December 4, 2019 • 41 mins
Rainbow Valentine grew up on a beautiful hillside in Mill Valley, California, in a comfortable home filled with plenitude and love. But now, as an adult, she's discovered that her idyllic childhood was supported by her dad's career as a big-time pot smuggler. In this first episode of "Disorganized Crime," her parents break their silence for the first time about their lives as illegal pot smugglers. Special thanks to Rita Abrams for her song "Mill Valley," included in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans? Is this still recording? It's on? You're
just going to edit all this bullshit. It's a wasted time, though,
isn't it having to listen to Semire say something. I
might say something amazing. I always say something amazing. I've
just turned on the recorder in front of my dad
(00:29):
at his house in northern California. This is our first
recording session, and he's a little uncomfortable being recorded, and
for good reason, because while my dad was an amazing
father who made sure I grew up with a storybook childhood,
this is the first time he is telling me about
his double life, because for twenty plus years, from the
late sixties to the late nineteen eighties, my dad was
(00:53):
a pot smuggler of considerable proportions. Do you want to
just tell us about what the bond of outlaws is
to not talk about anything ever? Do you mean? Is
that what you're speaking of? That? It's that's what we're
not supposed to do is talk about it. So getting
(01:16):
me in a whole bunch of my crazy friends to
be talking about staff is a little fucking crazy. For
the past year, I've been interviewing my parents and all
these people in my life who I've learned we're part
of the smuggling network, and hearing these stories has truly
changed my life. I'm Rainbow Valentine, and this is disorganized
(01:41):
crime smuggler's daughter, young, free and groovy making it up.
We roll along country even brain making it up. So
(02:23):
here's what I tell people about this podcast. Like most
kids in the nineteen eighties, I was obsessed with Indiana
Jones movies. I would dig for treasure in my backyard
all the time. Well, actually, during one of my digging
bouts in the mid eighties, when I was about eight
or nine, there was in fact half a million dollars
buried in my backyard. Well it wasn't like you'd find that.
(02:44):
You would have discovered a big steel box which would
have appeared to be a pirate treasure chest, which would
have been a treasures like So, this is my dad.
He's just finished telling me about one of his biggest smuggles,
helping some of his old smuggling pals distribute sixty thousand
pounds of Lebanese hash. He ended up smuggling four thousand pounds.
(03:07):
Oh you know, just four thousand pounds of hash. No
big deal or the equivalent of two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, which at the time was over one point
three million dollars in today's money, and my dad needed
to keep that money safe until the Pounds who initially
smuggled the hash into the country from Lebanon could come
(03:28):
and collect. But my dad had a problem. He didn't
know where to put that much cash in my snug
childhood home, so he decided to bury the money in
the yard. I got a big steel box, and I
put it all in this steel box, and then I
went out to our gardens, which were all at that
(03:50):
time BlackBerry bushes. The whole acreage was all BlackBerry so
you couldn't really see much of anything. And I went
from this bush to this bush to whatever and found
the spot to bury it. And I buried the ship. Finally,
a long time later, it could be six months, did
I get a call saying, yo, bro, we want to
(04:12):
come over. We're gonna come out next week and pick
it up. Cool, No problem, okay, So I had to
go out there and find it. However, by the time
that had happened, we had already worked on our land
and got rid of all of the blackberries and I
mean I had hired these two guys to not only
(04:37):
get rid of the blackberries, but to dig up the
roots and sift them, sift through them with it, so
we wouldn't have so it would become gardens. All my
idiot landmarks were destroyed. And it have been so long
since I put the fucking thing in the ground. I
couldn't initially find it, and I started to freak out,
and then I freaked out thinking, oh fuck, did these
(05:00):
guys do in the garden find it and just take it?
Oh my god. The yard of my childhood home was
three fourths of an acre on a steep hill. It's huge, precarious,
and it always took a ton of work. My mom
garden constantly planting massive bamboo groves with huge shovels, not
dinky hand spades. I was probably there for the frantic search,
(05:21):
but I blocked it out because nothing stresses me out
like my dad's stress, which is huge, theatrical, and like
a frazzled, angry cabby in Manhattan traffic, super New Yorky.
I'm sure my parents frantic search was full of blood,
sweat and tears. Where the fuck is it? Oh? Crust
spoiler he finds it buried now near the pear tree.
(05:42):
But in this moment, my dad learns an important smuggling lesson.
If you're going to bury treasure in the backyard, remember
where the fuck you put it? Did you ever bury
stuff in the yard again? No? Anyway, Hi, I'm Rainbow Valentine.
So Rainbow Valentine is not my real name, although I
(06:04):
did start calling myself Rainbow Valentine when I was five
because I thought that rainbows and Valentines were the two
most beautiful things in the world, so together it would
be the most beautiful thing in the universe. So I've
spent the last year on a midlife reckoning, as my
BFF says, opening Pandora's box and learning about what my
parents and most of the adults in my childhood were
(06:27):
up to. While I endeavored to get cast as Annie
or Dorothy. Now that never happened, but I have learned
all about the grown ups in my life smuggling thousands
of pounds of pot quilst I willingly humiliated myself by
building out somewhere over the rainbow at the Senior Citizens Center.
I'm using this alias of Rainbow Valentine because most of
the people i'm talking to, former smugglers, that is, are
(06:50):
not comfortable having their names revealed. My parents have finally
settled on Walter and Taffy Lemur. We cycled through Kimmy Whitefish,
various other ridiculous names. To be clear, I've known my
dad was a pot smuggler since I was fourteen. I
remember my older sister, Verdicu, who was in college at
the time, sat me down one summer day and in
(07:11):
a hushed voice, told me the family secret that our
dad was a big time pot smuggler in California. Then
she said to never tell anyone that I knew this information,
and definitely don't mention it to our parents. Well. Being
a bit of a loudmouth, I did mention it a
(07:31):
few times, and in return received a deadly serious warning
to never speak of this to anyone from my dad.
Before this year. The last time I even tried to
bring up the whole being a smuggler for twenty two
years thing was when I came home from college in
the mid nineteen nineties, more than five years after my
dad was out of the smuggling business. My dad was
(07:53):
driving me home from the airport, and I remember him
slamming on the brakes, and he said, well, I'll just
let him tell you what he told me. I remember
very much stopping the car and to you, it is
critical that you never speak of this to anyone ever,
(08:14):
because more than anything, Bruce lips singing ships. Ah. But
times they are a changing. All over California, you'll see
billboards advertising pot delivery and dispensaries. There are apps where
you can get pot legally dropped off right at your doorstep. Also,
statutes of limitations on my dad's smuggling days have long
(08:34):
run out, and as they age, my dad and mom
are feeling a little more comfortable with the idea of
sharing their secret stories. Good morning Vietnam, is Mom, there
too are okay? Hi? I called my parents on their anniversary.
They've been together since nineteen seventy but only married in
two thousand and two. They wanted to make sure they
(08:56):
really liked each other, and I asked them to introduce
themselves and their aliases, Taffy and Walter Lemur. Hi, this
is taf Lemur and my husband, Walter Lemer. Walter and
I are in our seventies and I'm under my life
seven days and we came from the fifties, from the
(09:17):
sixties and stepped into the revolution of the Hippie revolution
when the sixties happened, and then we never left. And
can you tell us a little bit about your husband,
Walter Lemur my dad if he's a connoisseur of art
and decorations and food, and he likes to talk. He's
(09:39):
a schmoozer. It's from New York. And Dad, can you
introduce your wife? Hi there, Walter here. I came out
from the East Coast in nineteen seventy from New York.
I landed on the porch of two of the grateful
Dad's roadies, and within a couple of months being in
(10:03):
the center of that she I was introduced through them
to your lovely mother, with whom I've been for forty
nine years, the great and famous Kaffi Leaner. With my eccentric, Bohemian,
artsy intellectual parents at the helm, I had an idyllic childhood.
(10:28):
When I was a toddler, our family, me, my mom,
my dad, and my six year old sister, Vertica, moved
just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Saclito to
Mill Valley, a redwood beetreed valley, nestled below Mount Tamil Pious,
named for its eighteen hundred sawmill, which still stands in
Old Mill Park. It was where families from all over
the Bay Area summerd in the eighteen hundreds. After the
(10:51):
Golden Gate Bridge was constructed in nineteen thirty seven, real
estate boomed in Mill Valley and it hasn't stopped since.
In the nineteen seventies, Mill Valley became an area associated
with great wealth, with so many people making their millions
in San Francisco and moving north to raise kids. Nineteen seventies,
Mill Valley had a quiet, low key, home spun hippie
(11:12):
wealth vibe. It was charming, rural, a funky town full
of small businesses and young counterculture families, progressive intellectuals, rock stars,
nature lovers, and old California gold Rush moneyed families. I
remember singing this song about Mill Valley as a kid.
It's by Rita Abrahams, a Mill Valley resident, and it
(11:32):
perfectly illustrates the feel good hippie vibe of my childhood
in Northern California. People at a Fridges spa and stop
and talk with you, walk and you can be as
friendly as you want to. Be talking about love. Those
(12:05):
flutes drive on nostal drum just feels good and just
feels right. Anyway, among the rolling landscapes and redwoods was
my house, stucked among the trees, BlackBerry bushes and roses
that adorned our driveway, which to me as a kid
seemed like the longest dirt driveway in the world. Our
family was close, always together, cooking and eating, hanging out
(12:25):
in the main part of the house, which was an
open kitchen, dining room, living room with giant windows and
sliding glass doors to the deck, quoi pond, and massive
gardens full of fruit trees, play structures, the trampoline, and
more so much more I've since learned. Our house was
usually full of laughter, delicious food, original art, and it
(12:46):
was a center of social activity. My parents' friends constantly
dropped by and stayed for dinner, and every weekend my
friends visited for slumber parties, spending multiple nights. My friends
and I would concoct stories that we would theatrically record
into my cassette player, with me always taking center stage.
Guys coming for Then I shall cook my specialty brain
(13:10):
a lah noodle. What shall you cook? I shall hook
my specialty rive allah I bill yuh me yum, It's
so delicious. Every night, my parents would read to me
in my treehouse loft bed wall papered with snow white
in the Seven Dwarves. I went to an artsy, holistic
(13:33):
progressive school where each day started with an hour of music.
When I was eight, my sister thirteen. In the early eighties,
our little brother was born and I became the middle child.
(13:54):
My memories of childhood are joyful, full of abundance, both
the material like playing legos at our Tahoe house, and
the immaterial like community, magical, spiritual, connected to the earthedness, friends, family,
and a lot of absurdities. When I look back now,
(14:16):
I feel ridiculous for not realizing that something was going
on behind the scenes in our family home. Our house
was pretty different from TV houses like The Brady Bunch,
my favorite show. For instance, we had a second parking
lot on the property for all the extra oversized vehicles
my family owned. The Brady Bunch only had that one
wood paneled station wagon. Our car part had a clutch
(14:38):
of outdoor storage closets packed with camping gear, ski gear,
and dozens of hardback seventies sampsonite burnt sianta suit cases
with combo locks. Okay, sure, we were a family of five,
but we never seemed to use the suitcases. They were
foemy inside and large enough for me to fit in,
and I loved playing with them, pretending I was stowaway
(14:58):
or hidden refugee, climbing inside and shutting the lid. Now
I get it. These amazing large suitcases were for transporting weed.
I also have fond memories of going to these weekly
baseball games with my dad. I'd run around and play
in the crisp marine air around a glossy green baseball field,
(15:18):
enjoying myself, maybe batting a ball or two, and my
dad would play with all these guys I've known my
whole life, the coach Baseball Bob, the Philly Boys, the
French hippie tal Joe, Peach Blossom, Loose Larry, the Vietnam Vet.
And I'm now discovering that all of these people who
are essentially like my surrogate ants and uncles, all of
them were also smugglers or growers or somehow in the
(15:42):
pot industry big time. And here's how oblivious I was
as a kid, slash amazed I didn't realize what was
going on. They're always garbage bags of pot in my
dad's office. Garbage bags, you guys. But this just seemed
normal to me. My parents seemed normal. I mean, they
weren't straight that as, they weren't the typical nine to
five suburban parents with zero interest in Tibetan Tonka's karmas
(16:05):
aadelic poster art. But they also weren't living on a
hippie bus and wearing tide like lots of my friends parents.
And plus, pott was everywhere in Marin County in northern California.
Everyone's family had pot around, just maybe not garbage bags full.
(16:28):
So when my sister told me the shocking news that
our parents were drug dealers when I was fourteen, I
was mortified. These are the Nancy Reagan just say no,
this is your brain on Drugs TV campaign years in
the nineteen eighties. Drug dealers are the worst, according to
TV and the rest of the world. Do I have
(16:48):
your permission to record? Yes? Okay, awesome, Okay, So this
is Petunia, one of my best friends growing up in
an honorary member of our family. She knew me and
my parents really well. Yeah. So my bff Petunia spent
so much time, you spent so much time at our house.
I wanted to get your stories of what you thought
was going on in my house and if you ever
had any what did you think of my house and
(17:10):
my parents? What did you did you have any inkling
of what they did for a job? And yeah, well,
I mean, of course I knew that your mom was
a painter and a mother, and that was very clear, transparent,
obvious and made a lot of sense, you know, you
could see. And with your dad, it wasn't clear what
(17:35):
he was doing. I feel like we talked about it
even as children, and and said that he was a businessman.
He knew that he was a businessman, but definitely not
like a nine to five, not a suit. But we
knew that he made deals. I knew that he made
deals because he would like this. I feel like this
(17:57):
must have been part of his conversation. That it was like, oh,
I'm working on a deal or whatever, but some kind
of deal that it involved talking on the phone. And
so your dad was around and doing business and and
that's that's all I knew. Really, yeah, me too, And
I didn't care, like that's all that was all the
business man that was. It was an answer that was
(18:18):
answer enough for me. Yeah, and I could perceive that
your your family was well off. Your house was like
an oasis of plenitude. Do you remember my dad being
super high strung, Yeah, so stressed out. Yeah yeah, me too.
(18:43):
Oh yeah, yeah. It's sort of interesting, but like I
don't know, like a lot of other people's dads just
weren't really around, so like who knows what those dads were, Like,
who else's dad was around as much as your dad,
Like nobody's. I love hearing Petunia talk about my dad
like this, because he really was around a lot. There's
something special about how my dad subverts the good old
(19:05):
dad role. Clad in a far side T shirt, my
dad would pad around in his office and his socks,
yelling into the phone, stealing our Halloween candy, schooling us
on opera and art history. Oh and he was also smuggling.
After I found out the family secret in my teens,
Petunia was the only person I confided in. Yeah, I
remember you telling me in this tone of like I
(19:27):
just found out, how can you believe it? And I
was like, yeah, I can't believe it actually, Like yeah,
like it was not at all surprising, but I didn't know,
which is funny because I was shocked. I grew up
in this world where there was it was. Pot was
everywhere in my household. Yeah, it wasn't hidden, I mean
(19:49):
it wasn't. It was just part of the furniture. Yeah,
and I was totally uninterested in it. Yeah, it was boring.
I thought pot was uncool. I thought it was lame.
I thought it was what grown ups did. I thought
it was like totally lame. And it blows my mind
think that literally, at any moment, my parents could have
(20:10):
been busted and we could have been foster children. Yeah, well,
this is something that's interesting to me. So my mom
is thinks of herself as a very overprotective person. So
I'm curious what she knew about your dad's livelihood because
(20:30):
I know that she did the books for your dad
for a while, and I wonder what she knew because
she thinks of herself as an overprotective parent. But then
she was allowing me to spend vast amounts of time
in this household that like, like what if your dad
(20:53):
was busted or what if some professional enemy. I don't
know how likely that this would be. I really have
no idea, but like, did he know people who were dangerous?
Possibly he did? Coming up, my dad loses all of
(21:16):
his money and a smuggling trip gone wrong, which just
happened to be the night I was born. I'm Rainbow
Valentine and this is disorganized crime. We'll be right back.
The origin of the word pot is from pataguaya, a
(21:39):
wine or brandy that has been steeped in cannabis buds.
Pataguaya is short for potassion duguaya, which means the drink
of grief. It does seem this job brought its fair
share of grief with it. If a deal went wrong,
you could lose everything. Can Dad stop clinking around in
(22:00):
the back, We can hear him and bail? Yeah? Yeah,
Dad is not able to be quiet. Good job. Enjoy
your oatmeal, dad, So mom, can you talk about how
critical it was that your jobs were see a secret?
Talk about the high stakes of this job. The high
(22:21):
stakes were that we was the ego and everybody thought
it was the devil. And if you got caught with
even an ounce who went to jail and could lose
your kids. It was super high stakes. So you could
you have to be really careful about not talking about
your business to any of your friends or parents of
(22:44):
the other children, or the soccer parents. You just have
to conduct your life like it was really normal, just
like everybody else. Dad finished his oatmeal and chimed in.
I mean, my job was to do it right and
stay under the radar and be this schizophrenic living two
(23:04):
lives basically didn't bother me. It was either do it
right for begad. It was similar to war. You stick
your head above the foxhole and it gets blown off.
People are getting busted for less than an ounce of pot.
Now that wasn't real big time staff, but when you
(23:27):
got into what we were doing, it would cost a
fortunate attorneys even if you did get off, you know.
I mean, I was living sort of in two worlds. Now.
Both of my parents talk about leading a double life.
On one hand, the parents, I know, they're devoted, involved,
adoring parents and upstanding citizens who participate, to my embarrassment
(23:51):
in my school in life almost too enthusiastically. And on
the other hand, their counterculture outlaws smuggling up to several
thousands of pounds of pot across a god fearing country
swarming with law enforcement and full of hippie and drug
fearing Americans. My dad's career as a smuggler coincided with
(24:11):
the inception of the War on Drugs, when the country
was focused on sending drug dealers and users to prison,
and more and more dangerous drugs were entering the transcontinental
smuggling trade like heroin and cocaine drugs were If you
got caught up in those smuggling networks, could lead to
a bullet through the head. You've mentioned feeling like you
(24:33):
led a devil life, Can you speak about that? But yeah,
well then I had I had my friends, which were
all my old friends. We trusted everybody from their word,
and they were separate from all the people that lived
in the community, you know, and the people at the stores,
(24:54):
and even your doctor didn't know who else was going on,
you know. Very stressful to lead two loves, I remember,
ba Yeah, but they were just coming and going. Those
were I mean, I'm talking about room full of pot
(25:15):
where we stabshed at the garbage bags. Pot were just samples.
So the garbage bag is a pot I remember from
when I was a kid, were just the tip of
the pot iceberg of how much pot my dad was moving.
They were samples. Really, At any given point in my childhood,
(25:35):
my dad was storing up to four or five thousand
pounds of pot in our garage or the family storage
unit a few miles away from our house. The true
and complete story of my birth is the perfect saga
(25:58):
to show this double life that my parents led. I
was born in nineteen seventy four on a dark and
stormy night in West Marin, California. We're gonna start. It
was a dark and stormy night. Well, but yeah, the
arm and hit. Yeah, it was just daring and raining
and raining and dark and mary. Well it was dark
and stormy. Yes, it was quite a storm. And that
(26:21):
night my young parents, my dad and his twenties, my
mom in her early thirties, lost their life savings in
a smuggling trip gone wrong. Now, their life savings was
about thirty six thousand dollars in nineteen seventy four, which
is one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars today. I
just figured that's what you cost. So in nineteen seventy four,
(26:43):
my parents were living in a handmaid hippie hobbit house
in West Merin, California. It had a long winding staircase
up to the circular door. My very pregnant mom would
tend to my sister the Japanese gardens and her herd
of animals. She hated the goose. My dad was enjoying
the country life of chickens and his first chainsaw for
firewood in this tiny rural town in westmore in California,
(27:06):
near Point Raise National Seashore. But among the hanging plants
hippi embroidery and art that adorned the inside of the house.
My parents had a custom built secret room which at
any given point could stash up to four thousand pounds
of pot. They couldn't the movies. It was. Yeah, there's
a real sacred room where if you picked out a book,
when you took out a screwdriver, and then there was
(27:27):
a bookshelf, and you had to remove the bookshelf first,
and then the book the books you took the books
off in the bookshelf off, and then the things that
held up the shelf had screws into the wall, and
one of those screws was a key to open the door.
(27:51):
Right before I was born, my dad was at the
tail end of a big trip smugglers lingo a trip
is a business deal from start to finish. The entire
deal is a trip for our purposes. Trips are pot
deals from risk saving the load to delivering it to
the next location. Slash buyer trips last anywhere from a
(28:11):
few weeks to months to a year. Trips include the
journey of the product from its point of origin places
like Mexico, Columbia, Thailand, Lebanon, to its final destination, in
my dad's case, northern California, or his hometown, New York City.
My dad's entire career in pot smuggling was as a middleman.
He was a pot distributor. He's never a small time
(28:33):
street dealer in a sketchy alleyway. He never sold ounces.
He actually laughed in my face when I asked if
he ever sold just one pound at a time. He
would get hundreds or thousands of pounds a pot from
the smugglers who took it off the boats that came
into San Francisco Bay. This pot would go to my
dad's secure location. He would then transport the pot to
a few of his trusted associates, who would in turn
(28:56):
sell it in smaller and smaller amounts down the smuggling
food chain. If the pot came into San Francisco Bay
usually from South America or South Asia, my dad would
transport or to his guy in New York City. Alternatively,
if my dad's supplier in New York City his code
name is Blondie, had a load come into the New
York City Harbor, usually from the Middle East, my dad
(29:17):
would get a ton or more. By the way, a
ton is two thousand pounds, and he would move it
across country and distribute it to the people in San
Francisco Bay area. However, it wasn't organized. Remember this is
disorganized crime. Loads just sort of came in and people
found out, and it was very loose. Now, my dad
didn't work with groups, just a handful of lifelong trusted
(29:38):
friends who are still lifelong trusted friends. The relationships formed
were similar to the bonds formed by soldiers in war.
My dad and his associates trusted each other implicitly, and
integrity was everything. You were as good as your word. Now.
(29:59):
On the night of my birth, my dad made three
big mistakes. On this trip, known as the Second Panama
Red Trip. My dad handed off the pot he had
that he had stored in the secret room in the
hippie Hobbit House to three drivers known as the Brooklyn Boys,
who moved it from were In County to New York City.
That was the first mistake. Just you stupid kids from Yeah,
(30:23):
young stupid kids from Brooklyn, who vegetarians, who like getting high,
and we're real psychedelicized vegetarian kids. Okay, it's fine that
they're vegetarians, but what we're getting at is that these
were young, inexperienced kids who didn't take extra precautions when
hauling loads of pot across the country. Like when my
(30:45):
dad was more established, he would never get high while working.
That was reserved for after if the trip was successful. Well,
these kids, they wanted to have fun on the job.
The next mistake was the flashy spank a new vehicle
my dad provided for transporting the loads across the country.
That was really a stupid of errors because the truck
(31:07):
I bought to do this, we decided we got a
new the fanciest big four wheels h GMC pickup. It
was like right off the lot, remember that white and
yellow orange? Yet what was it? White and gold? Oh?
(31:28):
I remember it very clearly. The way I looked at
things you wanted to have the best of everything the bed.
But that was really part of the stupid thing, because
we had right, We had kids who looked like hippies,
smoking pot all through it, and the whole fucking bed
was filled. That we built a bed, and we put
(31:49):
in three hundred and fifty pounds under this bed that
we had built in the U in the back of
the truck, in the pick in the pickup bed. It
shouldn't have been a new truck. It was too flashy
a truck for these scrunky looking twice four year olds.
I shouldn't have done that, and I shouldn't have given
him my profit. I should have just taken my profit,
(32:11):
kept it safe, and sold it off as I would
sell it. The third mistake, and the most critical, was
that my dad fronted all of his profits in this
last truck load. Basically, the Brooklyn Boys had already transported
several loads of pot from arine New York City, but
all of my dad's profits from this trip were dependent
on that last truck load. I let these guys talk
(32:33):
me into fronting all of my profits in their last truck,
which was about his damastic instead of just taking our
winnings and packing up and going, and greed is right.
I mean I wanted however more, I wanted more. It
(32:54):
wasn't enough that we've made like fifty grand in in
two months. My dad thought that fronting his money would
increase his profits, but in fact, good old fashioned greed
reared its ugly head and bit my dad in the ass.
Because that dark, stormy night that the Brooklyn boys set
off with this last potload, they get busted. But before
(33:16):
my dad hears anything about this, my very pregnant mom
goes into libor and all the focus goes from the
trip to having a baby, and then off goes to
the truck and she goes into labor and just mind on,
I lost my mind. I was born at home and
my dad, always a camera enthusiast, videotaped the event with
a brand new camera, one of the first of its
kind for home video. We got the tape digitized. My
(33:39):
poor mother. My mom is surrounded by my dad, the
midwife of some family friends, my five year old sister, Vertica,
the cats, our family dog. Is we're paying us the
picture of what mom's upstairs. No, we're well, there are
several level No, we're down in the in the middle
section in a water bed, a water bed by the
(34:01):
fireplace at two thirty. I mean, after this this incredibly
intense storm for twenty four hours or more, the storm
breaks and boom out you pop, girl, girl. So I
(34:21):
swaped you up, and then the doctor combs, and so
we gave we gave an instant replay because we had
video taped the whole thing. Well, you know, so we're
the first of instant replay and a home birth. Then
I get the news. I mean, so we've been up
(34:42):
for forever, for two days or whatever it is, because
how long labors are the wasted wasted. The next morning,
one of the guys comes by and says, oh, the
truck I busted in Indiana. So apparently the Brooklyn Boys
got pulled over in Indiana and being young stoned in
a fancy new truck with California plates. The cop suspected
(35:06):
something was amiss, so busted. The Brooklyn Boys call my
dad with bad news the next day, which is also
the first morning I spent outside the womb on planet Earth.
So my dad leaves town and heads to New York
City to try and get some of his money back
from the Brooklyn Boys. My dad finds the Brooklyn Boys
peeps and he gets a little bit of money back,
a couple of thousand dollars, but to this day he
(35:27):
regrets not being bolsy enough to demand the entire amount
thirty six thousand dollars, which is roughly one hundred and
ninety five thousand dollars in today's money. My dad returns
to California with a fraction of the money he lost,
and then he and my mom and my sister and me,
just a few days old, moved to another house in
West Morin And then after doing that, we split from
(35:50):
that house because we were concerned, oh, because we thought
that's when the battalion chief came to be my bodyguard,
because we thought they would send people after us, So
we had to leave and moved abruptly. My parents are
scared that someone might come for them, someone from the
(36:11):
Brooklyn Boys network who might want revenge or retaliation in
some form or another. Luckily that never happened, but the
trip definitely had gone wrong and my parents' money was gone.
Tensions were running high, and my fledgling smuggler parents were scared.
My parents have two daughters. They need to protect themselves
from arrest from losing their kids and the cedier parts
(36:33):
of the industry. So after moving, my parents put their
heads down and try to leave the smuggling business. Try
being the keyword. I'm Rambo Valentine. You're listening to disorganized Crime.
We'll be right back. One thing that blows me away
(36:54):
with my parents is that they always see the glass
is half full. Their work was critically dangerous. But when
my parents were telling me my birth story after he
found out they lost all their money, my dad went
into the backyard to think, I'm wandering in the garden
and I'm looking at our fruit trees and I'm just
(37:16):
philosophica because I remember the same thoughts, you know, And
it was like, well, I guess it's a pruning because
that's that's how I always looked at it. And I
mean that's the only way I could look at it. Yeah,
that is always how fuld of you guys, which I
love me too, But that's us. That's who we are,
(37:38):
you know. Like my dad's trips smuggling pot across the country,
I've been on a long, strange trip myself. Thank you
Robert Hunter for that iconic sentence, unraveling a web of secrets.
This long, strange journey is a first hand look at
(37:59):
the extraordinary, unique, disorganized drug smuggling industry in Marine County, California, which,
while today is home to tech billionaires, was once home
to the rock stars drug smugglers of San Francisco's nineteen
sixties counterculture. They risked their lives to smuggle pot in
the most dangerous time for pot in history. I was
(38:22):
born in a unique location and situation, right in the
middle of the battle between the counterculture, psychedelic smugglers and
the War on drugs, which would ultimately end my dad's
smuggling career forever. Dad made and lost millions of dollars
more than once. And I, Rainbow Valentine, of tax paying,
(38:44):
regularish job having non pot smoker but total hippie at heart,
was there obliviously in the middle of it all. I
wanted to find out what in the world was going
on at home while I was playing Smurfs under the
olive tree. Listener, you and I are both going back
in time to find out how did my dad smuggle
(39:06):
thousands of pounds upot across the country for over twenty
two years. Some people I will talk to spent years
in prison. Some lost all their money, some lost their minds,
a few flew under the radar. But for all of them,
this podcast is the first time they have told their stories,
(39:27):
allowed to anyone ever. So now it is time for
the smugglers to speak and we get to listen. I'm
Rainbow Valentine and this is Disorganized Crime. Disorganized Crime. Smuggler's
Daughter is written and recorded by Me, Rainbow Valentine. Our
(39:51):
producers are Gabby Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are
Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and Me at School
of Humans and Connell Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio.
Our music is by Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with
original them by Mark, Karen and Me. You can find
us online at iHeart dot com slash Podcasts Right novel
(40:20):
the story Do It as with Me tamble by Steeping
Princess of the red Wood Dreams. She helps us keep
it real. Handshake seals the deal, Wrap the stack, sealed, meal,
Road up these all breads, rolling a Doobe, young, rich
(40:46):
and groovy, making it up. We roll along, Rolling along,
Far Country, Roll Rolling along Far Country, Roll Rolling low
(41:08):
Floria Country low
School of Humans? Is this still recording? It's on? You're
just going to edit all this bullshit. It's a wasted time, though,
isn't it having to listen to Semire say something. I
might say something amazing. I always say something amazing. I've
just turned on the recorder in front of my dad
(00:29):
at his house in northern California. This is our first
recording session, and he's a little uncomfortable being recorded, and
for good reason, because while my dad was an amazing
father who made sure I grew up with a storybook childhood,
this is the first time he is telling me about
his double life, because for twenty plus years, from the
late sixties to the late nineteen eighties, my dad was
(00:53):
a pot smuggler of considerable proportions. Do you want to
just tell us about what the bond of outlaws is
to not talk about anything ever? Do you mean? Is
that what you're speaking of? That? It's that's what we're
not supposed to do is talk about it. So getting
(01:16):
me in a whole bunch of my crazy friends to
be talking about staff is a little fucking crazy. For
the past year, I've been interviewing my parents and all
these people in my life who I've learned we're part
of the smuggling network, and hearing these stories has truly
changed my life. I'm Rainbow Valentine, and this is disorganized
(01:41):
crime smuggler's daughter, young, free and groovy making it up.
We roll along country even brain making it up. So
(02:23):
here's what I tell people about this podcast. Like most
kids in the nineteen eighties, I was obsessed with Indiana
Jones movies. I would dig for treasure in my backyard
all the time. Well, actually, during one of my digging
bouts in the mid eighties, when I was about eight
or nine, there was in fact half a million dollars
buried in my backyard. Well it wasn't like you'd find that.
(02:44):
You would have discovered a big steel box which would
have appeared to be a pirate treasure chest, which would
have been a treasures like So, this is my dad.
He's just finished telling me about one of his biggest smuggles,
helping some of his old smuggling pals distribute sixty thousand
pounds of Lebanese hash. He ended up smuggling four thousand pounds.
(03:07):
Oh you know, just four thousand pounds of hash. No
big deal or the equivalent of two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, which at the time was over one point
three million dollars in today's money, and my dad needed
to keep that money safe until the Pounds who initially
smuggled the hash into the country from Lebanon could come
(03:28):
and collect. But my dad had a problem. He didn't
know where to put that much cash in my snug
childhood home, so he decided to bury the money in
the yard. I got a big steel box, and I
put it all in this steel box, and then I
went out to our gardens, which were all at that
(03:50):
time BlackBerry bushes. The whole acreage was all BlackBerry so
you couldn't really see much of anything. And I went
from this bush to this bush to whatever and found
the spot to bury it. And I buried the ship. Finally,
a long time later, it could be six months, did
I get a call saying, yo, bro, we want to
(04:12):
come over. We're gonna come out next week and pick
it up. Cool, No problem, okay, So I had to
go out there and find it. However, by the time
that had happened, we had already worked on our land
and got rid of all of the blackberries and I
mean I had hired these two guys to not only
(04:37):
get rid of the blackberries, but to dig up the
roots and sift them, sift through them with it, so
we wouldn't have so it would become gardens. All my
idiot landmarks were destroyed. And it have been so long
since I put the fucking thing in the ground. I
couldn't initially find it, and I started to freak out,
and then I freaked out thinking, oh fuck, did these
(05:00):
guys do in the garden find it and just take it?
Oh my god. The yard of my childhood home was
three fourths of an acre on a steep hill. It's huge, precarious,
and it always took a ton of work. My mom
garden constantly planting massive bamboo groves with huge shovels, not
dinky hand spades. I was probably there for the frantic search,
(05:21):
but I blocked it out because nothing stresses me out
like my dad's stress, which is huge, theatrical, and like
a frazzled, angry cabby in Manhattan traffic, super New Yorky.
I'm sure my parents frantic search was full of blood,
sweat and tears. Where the fuck is it? Oh? Crust
spoiler he finds it buried now near the pear tree.
(05:42):
But in this moment, my dad learns an important smuggling lesson.
If you're going to bury treasure in the backyard, remember
where the fuck you put it? Did you ever bury
stuff in the yard again? No? Anyway, Hi, I'm Rainbow Valentine.
So Rainbow Valentine is not my real name, although I
(06:04):
did start calling myself Rainbow Valentine when I was five
because I thought that rainbows and Valentines were the two
most beautiful things in the world, so together it would
be the most beautiful thing in the universe. So I've
spent the last year on a midlife reckoning, as my
BFF says, opening Pandora's box and learning about what my
parents and most of the adults in my childhood were
(06:27):
up to. While I endeavored to get cast as Annie
or Dorothy. Now that never happened, but I have learned
all about the grown ups in my life smuggling thousands
of pounds of pot quilst I willingly humiliated myself by
building out somewhere over the rainbow at the Senior Citizens Center.
I'm using this alias of Rainbow Valentine because most of
the people i'm talking to, former smugglers, that is, are
(06:50):
not comfortable having their names revealed. My parents have finally
settled on Walter and Taffy Lemur. We cycled through Kimmy Whitefish,
various other ridiculous names. To be clear, I've known my
dad was a pot smuggler since I was fourteen. I
remember my older sister, Verdicu, who was in college at
the time, sat me down one summer day and in
(07:11):
a hushed voice, told me the family secret that our
dad was a big time pot smuggler in California. Then
she said to never tell anyone that I knew this information,
and definitely don't mention it to our parents. Well. Being
a bit of a loudmouth, I did mention it a
(07:31):
few times, and in return received a deadly serious warning
to never speak of this to anyone from my dad.
Before this year. The last time I even tried to
bring up the whole being a smuggler for twenty two
years thing was when I came home from college in
the mid nineteen nineties, more than five years after my
dad was out of the smuggling business. My dad was
(07:53):
driving me home from the airport, and I remember him
slamming on the brakes, and he said, well, I'll just
let him tell you what he told me. I remember
very much stopping the car and to you, it is
critical that you never speak of this to anyone ever,
(08:14):
because more than anything, Bruce lips singing ships. Ah. But
times they are a changing. All over California, you'll see
billboards advertising pot delivery and dispensaries. There are apps where
you can get pot legally dropped off right at your doorstep. Also,
statutes of limitations on my dad's smuggling days have long
(08:34):
run out, and as they age, my dad and mom
are feeling a little more comfortable with the idea of
sharing their secret stories. Good morning Vietnam, is Mom, there
too are okay? Hi? I called my parents on their anniversary.
They've been together since nineteen seventy but only married in
two thousand and two. They wanted to make sure they
(08:56):
really liked each other, and I asked them to introduce
themselves and their aliases, Taffy and Walter Lemur. Hi, this
is taf Lemur and my husband, Walter Lemer. Walter and
I are in our seventies and I'm under my life
seven days and we came from the fifties, from the
(09:17):
sixties and stepped into the revolution of the Hippie revolution
when the sixties happened, and then we never left. And
can you tell us a little bit about your husband,
Walter Lemur my dad if he's a connoisseur of art
and decorations and food, and he likes to talk. He's
(09:39):
a schmoozer. It's from New York. And Dad, can you
introduce your wife? Hi there, Walter here. I came out
from the East Coast in nineteen seventy from New York.
I landed on the porch of two of the grateful
Dad's roadies, and within a couple of months being in
(10:03):
the center of that she I was introduced through them
to your lovely mother, with whom I've been for forty
nine years, the great and famous Kaffi Leaner. With my eccentric, Bohemian,
artsy intellectual parents at the helm, I had an idyllic childhood.
(10:28):
When I was a toddler, our family, me, my mom,
my dad, and my six year old sister, Vertica, moved
just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Saclito to
Mill Valley, a redwood beetreed valley, nestled below Mount Tamil Pious,
named for its eighteen hundred sawmill, which still stands in
Old Mill Park. It was where families from all over
the Bay Area summerd in the eighteen hundreds. After the
(10:51):
Golden Gate Bridge was constructed in nineteen thirty seven, real
estate boomed in Mill Valley and it hasn't stopped since.
In the nineteen seventies, Mill Valley became an area associated
with great wealth, with so many people making their millions
in San Francisco and moving north to raise kids. Nineteen seventies,
Mill Valley had a quiet, low key, home spun hippie
(11:12):
wealth vibe. It was charming, rural, a funky town full
of small businesses and young counterculture families, progressive intellectuals, rock stars,
nature lovers, and old California gold Rush moneyed families. I
remember singing this song about Mill Valley as a kid.
It's by Rita Abrahams, a Mill Valley resident, and it
(11:32):
perfectly illustrates the feel good hippie vibe of my childhood
in Northern California. People at a Fridges spa and stop
and talk with you, walk and you can be as
friendly as you want to. Be talking about love. Those
(12:05):
flutes drive on nostal drum just feels good and just
feels right. Anyway, among the rolling landscapes and redwoods was
my house, stucked among the trees, BlackBerry bushes and roses
that adorned our driveway, which to me as a kid
seemed like the longest dirt driveway in the world. Our
family was close, always together, cooking and eating, hanging out
(12:25):
in the main part of the house, which was an
open kitchen, dining room, living room with giant windows and
sliding glass doors to the deck, quoi pond, and massive
gardens full of fruit trees, play structures, the trampoline, and
more so much more I've since learned. Our house was
usually full of laughter, delicious food, original art, and it
(12:46):
was a center of social activity. My parents' friends constantly
dropped by and stayed for dinner, and every weekend my
friends visited for slumber parties, spending multiple nights. My friends
and I would concoct stories that we would theatrically record
into my cassette player, with me always taking center stage.
Guys coming for Then I shall cook my specialty brain
(13:10):
a lah noodle. What shall you cook? I shall hook
my specialty rive allah I bill yuh me yum, It's
so delicious. Every night, my parents would read to me
in my treehouse loft bed wall papered with snow white
in the Seven Dwarves. I went to an artsy, holistic
(13:33):
progressive school where each day started with an hour of music.
When I was eight, my sister thirteen. In the early eighties,
our little brother was born and I became the middle child.
(13:54):
My memories of childhood are joyful, full of abundance, both
the material like playing legos at our Tahoe house, and
the immaterial like community, magical, spiritual, connected to the earthedness, friends, family,
and a lot of absurdities. When I look back now,
(14:16):
I feel ridiculous for not realizing that something was going
on behind the scenes in our family home. Our house
was pretty different from TV houses like The Brady Bunch,
my favorite show. For instance, we had a second parking
lot on the property for all the extra oversized vehicles
my family owned. The Brady Bunch only had that one
wood paneled station wagon. Our car part had a clutch
(14:38):
of outdoor storage closets packed with camping gear, ski gear,
and dozens of hardback seventies sampsonite burnt sianta suit cases
with combo locks. Okay, sure, we were a family of five,
but we never seemed to use the suitcases. They were
foemy inside and large enough for me to fit in,
and I loved playing with them, pretending I was stowaway
(14:58):
or hidden refugee, climbing inside and shutting the lid. Now
I get it. These amazing large suitcases were for transporting weed.
I also have fond memories of going to these weekly
baseball games with my dad. I'd run around and play
in the crisp marine air around a glossy green baseball field,
(15:18):
enjoying myself, maybe batting a ball or two, and my
dad would play with all these guys I've known my
whole life, the coach Baseball Bob, the Philly Boys, the
French hippie tal Joe, Peach Blossom, Loose Larry, the Vietnam Vet.
And I'm now discovering that all of these people who
are essentially like my surrogate ants and uncles, all of
them were also smugglers or growers or somehow in the
(15:42):
pot industry big time. And here's how oblivious I was
as a kid, slash amazed I didn't realize what was
going on. They're always garbage bags of pot in my
dad's office. Garbage bags, you guys. But this just seemed
normal to me. My parents seemed normal. I mean, they
weren't straight that as, they weren't the typical nine to
five suburban parents with zero interest in Tibetan Tonka's karmas
(16:05):
aadelic poster art. But they also weren't living on a
hippie bus and wearing tide like lots of my friends parents.
And plus, pott was everywhere in Marin County in northern California.
Everyone's family had pot around, just maybe not garbage bags full.
(16:28):
So when my sister told me the shocking news that
our parents were drug dealers when I was fourteen, I
was mortified. These are the Nancy Reagan just say no,
this is your brain on Drugs TV campaign years in
the nineteen eighties. Drug dealers are the worst, according to
TV and the rest of the world. Do I have
(16:48):
your permission to record? Yes? Okay, awesome, Okay, So this
is Petunia, one of my best friends growing up in
an honorary member of our family. She knew me and
my parents really well. Yeah. So my bff Petunia spent
so much time, you spent so much time at our house.
I wanted to get your stories of what you thought
was going on in my house and if you ever
had any what did you think of my house and
(17:10):
my parents? What did you did you have any inkling
of what they did for a job? And yeah, well,
I mean, of course I knew that your mom was
a painter and a mother, and that was very clear, transparent,
obvious and made a lot of sense, you know, you
could see. And with your dad, it wasn't clear what
(17:35):
he was doing. I feel like we talked about it
even as children, and and said that he was a businessman.
He knew that he was a businessman, but definitely not
like a nine to five, not a suit. But we
knew that he made deals. I knew that he made
deals because he would like this. I feel like this
(17:57):
must have been part of his conversation. That it was like, oh,
I'm working on a deal or whatever, but some kind
of deal that it involved talking on the phone. And
so your dad was around and doing business and and
that's that's all I knew. Really, yeah, me too, And
I didn't care, like that's all that was all the
business man that was. It was an answer that was
(18:18):
answer enough for me. Yeah, and I could perceive that
your your family was well off. Your house was like
an oasis of plenitude. Do you remember my dad being
super high strung, Yeah, so stressed out. Yeah yeah, me too.
(18:43):
Oh yeah, yeah. It's sort of interesting, but like I
don't know, like a lot of other people's dads just
weren't really around, so like who knows what those dads were, Like,
who else's dad was around as much as your dad,
Like nobody's. I love hearing Petunia talk about my dad
like this, because he really was around a lot. There's
something special about how my dad subverts the good old
(19:05):
dad role. Clad in a far side T shirt, my
dad would pad around in his office and his socks,
yelling into the phone, stealing our Halloween candy, schooling us
on opera and art history. Oh and he was also smuggling.
After I found out the family secret in my teens,
Petunia was the only person I confided in. Yeah, I
remember you telling me in this tone of like I
(19:27):
just found out, how can you believe it? And I
was like, yeah, I can't believe it actually, Like yeah,
like it was not at all surprising, but I didn't know,
which is funny because I was shocked. I grew up
in this world where there was it was. Pot was
everywhere in my household. Yeah, it wasn't hidden, I mean
(19:49):
it wasn't. It was just part of the furniture. Yeah,
and I was totally uninterested in it. Yeah, it was boring.
I thought pot was uncool. I thought it was lame.
I thought it was what grown ups did. I thought
it was like totally lame. And it blows my mind
think that literally, at any moment, my parents could have
(20:10):
been busted and we could have been foster children. Yeah, well,
this is something that's interesting to me. So my mom
is thinks of herself as a very overprotective person. So
I'm curious what she knew about your dad's livelihood because
(20:30):
I know that she did the books for your dad
for a while, and I wonder what she knew because
she thinks of herself as an overprotective parent. But then
she was allowing me to spend vast amounts of time
in this household that like, like what if your dad
(20:53):
was busted or what if some professional enemy. I don't
know how likely that this would be. I really have
no idea, but like, did he know people who were dangerous?
Possibly he did? Coming up, my dad loses all of
(21:16):
his money and a smuggling trip gone wrong, which just
happened to be the night I was born. I'm Rainbow
Valentine and this is disorganized crime. We'll be right back.
The origin of the word pot is from pataguaya, a
(21:39):
wine or brandy that has been steeped in cannabis buds.
Pataguaya is short for potassion duguaya, which means the drink
of grief. It does seem this job brought its fair
share of grief with it. If a deal went wrong,
you could lose everything. Can Dad stop clinking around in
(22:00):
the back, We can hear him and bail? Yeah? Yeah,
Dad is not able to be quiet. Good job. Enjoy
your oatmeal, dad, So mom, can you talk about how
critical it was that your jobs were see a secret?
Talk about the high stakes of this job. The high
(22:21):
stakes were that we was the ego and everybody thought
it was the devil. And if you got caught with
even an ounce who went to jail and could lose
your kids. It was super high stakes. So you could
you have to be really careful about not talking about
your business to any of your friends or parents of
(22:44):
the other children, or the soccer parents. You just have
to conduct your life like it was really normal, just
like everybody else. Dad finished his oatmeal and chimed in.
I mean, my job was to do it right and
stay under the radar and be this schizophrenic living two
(23:04):
lives basically didn't bother me. It was either do it
right for begad. It was similar to war. You stick
your head above the foxhole and it gets blown off.
People are getting busted for less than an ounce of pot.
Now that wasn't real big time staff, but when you
(23:27):
got into what we were doing, it would cost a
fortunate attorneys even if you did get off, you know.
I mean, I was living sort of in two worlds. Now.
Both of my parents talk about leading a double life.
On one hand, the parents, I know, they're devoted, involved,
adoring parents and upstanding citizens who participate, to my embarrassment
(23:51):
in my school in life almost too enthusiastically. And on
the other hand, their counterculture outlaws smuggling up to several
thousands of pounds of pot across a god fearing country
swarming with law enforcement and full of hippie and drug
fearing Americans. My dad's career as a smuggler coincided with
(24:11):
the inception of the War on Drugs, when the country
was focused on sending drug dealers and users to prison,
and more and more dangerous drugs were entering the transcontinental
smuggling trade like heroin and cocaine drugs were If you
got caught up in those smuggling networks, could lead to
a bullet through the head. You've mentioned feeling like you
(24:33):
led a devil life, Can you speak about that? But yeah,
well then I had I had my friends, which were
all my old friends. We trusted everybody from their word,
and they were separate from all the people that lived
in the community, you know, and the people at the stores,
(24:54):
and even your doctor didn't know who else was going on,
you know. Very stressful to lead two loves, I remember,
ba Yeah, but they were just coming and going. Those
were I mean, I'm talking about room full of pot
(25:15):
where we stabshed at the garbage bags. Pot were just samples.
So the garbage bag is a pot I remember from
when I was a kid, were just the tip of
the pot iceberg of how much pot my dad was moving.
They were samples. Really, At any given point in my childhood,
(25:35):
my dad was storing up to four or five thousand
pounds of pot in our garage or the family storage
unit a few miles away from our house. The true
and complete story of my birth is the perfect saga
(25:58):
to show this double life that my parents led. I
was born in nineteen seventy four on a dark and
stormy night in West Marin, California. We're gonna start. It
was a dark and stormy night. Well, but yeah, the
arm and hit. Yeah, it was just daring and raining
and raining and dark and mary. Well it was dark
and stormy. Yes, it was quite a storm. And that
(26:21):
night my young parents, my dad and his twenties, my
mom in her early thirties, lost their life savings in
a smuggling trip gone wrong. Now, their life savings was
about thirty six thousand dollars in nineteen seventy four, which
is one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars today. I
just figured that's what you cost. So in nineteen seventy four,
(26:43):
my parents were living in a handmaid hippie hobbit house
in West Merin, California. It had a long winding staircase
up to the circular door. My very pregnant mom would
tend to my sister the Japanese gardens and her herd
of animals. She hated the goose. My dad was enjoying
the country life of chickens and his first chainsaw for
firewood in this tiny rural town in westmore in California,
(27:06):
near Point Raise National Seashore. But among the hanging plants
hippi embroidery and art that adorned the inside of the house.
My parents had a custom built secret room which at
any given point could stash up to four thousand pounds
of pot. They couldn't the movies. It was. Yeah, there's
a real sacred room where if you picked out a book,
when you took out a screwdriver, and then there was
(27:27):
a bookshelf, and you had to remove the bookshelf first,
and then the book the books you took the books
off in the bookshelf off, and then the things that
held up the shelf had screws into the wall, and
one of those screws was a key to open the door.
(27:51):
Right before I was born, my dad was at the
tail end of a big trip smugglers lingo a trip
is a business deal from start to finish. The entire
deal is a trip for our purposes. Trips are pot
deals from risk saving the load to delivering it to
the next location. Slash buyer trips last anywhere from a
(28:11):
few weeks to months to a year. Trips include the
journey of the product from its point of origin places
like Mexico, Columbia, Thailand, Lebanon, to its final destination, in
my dad's case, northern California, or his hometown, New York City.
My dad's entire career in pot smuggling was as a middleman.
He was a pot distributor. He's never a small time
(28:33):
street dealer in a sketchy alleyway. He never sold ounces.
He actually laughed in my face when I asked if
he ever sold just one pound at a time. He
would get hundreds or thousands of pounds a pot from
the smugglers who took it off the boats that came
into San Francisco Bay. This pot would go to my
dad's secure location. He would then transport the pot to
a few of his trusted associates, who would in turn
(28:56):
sell it in smaller and smaller amounts down the smuggling
food chain. If the pot came into San Francisco Bay
usually from South America or South Asia, my dad would
transport or to his guy in New York City. Alternatively,
if my dad's supplier in New York City his code
name is Blondie, had a load come into the New
York City Harbor, usually from the Middle East, my dad
(29:17):
would get a ton or more. By the way, a
ton is two thousand pounds, and he would move it
across country and distribute it to the people in San
Francisco Bay area. However, it wasn't organized. Remember this is
disorganized crime. Loads just sort of came in and people
found out, and it was very loose. Now, my dad
didn't work with groups, just a handful of lifelong trusted
(29:38):
friends who are still lifelong trusted friends. The relationships formed
were similar to the bonds formed by soldiers in war.
My dad and his associates trusted each other implicitly, and
integrity was everything. You were as good as your word. Now.
(29:59):
On the night of my birth, my dad made three
big mistakes. On this trip, known as the Second Panama
Red Trip. My dad handed off the pot he had
that he had stored in the secret room in the
hippie Hobbit House to three drivers known as the Brooklyn Boys,
who moved it from were In County to New York City.
That was the first mistake. Just you stupid kids from Yeah,
(30:23):
young stupid kids from Brooklyn, who vegetarians, who like getting high,
and we're real psychedelicized vegetarian kids. Okay, it's fine that
they're vegetarians, but what we're getting at is that these
were young, inexperienced kids who didn't take extra precautions when
hauling loads of pot across the country. Like when my
(30:45):
dad was more established, he would never get high while working.
That was reserved for after if the trip was successful. Well,
these kids, they wanted to have fun on the job.
The next mistake was the flashy spank a new vehicle
my dad provided for transporting the loads across the country.
That was really a stupid of errors because the truck
(31:07):
I bought to do this, we decided we got a
new the fanciest big four wheels h GMC pickup. It
was like right off the lot, remember that white and
yellow orange? Yet what was it? White and gold? Oh?
(31:28):
I remember it very clearly. The way I looked at
things you wanted to have the best of everything the bed.
But that was really part of the stupid thing, because
we had right, We had kids who looked like hippies,
smoking pot all through it, and the whole fucking bed
was filled. That we built a bed, and we put
(31:49):
in three hundred and fifty pounds under this bed that
we had built in the U in the back of
the truck, in the pick in the pickup bed. It
shouldn't have been a new truck. It was too flashy
a truck for these scrunky looking twice four year olds.
I shouldn't have done that, and I shouldn't have given
him my profit. I should have just taken my profit,
(32:11):
kept it safe, and sold it off as I would
sell it. The third mistake, and the most critical, was
that my dad fronted all of his profits in this
last truck load. Basically, the Brooklyn Boys had already transported
several loads of pot from arine New York City, but
all of my dad's profits from this trip were dependent
on that last truck load. I let these guys talk
(32:33):
me into fronting all of my profits in their last truck,
which was about his damastic instead of just taking our
winnings and packing up and going, and greed is right.
I mean I wanted however more, I wanted more. It
(32:54):
wasn't enough that we've made like fifty grand in in
two months. My dad thought that fronting his money would
increase his profits, but in fact, good old fashioned greed
reared its ugly head and bit my dad in the ass.
Because that dark, stormy night that the Brooklyn boys set
off with this last potload, they get busted. But before
(33:16):
my dad hears anything about this, my very pregnant mom
goes into libor and all the focus goes from the
trip to having a baby, and then off goes to
the truck and she goes into labor and just mind on,
I lost my mind. I was born at home and
my dad, always a camera enthusiast, videotaped the event with
a brand new camera, one of the first of its
kind for home video. We got the tape digitized. My
(33:39):
poor mother. My mom is surrounded by my dad, the
midwife of some family friends, my five year old sister, Vertica,
the cats, our family dog. Is we're paying us the
picture of what mom's upstairs. No, we're well, there are
several level No, we're down in the in the middle
section in a water bed, a water bed by the
(34:01):
fireplace at two thirty. I mean, after this this incredibly
intense storm for twenty four hours or more, the storm
breaks and boom out you pop, girl, girl. So I
(34:21):
swaped you up, and then the doctor combs, and so
we gave we gave an instant replay because we had
video taped the whole thing. Well, you know, so we're
the first of instant replay and a home birth. Then
I get the news. I mean, so we've been up
(34:42):
for forever, for two days or whatever it is, because
how long labors are the wasted wasted. The next morning,
one of the guys comes by and says, oh, the
truck I busted in Indiana. So apparently the Brooklyn Boys
got pulled over in Indiana and being young stoned in
a fancy new truck with California plates. The cop suspected
(35:06):
something was amiss, so busted. The Brooklyn Boys call my
dad with bad news the next day, which is also
the first morning I spent outside the womb on planet Earth.
So my dad leaves town and heads to New York
City to try and get some of his money back
from the Brooklyn Boys. My dad finds the Brooklyn Boys
peeps and he gets a little bit of money back,
a couple of thousand dollars, but to this day he
(35:27):
regrets not being bolsy enough to demand the entire amount
thirty six thousand dollars, which is roughly one hundred and
ninety five thousand dollars in today's money. My dad returns
to California with a fraction of the money he lost,
and then he and my mom and my sister and me,
just a few days old, moved to another house in
West Morin And then after doing that, we split from
(35:50):
that house because we were concerned, oh, because we thought
that's when the battalion chief came to be my bodyguard,
because we thought they would send people after us, So
we had to leave and moved abruptly. My parents are
scared that someone might come for them, someone from the
(36:11):
Brooklyn Boys network who might want revenge or retaliation in
some form or another. Luckily that never happened, but the
trip definitely had gone wrong and my parents' money was gone.
Tensions were running high, and my fledgling smuggler parents were scared.
My parents have two daughters. They need to protect themselves
from arrest from losing their kids and the cedier parts
(36:33):
of the industry. So after moving, my parents put their
heads down and try to leave the smuggling business. Try
being the keyword. I'm Rambo Valentine. You're listening to disorganized Crime.
We'll be right back. One thing that blows me away
(36:54):
with my parents is that they always see the glass
is half full. Their work was critically dangerous. But when
my parents were telling me my birth story after he
found out they lost all their money, my dad went
into the backyard to think, I'm wandering in the garden
and I'm looking at our fruit trees and I'm just
(37:16):
philosophica because I remember the same thoughts, you know, And
it was like, well, I guess it's a pruning because
that's that's how I always looked at it. And I
mean that's the only way I could look at it. Yeah,
that is always how fuld of you guys, which I
love me too, But that's us. That's who we are,
(37:38):
you know. Like my dad's trips smuggling pot across the country,
I've been on a long, strange trip myself. Thank you
Robert Hunter for that iconic sentence, unraveling a web of secrets.
This long, strange journey is a first hand look at
(37:59):
the extraordinary, unique, disorganized drug smuggling industry in Marine County, California, which,
while today is home to tech billionaires, was once home
to the rock stars drug smugglers of San Francisco's nineteen
sixties counterculture. They risked their lives to smuggle pot in
the most dangerous time for pot in history. I was
(38:22):
born in a unique location and situation, right in the
middle of the battle between the counterculture, psychedelic smugglers and
the War on drugs, which would ultimately end my dad's
smuggling career forever. Dad made and lost millions of dollars
more than once. And I, Rainbow Valentine, of tax paying,
(38:44):
regularish job having non pot smoker but total hippie at heart,
was there obliviously in the middle of it all. I
wanted to find out what in the world was going
on at home while I was playing Smurfs under the
olive tree. Listener, you and I are both going back
in time to find out how did my dad smuggle
(39:06):
thousands of pounds upot across the country for over twenty
two years. Some people I will talk to spent years
in prison. Some lost all their money, some lost their minds,
a few flew under the radar. But for all of them,
this podcast is the first time they have told their stories,
(39:27):
allowed to anyone ever. So now it is time for
the smugglers to speak and we get to listen. I'm
Rainbow Valentine and this is Disorganized Crime. Disorganized Crime. Smuggler's
Daughter is written and recorded by Me, Rainbow Valentine. Our
(39:51):
producers are Gabby Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are
Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley and Me at School
of Humans and Connell Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio.
Our music is by Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with
original them by Mark, Karen and Me. You can find
us online at iHeart dot com slash Podcasts Right novel
(40:20):
the story Do It as with Me tamble by Steeping
Princess of the red Wood Dreams. She helps us keep
it real. Handshake seals the deal, Wrap the stack, sealed, meal,
Road up these all breads, rolling a Doobe, young, rich
(40:46):
and groovy, making it up. We roll along, Rolling along,
Far Country, Roll Rolling along Far Country, Roll Rolling low
(41:08):
Floria Country low
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