Speaker 1: School of Humans? Is this still recording? It's on? You're
Speaker 1: just going to edit all this bullshit. It's a wasted time, though,
Speaker 1: isn't it having to listen to Semire say something. I
Speaker 1: might say something amazing. I always say something amazing. I've
Speaker 1: just turned on the recorder in front of my dad
Speaker 1: at his house in northern California. This is our first
Speaker 1: recording session, and he's a little uncomfortable being recorded, and
Speaker 1: for good reason, because while my dad was an amazing
Speaker 1: father who made sure I grew up with a storybook childhood,
Speaker 1: this is the first time he is telling me about
Speaker 1: his double life, because for twenty plus years, from the
Speaker 1: late sixties to the late nineteen eighties, my dad was
Speaker 1: a pot smuggler of considerable proportions. Do you want to
Speaker 1: just tell us about what the bond of outlaws is
Speaker 1: to not talk about anything ever? Do you mean? Is
Speaker 1: that what you're speaking of? That? It's that's what we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to do is talk about it. So getting
Speaker 1: me in a whole bunch of my crazy friends to
Speaker 1: be talking about staff is a little fucking crazy. For
Speaker 1: the past year, I've been interviewing my parents and all
Speaker 1: these people in my life who I've learned we're part
Speaker 1: of the smuggling network, and hearing these stories has truly
Speaker 1: changed my life. I'm Rainbow Valentine, and this is disorganized
Speaker 1: crime smuggler's daughter, young, free and groovy making it up.
Speaker 1: We roll along country even brain making it up. So
Speaker 1: here's what I tell people about this podcast. Like most
Speaker 1: kids in the nineteen eighties, I was obsessed with Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones movies. I would dig for treasure in my backyard
Speaker 1: all the time. Well, actually, during one of my digging
Speaker 1: bouts in the mid eighties, when I was about eight
Speaker 1: or nine, there was in fact half a million dollars
Speaker 1: buried in my backyard. Well it wasn't like you'd find that.
Speaker 1: You would have discovered a big steel box which would
Speaker 1: have appeared to be a pirate treasure chest, which would
Speaker 1: have been a treasures like So, this is my dad.
Speaker 1: He's just finished telling me about one of his biggest smuggles,
Speaker 1: helping some of his old smuggling pals distribute sixty thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of Lebanese hash. He ended up smuggling four thousand pounds.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, just four thousand pounds of hash. No
Speaker 1: big deal or the equivalent of two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which at the time was over one point
Speaker 1: three million dollars in today's money, and my dad needed
Speaker 1: to keep that money safe until the Pounds who initially
Speaker 1: smuggled the hash into the country from Lebanon could come
Speaker 1: and collect. But my dad had a problem. He didn't
Speaker 1: know where to put that much cash in my snug
Speaker 1: childhood home, so he decided to bury the money in
Speaker 1: the yard. I got a big steel box, and I
Speaker 1: put it all in this steel box, and then I
Speaker 1: went out to our gardens, which were all at that
Speaker 1: time BlackBerry bushes. The whole acreage was all BlackBerry so
Speaker 1: you couldn't really see much of anything. And I went
Speaker 1: from this bush to this bush to whatever and found
Speaker 1: the spot to bury it. And I buried the ship. Finally,
Speaker 1: a long time later, it could be six months, did
Speaker 1: I get a call saying, yo, bro, we want to
Speaker 1: come over. We're gonna come out next week and pick
Speaker 1: it up. Cool, No problem, okay, So I had to
Speaker 1: go out there and find it. However, by the time
Speaker 1: that had happened, we had already worked on our land
Speaker 1: and got rid of all of the blackberries and I
Speaker 1: mean I had hired these two guys to not only
Speaker 1: get rid of the blackberries, but to dig up the
Speaker 1: roots and sift them, sift through them with it, so
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have so it would become gardens. All my
Speaker 1: idiot landmarks were destroyed. And it have been so long
Speaker 1: since I put the fucking thing in the ground. I
Speaker 1: couldn't initially find it, and I started to freak out,
Speaker 1: and then I freaked out thinking, oh fuck, did these
Speaker 1: guys do in the garden find it and just take it?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. The yard of my childhood home was
Speaker 1: three fourths of an acre on a steep hill. It's huge, precarious,
Speaker 1: and it always took a ton of work. My mom
Speaker 1: garden constantly planting massive bamboo groves with huge shovels, not
Speaker 1: dinky hand spades. I was probably there for the frantic search,
Speaker 1: but I blocked it out because nothing stresses me out
Speaker 1: like my dad's stress, which is huge, theatrical, and like
Speaker 1: a frazzled, angry cabby in Manhattan traffic, super New Yorky.
Speaker 1: I'm sure my parents frantic search was full of blood,
Speaker 1: sweat and tears. Where the fuck is it? Oh? Crust
Speaker 1: spoiler he finds it buried now near the pear tree.
Speaker 1: But in this moment, my dad learns an important smuggling lesson.
Speaker 1: If you're going to bury treasure in the backyard, remember
Speaker 1: where the fuck you put it? Did you ever bury
Speaker 1: stuff in the yard again? No? Anyway, Hi, I'm Rainbow Valentine.
Speaker 1: So Rainbow Valentine is not my real name, although I
Speaker 1: did start calling myself Rainbow Valentine when I was five
Speaker 1: because I thought that rainbows and Valentines were the two
Speaker 1: most beautiful things in the world, so together it would
Speaker 1: be the most beautiful thing in the universe. So I've
Speaker 1: spent the last year on a midlife reckoning, as my
Speaker 1: BFF says, opening Pandora's box and learning about what my
Speaker 1: parents and most of the adults in my childhood were
Speaker 1: up to. While I endeavored to get cast as Annie
Speaker 1: or Dorothy. Now that never happened, but I have learned
Speaker 1: all about the grown ups in my life smuggling thousands
Speaker 1: of pounds of pot quilst I willingly humiliated myself by
Speaker 1: building out somewhere over the rainbow at the Senior Citizens Center.
Speaker 1: I'm using this alias of Rainbow Valentine because most of
Speaker 1: the people i'm talking to, former smugglers, that is, are
Speaker 1: not comfortable having their names revealed. My parents have finally
Speaker 1: settled on Walter and Taffy Lemur. We cycled through Kimmy Whitefish,
Speaker 1: various other ridiculous names. To be clear, I've known my
Speaker 1: dad was a pot smuggler since I was fourteen. I
Speaker 1: remember my older sister, Verdicu, who was in college at
Speaker 1: the time, sat me down one summer day and in
Speaker 1: a hushed voice, told me the family secret that our
Speaker 1: dad was a big time pot smuggler in California. Then
Speaker 1: she said to never tell anyone that I knew this information,
Speaker 1: and definitely don't mention it to our parents. Well. Being
Speaker 1: a bit of a loudmouth, I did mention it a
Speaker 1: few times, and in return received a deadly serious warning
Speaker 1: to never speak of this to anyone from my dad.
Speaker 1: Before this year. The last time I even tried to
Speaker 1: bring up the whole being a smuggler for twenty two
Speaker 1: years thing was when I came home from college in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen nineties, more than five years after my
Speaker 1: dad was out of the smuggling business. My dad was
Speaker 1: driving me home from the airport, and I remember him
Speaker 1: slamming on the brakes, and he said, well, I'll just
Speaker 1: let him tell you what he told me. I remember
Speaker 1: very much stopping the car and to you, it is
Speaker 1: critical that you never speak of this to anyone ever,
Speaker 1: because more than anything, Bruce lips singing ships. Ah. But
Speaker 1: times they are a changing. All over California, you'll see
Speaker 1: billboards advertising pot delivery and dispensaries. There are apps where
Speaker 1: you can get pot legally dropped off right at your doorstep. Also,
Speaker 1: statutes of limitations on my dad's smuggling days have long
Speaker 1: run out, and as they age, my dad and mom
Speaker 1: are feeling a little more comfortable with the idea of
Speaker 1: sharing their secret stories. Good morning Vietnam, is Mom, there
Speaker 1: too are okay? Hi? I called my parents on their anniversary.
Speaker 1: They've been together since nineteen seventy but only married in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. They wanted to make sure they
Speaker 1: really liked each other, and I asked them to introduce
Speaker 1: themselves and their aliases, Taffy and Walter Lemur. Hi, this
Speaker 1: is taf Lemur and my husband, Walter Lemer. Walter and
Speaker 1: I are in our seventies and I'm under my life
Speaker 1: seven days and we came from the fifties, from the
Speaker 1: sixties and stepped into the revolution of the Hippie revolution
Speaker 1: when the sixties happened, and then we never left. And
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit about your husband,
Speaker 1: Walter Lemur my dad if he's a connoisseur of art
Speaker 1: and decorations and food, and he likes to talk. He's
Speaker 1: a schmoozer. It's from New York. And Dad, can you
Speaker 1: introduce your wife? Hi there, Walter here. I came out
Speaker 1: from the East Coast in nineteen seventy from New York.
Speaker 1: I landed on the porch of two of the grateful
Speaker 1: Dad's roadies, and within a couple of months being in
Speaker 1: the center of that she I was introduced through them
Speaker 1: to your lovely mother, with whom I've been for forty
Speaker 1: nine years, the great and famous Kaffi Leaner. With my eccentric, Bohemian,
Speaker 1: artsy intellectual parents at the helm, I had an idyllic childhood.
Speaker 1: When I was a toddler, our family, me, my mom,
Speaker 1: my dad, and my six year old sister, Vertica, moved
Speaker 1: just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Saclito to
Speaker 1: Mill Valley, a redwood beetreed valley, nestled below Mount Tamil Pious,
Speaker 1: named for its eighteen hundred sawmill, which still stands in
Speaker 1: Old Mill Park. It was where families from all over
Speaker 1: the Bay Area summerd in the eighteen hundreds. After the
Speaker 1: Golden Gate Bridge was constructed in nineteen thirty seven, real
Speaker 1: estate boomed in Mill Valley and it hasn't stopped since.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, Mill Valley became an area associated
Speaker 1: with great wealth, with so many people making their millions
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and moving north to raise kids. Nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: Mill Valley had a quiet, low key, home spun hippie
Speaker 1: wealth vibe. It was charming, rural, a funky town full
Speaker 1: of small businesses and young counterculture families, progressive intellectuals, rock stars,
Speaker 1: nature lovers, and old California gold Rush moneyed families. I
Speaker 1: remember singing this song about Mill Valley as a kid.
Speaker 1: It's by Rita Abrahams, a Mill Valley resident, and it
Speaker 1: perfectly illustrates the feel good hippie vibe of my childhood
Speaker 1: in Northern California. People at a Fridges spa and stop
Speaker 1: and talk with you, walk and you can be as
Speaker 1: friendly as you want to. Be talking about love. Those
Speaker 1: flutes drive on nostal drum just feels good and just
Speaker 1: feels right. Anyway, among the rolling landscapes and redwoods was
Speaker 1: my house, stucked among the trees, BlackBerry bushes and roses
Speaker 1: that adorned our driveway, which to me as a kid
Speaker 1: seemed like the longest dirt driveway in the world. Our
Speaker 1: family was close, always together, cooking and eating, hanging out
Speaker 1: in the main part of the house, which was an
Speaker 1: open kitchen, dining room, living room with giant windows and
Speaker 1: sliding glass doors to the deck, quoi pond, and massive
Speaker 1: gardens full of fruit trees, play structures, the trampoline, and
Speaker 1: more so much more I've since learned. Our house was
Speaker 1: usually full of laughter, delicious food, original art, and it
Speaker 1: was a center of social activity. My parents' friends constantly
Speaker 1: dropped by and stayed for dinner, and every weekend my
Speaker 1: friends visited for slumber parties, spending multiple nights. My friends
Speaker 1: and I would concoct stories that we would theatrically record
Speaker 1: into my cassette player, with me always taking center stage.
Speaker 1: Guys coming for Then I shall cook my specialty brain
Speaker 1: a lah noodle. What shall you cook? I shall hook
Speaker 1: my specialty rive allah I bill yuh me yum, It's
Speaker 1: so delicious. Every night, my parents would read to me
Speaker 1: in my treehouse loft bed wall papered with snow white
Speaker 1: in the Seven Dwarves. I went to an artsy, holistic
Speaker 1: progressive school where each day started with an hour of music.
Speaker 1: When I was eight, my sister thirteen. In the early eighties,
Speaker 1: our little brother was born and I became the middle child.
Speaker 1: My memories of childhood are joyful, full of abundance, both
Speaker 1: the material like playing legos at our Tahoe house, and
Speaker 1: the immaterial like community, magical, spiritual, connected to the earthedness, friends, family,
Speaker 1: and a lot of absurdities. When I look back now,
Speaker 1: I feel ridiculous for not realizing that something was going
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes in our family home. Our house
Speaker 1: was pretty different from TV houses like The Brady Bunch,
Speaker 1: my favorite show. For instance, we had a second parking
Speaker 1: lot on the property for all the extra oversized vehicles
Speaker 1: my family owned. The Brady Bunch only had that one
Speaker 1: wood paneled station wagon. Our car part had a clutch
Speaker 1: of outdoor storage closets packed with camping gear, ski gear,
Speaker 1: and dozens of hardback seventies sampsonite burnt sianta suit cases
Speaker 1: with combo locks. Okay, sure, we were a family of five,
Speaker 1: but we never seemed to use the suitcases. They were
Speaker 1: foemy inside and large enough for me to fit in,
Speaker 1: and I loved playing with them, pretending I was stowaway
Speaker 1: or hidden refugee, climbing inside and shutting the lid. Now
Speaker 1: I get it. These amazing large suitcases were for transporting weed.
Speaker 1: I also have fond memories of going to these weekly
Speaker 1: baseball games with my dad. I'd run around and play
Speaker 1: in the crisp marine air around a glossy green baseball field,
Speaker 1: enjoying myself, maybe batting a ball or two, and my
Speaker 1: dad would play with all these guys I've known my
Speaker 1: whole life, the coach Baseball Bob, the Philly Boys, the
Speaker 1: French hippie tal Joe, Peach Blossom, Loose Larry, the Vietnam Vet.
Speaker 1: And I'm now discovering that all of these people who
Speaker 1: are essentially like my surrogate ants and uncles, all of
Speaker 1: them were also smugglers or growers or somehow in the
Speaker 1: pot industry big time. And here's how oblivious I was
Speaker 1: as a kid, slash amazed I didn't realize what was
Speaker 1: going on. They're always garbage bags of pot in my
Speaker 1: dad's office. Garbage bags, you guys. But this just seemed
Speaker 1: normal to me. My parents seemed normal. I mean, they
Speaker 1: weren't straight that as, they weren't the typical nine to
Speaker 1: five suburban parents with zero interest in Tibetan Tonka's karmas
Speaker 1: aadelic poster art. But they also weren't living on a
Speaker 1: hippie bus and wearing tide like lots of my friends parents.
Speaker 1: And plus, pott was everywhere in Marin County in northern California.
Speaker 1: Everyone's family had pot around, just maybe not garbage bags full.
Speaker 1: So when my sister told me the shocking news that
Speaker 1: our parents were drug dealers when I was fourteen, I
Speaker 1: was mortified. These are the Nancy Reagan just say no,
Speaker 1: this is your brain on Drugs TV campaign years in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. Drug dealers are the worst, according to
Speaker 1: TV and the rest of the world. Do I have
Speaker 1: your permission to record? Yes? Okay, awesome, Okay, So this
Speaker 1: is Petunia, one of my best friends growing up in
Speaker 1: an honorary member of our family. She knew me and
Speaker 1: my parents really well. Yeah. So my bff Petunia spent
Speaker 1: so much time, you spent so much time at our house.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your stories of what you thought
Speaker 1: was going on in my house and if you ever
Speaker 1: had any what did you think of my house and
Speaker 1: my parents? What did you did you have any inkling
Speaker 1: of what they did for a job? And yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course I knew that your mom was
Speaker 1: a painter and a mother, and that was very clear, transparent,
Speaker 1: obvious and made a lot of sense, you know, you
Speaker 1: could see. And with your dad, it wasn't clear what
Speaker 1: he was doing. I feel like we talked about it
Speaker 1: even as children, and and said that he was a businessman.
Speaker 1: He knew that he was a businessman, but definitely not
Speaker 1: like a nine to five, not a suit. But we
Speaker 1: knew that he made deals. I knew that he made
Speaker 1: deals because he would like this. I feel like this
Speaker 1: must have been part of his conversation. That it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm working on a deal or whatever, but some kind
Speaker 1: of deal that it involved talking on the phone. And
Speaker 1: so your dad was around and doing business and and
Speaker 1: that's that's all I knew. Really, yeah, me too, And
Speaker 1: I didn't care, like that's all that was all the
Speaker 1: business man that was. It was an answer that was
Speaker 1: answer enough for me. Yeah, and I could perceive that
Speaker 1: your your family was well off. Your house was like
Speaker 1: an oasis of plenitude. Do you remember my dad being
Speaker 1: super high strung, Yeah, so stressed out. Yeah yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. It's sort of interesting, but like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a lot of other people's dads just
Speaker 1: weren't really around, so like who knows what those dads were, Like,
Speaker 1: who else's dad was around as much as your dad,
Speaker 1: Like nobody's. I love hearing Petunia talk about my dad
Speaker 1: like this, because he really was around a lot. There's
Speaker 1: something special about how my dad subverts the good old
Speaker 1: dad role. Clad in a far side T shirt, my
Speaker 1: dad would pad around in his office and his socks,
Speaker 1: yelling into the phone, stealing our Halloween candy, schooling us
Speaker 1: on opera and art history. Oh and he was also smuggling.
Speaker 1: After I found out the family secret in my teens,
Speaker 1: Petunia was the only person I confided in. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember you telling me in this tone of like I
Speaker 1: just found out, how can you believe it? And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I can't believe it actually, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: like it was not at all surprising, but I didn't know,
Speaker 1: which is funny because I was shocked. I grew up
Speaker 1: in this world where there was it was. Pot was
Speaker 1: everywhere in my household. Yeah, it wasn't hidden, I mean
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was just part of the furniture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was totally uninterested in it. Yeah, it was boring.
Speaker 1: I thought pot was uncool. I thought it was lame.
Speaker 1: I thought it was what grown ups did. I thought
Speaker 1: it was like totally lame. And it blows my mind
Speaker 1: think that literally, at any moment, my parents could have
Speaker 1: been busted and we could have been foster children. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this is something that's interesting to me. So my mom
Speaker 1: is thinks of herself as a very overprotective person. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious what she knew about your dad's livelihood because
Speaker 1: I know that she did the books for your dad
Speaker 1: for a while, and I wonder what she knew because
Speaker 1: she thinks of herself as an overprotective parent. But then
Speaker 1: she was allowing me to spend vast amounts of time
Speaker 1: in this household that like, like what if your dad
Speaker 1: was busted or what if some professional enemy. I don't
Speaker 1: know how likely that this would be. I really have
Speaker 1: no idea, but like, did he know people who were dangerous?
Speaker 1: Possibly he did? Coming up, my dad loses all of
Speaker 1: his money and a smuggling trip gone wrong, which just
Speaker 1: happened to be the night I was born. I'm Rainbow
Speaker 1: Valentine and this is disorganized crime. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: The origin of the word pot is from pataguaya, a
Speaker 1: wine or brandy that has been steeped in cannabis buds.
Speaker 1: Pataguaya is short for potassion duguaya, which means the drink
Speaker 1: of grief. It does seem this job brought its fair
Speaker 1: share of grief with it. If a deal went wrong,
Speaker 1: you could lose everything. Can Dad stop clinking around in
Speaker 1: the back, We can hear him and bail? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dad is not able to be quiet. Good job. Enjoy
Speaker 1: your oatmeal, dad, So mom, can you talk about how
Speaker 1: critical it was that your jobs were see a secret?
Speaker 1: Talk about the high stakes of this job. The high
Speaker 1: stakes were that we was the ego and everybody thought
Speaker 1: it was the devil. And if you got caught with
Speaker 1: even an ounce who went to jail and could lose
Speaker 1: your kids. It was super high stakes. So you could
Speaker 1: you have to be really careful about not talking about
Speaker 1: your business to any of your friends or parents of
Speaker 1: the other children, or the soccer parents. You just have
Speaker 1: to conduct your life like it was really normal, just
Speaker 1: like everybody else. Dad finished his oatmeal and chimed in.
Speaker 1: I mean, my job was to do it right and
Speaker 1: stay under the radar and be this schizophrenic living two
Speaker 1: lives basically didn't bother me. It was either do it
Speaker 1: right for begad. It was similar to war. You stick
Speaker 1: your head above the foxhole and it gets blown off.
Speaker 1: People are getting busted for less than an ounce of pot.
Speaker 1: Now that wasn't real big time staff, but when you
Speaker 1: got into what we were doing, it would cost a
Speaker 1: fortunate attorneys even if you did get off, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was living sort of in two worlds. Now.
Speaker 1: Both of my parents talk about leading a double life.
Speaker 1: On one hand, the parents, I know, they're devoted, involved,
Speaker 1: adoring parents and upstanding citizens who participate, to my embarrassment
Speaker 1: in my school in life almost too enthusiastically. And on
Speaker 1: the other hand, their counterculture outlaws smuggling up to several
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds of pot across a god fearing country
Speaker 1: swarming with law enforcement and full of hippie and drug
Speaker 1: fearing Americans. My dad's career as a smuggler coincided with
Speaker 1: the inception of the War on Drugs, when the country
Speaker 1: was focused on sending drug dealers and users to prison,
Speaker 1: and more and more dangerous drugs were entering the transcontinental
Speaker 1: smuggling trade like heroin and cocaine drugs were If you
Speaker 1: got caught up in those smuggling networks, could lead to
Speaker 1: a bullet through the head. You've mentioned feeling like you
Speaker 1: led a devil life, Can you speak about that? But yeah,
Speaker 1: well then I had I had my friends, which were
Speaker 1: all my old friends. We trusted everybody from their word,
Speaker 1: and they were separate from all the people that lived
Speaker 1: in the community, you know, and the people at the stores,
Speaker 1: and even your doctor didn't know who else was going on,
Speaker 1: you know. Very stressful to lead two loves, I remember,
Speaker 1: ba Yeah, but they were just coming and going. Those
Speaker 1: were I mean, I'm talking about room full of pot
Speaker 1: where we stabshed at the garbage bags. Pot were just samples.
Speaker 1: So the garbage bag is a pot I remember from
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, were just the tip of
Speaker 1: the pot iceberg of how much pot my dad was moving.
Speaker 1: They were samples. Really, At any given point in my childhood,
Speaker 1: my dad was storing up to four or five thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of pot in our garage or the family storage
Speaker 1: unit a few miles away from our house. The true
Speaker 1: and complete story of my birth is the perfect saga
Speaker 1: to show this double life that my parents led. I
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen seventy four on a dark and
Speaker 1: stormy night in West Marin, California. We're gonna start. It
Speaker 1: was a dark and stormy night. Well, but yeah, the
Speaker 1: arm and hit. Yeah, it was just daring and raining
Speaker 1: and raining and dark and mary. Well it was dark
Speaker 1: and stormy. Yes, it was quite a storm. And that
Speaker 1: night my young parents, my dad and his twenties, my
Speaker 1: mom in her early thirties, lost their life savings in
Speaker 1: a smuggling trip gone wrong. Now, their life savings was
Speaker 1: about thirty six thousand dollars in nineteen seventy four, which
Speaker 1: is one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars today. I
Speaker 1: just figured that's what you cost. So in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: my parents were living in a handmaid hippie hobbit house
Speaker 1: in West Merin, California. It had a long winding staircase
Speaker 1: up to the circular door. My very pregnant mom would
Speaker 1: tend to my sister the Japanese gardens and her herd
Speaker 1: of animals. She hated the goose. My dad was enjoying
Speaker 1: the country life of chickens and his first chainsaw for
Speaker 1: firewood in this tiny rural town in westmore in California,
Speaker 1: near Point Raise National Seashore. But among the hanging plants
Speaker 1: hippi embroidery and art that adorned the inside of the house.
Speaker 1: My parents had a custom built secret room which at
Speaker 1: any given point could stash up to four thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of pot. They couldn't the movies. It was. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a real sacred room where if you picked out a book,
Speaker 1: when you took out a screwdriver, and then there was
Speaker 1: a bookshelf, and you had to remove the bookshelf first,
Speaker 1: and then the book the books you took the books
Speaker 1: off in the bookshelf off, and then the things that
Speaker 1: held up the shelf had screws into the wall, and
Speaker 1: one of those screws was a key to open the door.
Speaker 1: Right before I was born, my dad was at the
Speaker 1: tail end of a big trip smugglers lingo a trip
Speaker 1: is a business deal from start to finish. The entire
Speaker 1: deal is a trip for our purposes. Trips are pot
Speaker 1: deals from risk saving the load to delivering it to
Speaker 1: the next location. Slash buyer trips last anywhere from a
Speaker 1: few weeks to months to a year. Trips include the
Speaker 1: journey of the product from its point of origin places
Speaker 1: like Mexico, Columbia, Thailand, Lebanon, to its final destination, in
Speaker 1: my dad's case, northern California, or his hometown, New York City.
Speaker 1: My dad's entire career in pot smuggling was as a middleman.
Speaker 1: He was a pot distributor. He's never a small time
Speaker 1: street dealer in a sketchy alleyway. He never sold ounces.
Speaker 1: He actually laughed in my face when I asked if
Speaker 1: he ever sold just one pound at a time. He
Speaker 1: would get hundreds or thousands of pounds a pot from
Speaker 1: the smugglers who took it off the boats that came
Speaker 1: into San Francisco Bay. This pot would go to my
Speaker 1: dad's secure location. He would then transport the pot to
Speaker 1: a few of his trusted associates, who would in turn
Speaker 1: sell it in smaller and smaller amounts down the smuggling
Speaker 1: food chain. If the pot came into San Francisco Bay
Speaker 1: usually from South America or South Asia, my dad would
Speaker 1: transport or to his guy in New York City. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: if my dad's supplier in New York City his code
Speaker 1: name is Blondie, had a load come into the New
Speaker 1: York City Harbor, usually from the Middle East, my dad
Speaker 1: would get a ton or more. By the way, a
Speaker 1: ton is two thousand pounds, and he would move it
Speaker 1: across country and distribute it to the people in San
Speaker 1: Francisco Bay area. However, it wasn't organized. Remember this is
Speaker 1: disorganized crime. Loads just sort of came in and people
Speaker 1: found out, and it was very loose. Now, my dad
Speaker 1: didn't work with groups, just a handful of lifelong trusted
Speaker 1: friends who are still lifelong trusted friends. The relationships formed
Speaker 1: were similar to the bonds formed by soldiers in war.
Speaker 1: My dad and his associates trusted each other implicitly, and
Speaker 1: integrity was everything. You were as good as your word. Now.
Speaker 1: On the night of my birth, my dad made three
Speaker 1: big mistakes. On this trip, known as the Second Panama
Speaker 1: Red Trip. My dad handed off the pot he had
Speaker 1: that he had stored in the secret room in the
Speaker 1: hippie Hobbit House to three drivers known as the Brooklyn Boys,
Speaker 1: who moved it from were In County to New York City.
Speaker 1: That was the first mistake. Just you stupid kids from Yeah,
Speaker 1: young stupid kids from Brooklyn, who vegetarians, who like getting high,
Speaker 1: and we're real psychedelicized vegetarian kids. Okay, it's fine that
Speaker 1: they're vegetarians, but what we're getting at is that these
Speaker 1: were young, inexperienced kids who didn't take extra precautions when
Speaker 1: hauling loads of pot across the country. Like when my
Speaker 1: dad was more established, he would never get high while working.
Speaker 1: That was reserved for after if the trip was successful. Well,
Speaker 1: these kids, they wanted to have fun on the job.
Speaker 1: The next mistake was the flashy spank a new vehicle
Speaker 1: my dad provided for transporting the loads across the country.
Speaker 1: That was really a stupid of errors because the truck
Speaker 1: I bought to do this, we decided we got a
Speaker 1: new the fanciest big four wheels h GMC pickup. It
Speaker 1: was like right off the lot, remember that white and
Speaker 1: yellow orange? Yet what was it? White and gold? Oh?
Speaker 1: I remember it very clearly. The way I looked at
Speaker 1: things you wanted to have the best of everything the bed.
Speaker 1: But that was really part of the stupid thing, because
Speaker 1: we had right, We had kids who looked like hippies,
Speaker 1: smoking pot all through it, and the whole fucking bed
Speaker 1: was filled. That we built a bed, and we put
Speaker 1: in three hundred and fifty pounds under this bed that
Speaker 1: we had built in the U in the back of
Speaker 1: the truck, in the pick in the pickup bed. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been a new truck. It was too flashy
Speaker 1: a truck for these scrunky looking twice four year olds.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have done that, and I shouldn't have given
Speaker 1: him my profit. I should have just taken my profit,
Speaker 1: kept it safe, and sold it off as I would
Speaker 1: sell it. The third mistake, and the most critical, was
Speaker 1: that my dad fronted all of his profits in this
Speaker 1: last truck load. Basically, the Brooklyn Boys had already transported
Speaker 1: several loads of pot from arine New York City, but
Speaker 1: all of my dad's profits from this trip were dependent
Speaker 1: on that last truck load. I let these guys talk
Speaker 1: me into fronting all of my profits in their last truck,
Speaker 1: which was about his damastic instead of just taking our
Speaker 1: winnings and packing up and going, and greed is right.
Speaker 1: I mean I wanted however more, I wanted more. It
Speaker 1: wasn't enough that we've made like fifty grand in in
Speaker 1: two months. My dad thought that fronting his money would
Speaker 1: increase his profits, but in fact, good old fashioned greed
Speaker 1: reared its ugly head and bit my dad in the ass.
Speaker 1: Because that dark, stormy night that the Brooklyn boys set
Speaker 1: off with this last potload, they get busted. But before
Speaker 1: my dad hears anything about this, my very pregnant mom
Speaker 1: goes into libor and all the focus goes from the
Speaker 1: trip to having a baby, and then off goes to
Speaker 1: the truck and she goes into labor and just mind on,
Speaker 1: I lost my mind. I was born at home and
Speaker 1: my dad, always a camera enthusiast, videotaped the event with
Speaker 1: a brand new camera, one of the first of its
Speaker 1: kind for home video. We got the tape digitized. My
Speaker 1: poor mother. My mom is surrounded by my dad, the
Speaker 1: midwife of some family friends, my five year old sister, Vertica,
Speaker 1: the cats, our family dog. Is we're paying us the
Speaker 1: picture of what mom's upstairs. No, we're well, there are
Speaker 1: several level No, we're down in the in the middle
Speaker 1: section in a water bed, a water bed by the
Speaker 1: fireplace at two thirty. I mean, after this this incredibly
Speaker 1: intense storm for twenty four hours or more, the storm
Speaker 1: breaks and boom out you pop, girl, girl. So I
Speaker 1: swaped you up, and then the doctor combs, and so
Speaker 1: we gave we gave an instant replay because we had
Speaker 1: video taped the whole thing. Well, you know, so we're
Speaker 1: the first of instant replay and a home birth. Then
Speaker 1: I get the news. I mean, so we've been up
Speaker 1: for forever, for two days or whatever it is, because
Speaker 1: how long labors are the wasted wasted. The next morning,
Speaker 1: one of the guys comes by and says, oh, the
Speaker 1: truck I busted in Indiana. So apparently the Brooklyn Boys
Speaker 1: got pulled over in Indiana and being young stoned in
Speaker 1: a fancy new truck with California plates. The cop suspected
Speaker 1: something was amiss, so busted. The Brooklyn Boys call my
Speaker 1: dad with bad news the next day, which is also
Speaker 1: the first morning I spent outside the womb on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: So my dad leaves town and heads to New York
Speaker 1: City to try and get some of his money back
Speaker 1: from the Brooklyn Boys. My dad finds the Brooklyn Boys
Speaker 1: peeps and he gets a little bit of money back,
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand dollars, but to this day he
Speaker 1: regrets not being bolsy enough to demand the entire amount
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand dollars, which is roughly one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five thousand dollars in today's money. My dad returns
Speaker 1: to California with a fraction of the money he lost,
Speaker 1: and then he and my mom and my sister and me,
Speaker 1: just a few days old, moved to another house in
Speaker 1: West Morin And then after doing that, we split from
Speaker 1: that house because we were concerned, oh, because we thought
Speaker 1: that's when the battalion chief came to be my bodyguard,
Speaker 1: because we thought they would send people after us, So
Speaker 1: we had to leave and moved abruptly. My parents are
Speaker 1: scared that someone might come for them, someone from the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Boys network who might want revenge or retaliation in
Speaker 1: some form or another. Luckily that never happened, but the
Speaker 1: trip definitely had gone wrong and my parents' money was gone.
Speaker 1: Tensions were running high, and my fledgling smuggler parents were scared.
Speaker 1: My parents have two daughters. They need to protect themselves
Speaker 1: from arrest from losing their kids and the cedier parts
Speaker 1: of the industry. So after moving, my parents put their
Speaker 1: heads down and try to leave the smuggling business. Try
Speaker 1: being the keyword. I'm Rambo Valentine. You're listening to disorganized Crime.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. One thing that blows me away
Speaker 1: with my parents is that they always see the glass
Speaker 1: is half full. Their work was critically dangerous. But when
Speaker 1: my parents were telling me my birth story after he
Speaker 1: found out they lost all their money, my dad went
Speaker 1: into the backyard to think, I'm wandering in the garden
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at our fruit trees and I'm just
Speaker 1: philosophica because I remember the same thoughts, you know, And
Speaker 1: it was like, well, I guess it's a pruning because
Speaker 1: that's that's how I always looked at it. And I
Speaker 1: mean that's the only way I could look at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is always how fuld of you guys, which I
Speaker 1: love me too, But that's us. That's who we are,
Speaker 1: you know. Like my dad's trips smuggling pot across the country,
Speaker 1: I've been on a long, strange trip myself. Thank you
Speaker 1: Robert Hunter for that iconic sentence, unraveling a web of secrets.
Speaker 1: This long, strange journey is a first hand look at
Speaker 1: the extraordinary, unique, disorganized drug smuggling industry in Marine County, California, which,
Speaker 1: while today is home to tech billionaires, was once home
Speaker 1: to the rock stars drug smugglers of San Francisco's nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties counterculture. They risked their lives to smuggle pot in
Speaker 1: the most dangerous time for pot in history. I was
Speaker 1: born in a unique location and situation, right in the
Speaker 1: middle of the battle between the counterculture, psychedelic smugglers and
Speaker 1: the War on drugs, which would ultimately end my dad's
Speaker 1: smuggling career forever. Dad made and lost millions of dollars
Speaker 1: more than once. And I, Rainbow Valentine, of tax paying,
Speaker 1: regularish job having non pot smoker but total hippie at heart,
Speaker 1: was there obliviously in the middle of it all. I
Speaker 1: wanted to find out what in the world was going
Speaker 1: on at home while I was playing Smurfs under the
Speaker 1: olive tree. Listener, you and I are both going back
Speaker 1: in time to find out how did my dad smuggle
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds upot across the country for over twenty
Speaker 1: two years. Some people I will talk to spent years
Speaker 1: in prison. Some lost all their money, some lost their minds,
Speaker 1: a few flew under the radar. But for all of them,
Speaker 1: this podcast is the first time they have told their stories,
Speaker 1: allowed to anyone ever. So now it is time for
Speaker 1: the smugglers to speak and we get to listen. I'm
Speaker 1: Rainbow Valentine and this is Disorganized Crime. Disorganized Crime. Smuggler's
Speaker 1: Daughter is written and recorded by Me, Rainbow Valentine. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Gabby Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and Me at School
Speaker 1: of Humans and Connell Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with
Speaker 1: original them by Mark, Karen and Me. You can find
Speaker 1: us online at iHeart dot com slash Podcasts Right novel
Speaker 1: the story Do It as with Me tamble by Steeping
Speaker 1: Princess of the red Wood Dreams. She helps us keep
Speaker 1: it real. Handshake seals the deal, Wrap the stack, sealed, meal,
Speaker 1: Road up these all breads, rolling a Doobe, young, rich
Speaker 1: and groovy, making it up. We roll along, Rolling along,
Speaker 1: Far Country, Roll Rolling along Far Country, Roll Rolling low
Speaker 1: Floria Country low