I Was A Prison Inmate Firefighter | Matthew Hahn
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My name is Ian Bick, and you're tuned in to Locked In with Ian Bick. On this week's episode, I interview Matthew Hahn, who was a California career criminal that ended up stealing a safe that would change his life forever. Make sure you guys subscribe to our podcast, like, share, and give it a listen.

And thank you for supporting Locked In with Ian Bick. We all make mistakes, experience failure, and fall down in life. But if you decide to get back up and use it as fuel to your fire, you can choose to not let it define you. You can make it through to the other side and turn it into an opportunity. I went from owning a popular nightclub when I was 19 years old to becoming a federal inmate by the time I was 21. Join me, Ian Bick,

as I interview people from all over the country who have experienced the rock bottom of the American justice system. Thanks for coming on the show today. Good to be here. Awesome. I stumbled across your story. Someone had put your name in my comment and I went down like this little rabbit hole of your videos, finding out like what your whole story was about and just like super excited to dive into it today.

I like to start at the beginning of everyone's story. What was your childhood like for you growing up? What was your family like? I had a pretty good average childhood. I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood. No trauma to speak of, no adverse childhood experiences to speak of. I know we like to talk about that sometimes with people who have been to prison. The only thing that

Comes up for me in terms of my childhood was my parents getting divorced, maybe starting around the age of 10 or 11 years old. There's a lot of fighting in the house. My father moved to a different bedroom of the house. And so that was something that impacted me as a young adult or a teenager. And yeah, I started experimenting with drugs in high school and

Pretty much was an okay student, okay kid until I found methamphetamine and eventually dropped out my senior year. But nothing significant in my childhood that would point me in the direction of going to prison. Why did you get into drugs to begin with? Despite having a good childhood, good upbringing, what propels someone to get into that? It's a proverbial question, right? Like, I'd say like maybe it started out with curiosity.

Maybe it started out with a little bit of distrust for authority. I grew up in the Nancy Reagan, just say no to drugs, dare kind of like programming in elementary school. So like third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, you know, we were getting pumped with all sorts of very dramatic information about what drugs would do to us. And I was always the type of kid that was curious enough to go, well, I got to at least try it once. And so that's what happened. I think I was in sixth grade.

I tried pot for the first time. And what's society's outlook on pot at that point? I'm very curious about that. So this would have been like 1991, something like that. And I'd say that it was considered the gateway drug to all other drugs. So basically the way...

I would have understood it at the time, at least the way it would have been taught to me in kind of like drug education in school was that if I smoke pot, I will eventually smoke crack and then I will eventually be in prison. Like that was the natural trajectory to smoking pot. And I smoked pot, you know, that first time in sixth grade and none of that happened. And so I kind of was like, maybe these people have been lying to me all this time. Like they told me this is what would happen if I did drugs and it didn't happen.

And so I kind of carried that attitude forward. I just had this attitude of investigation and curiosity. Like I'm going to try everything at least once. Right. So whether it was drinking, smoking pot, high school turned into kind of hallucinogens and cocaine. And they were always fun. But for me, methamphetamine clicked different. And you just got different. You got addicted right off the bat to it. You know, I did speed.

Kind of like what we at the time would have called crank maybe sometime in my junior year of high school And it wasn't very strong. I didn't like it very much But when I tried crystal meth like what back then they were calling it the probe dope, but when I tried crystal meth Right at the very beginning of my senior year in high school I felt like Superman and I felt like I'd come home in some capacity so I'd say in a way yeah, I was addicted psychologically to the effects of meth almost immediately and

Did you ever sell or were you always just a user? I was pretty much a user. I, of course, would buy bigger sacks sometimes and, you know, sell some of it to some friends who were using with me. But I never bought meth with the purpose or with the intention of making money selling drugs. That was never my intention. Do your parents know that you're using drugs at this point? And do they try to step in, intervene, stop you at all?

Well, my dad had moved out. My dad had moved out of the house at that point, so it was just me, my mom, and my sister. And no, I don't think my mother, or my father for that matter, knew I was using meth specifically. They knew I was using drugs. They knew there was something going on. But I don't think they knew I was using meth specifically. Not early on. I sometimes laugh because I'd had a conversation a number of years after I went to prison the first time

And somehow the conversation led to my mother discovering around the house like little pieces of straw, like straws, because we had plastic straws in a drawer and I'd like cut them into like, you know, two inch pieces so I could do lines of methamphetamine. And she said she would find them around the house and she had absolutely no idea or she'd go into the drawer and she'd find like half a straw and she could never figure out what was going on. That kind of tells you how naive I am.

my mother was with regards to at least hard drugs. So they didn't really know what was going on. Obviously, by the time I dropped out of high school, which happened about halfway through my senior year, and I was on the verge of turning 18, they knew that there was something up. And

They had a conversation probably a month or so before I turned 18 about whether they should snatch me up and send me off to a rehab before I turned into an adult. Because once I'm an adult, they can't snatch me up anymore. And they were too late to do that? They disagreed about whether it should be done. And why did you decide to drop out of high school? What was like the deciding factor for you? Have you heard this story already? Of the high school dropout? No, that's why I'm curious about it. Sorry.

It's kind of a funny story. We love funny stories. So have you ever heard of meth monsters? No. You've never heard of meth monsters? Never. I was never really into drugs or anything. And this is way before my time too. I was born in 1995. So if this was like a pre-1995 era, then I wasn't a part of it.

Meth monsters. So when a person does meth, you probably know they stay up a long time. They stay awake a long time. So when I would do meth, particularly in the beginning, I could do a line or two and I'd stay up two, three nights. There's a close friend of mine. We'd buy like $20 worth, like a quarter gram. And that would keep him and I up for the bulk of a week in the very beginning. So we wouldn't sleep much.

we also wouldn't eat much, right? And this is why you often see people who are addicted to meth. They like kind of look a little crazy, but they've also lost a lot of weight and they kind of get sucked up is the word we have for it. So what also happens with not eating and not sleeping is auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations. And we used to call those hallucinations, meth monsters. So in time, I started to recognize that I was having these hallucinations. So I'd come up with rules for what I

constituted a meth monster. When the hallucinations were real and when they were fake. And basically, if I shined a light on a meth monster, it would disappear. If I talked directly to a meth monster, it would never respond to me. And if you were ever looking directly at a meth monster, it would never move. It was only moving like in the peripheral of your vision. That's kind of like how these hallucinations work. So one night, it was a weekend night. It was around midnight. I was sitting in my front yard. A friend of mine and I saw...

creeping up to my mother's fence in the side of the yard. And he saw it, I saw it. So if this was a hallucination, it was both of us hallucinating this.

And so we ran to the garage, we got a flashlight, we got an axe, we were going to go figure out what was going on. And when I shined the flashlight over the fence, there was a dude like dressed in all black, dressed like a ninja. He had like reflective tape on the back of his arms. And I wouldn't have known this at the time, but today I'd say he was doing Tai Chi. Like in the middle of the night, dressed like a ninja, like doing Tai Chi under like this willow tree in the neighbor's front yard. I shined the flashlight over the fence, there was a dude, like dressed in all black, dressed like a ninja.

I shined the light on him. He was still there. I stared at him. He kept moving. And then I yelled at him and he growled back at me. He growled like it was this blood curdling, crazy like growl. And I was it was probably one of the scariest moments of my life up to that point. We turned around. We booked it into the house. My friend was so scared. He had someone come pick him up. He called the cops and said, there's something going on on the street over there.

Of course, this is a small town. The cops knew me. So when somebody said there's something going on on that street over there, they just came to my house to talk to me. And I wasn't very smart about this. I mean, I'm 17 years old. I told them, I'm like, man, I saw a ninja in the yard next door. They took me to juvenile hall that night.

Just for reporting a ninja. Well, they figured I must be on meth if I'm talking about ninjas. If you haven't been around people who do meth, there's a little bit of discussion about ninjas. That's the other thing that people often describe meth monsters as, is as ninjas. I came back from Juvenile Hall...

just later that morning because they determined that I was not under the influence at the time. I came home, I was smoking a cigarette in my front yard, walking down the street. I was barefoot because that's the way they'd arrested me. And some neighbor called the cops on me. So the cops showed back up at my house and they're like, Matt, what's going on? We heard you're smiling. And I said, this is how it's going down, right? Like you're responding to a call because I'm smiling. And they're like, yeah, well, you must be up to something. You must be high. And so I told them the story about what happened the night before and that I'd been released and

And that I wasn't actually high and the cops left and for whatever reason at that moment I decided that the world wasn't made for me. This is some stupid kid stuff, right? Like nobody understands me. Everybody's a liar Authority sucks like I'm never going back to school. And so I didn't that's when I dropped out of high school That same day that that was my deciding moment very rash decision Yeah

definitely a rash decision but that was the that was the event that spurred my dropping out of high school and then I just went on a good meth run so after this you drop out of high school and then you start committing like small petty crimes what's the first crime you commit to support your habit or just to support yourself in general well in the beginning I'd say some of it probably started before this in the beginning it was yeah petty crime like stealing from like construction sites

or stealing from stores. It was mostly a result of when you're up all night, as I was, I didn't really want to hang out in my house.

Right? Because my mom and my sister are asleep. And so like a friend and myself would go and hang out somewhere else. And we used to party at like construction sites in the middle of the night, even before doing meth. Like that's where we'd go party because like it was a place to like kind of drink and do whatever you wanted to do. So we'd go to these construction sites at night and that's where we'd hang out in the middle of the night when we were high.

Well, while we were there, we started to notice that there was tools and toolboxes and things that people who worked there had left scattered around. And I happened to know that the guy I was buying dope from liked tools. And so that's kind of what started it. And I started stealing these tools. I trade them for dope. I steal these tools and trade them from dope. And over time, I just got ballsier. You know, like I thought I had morals. I thought I had like ethics, like there were lines I wouldn't cross.

I said, "Well, I'll steal from a construction site, but I'll never be as bad as to steal from someone's home." Next thing you know, I'm stealing from a car or a garage. And then it'd be, "All right, well, I'll steal from a car or a garage because they left it unlocked, but I'll never be as bad as someone who goes into their home." And then I'd cross that line too. It got to the point where I was essentially addicted to stealing.

the meth wasn't doing it for me anymore. And so I was just addicted to stealing. And I went around kind of all night long stealing from people opportunistically. And you're still living at your parents' house while this is happening? Yes and no. I mean, my mom would kick me out and sometimes I live in like,

the minivan. Sometimes she would let me live in the garage and then I'd be allowed back in the house. But yes, technically living at my mother's house. You're the neighborhood crime junkie. You know, you're getting a bad rep around town. Neighbors don't like me at this point. Eventually this catches up to you and you get five years in prison. What are the charges that land you in prison that first time? And how old are you? So I was 18 years old. This is 1999. Uh,

Basically the charges were first degree burglary second degree burglary and possession of stolen property First degree burglary is when you steal from something that's considered a residence so

Most of my crimes were stealing from garages, but the way California law defines a residence is that if the garage is attached to the roof where people live, then the garage is itself a residence. And that was an important distinction for me because any crime where I stole from a residence was a strikeable offense under California's three strikes law. So I was charged with

Don't remember the specific number but I was charged with I think around 20 20 felonies all theft related So they were like investigating you and they lumped everything together. No, I was just not a very smart criminal and so When they came to my house my mom's house. I just had stolen property strewn all over the place You had it at the house. I just it was just piled up. I wasn't it was an idiot and so I just had stolen property all over the place and

They did a search warrant on the house and found all that and linked me up to those burglaries. So I took a plea bargain eventually for 12 felonies. Nine of those were first degree burglaries. So that meant I had nine strikes on my record. And how much time do you do out of those five years that you get? So, yeah, I took a five year, eight month plea bargain, and I think I only served like 20 or 21 months total. Wow.

So it wasn't terrible. You get out by the time you're 20, around 20. I ended up paroling at 21 because I had some time in between where I'd bailed out and been in a drug program and stuff. Now, essentially you get out and you have a second chance at life at this point. Clean slate, I guess you could say, but California has that three strike law. What is the three strike law? Uh,

There's the way it is, and then there's the way people understood it. So the way it was understood by most people is that you commit three violent felonies in your life and you go away for 25 to life. The way it actually was is that it's three violent or serious felonies, and you can get all those strikes on a single arrest like I did when I was 18. And then any felony, no matter what it is, can get you a 25 to life sentence.

So that meant that I was walking around the streets after coming home from prison the first time with three plus strikes on my record. So any more and you're facing life in prison. Possession of dope, 25 to life. Stealing a pizza, 25 to life. Didn't matter what sort of felony it was. I was facing 25 to life. That's got to be a scary thought. It was. And you would have hoped that I could have...

Digested that reality. Do you get yourself together when you come out of prison that time facing, you know? The potential life sentence if you mess up that's got to give you some like a scared straight program saying alright I'm gonna stay I'm gonna walk on eggshells and I'm gonna make sure I don't do anything bad. What happens next you give me too much credit I Was not scared straight. I mean I did well and

And I convinced myself that my problem was meth and nothing else. I'm 21 years old. I've never even been to a bar before. And I'm like, I want to go to bars. So I'm like, let me do what I need to do.

I'll work a program of recovery or I look like I'm in recovery, make the parole agent happy, make the drug program I was a part of happy, get off parole and then I can drink and go to bars and smoke pot and just resume my life without methamphetamine. That's what I told myself. And so I went to college, I was doing well, I was getting a 4.0, I got off parole, everything was fine. I got drank on the weekends, I smoked pot here and there, not a big deal. How long does that last for?

Because the story goes bad. Yes, of course. It doesn't end there. Of course the story goes bad. Things went well until they weren't going well anymore. So I paroled in August of 2001. And in October of 2003, one of my closest childhood friends committed suicide. And it was pretty violent. He died.

It significantly impacted me and it was my first exposure to death like that. I'd had family die, but like great grandparents and things like that. And it just felt different than the guy you grew up with killing himself. And, and this isn't to blame him. It's not what this is about, but I was unable to cope with, with his death. And so I,

what was successful drinking and pot smoking and whatnot leading up to his death in 2003 transitioned into daily drinking, smoking pot all day. Doesn't sound like a big deal until I relapsed on meth like a month later. And, you know, you may not be familiar with the term like hang out a barbershop long enough, get a haircut. But that's basically what was going on. What happened with me is I'd been offered drugs like meth or coke in the years prior and

But I was able to say no. And after my friend killed himself and I was just in a really dark place, I was offered and I didn't say no. And it only takes one yes for someone like me doing meth to go off the deep end. And that's what happened. So I relapsed on meth there.

at the end of 2003, beginning of 2004, somewhere like that. Did you have a support system that was there for you that you could have went to to ask for help or did that not even cross your mind or was there no one there for you? There were people there for me. My family would have been there for me if I'd asked, but pride got in the way. I know my father tried to get in touch with me. He knew something was going on and he wanted to talk to me and

drug problem, you know my drug problem again, and I remember him bringing the subject up and I just had so much shame about having not learned my lesson so much pride about not wanting to be Asking my family or friends for help that I just ignored him. In fact, I just stopped answering his phone calls and

So pride and shame got in the way of getting the help I needed. Do you think you wouldn't have relapsed after your friend's incident if it wasn't so accessible to you, the drugs? Were you just like hanging around a bad crowd that you were able to have access to it that fast again? Yeah, you know, if you don't have a history of drugs and you also don't therefore have a history of being in like 12-step programs or recovery programs, but one thing they tell us is

in those programs is, and that's where that whole hang out at the barbershop, end up getting a haircut kind of line comes from is that you have to extract yourself from the people, places and things with whom you were hanging out before, because you can't have those influences. And I felt like I was smarter than those recommendations. I felt like I was smarter than those suggestions. And so, yeah, I had a, not all of them, but I had a handful of people still in my life

that I'd hung out with before. And in fact, when I reconnected with them after coming home from prison, they were doing well too. Eventually they had relapsed. It's just a domino effect. And I just kept hanging out with them anyhow, even though they'd relapsed. And that's when I said yes to the offer. So the recommendation to stay away from folks like that is a good one. And I didn't take the recommendation. Now, because you're back on drugs, you go back to your stealing habits. Yeah.

2005 ish, you end up stealing a safe from a house or wherever you stole it from that changes your life forever. What can you tell me about that incident? Like what's the safe? Where do you get it from? And what exactly happens? So I had been speaking with a friend of mine and he had told me about, well, I had expressed my desire to get a three wheeler, you know, like the quads. Yeah. Well now they have, now they're quads, but

Around that time they had banned three wheelers in California because they're so dangerous I guess from flipping over or whatever and so I'm like I want to find a three wheeler and I told this to my friend He's like I know a dude who has a three wheeler and that dude owes me a bunch of money for dope and so he told me where this guy lives and I realized that he lived relatively close to me and so I decided that I would go there and see if I could steal a three wheeler I went there one night I searched the backyard and

Didn't find any three-wheeler. I figured like, okay, maybe he's out of town using it somewhere. So I decided that I would go back a couple of nights later. So I had a guy that I used to do crime with. I don't want to call him a friend. A partner. I don't even want to call him a partner. We'll just go business associate. Whatever you want to call this guy. There's a guy that I used to get high with and he'd come over and we'd go steal stuff.

And a couple of nights later, after this first time I'd visited that house, I said to him, like, hey, there's this place I want to go check out. Let's go over. So we went over to this house. It's in a very wealthy community. It's in the middle of the night. I don't know, one or two in the morning, something like that. And maybe a description of the property is in order. So like it's a it's a it's a nice home. There's a large mansion kind of on the back of the property.

And then on the front of the property, there was a kind of like a studio apartment, like an in-law unit on the front of the property. And the driveway for the house kind of came in between the mansion and the studio apartment. So when I and he, he and I entered the property, we walked between the studio and the main house to go look for this three-wheeler. Excuse me.

And there was nothing there. There was no three-wheeler. We didn't find it. So like, I just figured this friend of mine was wrong about him owning a three-wheeler. Now we were searching around the back, maybe for other things to steal. I had a weird feeling. I had this sense that something was off. Decided that it was probably time to leave. And as we're leaving and coming back to the front of the property, I notice that there's light shining out into the driveway.

And what I was looking at was that studio that was on the front of the property, its back door was open and there was a light on in the room, shining light out into the driveway. Somebody had woken up. Sorry, can we stop for one second? Yeah, you're good. So any sane person who would see this light shining out into the driveway, at least when they're a burglar, is going to think that it's time to book it, time to run, time to get away.

When I was stealing, I wasn't trying to have a confrontation with people. I wasn't trying to have violence happen. And so I did something that was really out of character for me. Not only did I just walk by that door that was open in the middle of the night, I looked in and I saw through a room into another bedroom, a safe sitting on the floor. So I think there was a laundry room and then beyond it was a bedroom and on the floor was a safe. And I said to the dude that I was with,

hey man, let's go get that safe. And he's like, no, you're crazy. I just decided to go in anyhow. And it was actually very out of character for me, but something drew me in there. And I walked in, I started to lift the safe. I called out to the guy I was with and said, I need you to help me with it. So he did. He came in, he helped me. We carried the safe out to my pickup truck, threw it in and I drove home and

That, of course, would be the safe, as you said, that would change my life forever. How do you get into the safe when you get home? I'm not a safe cracker, so I don't have...

some skill set for doing this. It was still the middle of the night. I lived in a suburban neighborhood. Is it like a rinky dink safe? Like when you got at Walmart or something? No, it's not. And it's no, it's, it's a good safe. Like I think it was a Liberty safe. It wasn't a fire safe. You know, the ones where you can like stick a ruler in and open it up. It wasn't one of those. This was going to take like some tools.

And I had tools, but they were all going to make a whole bunch of noise. Like I had like die grinders and pry bars and saws and all sorts of stuff. But it's like three in the morning, four in the morning. And I can't make a racket like that in my neighborhood without the cops getting called. So I told the dude that I had done this burglary with, look, I'm going to wait till 8 a.m., wait till the sun comes up, and I'm going to start cracking this thing. And he said, okay, well, just let me know what's in it. And of course, like the burglar in me

The thief in me was like, well, this is fantastic. I'm going to open the safe and he's never going to know what I find in there, right?

So that's what I did. I waited till 8 a.m. And I started grinding it with a die grinder and whatnot and kind of opened a corner of the door of the safe and got a pry bar in there and opened it enough for me to reach inside. And you're hoping there's money, jewelry, whatever. I'm hoping for money and jewelry or something like that. But you don't find that. No, I don't find that. You stick your hand in. What do you pull out? And what's your reaction? Well, the first thing I pulled out was a diaper. A dirty diaper. Yeah.

dirty diaper I mean I reached into a safe you don't expect to feel something squishy like that and so when I pulled it out I thought oh maybe somebody's got something that's like valuable or breakable and they're trying to like put it in the diaper to keep it from rattling around does it smell bad or no now I never verified what it was but I did open it up and see that it was just a diaper that was full of liquid I didn't test it to see if it was urine or anything like that but I found that diaper in there

And then I found a few more diapers and I also found a gun. I found like a pack of new fresh diapers. I found paperwork for the guy that owned the safe, his adoption paperwork. And I found a memory card, a digital memory card for a camera. What do you do with the memory card? Do you put it in the computer and check it out? So I took the memory card and I put it into my computer. And the first thing that happened, and this is something that happened with computers in the early 2000s, is you would put something into...

either like a floppy disk slot or a memory card slot and all these miniature versions of the photo would show up as thumbnails kind of like streaming across the screen. And so I saw all these thumbnails and I remember thinking, oh, I stumbled upon somebody's like homemade porn collection, you know, something that somebody might have done with their girlfriend or boyfriend. That's what I thought. And so I clicked on one and the first photo I looked at felt weird because

It felt like there was something off, but I wasn't 100% sure what it was that was wrong. So I started scrolling through the other photographs and I don't remember how many there were. It might've been six or eight or 10. They kind of blur together, but I learned pretty quickly that what I was looking at was an adult man and a child, um,

A child that I thought was maybe three years old and it was sexual activity. So I was looking at not just child pornography, but evidence of abuse. What's your reaction to this? What are you thinking? In the beginning, I was shocked because, you know, I've known that things like this exist in the world. And I was just shocked that I'd stumbled on it.

I was disgusted when I saw it, but I was also outraged and I knew that I had to do something about it. I didn't know exactly how or what I would do at that very moment, but I was also very sure that I would do something about it. What do you do next? Well, I called the guy that I'd stolen the safe with. You called him? Okay. I told him that he needed to come over. Now, if you had found money, you weren't going to call him?

I probably would have called him, but maybe there wouldn't have been as much money. Okay. I wasn't an honest character back then. So you call him, he comes over, what happens? Well, I showed him the basic stuff that was in there, and then I said, but you have to see this. So I showed him one photograph from what was on there, and he just recoiled and said, I don't want anything to do with this. And I said, well, I think I'm going to turn him into the police. And he just reiterated, I don't want anything to do with this. So I said, that's fine.

If it ever comes back to me, your name will never come up. But I'm going to figure out how to get this to the police so we can take care of this guy. And that's what I ended up doing. Like later on that night, I put the memory stick into like a change purse. And then I put in an envelope with a note on the outside that said, please deliver to the Las Gadas Monte Sereno Police Department.

graphic photos, pictures of abuse, something like that. And I included in the change purse with the memory card the address I'd stolen it from or the street I'd stolen it from, the name that was associated with the paperwork in the safe. And then I said something along the lines of, I stole this. I don't want anything to do with it, but please remove this animal from the streets. Do you feel like you made the right decision to send it anonymously rather than go in yourself and explain what happened?

I think it's the only decision I could have made at the time. It seemed untenable, the idea of walking into the police department in a wealthy community and saying, I've been burglarizing and terrorizing the neighborhoods here, but I found this, not with my three strikes. So I think I made the right choice to do it anonymously, and it clearly worked out. So I'd say in hindsight, it seems like the right choice, too.

After you send this in anonymously, you go back to burglarizing, continuing drugs and back to your regular day in the life of Matt. Yes. Do you then eventually you then eventually get caught? Do you mention to them that you gave them this anonymous tip that landed to a potentially like big fish, I guess you could say?

to try to maybe save yourself in the situation? Well, I did have what I guess would be thought of as a moment of weakness. I had been on parole in that small town when I'd come home from prison the first time and was fairly familiar with the police there. There aren't very many officers in that town. And so they would come over to my house and search my house and search through my property or pull me over and search my car. And they saw over time that I was doing well and eventually got off parole and everything.

So one of the officers that picked me up the night I was arrested said something to me along, and I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was something like, you know, you were doing so well. You know, like you were doing so good. You know, what happened to you? Why are you like this again? You know, and now mind you, I'm in handcuffs. I'm in like the backseat of the cop car when this was said to me. And my response was something along the lines of, well, if I'm that bad of a guy, at least I gave you eightkin.

Which is the guy that... And that's the name of the man that was in the photographs. Robbie Aitken was his name. And that started like a whole conversation amongst themselves because they suddenly realized that I was the guy that had sent those in anonymously. Because you would have been the only one that had that information anyways. Yeah. Well, it had showed up in the newspaper, but I don't remember if the newspaper article mentioned the name of the person who'd been arrested.

It just mentioned that an anonymous tip had led to the arrest of someone living on, I think the name of the street was Wedgwood Drive in Los Gatos, California. So they clearly had found the person who had found it, or at least they suspected that I was telling the truth. And eventually that night before going to jail, I had an off-the-record conversation with the detective who had been investigating that case. And they basically asked me just what you asked me a few moments ago, which was, you know, what was in the safe?

They tried to get me to admit to having stolen the safe, but I didn't admit that at the time. But I did tell them what was in the safe. And they said that it would remain off the record, which they did keep off the record. So all that conversation, they never made it part of the official record. How much time are you facing at this point? Because now you're on your third strike. Yeah, so I was originally charged with four counts of possession of stolen property. And in California's three-strike law, that's 25 to life for each one. So that would have been 100 years to life.

The investigation continued, and eventually I was charged with 16 different felonies. How old are you at this point? 25.

So I was charged with 16 different felonies and that would have been 25 years to life for each one. So that was 400 years to life I was facing. What's going through in your mind at this point? You're sitting in this jail cell. Obviously they don't give you bail. Well, they did bail me. I did get bail originally. You got bail. Wow. Well, I bailed out before they figured out it was a three strike case. Okay. So I got put into the jail there that morning at like 6 a.m. I knew it was going to be a three strike case. So I bailed out on $10,000 bail and was out by noon.

I had a court date that was coming up like two weeks later. And so obviously I had a decision to make because I knew when I went to court, they were going to take me. And I knew when I went to court, I was going to be facing a life sentence. And I did a lot of soul searching those couple of weeks. And I kind of just came to the conclusion that A, spending the rest of my life running wasn't something that I wanted to do. I had some money, but money goes fast.

And I just realized that I was just tired of lying. I was tired of hurting people. I was tired of cheating. I was tired of stealing. I was tired of addiction. I was just tired of all of it. It's a lot to process for a 25 year old. Yeah. And I just, some part of me knew that it wasn't going to come to an end unless I went to jail. Does the prosecution offer you a deal? Well, at that point, I wasn't even that far into the case yet. I went to court and basically turned myself in.

And the prosecution did not offer me a deal. In fact, because I'd been stealing from the wealthier members of society, the prosecution wanted to take me to trial and get as much time out of me as possible. Did the prosecution know at this point, though, that you had helped them in a pretty big case? Probably not at the very beginning, but I'd been, I ended up being in the county jail for

a year and a half, almost two years on this case. So they did eventually learn from kind of like word of mouth from the police department to the prosecutor's office that I was involved in that other case. And that made them rethink and offer you a deal? Well, the person who was prosecuting the other guy, that district attorney came to visit me in the county jail and basically said to me, we have a chain of custody issue. The evidence was obtained illegally through a burglary.

And there were motions filed on his part by his defense team to have the photographic evidence thrown away because it had been acquired through a criminal act. And essentially, the district attorney needed it to be proven that that criminal act wasn't performed by law enforcement.

But you had to snitch on yourself in order to do that. Well, and that's where things get a little dicey for me, right? Because my defense, what I was hoping for if I went to trial, was that I had never been caught doing a burglary. I'd never been caught in the act of stealing. So I was hoping that I would go to trial, get convicted of just possession of stolen property, and that nobody would want to actually send me away for life for possession of stolen property. So my defense depended upon there being no evidence I was actually stealing.

So when this prosecutor came to visit me to ask me to testify to having stolen the safe, that would have been a problem for my defense. But when all things were said and done, and she kind of basically said, you can do what you want. I'm not offering you a deal. I can't offer you a deal. This isn't law and order. This isn't TV or whatever. I know those sorts of things do happen in the criminal justice system, but it didn't happen that day. She says, okay.

You just do what you think is right. And she eventually asked me if anybody else had ever possessed the safe from the moment it was stolen to the moment it made it to the police department or at least to the mailbox where I sent it. And I said, no, that was me. And I knew that I wasn't going to be mounting a defense. I also agreed that if she wanted me to say it in court, I'd be willing to. So that was kind of the day, I suppose, that I let go of

my own life in a way, because I wasn't going to be trying to defend myself at trial at that point. Do you think you could have avoided this whole aspect? Had you just turned in the safe yourself rather than report it anonymously? Or was it inevitable? I don't know. I, you know, I, you know, some people have, have asked me, what if you had taken, um,

the photos to a lawyer and then you- Negotiate. Yeah, and then you went to the lawyer and had the lawyer go to the prosecutor's office and say like, we want to get immunity for a guy who discovered a crime. Yeah, maybe that would have worked. I didn't think that, I wasn't thinking like that though. Is the town, this is a small town, right? Are they looking at you as like a hero? Because I'm sure they know this other guy that just got arrested. What are they looking at you as?

Well, if you read the articles about the whole thing, the police department certainly didn't see me as a hero. Well, you were a career criminal at this point. I can't tell you what the whole town thought. But what I can say is that once this stuff hit the newspaper, once people found out that I was facing more time than the guy I'd caught doing those crimes, there was a little bit of outrage.

It became national news, but locally people from that very community started a petition, albeit a smaller petition, but they started a petition trying to get the district attorney or the courts to offer me leniency. So there were clearly people in the community who felt like, yes, he harmed us. Yes, he commit crimes against us. But

He definitely doesn't need to be doing the rest of his life in prison or as much time as the person whose crime he discovered. Did that outreach for leniency help you? Eventually, yeah. What did you end up getting? So eventually I took a plea bargain of 11 years, eight months. 11 years, four months. Way better than 25 to life.

25 a life would have been the low end. So yes, it's way, it's way better than anything else I could have, I could have gotten had I had to contend with a three, three strikes law. And you, you get how much time after the plea deals for 11? Do you get more than that? Or they give you that on, on the money? Yeah, at least most of the time when you do plea bargains, it's,

Whatever the plea bargain is is exactly what you get and this is a state or a federal case. This is a state case Okay, so you end up in the California state prison system? That's right for a second time and you're like second time California has like one of the most notorious state prison systems Do you think you know state prison you're thinking Texas, California? New York New York City. What's it like for you at this point as a young person? You're not even 30 yet. And what state prison are you at? I?

Well, you move around a lot in California state prisons. I'm sure you do this in other states too, but there's a prison you go to for reception where they decide how dangerous are you, right? They decide whether you're high security, medium security, low security. And so I went to that prison. I was in Tracy, DVI, but I was only there for whatever, a month or two for what they call classification. Then I ended up at Folsom State Prison, the infamous Folsom State Prison, where Johnny Cash recorded that

that live in Folsom State Prison album there in the late 60s. So I ended up there, which is low-high security, if that makes sense. What kind of people are you housed with? Everyone, in terms of general population. California at the time, though I know things are changing, California at the time had a very strict segregation between general population and protective custody.

So there would have been no one on those yards with, say, convicted of sex crimes. There would have been no one on those yards who were snitches. There would have been no one on those yards who had drug debt or who were gang dropouts or anything like that. If it was discovered, they would have gotten hurt really bad. Were you looked at as a snitch because you testified? No, I also didn't talk about it.

I had talked to this old timer and this was well before I caught my second case, but I remember this old timer who had just come home from prison. I got, I worked with at a roofing company. This is in the years between my two prison terms. And we had talked about certain types of crimes and whether it was justifiable to work with the police. And he had always said that when it comes to sex crimes, there's no such thing as snitching. And that's something I remembered later with that said,

prisons have knuckleheads in them, as you know, right? And so I was still just terrified that either, you know, like prisons have 3000 people in them, maybe. California prisons are, they're very populated, you know, it only takes one knucklehead to hurt you, right?

And so I was concerned that someone would either read the case wrong if they got a hold of the story and think I was the other guy. And just read the headlines that you testified against someone. Or they just go like, oh, he worked with police.

Fortunately, it never came up. Now, I was offered protective custody early on. Like when I was in the county jail, they came up to me and said, do you want protective custody? I just said no. And that's just being in the shoe all day? No, we have whole prisons and whole yards just for protective custody. So they're completely segregated. But then I would have possibly been on a yard with him, right? Like in California, they're called SNY yards or special needs yards. And they're people who are for...

for whatever reason, are afraid to be in the general population. Though I paroled more than 11 years ago now and the prison system has changed a lot since then such that general population is the minority now and SNY is the majority of the prison population in California. So things would be different if I had gone to prison today. But back then, yeah, I was worried. I was worried that someone might read it wrong. But I also knew that staying general population was my only shot to get out earlier.

It wasn't like the movies at this time where, you know, inmates have the flip cell phones and they're communicating and doing any type of like deals or criminal activities. Well, there's criminal activities, but this is, uh, what, 2007. Um,

I'm trying to remember if I even saw a cell phone when I was at Folsom State Prison, and I don't think I did. Do you think you would have had a harder time if you were in prison now that they would, it would have been easier for them to find out about your case and situation? Oh, for sure. For sure. Um, but, uh, I stayed in the general population yard. I,

Did what I had to do without having to enforce rules because you know California prisons are also notorious for Racist segregation gang violence and all that stuff. I showed up where I needed to I kept my head down I kept my mouth shut And managed to drop my security level after a couple of years What were the prison politics like and were you like running with a group or a gang or anything like that? Well, you don't have a choice. You don't have to run with a gang. I

but you are going to run with a group of people that look like you. So you ran with the white guys? They called us woods. Woods, okay. The pecker woods that they called? Yes, the woods. And there are no choices with regards to that. So how does that work? You get on the yard and they just approach you right away and say, it's ride or die, you're with us or you're out of here? Well, you probably already would have made some degree of association in the county jail before coming to prison.

Uh, but yeah, like the, uh, I mean, I can tell you a story about my first day in prison on the first prison term. Uh, I was at San Quentin and, you know, I go through a reception, I'm put in a cell and, uh, I don't know, I'd probably been in my cell 15 minutes before some white guys show up at the cell, uh,

And they're like, hey, Wood, where are you from? You know, Santa Clara County. All right, so I'm going to find your shot caller, right? And so someone from Santa Clara County then shows up at my cell shortly thereafter, asks to see my paperwork, find out, you know, what sort of crimes I'm there for, and then brings me boots, brings me cigarettes, brings me coffee. He then tells me that

Today at count at 430 after count, you're going to sneak out of your cell. Here's how you're going to do it. You're going to meet all of us in the chow hall. I'm like, I'm going to seek out of my cell. I'm in prison. How do I do that? I'm like, he tells me how to sneak out of my cell. And I do. I meet him in the chow hall to work in the chow hall that night, even though I didn't have a job in the chow hall, they made it look like I did. And then I met all the homeboys, all the people who are white, who are from my neck of the woods, from my county. And then they explained the rules to me.

You want to know what the rules are? I'll tell you the rules. All right. Well, I'm not going to say them in the language that they were shared with me. But they were essentially, don't mess with any black people, don't mess with any gay people, and don't gamble more than you got. And those are rules that get fleshed out the longer you're in prison, so you have a better idea of what they mean. But, for example, with the don't mess with black people rule, it essentially meant, you know,

You can't live in a cell with them. You can't be on a bunk with them. You can't use the same water fountain. You can't use the same shower head. You can't use the same pull-up bar. You can't take food from them if it's not packaged. You can't get a cigarette from them if it's already rolled. You can't over-associate. You can't over-familiarize with them. You can't have people of that color visit you in visiting. Like, there's like, that's what it means, you know? And then the next step is that you can't do any of those things with people who are allied with black people.

So that's like the race element in prison and then everything kind of expands from there And so there's like southern Hispanics the South Siders They're allied with white people and you have then the northern Hispanics who are allied with with black people and those are kind of like where the boundaries are

There's a boundary kind of like between those two groups. - I think what you're describing is what people think of prison when they hear prison in general. I get a lot of comments on my social media about like if I had to run with a gang or anything like that, or how race played a factor,

And I was in prison at a young age. I was 21. And the experiences you're describing were like so much different than mine in the federal system. Cause I was at Lowe's and camps and I never found myself in a position like that. So I couldn't even imagine like someone coming up to me and like, I know that's morally wrong. And I don't even know how I would have handled my situation. If someone came up to me to like make me a part of this now. Let me say one thing. I,

This is where a distinction between following rules and enforcing rules is important, right? So when folks would come up to me or you or whoever gets into prison and says, like, these are the rules, that's actually not even joining a group. That's just on your docket, you said you were white, so you're going to get housed with white people. And these are the politics of everybody that you're going to get sold or housed with the entire time you're in prison. Right.

There are groups within whites, like traditional gangs, like skinheads or whatever, that you can join. But those are the types of people that tend to want to enforce rules. And the best way to, of course, stay out of trouble in prison is to just follow rules and not enforce rules. So I think that's the distinction. The people that are like me or like you tend to be people that just want to follow the rules, put their head down, not try to cause waves or ripples or stir shit up, and just go home intact.

And then there's people that go there that, I don't know, pick up the sword. Did you ever have to do things you felt uncomfortable doing just in order to survive? Well, I agreed to things that fortunately never ended up happening. So like there's times when there's tension between the whites and another race. And so being white, you're expected to show up for the potential riot. You're expected to show up at the yard. So there'd be days like mandatory yard.

you know, and you know, the, whoever's like a shot caller or somebody in your building is going to tell you where the pieces are, where the weapons are hidden, where they are at the yard, all that. And you're expected when the bar cracks to go to yard and show up. Right. And a lot of the times, you know, if enough people show up, people like will back down and sometimes it doesn't happen. Fortunately, every time I had to show up, it didn't. And that's where my experience was that not being involved with like the, the racial issues,

violence that can that happens in prison is more often than not a matter of luck. You know, you can make choices to limit the exposure you have to those things. For example, a lot of the things that happen in California prisons happen during yard, right? They happen at yard. That's where the battle goes down or whatever. And so what's one way you can avoid being at yard and being told that there's mandatory yard that you have to show up for is you have a job.

So if you have a job during the day, nobody will expect you to be at the yard when that sort of thing would happen. What was your prison job? The first few months I was a landscaper at a place called China Hill. Landscaper. Yeah. So I had a weed whacker, but it was cool because like when we were up there, we used to grow vegetables like illicitly. And then there was a period of time when they had like a weird strip out and they weren't stripping us out. And so there was a period of time when a bunch of us were smuggling vegetables back into the cell blocks. And then after that, I was in the welding shop.

And that's always an interesting place in prison because you see people like kind of building the weaponry that will get used later on. But I was, I was in the welding shop there and eventually, you know, this is after I dropped security level and ended up at a minimum security camp. I was a,

I was a firefighter. You were a firefighter. Yeah. Well, in California, there are things called fire camps. I've heard of those. They made a movie about that. Yes. There's movies. Did you watch the movie? I don't know if I saw the movie, but I tried watching the thing on CBS recently. It's so bad. Yeah. But there's one on CBS. I think it's called like Fire Country or something like that.

The movie they made, it has a bunch of like famous actors in it. I saw the trailer. It's on my list to watch. I have like this list of movies that came out while I was in prison that I never got to see. I would be like going through the US Weekly magazines or Us Weekly, whatever it's called. And they would have like the movie premieres. So I'd keep a journal of like new songs, new music, new books. And

And that was like always one of those movies I wanted to see. So you're actually fighting fires. Oh yeah. I fought fires. That's crazy. Could you run away or is it like, well, are the guards there fighting the fires? Well, there's no guards with you when you're fighting fires. They'll be like at the bottom of the mountain somewhere.

You know, it's not like the guards want to fight fires. They're just there to arrest you if you do something stupid, right? Like bring you back to the prison if you behave wrong. That is wild. So yeah, like, you know, and you could end up in all over the state of California. Sometimes you end up away from the prison for as much as 30 days. If I remember right, 30 days was the max and they had to bring you back to your camp. Where are you sleeping? Well, when you're on, when you're first in the fire, there's no base camp.

So you're sleeping on the dirt, you know, you're out in the forest and you've got like a moon blanket. It looks like tinfoil and you wrap yourself on that and you sleep right there. Once the fire is big enough.

Like an incident that might last two weeks, three weeks, a month or whatever. There ends up being a base camp where you'll work a 24-hour shift and then you go to the base camp for 24 hours. You shower, you eat, you sleep. You have a sleeping bag kind of underneath the tent and then you go back out. You work another 24-hour shift, fight fires, and you come back and then you're in base camp for 24 hours. How much are you being paid an hour to fight fires as a prisoner? At the time, we had a daily stipend.

And depending on what you did on crew, like if you were just like a guy with a rake, you got like a dollar seventy five a day. And if you were a Sawyer, if you had a chainsaw, I think you got like two ninety a day. And then you got a dollar per hour for every hour you are or away from the prison. So if you were gone from the prison for 10 days.

That's 240 hours. So you get $240. So you had to risk your life in order to make not even a decent minimum wage. Oh, yeah. It's not even a minimum wage. And to be perfectly honest, so fighting fires is less dangerous than hanging out behind the walls. Oh, totally. And the trade-off was so worth it. Now, I know you did time in some minimum federal facilities and

We've all heard rumors about federal facilities. I don't know if you had like miniature golf or any of that shit out there, but like fire camps in Cal in the California system are like the best places to live. Right. They still have a weight pile. There was like a hobby shop. If you want to learn how to do woodworking or like I did oil painting and I made belt buckles, you know, like were those your prison hustles? No, I don't have a prison. You didn't have a prison. You did almost 12 years in prison. No, nine years. Okay. No prison hustle. I mean, I had hustle, but not for money.

I had stuff like it was more for cloud. Um, but yeah, I did like hobbies. I painted, I did belt buckles, you know, like the, the, the visiting is amazing. Your family in a fire, this isn't fire camp. So like the family brings like charcoal and like they roll in like a picnic basket and you put ribs on the barbecue and you put like chicken on the barbecue and you're grilling all day with your family. Like it's, it's a really humane environment to live. There's no wall, there's no fence, there's no armed guards. You go hiking every morning and

The food is good. I was eventually a clerk, and so I was responsible for managing the entire camp's food budget. I was given $2.60 per person per day for all three meals. It was my job to help develop the menu so that everybody ate well and they ate within budget. I got driven to town every day in a truck and pushed a shopping cart around a grocery store with an armed guard.

Like in my prisoner outfit, you know, like I haggled prices. I talked to like food vendors. I talked to produce vendors. Like if there was a freeze in Florida and the price of oranges went up, I had to switch to apples. Like that's like the type of stuff that I was able to do in fire camp. You're not going to do that behind the walls. How many years are you spending in fire camp? I was there for three years. And you're sober at this point. You're not using any contraband drugs or anything? No.

So you literally went from facing life in prison, drug addict, career criminal, to ending up at this fire camp as a prisoner, fighting fires and living a much better life. That was part of the plan the whole time. So you set yourself up for that. I mean, do you want me to tell you that little story or no? No, you can give me the brief version. Okay, the brief version is that my original plea deal was 12 years, excuse me, 11 years, eight months. I think we talked earlier and I mentioned that my plea bargain was 11 years.

I meant to say it was 14. My plea deal that I took was 14 years, four months, but I was originally offered a plea deal of 11 years, eight months, but they wanted me to serve it at 80%.

So I turned it down and asked for more time. You asked for more time? I turned it down and asked for more time. Like you said, worst criminal ever. No, this was a good choice. So I turned down the plea deal of 11 years, 8 months to be served at 80% in order to take a plea deal of 14 years, 4 months to serve at halftime because I knew if I got to fire camp and you're serving halftime, you serve one third time. So the moment I got to fire camp, I got 20 months dropped off my sentence. Just like that. So the district attorney had said they wanted me to serve 9 years. That was like part of the...

the agreement, they want Han to serve nine years in prison. I ended up serving six years, 11 months in that term. So I kind of came out ahead in the way that I negotiated. You didn't think it was going to work out. I knew it was going to work out. Oh, you knew it, okay. As long as I didn't get in trouble. That's what every criminal says. In this case, it worked out, right?

Okay. Probably because I wasn't doing the stuff you were talking about, like doing contraband drugs and stuff while I was inside. You know, if I started doing stuff like that, things might've gone different. Now the sex offender you testified against, what happened to him? And did you ever run into him while you're in prison, holding, going to court, anything? Well, he ended up getting 30 years, got 30 years in prison, served at 85%.

And I never was in a facility with him, though when I was in the county jail, since it's the county jail, he was clearly being held in the same grounds as me, although in a different unit. And the closest I ever got to him was on those mornings when he was up for jury selection during his trial. He hadn't yet taken a plea bargain. Because I was technically on the witness list, I was getting called into court every morning, even during jury selection.

even if I wasn't going to be going into court that day because I was incarcerated and because I was on the witness list. I had to show up every day for his court dates.

So I never ended up having to testify because he ended up taking the plea bargain. But I saw him every morning on the bus. So when I get on the bus, I was in the back of the bus with general population. And I would see him in the front of the bus in the cages where they kept protective custody. It's so fascinating just like think about how life and fate work out. I mean, just to think.

You got to think what's going on through this guy's mind. If he never even heard that sound or heard you guys were alert or trying to steal this trike that day or the three wheeler, would he have even opened the door? Would you have even stolen the safe? He could have still been doing that crap right now to this day.

And you just don't know it. Just like it's timing and that changed your life too. Maybe you didn't know that at the moment, but it brought you to a different spot. And it's crazy to think about in that respect. Yeah, well, and you're pointing to a part of the story that I'm not sure we totally fleshed out, which was the fact that that night that I'd done the burglary,

He had decided he needed something from the main house. His parents lived in the main house. So he left that studio and went into the house because he needed like a drink or something from the kitchen. And he watched me and that guy steal the safe from his studio. Oh, he saw you guys. He saw us steal the safe and run off with it. And he reported that burglary. I know he reported the burglary. He reported the burglary. So the way that they eventually got him in a way was the police...

told him hey you know that burglary reported we probably i think we have something we have to ask you about there he showed up at the police department and when he got there they showed him a photograph from the digital man uh the digital camera card and that's kind of like this the way that i read it in the article is they say he melted in his chair how old are you when you get out of prison uh just prior to turning 32 and what's life like for you at that point what kind of struggles are you facing uh

Well, there's the basic struggles. Like I think it took me like three or four months to put my underwear on straight because I was putting it on backwards because in California prisons, the labels up front and that's not how it works with, with boxers on the streets. Uh, honestly, like, uh, I kind of hit the ground running. I had, I had a lot of support from family. Um, and I know most people that leave prison don't, don't have that, um, that benefit, that privilege, but I had a lot of support from family that helped me find an apartment when I got out. I, uh,

I had been going to college when I was still incarcerated. My last year in, I started filling out applications to different universities across California. I didn't tell them I was in prison when I was filling out the applications. And that was a whole process because I didn't have Internet access. So it was like me typing things up, sending them to family, them editing, then sending it back, you know, doing all my applications by hand. And then my mom would input it in the computer. So just a month or two after coming home, I got accepted into all the colleges I applied to.

I ended up going to UC Berkeley, Cal, and graduated there with a bachelor's degree about a year and a half, 18 months after paroling. I was on parole for 16 months, 17 months, and I discharged early. But like I didn't have like the same struggles that people who don't come from a privileged position do. But you recognize that.

I do. Yeah. And really the goal is to have other people have the same opportunities that I had. I mean, I had some stuff come up that's related to just some degree of institutionalization, right? I still get bent out of shape about like too many things in my schedule.

Uh, for whatever reason, like the, the, the sporadic nature of phone calls, the sporadic nature of visiting, um, like the low expectations around work in prison and all that other stuff, like made it such that when I came home, like if I had an appointment at nine in the morning and another appointment at 4 PM, that day felt too full and I would get like lots of anxiety. And that's like stuff I had to work through. The other thing I had to work through since coming home from prison is, um,

You know, we talked about this. Like I didn't really, I was worried about one knucklehead in prison learning my story and misinterpreting it, right? And that meant that I spent a lot of my prison term hiding in a way. Not hiding from the yard, not hiding from the general population, but not trying to reveal too much personal information such that folks would like connect dots and go, oh, that's the guy that was in the newspaper. That's the guy, you know? And so I grew...

Without realizing it, of course, like deathly afraid of vulnerability, deathly afraid of telling my story, deathly afraid of telling people I've been to prison so that when I came home, I'm a chatty fella. You know what I mean? Like I can talk, you know, but, and so people would be surprised to find out that if I would like start to get close to certain topics, I would start freezing up. I'd start having like lots of anxiety. I'd have fight or flight responses. I remember trying to come

to come out of my shell a little bit my last semester when I was at Berkeley and talk about my history in prison. And like I had a fight or flight response when I was talking to people, not typical stage fright. I'd already been talking for 15 or 20 minutes about like my early childhood and whatnot. The second I started talking about prison politics and the violence inside and stuff like that, like my whole body went into kind of a trauma response. And so I had to start working through that and was eventually diagnosed with complex PTSD as a result of just years of living in environments like that.

I have a feeling lots of people who go to prison have something like that. You know, some type of anxiety, some type of stuff related to, you know, the sense of having to remain vigilant the whole time you're there. The sense of having to, like, assure yourself some degree of safety. How did you end up working through that? Well, therapy. Therapy?

I found a therapist who was willing to work with me and I was also fortunate enough. We haven't really talked much about this, but I found meditation and mindfulness and Buddhist practice while I was in prison. And so I was fortunate enough to find a therapist who understood meditation. And so when I went to meet with her, especially in the scenarios when I was actually having some sort of anxiety or fear response, I was able to

do talk therapy, but also do kind of bodily awareness and get meditation training, meditative techniques, ways of getting in touch with the way that fear and anxiety was showing up in my body so that I could name those. And, uh,

through the power of naming sensations that come up in my body when I would have like a fear or trauma response would alleviate their impact, take the power out of them. So sometimes, and I didn't have to do it today, but I'll often have a lot of fear come up when I get ready to talk about myself to people and be vulnerable. And in some scenarios when it's overwhelming, I'll actually begin my talking by telling people like, I have an elevated heart rate. I have tension in my forehead. I have some anxiety.

some heat in my lower back there's sweat in my palms and that very fact of bringing attention and awareness to the way that it showed up in my body has a tendency to alleviate the just being raw and vulnerable with people just trying yeah like it's almost like the antidote to vulnerability the fear of vulnerability is more vulnerability and uh life's a mystery like that huh yeah i mean i um

I make TikToks every day and I, you know, I'll do talks and I do this podcast and I've done like documentaries and stuff. And before everyone, I'm always nervous. Like I have like those pre-interview jitters and I don't know if that ever goes away, but I feel like once I get into it and I'm a, I'm a person that just jumps right in to something when I'm focused on it. So once I get over that little hump, that always just helps me. It's like when you're afraid to jump into the cold pool, but once you get into it, then, then you're good. Yeah.

Did you ever face temptations to relapse on drugs or any other substance? And how did you fight through those temptations after prison? After prison. The second time, the final prison stint. Yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it. I can't say that I have struggled with a desire to use since coming home or even since even early recovery in prison. By the time I was really getting regularly exposed to drugs, like in fire camp,

I wasn't interested. The closest I've come to a craving was when I went to the Stanley Cup final when the Sharks were playing the Pittsburgh Penguins in whatever it was, 2016. And it was a hot day and it was the Stanley Cup final and I was pumped and I went into like a Whole Foods and I just saw a Heineken sitting on the shelf and I'm like, that looks really good.

But I just left the section and then I didn't have to think about it anymore I genuinely feel like for me and this isn't the case for all people with my history Since early recovery so like since those first couple years were over with the extreme suffering of being in the county jail and facing life in prison I've lost the desire to get loaded. I don't have things that particularly trigger me too much So I don't have a whole lot to share on that specifically It's possible that

The suffering was so great that it finally learned me in some way. But it's possible, and sometimes in recovery we talk about the gift of desperation, that everything had crumbled in my life so significantly that I was willing to do anything and everything to never have to experience that degree of pain and suffering again.

And because of that, I recoil, I suppose they say this in the program, but I recoil from the idea of getting loaded as if from a hot flame. And this doesn't happen to everyone. I mean, I've met a lot of guys that have gone to prison and they go back or they start abusing substances again. And you're just you're one of those cases where it worked the other way because the system set up.

you know, to fail essentially. And a lot of people go back and go down that path. And it's good hearing that you were able to come out on the other side of that. Well, and to be clear, I say this, but I don't say it as if like that's something that happened

almost 18 years ago and that I haven't done things since to ensure that I don't want to get loaded. I spent my first 10 years from the moment I went to jail, that first day in April 2005, I spent the following 10 years in 12-step programs. I did the 12 steps. I had people sponsor me in the 12 steps. I sponsored other men in the 12 steps. Since then, I've transitioned to a different recovery program where it's more mindfulness and Buddhist-based.

But I have a group that my wife and I started seven or eight years ago now that every Sunday we meet, you know, like I stay connected to people. I'm involved with service for people who are either system impacted people in prison or people in recovery. So like I stay connected in a way that keeps me connected.

cognizant of where drugs and relapse can lead me. And I also stay involved in service. So like you could argue that part of the reason I don't have a desire to use is not only did I suffer severe consequences for using, I stay connected with the recovery community, uh,

18 years almost now. Um, I, I stay involved in practices that support a healthy and happy lifestyle. So I don't feel the need to use. That's great, man. What do you do for work now? I'm a union electrician. I'm currently helping build a part of an airport and airport terminal. I'm actually also an elected union official. Um,

That's not really my that's not my job. It's more, again, kind of like service work, because after I graduated from college, I had a heck of a time finding work as a felon. And I remembered something, a presentation that had been given to me when I was in the county jail by local members of the electricians union. They said, we don't care what your past is so long as it stays there.

I remembered what they'd said. So when I was having a hard time finding work shortly after graduating from college, after coming home from prison, I remembered that promise from them. I followed through with that and I did a five-year apprenticeship and they never questioned or cared about where I'd come from. All they cared about is the quality of my work and the attitude I bring to a job. So I try to give back. Which the world needs more of. That's for sure. Absolutely. And then, uh,

Yeah, I teach meditation in San Quentin State Prison. I'm part of a mindful prisons program. What's that like going back into a prison, even a prison that you were at? You were incarcerated there. I was at that prison. What's that like? Honestly, before I'd done it, I thought I was going to have some sort of reaction, right? I thought I was going to have anxiety or fear or whatever come up. But I realized that, as is the case with most things, like the worst part about fear is

Is the is everything leading up to that thing you're fearing and then the thing that you're fearing is usually not that bad Right, and so that was my experience going back into prison I had like some fear and trepidation about what it was going to happen But literally once I walked back inside and this is going to sound bad to maybe people who have never been to prison I felt like I'd gone home. That's just what it felt like. Um, I came full circle. Yeah, you know, I felt like um

some degree of the person I am today is a direct result of people who gave of themselves their free time, their love, their care for people that society wants to discard. And they weren't employed. They weren't paid. They just came in and they gave to us. And here I am trying to in some way do the same thing for others that they did for me. So yeah, some full circle. But like just being in the room and

It sounds wild, but it's like I'm in there in a circle and meditating with these guys and it's like, these are my people. That's great. It just, it feels like the right place. You know, it's not scary whatsoever. What do you say to the person, teen, adult, whoever that's listening to this right now and is struggling with substance abuse? What's your message to them?

That's a tough one because, I mean, I think about who I was when I was a teenager and using and whether adults saying like, you know, maybe you should stop using drugs, how I would have responded to that. And it wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have taken the advice. And sometimes I'm at, I do go back to the high school I dropped out of and I talk to the kids there and they ask me sometimes, you know, like, what are your recommendations for drugs? And so I guess I can repeat what I say to them. And essentially it's,

There's nothing I can say that's going to stop any of you teenagers from using. You're going to party when you party. And if you're not partying now, more of you will party when you get to college. It's just it's just what's going to happen. And I don't know what the statistics are on people who we don't even have to think of alcohol and pot as part of the problem. But I don't know what the statistics are of people who try hard drugs.

How many of them become bonafide addicts, right? I wouldn't even say it's the majority of them. Let's just say one in 10 people who do coke become coke heads. Let's say one in 50 people who do meth become meth heads. I don't know what the numbers are, but I essentially say to those teenagers, you don't know if you're that one. Now, you don't know if you're going to be the person who is like me, who felt like Superman, who felt like God after trying that dope.

And you don't know if that one time is going to be the one time that leads you all the way to prison or worse, because there are worse places that can lead you than prison. So that's the recommendation I make. And I just say, consider the probability or the possibilities. And if, uh, if you think you have a mind that's inclined towards prison,

doing things that you like in excess, then you might want to consider not following that path or going down that road. Something I always struggled with was I would do certain things without thinking of the consequences of those actions. I never thought, okay, if I do this, what could happen?

So I think it's important and it's powerful for people that go through situations like we've done and suffered the consequences of those actions because it puts everything into perspective. It's like, okay, what happens if I eat at this restaurant instead of eating at another one? Things like that. It applies to anything in life.

So people looking at stories like yours and they can think, okay, do I really want to try this meth because my life could take a turn and I could be dead or I could be alive or I can end up in prison. And it just gets that conversation going of, you know, the what ifs and really thinking about the consequences. And not a lot of people can come out of what you went through in one piece and doing well.

If you never found that safe that day, do you think your life would be a lot different? Do you think you'd be where you're at now? No, I'd still be in prison. So the safe saved your life, essentially? A couple people lives. It's kind of a weird irony to think that if I hadn't commit a particular felony, I would still be in prison. Like there's a...

it doesn't make sense and i'm not even like a god-fearing sort of man but there are there are elements to my story that make you wonder right like it does it like to that night right when he had left the house to go to the other house to get to the kitchen and saw me slip in and steal his safe if i'd had like another cigarette or if i'd hit like a stoplight or if i'd hit another green light whatever the circumstance anything that delayed me a minute or two

my life would have been completely different. His life would have been completely different. The little girl whose photos were in the safes life would have been completely different. And so it just makes you, makes me certainly have a certain degree of awe with the way the universe works. And it's, it just reinforces the idea that, um, uh, when we find opportunities in life, we need to, we need to grab them. Uh, I still feel in a way like I'm on borrowed time. You know, I, I,

wouldn't be up for parole. If I had just gotten the bare minimum, the 25 years to life, I wouldn't be up for parole, at least a hearing for a couple more years. And so in many ways, I feel like the, since the moment I came home in February of 2012 till now has all been borrowed time. It's all free time. It's all time that's like,

to develop and give back to the world in a way that I couldn't have previously. And maybe in a way that can make amends for all the harm that I've caused. It's free time. It's extra time. It's all a blessing in some capacity. Um,

Yeah. I don't know what to say about that. You said it all right there. Matt, thank you for coming on the show today. It's been great. It's great talking to you. I'm excited to see, you know, see you keep blossoming and then doing your thing and just, um, you know, keep being you, man. Like you're an inspiration to a lot of people and keep sharing your story. Don't shy away from that. Keep going to the prisons, keep showing up. And it has a, it has a big effect on people.

And I wish you the best, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for asking.