, You know who I am? Because he's a boxer. And I was like, Yeah, I don't give a shit. I don't care who you are. So he came running at me, tried to fight me. I don't remember exactly how it went, but he ended up in a guillotine, choked up on the ball field in front of everybody, including the cops. I was like, he's all unconscious. I pulled him off, slobber hanging out. I was like, oh yeah, I'm definitely getting flopped your rider. Yeah. Uh um another crazy thing. I flop my rider. I go back to county and they already. They let me out until I go see the judge, because the judge is on vacation. And I'm like, this is where my Canyon County DUI comes in. I got that DUI while I was out on OR after I'd already flopped my rider. So when the judge came, he's like, I don't want to talk to you. It's a maximum sentence. Because I don't know what's wrong with you. I was like, I'm an alcoholic. And he goes, Well, I got the best kind of help there is for you.

SPEAKER_00 55:01

Were you an alcoholic? Was it just alcohol or were you on drugs too at that time?

SPEAKER_02 55:05

Or I would do anything I could get my sweaty little hands on, dude. Okay, yeah. Um honestly, I think I never expected to live past 18. And when I did, I didn't know what to do with it.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:19

You know, um, I honestly thought my dad was gonna kill me. So every time that you got a party, you were just gonna go all out, just yeah, like it was like, yeah, have fun, make it the best you can while it lasts, and hopefully it doesn't last long. Yeah. But then I got present for seven and a half years, dude.

SPEAKER_00 55:42

He sentenced you to the max that he could sentence you to, or what did he give you like seven fixed, three undetermined, or like what was it?

SPEAKER_02 55:48

Um, so he ran he ran them concurrent, which I was I was thankful for. So uh he gave me the five years, which was the maximum for the DUIs at the time, and then uh Judge Lynn Crow of Canyon County gave me two and a half years on well, she gave me five years as well. It was supposed to be ten, right? But then I appealed while I was in ICC and I got knocked down to two and a half.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

So when you go to the big prison, what was that like? Not not the rider facilities anymore.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

You go to the yard first for RDU or yeah, so you go to I think it was 16 at the time, 16 house was classification. Uh maybe it was 11 house, the old old school one up at the front. I think it was I think it was both actually at the time. Like rider's were going to 11 house, timers were going to RDU uh going to 16 house for RDU, I think.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

Um honestly, like for me at this point, I was just like, okay, well, I'm probably gonna know a lot of people in here.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

It's like 2004 then, right?

SPEAKER_02 56:53

You said uh 2003. Okay, yeah. Dang. Early 2003.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

Yeah, I don't know what it was like.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

I know they've done a lot of renovations, but yeah, so it's um this is pre-riot and everything out there, so like the guard stations were I think different, but other than that, the houses I think are pretty much the same.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:16

Um, but I went out and did RDU, uh, had a good RDU celly named Mike Rongo. Uh Rongo was a cool dude. Um kind of just gave me the old school guy heads up on everything, like, uh they're gonna hit you up for the gangs, they're gonna, you know, all these things, and I was just like, okay, cool. Um I went to ICC, uh ICC next, and immediately they housed me with a black dude. So I was like, oh. So this is how it's gonna go. I already knew what that meant. I was gonna have to fight the black dude, or all the whites were gonna give me shit about living with a black dude.

SPEAKER_00 57:59

So But you weren't clicked up with anybody, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:02

Nope. No, I was uh so I have true familia tattooed on my back, so I knew I wasn't gonna be able to ride with the white boys, you know. Uh and like my honest experience with the Northanios out here was that the moment they got the chance to, they all turned their backs and ratted me out and were not really all that solid, so I definitely wasn't gonna ride with them when I got in prison. So um it was just like, yeah, I'm not gonna be a part of any of that shit. Um, but there was a lot of like pressure for it when I first got out there. But I got seldom up after that first fight with a guy named uh Sean Kerrigan, shooter Kerrigan. Good dude, really, really good dude. Had already been down for like 20-something years and kind of took me under his wing, you know, like the way I handled myself and then gave me advice on how to handle things going forward because there was trauma, you know. Um but yeah, ultimately just I had a few really good dudes that gave me good advice when I went in that prevented me from having to deal with too much BS.

SPEAKER_00 59:16

Yeah. Is it possible for someone to go in and not have to click up? Because I Yeah, absolutely. That's a miscon misunderstanding a lot of people think is that you have to, and it's like where do you think most people get tripped? Is it where like they start owing debts and then they have to do it, or they like where do you think most people end up deciding that they're gonna click up?

SPEAKER_02 59:35

Acceptance, honestly, man. Like um getting that acceptance or like knowing that somebody has your back so you can feel a little more cavalier about things, stuff like that. I think that's probably more why people join gangs um I I was running with the gang members here on the outs, but not well as in, you know what I mean. Um I just I just thought for what it was, I think. And a lot of people don't. They think it's cool to have that bravado. My best friend in the world, I love him to death, but he's a moron, dude. Um he got out three months after me. I got him a job on the fishing boat with me. I I I gave him a pathway to success and freedom, and it was too hard for him. So he went back to doing the same stuff, and he clicks up every time. He is he was PS when he was out at ICC in 2006, 2007, right? Well, they all got stomped out and absorbed by what SBC and AK now, and so he went to feds, and when I went to visit him, he's got AK tattooed above his. I was like, dude, that's an Idaho gang.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Yeah, it's no good anywhere else.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

Yeah, like what the f you know, you're just trying to get the bravado that I was like, and that's why you're always gonna be in the drama, bro.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:01

Like, I started getting all my tats lasered off a long time ago, and I want the rest of them lasered off. I don't want any part of anything, I don't want to look like a a convict or none of it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:14

Did you get tattoos while you were inside? Yeah. Those are those are the good OG ones back then. Now they have like the beard trimmers, and you can make a nice tattoo gun out of that. It's like a rotary motor and everything. Back when it was like it was cool when I first started because like you find a tattoo gun and it's the magnets put together and the clackers, like that was a cool tattoo gun. Now it's like you can order one for 30 bucks on commissary and you're it's quiet, it's battery operated, you don't have to plug it in.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:38

Like, yeah, I had so I had a few different dudes um tattoo on me that that I thought were good dudes, but um just like at the end of the day, I was like, I'm glad I'm getting these off because like that dude's not a good dude. What the fuck was I thinking? Yeah. Like my definition of good dude is definitely different than it used to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:05

Uh I think I think you gotta come to a point in your life when you when you grow up, man, and going to prison was just like, oh, what the hell am I doing, man? Like, I am watching people get maimed, I am watching people lose like decades of themselves to this place, come in a young, strapping, like fit dude, and you're leaving an old man that nobody that looks like shit nobody's gonna pay attention to when you get out. Like, I don't want that. Why would I want that for myself? You know, why would I want that to be the example that my son grows up with?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:43

I don't. So did you get into a lot of fights when you were in then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, at first. Um the whole not being willing to click up thing doesn't make you popular. So to your point, you know, like people send people after you huh? Do people send people after you then because you wouldn't click up? I think it was more like the people themselves. I don't think that maybe they were sent, I don't know, to be honest with you. You know, but like people would try and f come to me and be like, hey, you know, you gotta you gotta roll with this, bro. Um no, I don't. I'm not gonna do that. They'd be like, you have to. You have to choose somebody, blah, blah, blah, and look at us. We're the we're the number ones. You know, everybody has the same story, right? And I was like, I'm not clicking up with anybody. And eventually they would get offended by it. It's like, okay, well, it sells right here.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:40

You know, I don't I don't wait for somebody to get offended and come back. If you're uh if you're offended with me, we're gonna do that right now. Did you get any pressure from the people on the streets that you were hanging out with? So no. Never heard from them again.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:55

Oh, they never okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

That's the thing. Like, yeah, we're homeboys on the streets, I'm out here putting in work for you. I'm like, I'm literally shoving my gun in people's faces and taking everything they own and giving it to you guys, and like, and then I go to prison for the shit that you do, and I don't hear from you. I don't get a phone call, a visit, a letter, and never heard from them again.

unknown 1:04:22

Jeez.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

Like that's what I'm saying. I've learned my lessons, right? Like, I got in there and I saw that the people that I'd done so much for out here, and and I can tell you, like, I put in work out here for these people, right? And not a friggin' word from them when I got locked up. There's no loyalty, no, and then I get out and I hear that they had told people I was a rat and all kinds of I'm like, dude, I'm in there because of your crap right now. Like, I realize that the DUI is because of me, but when I got OR'd and got that DUI in Canyon County, the only reason I got the DUI in Canyon County is because one of them leaned out the window of my car and shot up another car. I had no idea he was gonna do it. Nothing. I and he bails out of the car a block later. I'm st it's my car. What am I gonna do? Bail out of my own friend. I gotta go get it later. You know what I mean? Yeah, he just totally did that and left me to take the blame for it. You know, luckily, I didn't have a weapon or like I obviously didn't do it, but yeah, just did that crap, and then because he knew that he's gonna look like a POS for that, goes and tells everybody I'm a rat. Jeez. Yeah. I'm like, did the cops ever come to talk to any of you or anything? Like, right. No. Oh, so he's just covering his own ass.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:46

But you guys are cool with that. Jeez. Did anybody come from your family to see you while you were in? My mom came to see me twice.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:56

I basically just told her, like, my mom's disabled, man. Yeah, it's it's a lot for my mom to be able to come and do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:02

And your siblings though or nothing?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

Yeah, so I just told her I said, Oh yeah, I don't I don't want you to come back in here.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:08

Yeah. What were some of the what were some of the good things that you like learned while you were in? I mean the self-realizations or anything like that. Hustle, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:19

I will tell you that if you came out of prison and you did not learn how to hustle, then you weren't paying attention. Period. Like I came out of prison having just been a big dummy all my life, never really learned anything. I went immediately back to the fishing boats when I got out of prison, right? Like it's because like that's where I know where they're gonna make money. But this time I didn't drink, I didn't do any drugs, I just stuck with it. I bought myself a little laptop so I could watch movies in my bunk when everybody else was at the bar. Um and for the next year and a half, that's what I did. I got hurt on the fishing boats and almost lost my left arm. And uh when I was back here getting the surgeries and going through the physical therapy, I realized like, oh yeah, I'm never gonna be able to do that again. I'll never be able to fish again. I started thinking about that. I was like, oh shit, I don't know how to do anything else. I've never taught myself anything else. Like I learned, I ordered business books and stuff while I was locked up and taught myself business that way, but I'd never put it into practice, I'd never really done anything. And so I was like, well, I guess now's a good time to start, right? And uh went and got my laptop, started like Googling everything I could that was business related because I decided that I wanted to own my own business, and I decided to start an import-export company, and I did that. I got my uh sureties bond, my security bond for import-export, and started importing bicycle engine kits and selling them all over the US, and um that did really, really good. And then uh I saw some garden gnomes on that I wanted to sell, honestly. They're cool because they light up at night, right? They're little lanterns, so it looks like they're squitting it, and I was like, ah, I thought it was kind of cool. Old people eat that shit up, so um, so did a bunch of that and started snow cone shacks and started learning how to build my own online stores, and everything was going great, man. Like honestly, like when I got out of prison, I was hustling hard. It was all legit, but um, I made a lot of freaking money in a very short period of time when I got out of prison, and it seemed like might as touch, like everything I touched turned to gold, and then my wife got in a really bad car accident and had to have some surgery, and we didn't have insurance. Like all this time I was making this money and stuff, I didn't even think about like health insurance and all this, you know. Um the accident was my wife's fault, so we're we're basically gonna be bankrupted, and um we just basically had uh dial back every bit of spending in the poor for the last like I don't know, eight years or so, but we lost the businesses and everything, and now I'm to the point where I'm about to start rebuilding that. I've built out an AI-powered sales platform that uh I'm about ready to launch now, and yeah, life is good, but it has been a wild trip, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:55

Yeah. So you were talking about that hustle culture. What were you doing in prison for the hustling? Like, what were you doing to get money in there?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:02

So um when I first went to prison, I initially went to the farm, and my hustle was tobacco. Um, I was from around here, so it was easy to get a hold of people and have them drop off tobacco in certain places. Uh, I had a crazy girlfriend who would get a log of uh chew, wrap it up in a black uh plastic bag, and tape it all up, and then just drive and throw it over the fence, like in the middle of the day at the farm. Because people don't expect that, you know. So you know how when you would go from the farm to the yard on the back side, you gotta go over the or not over, but in front of the visiting station for the for the farm. Yeah, and then when you roll past that, there's a ball field and then there's an uh dorm, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:58

This bitch, they'd be rolling, she'd just hang halfway out the window and throw it over the fence between the ball field and the dorm. And drive off. She did not care. We just grab it and walk it in. Like sometimes it's so simple to do things, you know what I mean? Right. Uh, people just made it more difficult than it needed to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:21

How long were you at ICC before you gotta reduce your points and go to the farm then?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:25

That's crazy. I never had points to justify ICC. I was always community custody the entire time I was there.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

Was it because you had a violence history or anything?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:35

No, no, I got a lot of points for DOR for the tobacco, right? When the because they found it in letters where I'd basically told her, yeah, at this time, throw it at this place.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:48

Oh, in a written letter.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:49

Yeah, because that's how I was doing it back then. Like, yeah, just write her a letter, go do this, go do that, go do that. And um they they had been monitoring my mail at that point and and busting me. So they sent me to ICC, I think I had five points.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

Oh, you went to ICC because of the first thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:08

Because of the tobacco at the farm. But then I'm at ICC for maybe six months before those points fall off, six months or a year, whatever it is, um, before those points fall off, and I'm back down to community custody. But now I'm in medium maximum for the remainder of my incarceration, basically. Um, my last year I went to the farm, then to St. Anthony, immediately got rolled up at St. Anthony and brought back to the farm and sent to Givens Hall and then to Napo Community Work Release.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:46

Um somebody in Gibbons Hall was scared of me. Like somebody that I'd had problems with before, and so um I wasn't there for very long either.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:57

Where'd you spend the most time at then?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:59

ICC.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:01

Uh started out JKL. Um, I tried to do programming, but again, I'm not programming material, bro. I bit a chunk out of Alan Ashbaker's face, and that was they were like, Yeah, you're not gonna out.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:14

Um was that oil thing you were telling me about?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

So that was on JKL. Um, I was on J tier, so that must have been on K.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:25

Mm-hmm. The middle one.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:26

And that was like my first month of being at ICC. Um one dude got shanked a bunch of times right in front of the door, like the CO is standing on the other side of the door, and they shanked him probably 30 something times. And then I want to say a couple weeks later, next year over, dude gets or not next year, but we're on J and it was on K. Dude gets his face burned off, and then you see him walking about, and it just doesn't even look real. So it was ballooned up, like it wasn't like you would think all melted off. It was like yeah, huge and red, red, like it was crazy looking.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:07

So, what had happened for so for the people that didn't hear the story, he had boiled oil, he got oil from commissary, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:14

Yeah, so um ICC used to be a private prison, and they had a company called Mid-States that handled the commissary out there. They sold completely different commissary, and one of the items that they had was cooking oil. And so this guy had collected cooking oil from a bunch of different people. He had opened and altered it as a hot pot so it just continuously gets hotter and hotter. Boiled that oil and threw it in somebody's face. Jeez, and uh, I guess when it came down to it, he he did that because the guy was gay. Only reason.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:50

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:50

And so, yeah, like I recognized that I didn't want to be there very long. Yeah, yeah, like crazy out there. ICC used to be, and I don't know what it's like since I left, but it used to be brutal, bro. A very brutal place to get locked up at.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:06

Yeah, I've heard different things from people. I've definitely heard that there was they they used to call it gladiator school.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:11

Yeah, that's when I was out there. The cops used to set up fights all the time. So how'd they do that? By for for example, um there used to be a lot of gang fights, right? Like North Enjos and Serenos fighting was the big thing back then. Um so you'd you'd get a group of them fighting in Chow Hall ICC. Um they remove them, but when they take them back, let's say the Sereno, right? And put them on a tier full of Northenos. Knowing what's gonna happen when that when they do that, right? A lot of that crap happened back then. Um they intentionally put sex offenders on my tier because I would fucking hurt them.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:00

Yeah. So I got my name menaced because I would beat and rob sex offenders. I'd menace them. Every commissary, every item that you ordered needs to be on your bed for me to inspect and take what I want. Otherwise, I'm gonna beat your ass, I'm gonna take a string, I'm gonna cut open your box, and I'm gonna take all your stuff anyways. And that's gonna be every week. And you know, eventually they get tired of it and they try to buck up, and so you you beat the shit out of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:36

So I know for a fact the cops put them there for me to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:41

A lot of people, I don't know if it's if it was different back then, but a lot of people think now, like sex offenders when they go to prison that they're gonna get protected. They're gonna get that kind of treatment and stuff, but they get protected now. They get protected, yeah. So that's that's I wonder when they really started that switch. When it was so when it was a private prison, was it more like that than when it was the stateside? Like when you had that different experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:03

I think it so I'll I'll just be honest, dude. It depended on how bad the chomo pissed off the cop. Right? Like, there was a lot of chomos, and yeah, they were segregated on their own tier, but there was a lot of chomos that didn't get to be segregated and on that tier too, and that's because they were the ones that wouldn't keep their mouths shut. They always had a grievance of some sort. Cops are people, man. You know, like they get tired of that crap too. They don't like rats, they don't like snitches, they don't like whiners. So, okay, you want to whine about that?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:37

We'll put you in A tier and see how it goes for you. Did you guys ever have any times where like people would come in, they're like, I don't have my paperwork? Because that would they would paper check, right? And then if you don't have it, then is that like a red flag that would go up?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:51

Yeah, it's when you come onto the tier and w we want to see your papers, you don't have to produce those papers, right? But if you don't produce the papers, you're gonna push the button. Which means you're gonna request to leave. And if you don't, or if they don't let you leave, you're getting hurt. Like there's no two ways about that. You either have your paperwork or we're going to hurt you. Like and I don't feel bad about this part, I'll be honest with you. I don't feel one shred of guilt for what I did to sex offenders in there. They hurt children. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

I feel that. Yeah, that's a thing that at least from my experience from being there, like on the other side, I never seen I never seen anything too crazy because they would always PC up, or we knew that they would already be their crimes and they would be segregated. So it was interesting to even think that they would that they would have them in the North Wing, knowing what their crimes would be. I don't know if they would refuse housing, or I guess that's that's different times.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:56

Some of them refused to PC up, dude. Like, I'm not gonna lie, there is a couple of them that could fucking scrap, bro. Like Jeremy Brown, Jesus, that dude could scrap, bro. Right? They sent three, four dudes at him at a time, and this dude's just peeling them back. Like he didn't need to go into protective custody because he knew that he could handle himself on the tier, you know? Um and he he was I'm trying to think of this other cat's name that was in there for basically like at a public park had kidnapped this girl and drug her into the bushes and was molesting her in the bushes, right? And goes to goes to prison. That's who he was, and he refused to PC up. This dude was just like, Yeah, I'm not gonna PC up. Fought everybody that came at him, and he is a badass, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:46

So what do you do with a guy like that? Then you just let him be because he can fight or what?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:51

No, I think they just kept going at him until finally the administrators didn't give him an option. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:58

Because like you get enough messed up people, you're and you do nothing about it, you're at fault for that, right? Yeah. But I'm pretty sure they let it be quite a few people.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:08

Like that dude could scrap. So once you develop a name for yourself that you can take care of yourself, obviously, and you're not a sex offender, then like did people just kind of let you be? They know you don't want to click up, they know that you can take care of business. Like, how's your life after that first like initial year? People knowing like he's not gonna click up, or did you keep just the whole time people were always still trying to get you to clip up?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:28

I'm gonna say like the first three years. Oh, really? Yeah, like the first three years, it was not easy, bro. Like it was constant drama shits that was either to do with gangs or uh prison stores, or you know, like just constant little drama shits, like okay, I loaned you this, now you're not gonna pay me because you're a gang member, you think I'm not gonna come and get collect from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:51

Or like you were running a store and they weren't paying you up there.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:54

Yeah, and it's like unfortunately for you, I don't care if you're in a gang or not, I'm getting my shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:01

And so, you know, dealing with trauma like that type of stuff, but eventually you get known as a good dude, and people kind of stop coming and messing with you because they know if they do, all these other guys that think you're a good dude are gonna have a problem with them. Yeah, you know, really doesn't have anything to do with me being a badass. I was never a badass. Um, I tried to avoid fights, bro. I really did, but when I did get into a fight, I made sure to do fucked up shit right away. Like, yeah, really, really bad stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:33

Just going for the win, not for a fair fight.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:35

Yeah, like um, I brought up Ash Paker. I got a bit of chunk right out of that dude's face right there. I don't feel bad about it. Um, some people thought that was maybe a one-off, so I did the same thing to Sparrow, and then I bit a chunk out of top of Tommy Phippin's head when I fought him. I built a reputation for doing something that's really messed up. I I gouged somebody to where they're gonna be blind to one eye for the rest of their life. I did these like super brutal things so that I wouldn't have to keep fighting. Like I wasn't trying to fight, I was trying to protect myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:08

Did you ever get charges for any of those?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:10

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:11

No, dang.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:13

No, and like uh a dude named Sean Mulbeyer, I'm surprised I didn't get charge for that cat too. Um me and him got into it over a radio that he sold me. And um he basically called me into a cell, so I was like, all right, let's go. We go in, and at first I'm just dodging his punches and you know, like just keeping him at distance, but then he clipped me in the eye with one and made me mad. So I I I knocked him out, and then I picked him up on my shoulder and body slammed his face into the table that's built into the cells at ICC, and it split his eye like all the way around, dude, like a big C around his eye, horrible gash. I'd already knocked him out. I just wanted everybody else to see how messed up he was, and he wasn't messed up yet because I'd knocked him out with one punch, you know. So I did some messed up stuff to make sure everybody else saw how bad it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:17

I'm not gonna lie, that's the type of person I was. I was calculated, I was thinking about things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:21

Yeah. Dang.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:23

But work. After that, like nobody on the tier really want to mess around too much, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:29

Everybody paid up.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:30

Yeah, well, that particular time it was over a radio that he sold me. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right? So, like, he sold me this radio because it had a blown speaker. It was a super tuner, you know, which back then was like the shit. And um, he sold it to me for like 20 bucks because it had a blown speaker and it kept turning off. Like I had a short somewhere. There's a lot of crackheads in prison. So you can get a crackhead to fix that crap for you for next to nothing. You know what I mean? And that's what I did. Well, then Mold Buyer comes back wanting the the full payment for it. Like, I was like, what do you mean, dude? He's like, Yeah, well, now it's worth this much. Yeah, because I didn't know. And then one of these guys that's clicked up that that's rolling around with everybody thinking he's suave. I was like, I'm not paying you, I'm paying you what I agreed to pay you, and that's it. He's like, Oh, you're gonna have to do this, and I was like, Well, now you're not getting paid because you tried to push the issue. Yeah. And he was like, Oh, I come in my cell. I was like, and now you made a big scene of it, so I have to hurt you.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:38

Yeah, you don't want to be called out on something in front of everybody and not do anything, right? Because then you get a different name.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:43

Yeah, so you made a big scene, so I had to hurt him. And so once I knocked him out with my punch, I was like, that's not quite enough. Like I tried to be calculated not to have to fight as much as a lot of people liked fighting. I didn't like fighting, dude. Like there's a possibility that this could get messed up.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:01

Yeah. And you never know if they're gonna be not just going with fists, right? Like you said, that guy that got stabbed like 37 times or whatever, right? Like, you don't know what they're gonna be, if you might be coming with fists, but if they got like a lock in a sock or anything else, then yeah, you just never know what's gonna happen out there.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:17

Like it's it's crazy, and people are constantly plotting on one another out there, right? Like, it's it's not paranoia if it's true, and it's true. Like, they are all trying to figure out how to get over on one another. Every freaking one of them. That's why you can get out of prison and learn how to hustle so well. Because the entire time you were in prison, you were guarding against other people doing it to you, or you were doing it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:44

You said you got really good at poker too, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:48

So did you play poker before you went in there? Or is that just one of the things you had to learn, like the different card games that they play, and you just got good at it?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:54

Yeah, so I mean, like, I'd I'd played a couple games of poker before I went to prison. Um, I got hustled at poker when I first went to prison, which is kind of like I guess it's either gonna turn you against it or turn you towards it, right? Um I was like, oh, okay, well that I got hustled because they were smarter than me right there. And so I took it as a challenge. And um I learned I learned all kinds of games, but the only ones that I really cared about was uh Texas and um I'm trying to think of the other one. It's basically like Texas Hold'em only as four cards, uh Omaha, high low Omaha. Um so in Texas, we all know how to play Texas Hold'em, but in Omaha, you get dealt four cards, and you can either go for the high hand or the low hand, right? And um you get to pick two of the cards that were dealt to you and come and use them on on with the cards that were dealt on the river. So um it was really, really cool because if you're smart, you know that if you're the last person bidding in Omaha, it doesn't matter what you want to do, just watch everybody else. Because if everybody else is going high, all you gotta do is go low and you win. Right? Or if you know that you got a good hand, then you can go high and beat everybody and take both the high and the low. And it was just all that type of figuring it out. Um, I played basically like 10 hours a day of poker while I was in ICC. Dang. Loved it. I ran the books, so it was also how I made money, like um running tournaments and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:42

That can get kind of dangerous when people don't pay up their debts on gambling, huh? Yeah, you know, that's why I was the one that run the books, though, is because like I always paid my debts, and if anybody didn't pay me, I would go fight. Yeah. Dang. Yeah, like I'm I wasn't a badass bro, but I would go fight, yeah. Handle it. You can handle yourself. I'm a pretty decent sized dude, and you know, if I got if I got angry enough to come at you, like people knew I was upset. Most of the time they would just pay up. It's not worth it, you know. Very little amount of money that you're playing poker for, really.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:16

It's not worth what I'm going to do to you if I have to fight you. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember you're saying too that you didn't find you didn't find any kind of faith inside prison because the churches were just full of people doing gay stuff or drugs, right? Like, so uh you don't want to get in any of that scene.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:34

Yeah, I mean, so Canyon County, um when I got when I got to Canyon County, I I was having the DTs pretty bad. Um I you know DTs. I was I was uh sobering up. Oh, okay. And I was going through withdrawals like really, really bad while I was in Canyon County. Um hallucinating and sweating, like just horrible for like days on end. And uh I remember some people came to see me from the Seventh Adventist Church, and they were talking to me, and while they were talking to me, I felt better. And as soon as they left, I felt horrible again. And so I was like, oh, I wanna I wanna like look into going to church. And when I walk when I went to prison, man, ICC, the very first time I went to church, um, a bunch of people in the church, guys got his hands on some guy's head praying for him, and I'm listening, and he's saying words, he's cussing and saying all kinds of just like crazy crap while he's got his hands on this guy's head, and everybody else is like I was like, man, I can't be a part of this. So uh I left and then I went to the other another uh church event to try uh in in prison to try and like find faith in prison, and it was like a homosexu homosexual meetup, it was just where all the gay guys went and were doing nasty crap with each other. Jeez, and I was just like, oh hell no. Yeah I was like, I can't do that either. So uh I decided to wait until after I got out of prison to to seek God. Yeah. I'm a member of the church now, I'm LDS. Um I have been for 13 years now, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:29

What was that point when you got out that you wanted to go and and do something different then?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:34

Immediately started going to churches when I got out. Um before I got out, I knew that I wanted to be a better man.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:45

I think six months before I got out is when I finally realized that I want to be a better man. It wasn't even necessarily that I wanted to avoid prison. I'm not afraid of prison. You know what I mean? I handle myself pretty well and it is what it is. But I wasn't happy with who I looked at in the mirror. I just wasn't happy with who the person that I was becoming. I was mean. I was a very mean person when I was in prison. I wasn't nice. Um I didn't really have any friends, you know, didn't have any out here, obviously. Nobody came to visit me or write me or anything when I was in prison. So I decided that that I wanted to be a better person, man. Nobody wants to be alone forever, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:34

Yeah. Did your kid ever come to see you when you were in prison? Because you had to.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:40

Yeah, my mom brought him one of the two times that she came to visit, and that was actually the time that I asked her not to come anymore and not to bring him to. It was horrible. Yeah. You know, like can't get up and walk anywhere with your kid. You can't you can't hold your kid on your lap without without a guard there, wondering what you're doing with your kid on your lap. Like, it's not a good environment to expose your kid to. Like visually, you can tell that everybody in there's got issues, you know what I mean? Like, what what are you doing to your kid bringing them in there?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:20

And yeah, I mean, honestly, I just decided that um it would have to wait until I got out. And then they tried to send me to programs. The parole board did. Uh, told them I'm not programmaterial, they didn't listen. They sent me to programs anyways. That's where I bit the chunk out of Ash Baker's face. So they're like, oh well, we're gonna send you this other program. And I was like, I'm not doing any more programs, I'll just top out. Yeah. That sucked. That I was two and a half years in knowing that that meant five more.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:56

Oh, really? At that point, huh? Yeah, I was like, ugh, this is like getting punched in the stomach. So we knew the programs weren't for you, and that was a something setting in then that you were gonna do five more if you had to top out. Was that a hard decision you had to make? No one. Yeah, I mean, I mean honestly, the thought of freedom, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:14

Like thought of getting ass. Like you've been locked up two and a half years, you haven't felt the touch of a woman, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, of course it there's temptations. Yeah, I just knew I wasn't gonna make it, bro. Like, I wasn't gonna make parole, and it wasn't because I planned on coming out here and being a criminal, it was because I don't like being told what to do. If I if I'm being a hundred percent honest. And I thought to myself, I'm not gonna come and go through this shit and then get out and be told what to do on top of it. Like, no. Like, when I'm done with this, I'm done with this.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:50

That's what it ended up being.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:52

When you got out, what did you want to change for your kid being a different being a different dad than you grew up with? Man, that ain't hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:01

Right? Like, uh, I always told myself, if I ever have kids, like I'm gonna be a better dad, but realistically, that's like, okay, don't get them hooked on drugs, don't don't beat them, don't do terrible sexual things to them, and you're made.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:16

You know what I mean? Um, so n being better than my dad was easy, right? But like I always I always knew um I always knew that I was meant to be this successful and good person, right? And but nobody ever showed it to me or how to how to make that come true. And I wanted to be that for my kid. Like most of us that get out of prison and end up going back, it's because it's hard out here. It is hard out here. It's hard not to it's easier to turn to drugs, selling drugs and stuff, right? Because you make more money even though it's illegal. Um, you didn't actually have to do crap. Um and I wanted to be the guy to show my kid that like if you just try hard, you'll you'll do so much. I never tried when I was young. You know, I chose the same route my dad did, drugs and crime. And I wanted to show my son that you don't have to have anybody else tell you that you're gonna succeed for you to succeed. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:31

Hey I'll I'll never give up on trying to succeed. And once I succeed, I will move on to the next challenge, you know. Um and I want my son to be like that. I want him to grow to never be satisfied and and uh always know that he can always do better and be more successful so that he can lead his children to success as well. My dad was a loser. But not because he wasn't smart, he just never saw anything through. And I wonder if sometimes if that's because nobody set that example for him or or nobody ever made him believe that he could, or because that's it sounds corny, but that stuff's so important, like it's so much more important than we realize, because we grow up to say, oh, that's some pussy shit. You know what I mean? Oh, what a sissy, you know, stuff like that. But really, um it's important to let your kids know that you support them, that you believe in them, and that that truly if they want to do something and they're willing to actually put in the work, then there's nothing that they can't accomplish. Um, I never had that. So that's what I would be for my son if I could.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:55

Yeah, that's awesome. It seems like you're doing really good because you showed me that video of him getting like awards and stuff, right? And um, I mean it seems like yeah, I know he made a pretty touching statement in there about you and how he looks up to you and they'll you know didn't start out with you around because you were locked up, but everything's got better now. So I mean it sounds like he's on a good path.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:15

Yeah, um I cry when I watch that video sometimes still because I I don't really deserve the praise that he gives me. Um I haven't been the best father to my son. Like, period. And I can say up until you know I got released from prison, but I mean, we're all humans, man. You know, I've I've stumbled along my my way since I've had him since being out of prison, too. Um, not always knowing what to do as a parent or whatever. So he gives me a lot of credit. I appreciate that. But he he's an amazing person on all on his own. Um and he's taught me a lot about I wish I wish I could go back in time and use the knowledge that he's taught me over the years to be better dad to him. But just his ability to do that lets me know what kind of father he's gonna be. I'm very proud of him. Very, very proud of him. Um yeah. I mean, you think about the situation that he had to grow up in because of me and because of his mother, and and it's not fair. But for him to grow up through that and then become the type of man that he is now, and like I'm very, very proud of him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:37

It's cool to think the what you're what generational curses you're stopping, you know, because you've made a lot of a lot of changes from what your dad did, and he's gonna change whatever he's gonna learn from you, and like by the end of him, like whatever happened from your dad is gone out of that generational curse now. So it's just cool to see everybody making these changes for the better.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:59

Yeah, I agree. Like, he's he's the best of us, you know, like uh already. And so I I I think it's just gonna continue to get better and better. He just got married uh earlier this year, and I know that he and his wife are gonna be great parents, you know. Um that's like a big relief to me. So I've I've mentioned several times my brother who um my full-blooded brother, and like the the effects of child abuse from one to the next is always gonna be different, right? But um he's my brother's worse than my dad, I think, was at this point. And um, I don't talk to him anymore. I haven't talked to him for a lot of years, but you and you can look it up. Uh um talking to my grandma one day and she shows me a news article where my brother's in jail in Idaho Falls for beating a woman up with brass knuckles, and I you read all this crazy crap. It just makes me so thankful to know that my kid didn't my kid's always gone through some things because I wasn't around for the first eight years of his life, right? But he didn't grow up with the types of experiences that are gonna turn him into that type of person. I guess that's the how do you be proud of yourself for not being at peace? Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:28

For not making your kid a terrible person. So you and your brother both grew up with like the same kind of experiences. What do you think was the difference between the way that you took a path in life and where he took if you guys both had the same experience growing up? Was it just like a mindset? My brother switched psycho, dude. Okay, just like a mindset thing then.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:48

Well, I mean uh you know, I say I followed my brother around like a dog and and but my brother was just as abusive to me too growing up. My brother has uh stabbed and hung me. He shot me in the leg with 22 when we were young. Um he's sadistic. Like he's he's a crazy, crazy person. I and I don't know why I ever loved him the way I did. Like same with my dad. I don't know why I love my dad either. He's a horrible and horrible, horrible person. It's just the way I'm built, you know. Um my brother is completely different. He should never be around children because I think that there's a possibility of him abusing them in multiple ways. So I don't uh I know he would physically abuse them, yeah, or at least in he has with his children in the past, you know. But it's easy to go, oh well he's a piece of shit for that, and not look at what he went through too. You know, it's it's kind of a hard like how do you quantify it?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:08

Right. Yeah. Did you ever get a chance to talk to your dad about what he went through as a child? Was anything passed down to him from his dad?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:15

Um, I I think there definitely was abuse in his family. Uh growing up, we heard stories from my dad about like his two brothers getting into a fight, one of them climbing a tree to get away from the other one, and that one's cutting the tree down with his brother in it. Um like just rough living. Like my grandparents lived in Osaka, which is do you know where Osaka is? Sounds familiar. So Orfino and Osaka are basically the same town. It's just that little river from Dorshack. Yeah, there's like yeah. Um my grandparents lived on the way up to Dorshack, and originally they converted a wagon into their house on that property. Like poor, and I'm sure they're they had 15 kids, so I'm sure those kids grew up rough, you know, as far as who abused them and how much, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:14

Yeah. But I'm sure they were abused, honestly. That's the thing I think about a lot, is that like even for my stepmom, I know I remember her talking about how her mom would make her go out to the tree and grab a switch to get beaten with, and if it wasn't big enough, she'd go get an even bigger one or something, right? And so I think about that, and I'm like, it's just these things gotta be passed down, and that's our and that's our responsibility as parents is like to stop these generational curses, because if we don't stop them, we're just gonna hand them off to our kids to have to deal with, and that's not fair to them, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:47

Yeah, and I've I've definitely like I've come up short in some ways in that respect. Like when I first got my son for s like year of having my son, he hated me because his uncle had convinced him that I was forcing this to happen and that I was making him leave and that he was never gonna be to be able to talk to those guys again. Um just made it bad, right? So my son hated me for like the first year. And and to try and counter that, I kinda just didn't ever get on him about anything. I didn't punish him, I didn't, you know, for like the first full year. Well then he's a jerk. Right? My kid like behavior is horrible. My wife and I aren't getting along, and we're like borderline gonna get a divorce because my son's behavior is so freaking bad. And so um I was punishing him one day, and I went over the line and I spanked him to where he had hand print bruises on his ass. Like that's totally inappropriate. But I'm I'm gonna come out and admit I did it, you know what I mean? Yeah, uh, I saw the little bruise on his ass and called my wife and I was like, call a cop. And um we don't call the cops or anything, but like that was I was like, I know I stepped over the line. Yeah. Uh that broke me pretty bad. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:26

Yeah. Yeah, I definitely have those moments too where I start to like start freaking out on my kids, and then I realize this is exactly what happened to me, and I like you have to stop yourself right in the moment. And uh yeah, it's it's um it's good that you like notice that these things happen though, because otherwise it gets too down on the road, and then um, you know, and then you go apologize to your kids and and uh yeah, it's it's it's crazy though, I mean just kind of how common the child abuse thing is though that people don't ever understand that a lot of stuff that happens behind closed doors and like it might look like an okay family, and then you don't know, and then years down the road is when you start to find things out, and you're like, How did I not see this?

SPEAKER_02 1:46:14

You know, it's funny that you say that because like I think about it and I'm like in my particular situation, I'm like, how the hell do they know? Like everybody knew this shit. You know, like yeah, everybody knew this, and nobody knew anything about it. That's the truth of it. Yeah, like for me, it wasn't like this thing where people didn't know, right? My father was arrested several times and never got in trouble for things like, and these aren't little things like uh I told you we were in McCammon, so Greg, a guy named Greg and McCammon, that's all I'm gonna say his name, but uh my brother ran away once and stole all my dad's stuff, sold it to Greg so that he could get the money for a bus ticket to run away, right? Greg comes with my dad's stuff and he's like, hey, your kid sold me all your stuff. I didn't know it was your stuff, but I'll I'll just sell it back to you for what I gave your kid for it. No, I'm taking it all back. And you're not gonna get a dime out of me for it. And the guy said something, my dad knocked all of his teeth out right then and there with that hook.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:23

Boom.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:25

He's like, Alright, well, I'm going to the bar. Cops will be here soon. Uh just tell him at the I'm at the bar. They go over, put my dad in the car, take an hour later, they bring my dad back to the spot where they knock this guy's teeth out. His teeth are still on the ground. They let my dad go. Did your dad just have poll or something? Or like from the motor second like club or what? Now that I'm older, I'm like, was my dad a snitch or something? Like, I really question it. Because bro, my dad got busted with a lot of stuff and never did any time. And he it was it was not a secret. Like, people knew that we were abused as bad as we were abused. Nothing ever happened. Jeez. Like, yeah, people knew. Like, people saw bad abuse happen to me on several occasions and just nothing ever happened. To the point where it's like, why bother telling anybody about it? Then I'm gonna get in more trouble. Yeah, yeah. May I use a restroom and vape for a moment outside?

SPEAKER_00 1:48:38

Yeah, dude. I was just gonna say we'll wrap this thing up too if you want, but yeah. What's your what's your goals for the podcast? I'm just gonna try and get to a hundred episodes by the end of the year, because that's like sixty-two more this year. I gotta do. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:52

Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean eventually I'd like to get monetized, but are you not monetized now then? Uh-uh. No. Um not on many platforms.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:01

Uh-uh.

unknown 1:49:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:03

No, I think it takes a lot. Like you have to get a lot of you. I don't I think I only have like 200. I only have like 200 followers or 215 followers on YouTube right now. Sound? But that just all came in like the last week since the last two weeks since that prison one.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:25

Uh that's time to monetize, just so you're aware. Um, you have over a thousand followers that you can begin to monetize, and by monetizing, it'll actually help you grow your platform.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:35

I thought it was like 5,000, and you could go live after a thousand.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:38

It's uh there's um yeah, you can you can monetize uh a thousand as well. So five thousand is if you want to sell f uh products, I think. So it's all about getting like free samples. Uh you have to have a certain amount of colours and stuff. Uh I can look into it for you because there for a while I was monetizing off of TikTok.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:00

Oh really?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:00

Made really good money for a little while. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:02

Did you have your own like show or something?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:04

Or or Yeah, I uh I went from streaming video games on Twitch to trying to do it on YouTube and somebody's like, nah, just follow me over to TikTok. And I think I was on TikTok for like a month and a half and I hit 10,000 followers. Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:25

I got a buddy that's been trying for years to monetize.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:28

Yeah, I was just like regular videos of myself that I would cut the funny like few seconds out of an hour video or whatever. Like I would go and do fishing trips with my buddies and um just cut little clips out of that, or we would go. I've gone to vacation to several different places now and um small clips of that and post videos of that, and they blew up. I I got to the point where I could sell products, and I did a Carhartt sweatshirt video that got like 1.3 million views or something like that on it. And from that, my follower account just like totally took off.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:10

You never know what's gonna take off, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:12

Like off of a stupid view, and it was literally me sitting in front of the camera like this. And why wouldn't you buy it? Yeah, it's five bucks, right? It's a sweatshirt, it's five bucks, it looks good. Why wouldn't of course you're gonna buy it? Yeah, that was the whole video, right? And um yeah, I mean, from there it took off. Every video that I posted from that point got a lot of views, so I just started selling stuff on on TikTok, and uh I think I made like 13,000 in one month um selling stuff on TikTok.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:44

Wow, yeah, that's crazy. I that's a goal by the end of the year is to be monetized on all platforms, especially like YouTube, but that's a bigger one. That one's more like long-form stuff, so shorts do okay too. The shorts help you get the subscribers to get eyes on you.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:04

The software that I'm building um is a sales platform, but it's really it's meant to be a marketing and sales platform for any industry. Uh, when I got out of prison, I didn't know anything I told you. Right, and I got my computer and I started learning business and web development.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:22

Uh right now uh I've built out an AI native platform that will essentially take a user through the journey of selecting their industry, describing their industry and their company's place within that industry, and from that have an AI set up every marketing and sales tool that you need, and then act as your business partner to help you run your business while you use those different marketing uh tools. So every social media platform um that you have, it would automate all the the work for that, so you're more worried about making content.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:03

Wow, that's pretty that's pretty cool. So you're going all in on that now?

SPEAKER_02 1:53:06

Yeah, I've been working on that for since June.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:12

Have you had any other have you ever done any other programming before this?

SPEAKER_02 1:53:15

Or is this kind of like a this is by far the biggest thing I've ever yeah. Um I've done a lot of things since um deciding to learn. Yeah. Uh I've built a lot of websites. I started out with learning WordPress and then went to a coding boot camp for three months where I learned how to actually write code and the way that to architect programs, uh, which is more what I do now than anything. Like, yeah, I'm the coder, but I use AI to do most of my coding for me, and then I just debug it. Um architecting is is the important thing. So being a prompt engineer and being able to architect a program to where it's secure and works the way it should is really the path that everything's moving towards now.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:05

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy how big it's getting. Like I'm still I'm still so new on that. Like I know chat GPT and that's about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:12

But yeah, well, I mean, imagine chat GPT that can do stuff for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:16

Yeah, I know there's so many other ones out there, I have no even not even a clue.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:21

Like, take your podcast, for example. Um, let's say you wanted to make a commercial for your podcast. You would just tell your AI assistant, hey, I want to make a commercial about this for my target demographic, and I want it to either be funny or I want it to be serious or whatever, and um maybe give it a uh like uh environment description, and it'll be able to create a video from it. Wow, from that. Um, and literally talking to it, no more text. So that's what my program's for.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:56

When do you think you're gonna be able to launch that?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:59

Soon, very, very soon. Um, so this project wasn't really the initial idea. This was a pivot because uh as I was building up another project, I was like, oh, I need this, and everybody else's solutions just kind of sucked. Like they didn't have enough options or they weren't flexible enough for what I was doing, and so I pivoted to make this for this business, and then I was like, oh, actually, everybody needs this crap, so just make two businesses.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:32

That's awesome, man. Where's uh where can somebody like follow along on this whole thing? Are you gonna do you have like a site you're gonna launch it on?

SPEAKER_02 1:55:39

Or yeah, it's salesvelocity.ai. It's currently up, but you have to have a pin to get in because it's still in development. I would say it's 98% done. Um what I'm doing now is more just going through and testing user journeys than anything else. Like if I'm a user, I'm gonna use this as this way if I'm in this industry, and I'm gonna use it in this way if I'm in this industry. That's important because there's a lot of tools that I've built into this, and they're all every single tool. So take social media, for example. How many tools are in social media? Well, we got X, we got Facebook, we got you know, all these different ones. I've built an AI for each one of them. All right. Then I build an a social media manager that manages those ones, and that whole set is one tool for my AI. So rather than my AI trying to go out and do all these tons of different things, I've architected the system to where uh these AIs do it for it and then report back to it so that one AI can control the entire system.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:53

Dang.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:54

That's pretty sweet, man. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm proud of it. Um, since you're a man of faith, I'll just go ahead and share this with you. So after getting out of prison, um I I did, I visited a bunch of different churches, investigated a bunch of different churches, because that feeling that I had from those people that came to visit me in Canyon County jail, I wanted it back. I knew that that feeling would allow me to go through life without being an addict, without being a criminal, without going back to prison, if I could hold on to that feeling. But I mean, I went back to that same church, I went to a bunch of other churches, I could not find that feeling anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:37

And my wife, who was the my boss at the community work center, she wasn't at community work center, she's at a business. I worked at when I was at community work center. Yeah, she made me feel that way. Like simply being around Jennifer makes me want to be a better man. And as soon as I realized that, I was like, yeah, I I gotta keep her in my life, you know. Um, and she went to church at an LDS church, and so that was the one church that I I had been avoiding going to, out of all of them, honestly, right? Yeah, I was like, yeah, I'll go check out Catholic, I'll go check out Seventh-day Adventist, uh go see about some Mennonites. Like, I even went to the Mennonites, bro. Like uh I just didn't get that feeling from them. And honestly, I wasn't getting the feeling from my wife's church either, but I got the feeling from her, yeah. And so I prayed, and it wasn't a voice like you and me are talking right now, but a voice inside of my head just said, You need to get baptized. And I was like, Yeah, that sounds cool. Um, and at the time I was also going through a lot of court for uh my disability from an injury on the fishing boat, and so I was also praying, like, yeah, but you need to know about that money, you know, like give me some direction on that money. And every time I prayed about either one of those things, the answer was always the same, which is you need to get baptized. And so I started to recognize that as a prompting for what it was, you know, and um yeah, the rest is history. I decided to get baptized, I became a member of the church. Um, I know, like, I watched a video where uh the guy was like, oh, a Mormon church is weird. I get people have their opinions, that's cool. Um, I haven't seen all the weird stuff, but I also know that I don't believe in the same way that other people believe. I believe that every single human perceives things differently, and therefore what other people are perceiving that as, I may not perceive that as. Um, whatever the case may be. All I really know is it works for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:09

Like, uh, even members of my own family, like, oh man, you're gonna join that church, you're gonna, you know. I'm like, look at what it's done for my life. I've completely changed my life around. Uh I'm not a millionaire today, but I will be soon, right? And um it's completely changed my life. My faith in God has completely changed my life. And those people that say, oh, well, you know, that church is wrong, or this is and they're not happy with it, are the same people that would be happy if I found the solution in a pill.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:45

You know, if me taking a pill could make me behave well and make me change my focus on life and start going a more successful route, then you would be happy with me taking that pill. But when it's a religion, for some reason you can't accept that. It's weird to me, but people are are that way.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:05

Yeah. No, I think everybody needs to have some sort of faith in their life for sure. Like if you have to have at least some some groundwork of what to believe in. If you don't believe in nothing and it's only on you, then you're gonna fail yourself every time. So whatever you choose. I mean, I have Catholic friends, I have Mormon friends, my whole family is pretty much Mormon, so I'm like the black sheep anyway, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:24

But um obviously growing up, my family wasn't religious at all. Like yeah, my parents never went to church. Um, in fact, my father spoke so poorly of anybody that did go to church that like yeah, it just wasn't it wasn't the norm. But honestly, man, like the I don't know when you decided to uh accept the Lord as your savior, but my life has changed since the moment I I did. I I can definitively say that.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:59

Oh for sure, yeah. Yeah, I would I would definitely agree.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:02

It's it's funny because um not often, but every once in a while uh I'll run into somebody that knows me from like forever ago. And the first thing they always say is, Oh my god, you're still alive. Like because I was so wild, you know, and and doing just senseless crap. Uh like that's how much my life has changed. Like nobody would have thought I would even live this long, just because it was balls to the wall all the time back in the day, you know. Yeah, um it's been a crazy life. I I guess the biggest thing that I've taken from that though is you you always hear the saying, oh, if I had to change, I wouldn't change a thing. And I always thought that was stupid. I would change all kinds of everything. You know what I mean? Like I would change everything. But when I look back on it now and like I am finally happy with who I am, and so I understand that saying finally.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:05

Yeah. If I had to change who I am today, I would I wouldn't I wouldn't go back and change the things I had to go through and they were horrible.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:18

Like my dad had this thing like when when he hurt you, he wasn't hurting he wasn't he wasn't hurting you to hurt you, he was hurting to you to control you, to scare you, to make you do what he wants. Does that make sense what I'm saying? My dad had my dad had issues with sexual abuse. But it was never about sex. It was about hurting you. Yeah. Um that's what it was. It was it was about hurting you and being more powerful over you and making you to where you could do nothing. And um I think for a long time I didn't realize that and I let it let me be bothered by it because you know I'm a man, I'm not supposed to have had something like that happen to me, you know. Um But I think accepting the Lord has finally made it to where I can accept that that wasn't me, that was his problem, you know, his issues and stuff, and making it easier for me to become a better person.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:28

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:30

Um all the crap that I suffered through when I was a kid sucked, but it helped me to be the person that I am today, and I am I like myself that much now that I would go through it all again to be myself again today.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:45

Yeah, absolutely. I whole totally agree. Like you have to go through a whole bunch of things to be able to be that person, be stronger. Like you're if you want to be strong, you're gonna have to go through moments where it makes you feel weak, and you want to be patient, you're gonna have to fill times where you just you know, like the exact thing that you want is hard to get. You just have to go through all the things. That's like uh someone told me it's like a bladesmith isn't judged by all the beating and everything that you have to do to the sword. He's judged at the end, like the quality of the blade at the end of your life, right? So it's like all those all the dings and everything that you go through, like and they're all the heat and everything that you're getting forged into is what made you into where you are now. And so that's just it's also preparing you and preparing future generations of things that they might be able to go through and and that you can help them through because of the things that you've gone through. Like you don't know whose in whose life you'll impact because of the things that you've gone through, and it's easier to take advice from somebody that's gone through these things than someone that's you know been a pastor their whole life or a bishop and never never touched alcohol or never had to go to prison, and then there's this person that's looking for guidance and they can't go to him and ask because he doesn't understand what they're going through.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:02

Yeah, no experience to draw from. Yeah. Like uh would you say that's the truth of about about yourself? Would you go through the things that you've been through to be the same person you are today if you could?

SPEAKER_00 2:06:15

Yeah, it's what I said. Yeah, yeah, I'd have to do it all again. I mean, there's too many things that had to line up and things that I had to go through to make me move from Utah to here and everything, like, but I would never have the life that I have now or be the person I am now, or like the the chaos levels that I go through would be way higher, you know, if I didn't go through everything that I went through and uh I wouldn't change it. Like that's what I told everybody when I released my story, and they're like, Oh, we're so sorry we didn't see anything. I wish we could change it. I'm like, it happened because for a reason. Like I think that's the thing that faith helped me was like when things are gonna happen now bad in my life, I don't take it as like poor me. It's like cool, this is gonna maybe not cool, but like I know this is here for a reason, and there's something coming up in my life that I'm gonna need this moment for. I can't see what it is, but I know there's a plan for me, and I'm just gonna have to ride this out and and go into it with the the best of faith.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:12

It's it's a wild ride when you do that too, though. They're like 'cause it's scary. Right? That's the the most scariest thing is what you don't know. Exactly. And when when you're like, okay, I just have faith, like it is scary, it's hard. But um, man. Like I've got a good life, and I like I give it all to God, and if I didn't actually have faith and just follow my promptings, then I wouldn't I wouldn't be where I'm at. Like, and I'm not like I said, I'm not rich, you know, but I'm happy. Yeah. I feel like that's more important.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:51

Yeah, absolutely. What's next for you, man?

SPEAKER_02 2:07:56

So hopefully retirement, brother. You know, um, I'm building out these two different pieces of software right now, which should be ready to go relatively soon. Um honestly, I don't know from there. I'd so I've talked to my wife about starting a nonprofit with one of these businesses for domestic violence. Um I just feel like there's not enough awareness about the type of abuse that a lot of people go through every day, still to this day. And um there's a lot of victims out there that don't really have good solutions for their situations available to them. So uh a lot of women would leave the abusive situations that they're in, but they know if they do that they have nowhere to go, or the places that they have to go are somehow somehow associated with the uh the abuse, you know. Um, I would like to start a nonprofit that gives these ladies uh a job and a place uh to go that's networked across the United States that gives them the ability to safely uh change locations and provide for them and their children.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:21

Yeah, that'd be pretty sweet. Yeah, I think that's enough.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:23

I was honestly thinking uh of uh getting my cannabis license and doing cannabis and hemp uh products and then um the business that that runs in, building a apartment complex in the upper floors of it where those ladies could stay. I don't know, weed, but um it's legal and I feel like it's profitable enough to help fund the helping of the women.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:58

Yeah. And they just change the federal laws on it now.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:01

Yeah, and like I wouldn't even take a uh profit from it. It would literally 100% be for domestic victims, uh domestic violence victims. I I really struggle with my brother turning out the way that he did, because I don't get it. Like, how can you turn out that way after everything that we went through? I've never understood it. Um I've never never understood why he's mean though either. I've never I was never mean, like the brutal things that I did in prison, biting chunks out of people, gouging eyes and all that shit. That was for protection. That was to protect myself. That was never because I'm a mean guy, you know. I've never understood why he ended up mean or why he thought it was okay to hurt women. I don't get it, I don't like it. Um I want to do something about it, but obviously we can't go out and like beat up all these dudes and and hope to find every abusive relationship in the world. So by offering an avenue that these people can escape it, that's my dream.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:21

Right on, man. I uh I'll be watching then. That'll be cool. Is there anybody is there anywhere that people can follow you at?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:29

Uh just on TikTok at True Menace right now. Um yeah, I mean honestly, until I got all this other work done, that's I'm just gonna be focused on the AI stuff, and uh I'll probably be back on social media more when it's done. Right on, man. Got focus.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:47

Yeah, absolutely. All in. That's how you gotta do it. Get it done.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:51

Yes, sir. All right, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:53

Thanks for thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:55

I'm really thankful for you having me on. Um watching your story was Powerful man, honestly. Um it's hard to it's hard to talk about some of this stuff sometimes, and I I feel like watching you be willing to come out and share your experience and be vulnerable makes it easier for people like me to also do the same, and hopefully that'll open people's eyes to how common it really is in the world. Like that kid that you see that might not be fortunate might not be might be way more unfortunate than you realize, you know, and maybe help people.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:35

Yeah. Yeah, I had a couple people reach out to me personally on from that wild chaos one, and they're like, I thought I was alone, and I found so many similarities that I've never heard of any for any other abuse situations that I went through, and it was like, thanks for sharing. I was like, Oh, that's cool. I didn't expect any of that to come out of it, you know. And then like just like you said, it lets people feel like they're not alone.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:57

Yeah, like um maybe maybe even talking about it will prevent them from continue continuing it to their children. Like, I don't really know what I hope the benefit is in the long run. Um like I don't know what to hope for, but I know that nothing but good can come out of exposing things, you know. And um I'm hoping that this really does help somebody somebody else like to have a good view on it. Like, yeah, it sucks that you had to go through it, right? But the choices that you make now determine your future, not the choices that were made for you when you were younger.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:35

Yeah. It's like the sailboat controlling the their sails, not the wind.

unknown 2:13:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:41

Again, I really appreciate you having me on though.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:43

Yeah, absolutely. Glad we got to meet, and thanks for commenting on a TikTok video. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:48

That's a crazy world we live in.