December 25, 2019 • 39 mins
On the night of Rainbow Valentine's birth, the Lemurs lose all their money in a deal gone wrong. Walter and Taffy try to restart their lives in the clothing industry, which ends in a colossal failure. Broke, alone, and disillusioned, Walter tries to rebuild his pot smuggling career with the help of 60,000 pounds of Lebanese Hash.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. It was a storage place right near us,
that's what we picked. And it was extremely well tucked
away at the same time as being able to get
trucks in and out quite easily right just top on
the freeway, and it's super like hidden, and that that
specific one was really sort of stashed. Okay, so I
(00:37):
have decided to go to the public storage container. Aware
my dad used to stash, you know, thousands of pounds
of pot. So I wanted to come here on my
way to the city and let's see what it felt like.
When I was growing up, my dad's storage unit was
one of my favorite places because a visit there was
(01:00):
both a rare occurrence and it was a fantastic playland
of furniture for fort building and romping. It was also
across the freeway from my favorite restaurant, McDonald's, which I
only got to go to on my birthday or maybe
if I was super lucky and my dad totally worn
down by my whining after a rare trip to the
(01:21):
storage unit. But this storage unit wasn't where my dad
would store his vintage and water damaged furniture. The furniture
was just there to hide thousands of pounds of pot
that moved in and out of Mill Valley via my
dad's prolific smuggling business. I got to the storage unit
and I called my partner to talk to because I
(01:41):
needed someone besides myself to work this out with. All Right,
the phone is on, this is happening there. You are high.
So I just parked at the public storage shed. It's
not a shed. I mean, there's multiple units where we
used to come here. It's like cover. There's eucalyptus everywhere,
Like it's very it's totally magical actually, like it's a
(02:04):
magical place if you're a kid. It's so it's like
the memories are so vivid of coming here and getting
to play on this furniture that was in front of
the pot which was in the back. Does it feel like,
oh like this this is not the kind of place
you would expect anything to be going on here. It
(02:25):
does feel nestled and hidden and cozy, but that's Mill Valley,
Like everything in Mill Valley is nestled and cozy because
it's a valley. So you have fond memories of this
storage shed, is what you're saying, mega like mega fond memories.
I didn't get to go here very often, and I love,
did you wonder why? I know, I know I should
have wondered why I was so clueless. I didn't wonder
(02:48):
why I never got to do anything fun. I mean,
oh no I did. I got to do fun things
all the time, but I never I was such a loud,
annoying child. I didn't. I was often told, you know,
I didn't get to hang with the grown ups. Yeah,
you were not. You were not a suspicious child. Same
I well, I still am not a suspicious human. Like
(03:09):
I'm not a suspicious adult. Like I am best friends
with everybody, like nothing wrong is ever happening. You're probably
very like you know, they could just be like, hey kid,
you know, go play in this furgniture, and that was
like perfect for them. Yeah, And I'm trying to remember
if I smelled the pot, you know, because there were bales,
like I'm you know, maybe a thousand pounds would be
(03:30):
there or something. And you know what, it's interesting because
it is in this grove of eucalyptus trees, and eucalyptus
smell really strong. Well, that's that's smart, that's best. Something
you should ask him. It's like, Hey, did you take
that to your account? Yeah, no, it's totally true because
eucalyptus are an incredibly strong smell, and if you're unloading
a thousand pounds pot bales, it's a great idea to
(03:52):
do it in a eucalyptus grove. I would came here
to the storage container area the storage units to sort
of see what's going on, and that I feel is
the takeaway is like, Wow, this isn't a aromatic grove.
The storage unit represents sophistication and professionalism in my dad's industry.
(04:13):
He has a permanent and reliable place to store the product.
But before he acquired the storage unit, like what happens
so much in the life of a smuggler, my dad
loses all of his money and has to rebuild. This
is disorganized crime smuggler's daughter. I'm Rainbow Valentine do Young,
(04:41):
free and groovy, making it up. We rolled along country.
He didn't in the Golden Gag State making it up
(05:02):
as well. So it's nineteen seventy four and my dad
has been with Taffy and her toddler in northern California
for four years. Organically, he's built a thriving cross country
pot smuggling business with a couple trusted friends in New
York and his New West Coast contacts, the heavyweight smugglers
(05:26):
of San Francisco's psychedelic Revolution. My dad has been getting
big deal after big deal. There's the Lime Green Pot
dabbling in cocaine dealing, the first Panama Red Trip, a
minor hiccup, getting arrested for bringing a nutcracker filled with
a couple of grams of pot to the airport, and
then in nineteen seventy four it's the second Panama Red
(05:46):
Trip when the young stoned Brooklyn Boys get busted in Indiana.
Remember that's my birthday, my literal birthday. Ah. Yes, the
state of the art home video of my home birth.
That dark and stormy night, my dad and mom are
living in Est Marin in the hippity hobbity house with
(06:07):
five year old Vertica, and in a series of mistakes,
my dad ends up losing all of our famili's money. Broke,
Scared and disillusioned, my parents move and try to start
over in the straight world. When I say straight world,
I mean the normal people world, not the psychedelic drug industry.
My parents are scared of retaliation, and they're scared they
(06:29):
might lose their kids. They dive into business as fashion
designers and merchandisers. After the day you were born and
we lost all our money, I continue to be disillusioned.
So I was very disillusioned, and I wasn't I was
too fearful to go back into the biz. And through
other of our psychedelic friends, we were introduced to this
(06:55):
very unusual asthetic. Having grown up in the forties and fifties,
my mom always made her own clothes and the nineteen
sixties dance parties were all about dressing up in Victorian
costumes found in San Francisco thrift stores. My mom was
obsessed with fashion and costumes. So my parents are friends
with this smuggler called the Millionaire. He's filthy rich from
(07:18):
smuggling et ergotamine tar treat the base that you use
to make LSD and with his boodles of money, he
wanted to start a clothing business. We were introduced by
my dentist. He wanted to make clothing. So Taffy and
I and this other lady he offered to give us
(07:40):
the money to start a clothing company. And ah, you said, hey,
I don't know what I'm doing and blah blah and
this and that. Whatever he said, he didn't care, and
we needed something to do because I had pulled out
again as usual. So we started the clothing company and
we named it after you, Rainbow Valentine, and we made
(08:02):
very high fashion, modest clothes, and it was the most
It was a really horrible time for me because I
hated the clothing business. You had to be born into it,
just like any other and I knew nothing about it
nor anybody in it really. So there I was doing
all this stuff and I didn't realize my job was
(08:25):
to be a salesman. My parents started their clothing line,
designing vulure track suits, which twenty years later, in nineteen
ninety six, put juicy couture on the map, but in
the nineteen seventies, no one was buying that. Yeah, no,
I'm not a great salesman. People say that to me.
I am great at at speaking about what I completely love.
(08:47):
That's what I'm great about, and I'm not. You know,
I was totally tentative in this. Idn't I didn't know
what styles. The gig was just crazy, and it made
me horrible that it just I couldn't do it. I
was traveling to clothing shows, you know, and less in
New York, in LA and Chicago, and it was horrible.
(09:09):
I mean that people had to deal with were horrible
people for me, and the ladies were having a ton
of fun. They just went off merrily designing whatever the
fuck they wanted to make, you know, And I'm I'm
forced to have to try and fucking sell it. I
(09:29):
lost my complete completely lost my self esteem from that
one Taffy and I split up. I just I thought
I was so worthless and I failed, and I failed
my family, and I've lost all this money for you know,
and well I'm a sensitive guy after pouring everything into it.
(09:56):
My parents clothing business failed. They were out of luck,
out of money, and the stress led my parents to separate.
I barely remember this. I was probably two or three.
My dad is devastated, Mom, me and my sister move
in with a couple of my mom's girlfriends, and my
dad moves into a group house filled with the hippiest
of hippies. So even today, after affirming he once traded
(10:19):
acid for a VW bus of redwood, burl slabs and
big Sir My dad insists he's not a hippie, and
his overwhelming memories of the time he and my mom
separated are of being sad and lonely while living amongst
irritatingly hippie hippies. But even in his cloud of depression,
my dad finds his glass half full attitude. I was
(10:39):
really down and sort of disappeared for a minute into
the hippie world, which was not me. But I put
myself back together again. Humpty dumpty that I was so.
My dad, a genuine humpty dumpty, endeavors to put himself
(11:01):
back together again when three big things happened. First, he
gets back into smuggling. In nineteen seventy eight, some of
his New York pals hook him up with a trip
involving a modest load of Colombian pot coming into Florida.
My dad knows he's good at the smuggling business and
he needs to make a living, so he agrees to
arrange a pickup for the product and distribution. He convinces
(11:24):
this psychiatrist friend of my mom's to front him some
money to hire a driver to score the pot in Florida.
The driver knows people to sell it to in Chicago,
this other strange fellow I met, who I really didn't
know very well and then never really hung out with.
After said, oh I got people in Chicago, I can
sell it to Chicago. I don't know, fucking Chicago whatever.
(11:49):
So the driver and my dad had to Chicago to
distribute and collect the profit. And I don't remember the
trip real well that it wasn't particularly successful. I guess
it was mediocre pot and whatever. We finally sold it
but and got the money. But that was my reinitiation
(12:12):
back in in nineteen seventy eight. Well, the trip did
end up being worth it, and now digging themselves out
of poverty, my parents are able to reunite and we
all moved back in together into a rental house in
the Mill Valley, Redwoods. So the next thing that happened
to put my humpty dumpty dad back together was an
old friend came knocking with a thank you gift of
(12:33):
thirty thousand dollars. For a few years in the early seventies,
my parents had helped out their friend the broker, who
was also a fellow smuggler. He was also a junkie,
and my parents would let him stay at their house
and take care of him when he was really doped
up on heroin. And I had been really good to
him in the early seventies when he was constantly fucked
(12:56):
up and trying to kick junk, and we took care
of him and he stayed at our crashed at our
house at different points in blah blah, and we had
no idea that he was actually at the same time
stealing our prescription drugs, which which reading and it hardly
used anyway. Well, later the broker makes a lot of
money smuggling. He also spends some time in a tie prison,
(13:19):
but that's later. Anyway, he wants to make amends for
taking advantage of my parents hospitality and give them a
thank you gift. He I mean, they were rolling in it.
So he said, well, here, you know, for all that
time you really took care of us. Here, here's a
bunch of money. Go buy a house in no Valley.
This money is the down payment on my childhood home.
(13:42):
Finally my family can stop moving and settle down. Now.
The third and final thing that got my family back
on its feet was in nineteen seventy nine, when opportunity
knocked in the form of sixty thousand pounds of Lebanese hash.
You're listening to Disorganized Crime. I'm Rainbow Valentine. We'll be
right back. My family truly gets back on its feet
(14:06):
with this huge hash deal. My dad's New York friend
and colleague, Blondie, was a big smuggler, part of the
international operations, and he came into sixty thousand pounds of
Lebanese hash and he needed everyone he knew to help
him get rid of it. Blondie sends a couple of
his guys to California to talk it over with my dad.
(14:27):
Blondie knows my dad's been doing some smaller smuggles, like
the Chicago one that was a couple hundred pounds of pot,
but this was in the thousands. The way I found
out about it is all of a sudden, the whole
two or three of the boys came and visited me,
and they were just bubbling. We did it, We did it,
(14:48):
we did it. We've we've brought in our first big,
big trip. They were unquestionably the Disorganized Crime crew. Okay,
my dad agrees to the job. Finally he's back in
the big time business since he attempted to quit five
years prior, he's ready to distribute four thousand pounds of
(15:11):
Blondie's sixty thousand pounds of Lebanese hash. So we're going
to send out a truckload of four thousand pounds for you. Okay, geez,
that's a lot. That's like how many elephants through? Four elephants? Well, no,
four thousand pounds, yeah, one elephant. So our family loves elephants.
(15:33):
In fact, the elephant is our family crest. So I
decided to measure the pot in elephants. It's an African
male adult elephant averages thirteen thousand pounds, so Blondie sends
out about a quarter of an elephant in Lebanese hash. Now,
four thousand pounds is also the average weight of a rhinoceros,
by the way, or a fat giraffe according to the Internet.
(15:54):
For those listeners out there unfamiliar with hash, it's a sticky, firm,
resinous material and you only need a pinch to get high.
According to my everyday pot smoking friends, it would take
one into three years to finish smoking one pound of
hash since you only need a nib. So four thousand
pounds is a lot of product. Smuggling requires a lot
(16:16):
of moving parts, with different people in charge of different
parts of the process. Now there isn't a traditional chain
of command per se. It's more of a freelance kind
of gig, but there is a chain of command in
a freelance fashion. My dad would buy the product outright
with a handshake deal and say yeah, I'll take care
of this four thousand pounds of Lebanese hash, and him
(16:38):
and Blondie handshake on it. And everyone's a freelancer. No
one can bail you out. There's no four o one ks.
You're on your own. Everyone's an independent contractor. One of
the most important jobs in smuggling is the driver, also
known as the bagman. For this Lebanese hash deal, the
driver was doubling his professional truck driving career with smuggling. Well, okay,
(17:00):
so the main truck trucker was this guy who was
I mean, who drove big loads around. He was a
professional truck driver. He had a Class A license, and
this load came out in a huge horse trailer or
a cattle trailer or some forty foot huge thing. Were
(17:24):
there livestocking at and the nash No, there wasn't. There was.
I can't remember really it's forty years ago. Over my
dad's twenty two plus year career, he worked with very
few drivers. His main driver, who fastidiously hauled moving trucks
of pot cross country, is one of our oldest family friends.
(17:45):
And we're going to call him Sandwich because he once
owned a tasty eatery that I loved as a child.
When I called mister Sandwich to ask if he'd share
his stories with me, he unleashed a torrent of riveting
tales that he had never spoken aloud ever to anyone.
His children still don't even know about his former smuggling career.
(18:06):
Sandwich is another scrupulous, brilliant, nice Jewish kid from the
East Coast, and my dad relied on him to rent
moving trucks, buy out the marine thrift stores of furniture,
because again my dad would often hide the product behind
furniture and then drive and deliver the product to New York.
(18:26):
He'd rent the truck and then from there he'd go
buy out to Saint Vincent de Paul, buy out a
truck load of furniture of used furniture and bring it
back to the warehouse. We'd pack it up on the
Saint Vincent de Paul thrift store. It is absurd to
learn that even marine thrift stores are significant, because being
(18:47):
a thrift store loving family, I often run into my
family members at marine thrift stores. I have no idea
what he did with the furniture loads, the truckloads. I
really have no idea. I never asked him. Okay, these
sounds are my dad putting on his raincoat in the
middle of our interview. I you know, I was what
(19:08):
I was into, solutions and success. I didn't care how
it got happened. That was not my part of the trip.
That was Sandwich is part of the drip that those details.
Each of us did different parts. That way, we couldn't
ran down each other. Almost together. My dad and Sandwich
(19:30):
would load thousands of pounds of pot into the back
of a moving truck and the front with furniture, and
Sandwich would take a few days to drive the load
to my dad's guy in New York City. Annoyingly, the
drives were almost always in the dead of winter, because
that's when pot harvested in the fall is ready for delivery.
What happened on Sandwich's cross country drives was his business.
(19:54):
My dad relied on him to successfully achieve his task totally,
and my dad didn't concern himself with how it happened
or what may have happened along the way. So mister
Sandwich change his mind about speaking to me on tape,
but he gave me the thumbs up to share his stories.
So Sandwich is driving a rented moving truck with a
(20:14):
load of four thousand pounds of pot from Mill Valley
to New York. It's a snowstorm in January in Nebraska
when the truck breaks down, luckily at a truck stop,
not the middle of the inner State. So Sandwich calls
the truck company from a payphone, of course they're in
cell phones in the nineteen eighties, and the truck company
(20:35):
sends out a new truck and thoughtfully a couple guys
to help Sandwich unload and reload the truck's cargo. Now,
my dad always hired a pilot and someone to ride shotgun,
precisely in case this kind of situation arose. Well, Sandwich
remembers convincing the truck rental guys there braun was unnecessary
(20:57):
and remarkably manage along with his copilot to unpack the
broken truck and repack the new truck in a Nebraska
truck stop in a snowstorm undetected. The snowstorm may have
saved their skin, as frigid Midwest blizzards are less than
ideal conditions for nosynellies or helpful cops looking to assist
(21:17):
out of towners moving heavy furniture and or bales of pot.
Sandwich's other driving close call happened in Wyoming. He, his copilot,
and their moving truck of several thousands of pounds of
pot plus furniture stop at a gas station fuel up,
and each, thinking the other has paid the bill, continue
(21:38):
on their way. Remember this is the eighties, before you
prepaid for gas, So they tootle on down the Wyoming interstate.
When Sandwich here's police sirens and out his side mirror
he sees a cop car indicating to pull over, keep
cool and don't arouse suspicion is smuggling one O one.
Sandwich pulls over and the cop approaches the driver's side window.
(22:03):
Did you guys just buy some gas? Sandwich and his
copilot nod ah, Did you pay for it? The cop asks,
sure he did. Sandwich points to his copilot, who points
to him simultaneously and says, I thought you paid. Both
thought the other had paid for the gas, and in
fact no one had paid. Incredibly, they didn't suspect Sandwich
(22:26):
of being anything other than forgetful, and then instead of
searching the truck and finding the pot, they escorted them
back to the gas station. Sandwich has been integral to
my dad's smuggling career, and along with finding great drivers,
part of my dad's job was also to find places
to put the pot. During the Lebanese hash trip in
(22:47):
the late seventies, my dad had not yet gotten his
storage unit that I loved going to as a kid,
so each new smuggle required finding new places to put
the product. To set this up, I had to find
a cool, quiet landing spot that was in the countryside,
and so I reached out to one of my pals
(23:08):
who lived in Sonoma. He turned me on to a
friend who was actually a musician at the same time
and had a sort of a ranch that he lived
out somewhere and I don't know if it was Healsburg
somewhere out there, and he had a ranch. So we
brought the truck into this ranch in the middle of
(23:29):
nowhere basically, which was great, and we unloaded the whole
thing in his barn. A good location to store pot
according to common sense, and my dad is off the
beaten path. My childhood house was incredibly private and off
the beaten path, but my dad rarely stored large quantities
of pot at my childhood house. That practice mostly went
away along with his life savings on the night of
(23:51):
my birth. Our Mill Valley home was important though for business.
My dad liked privacy and of course needed a place
for all the business vehicles. Plus our house usually contained
hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. Now we're in
Sonoma Counties are full of rambling country back roads dotted
with old farmhouses orchards with storage containers and barns. These
(24:14):
are good locations for storing pot for local delivery. Now
it's also a bonus if the storage location is fragrant
to mask the aromatic merchandise. The Sanoma County farmtown of
Pedaluma was a favorite pot storage location for local delivery.
Now anyone who's from Pedaluma can tell you it regularly
smells like cowshit at various times of the day. Storing
(24:36):
pot for cross country travel, however, is a different story.
The storage location should be near the freeway for easy access.
Move the truck in, move it out, and onto the freeway.
My dad's storage unit in Mill Valley was right off
the freeway and located in a massive grove of fragrant
eucalyptus trees. I took my dad six months to get
(24:56):
rid of the Lebanese hash because apparently it wasn't high quality.
And in the course of the six months he had
to move the stash to several different locations, all in
the world class honeymoon destination of a wine country, and
moving thousands of pounds of product is a pain in
the ass because each new location requires new precautions. In
(25:17):
one spot, he had to build a fake wall. What
idated specifically was I built the thing was so far
twenty feet deep whatever it was deep, and so I
built a false wall about fifteen feet so with sheet
rock and put the whole thing up, and we had
a picture frame hanging on a nail. And that actually
(25:38):
picture frame was in fact a cutout piece of the
picture frame was hanging right sideways like this on the
wall on a piece of sheet rock. But when you
took it off, the sheet rock and everything came off
with the frame you see right, so that you could
get in behind it. It was a secret stash, which
(26:02):
was pretty cool, and it was relative. It was relatively
easy access, but it was Sandra fell. It was a
pan in the ass, and then we seld it to
somebody else had become it was passed down. I sold
it for ten grand you own. No, I didn't known it.
I just had the lace, and nobody ever cared as
long as a ramp jack was sent to the correct box.
(26:25):
So I then sold it to these other guys. So
moving trucks packed with furniture and pot was my dad's
method for smuggling pot cross country. Locally, he packed giant
American cars like Buicks and Chevies with trunk loads of
merchandise and drove slowly, something ever early seen as my dad,
a former New York City cab driver, usually still drives
(26:46):
like one. We also had a big work truck with
two gas tanks and a camper shell with curtains on
the windows. I used that truck to move into my
first San Francisco apartment in the late nineties, and remember
it breaking down right in front of the Robin Williams
Memorial Rainbow Tunnel on the way over the Golden gate Bridge.
Our family work truck with double gas tanks now lives
on a cheese farm in Padaluma. Each smuggler has his
(27:10):
tricks and tips for smuggling in vehicles. The fancy white
Chevy truck my dad bought for the Brooklyn Boys slash
busted birthnight trip was tricked out with a custom camping
loft in the bed of the truck with secret compartments,
which apparently were not so tricky to find. Other smuggler
friends tricked out urvs with secret compartments and fried bacon
(27:31):
on their smuggling drives to mask the pot Aroma free. Freddy,
a smuggler from SoCal, perfected a method for stuffing tires
with pot for his many Mexico California trips. He also
mentioned customizing the gas tank to hold drugs. Loads came
into the San Francisco Bay on giant boats from South
America or Asia, and then smugglers transported the loads to
(27:54):
smaller fishing boats which came into the Saclito Docks or
local beaches. They were then moved to safe houses and
then to people like my dad in work trucks or
cars sometimes came in on helicopters. Free Freddie told me
a story about bales of pot dropped in a California
field from South American helicopters. Upon landing, the pot packaging broke,
(28:16):
scattering buds everywhere. The smugglers gathered as much as they
could find, but the farmer who owned the field called
in a panic a few weeks later about the pot
sprouting up all over his property. My mom has a
story about a smuggler named Goldfinger, and oddly enough, his
nickname foreshadowed his fate. On one smuggling trip that involved
(28:38):
a small plane. This guy Goldfinger, who looked like Goldfinger
in the James Bond movie. And he was red haired,
and he was called colt Finger because he was pretty
ruthless and he was dishuge smuggler and he was going
to meet this little smuggling plane on a runway somewhere
(29:00):
in California. And he drove up with this Porsche and
he jumped out before the plane stopped, and he ran
towards it and he got his hand caught in the
propeller and it cut it off at the wrist, and
all his henchman, you know, his assistance just went, Oh,
(29:20):
my God. So he grabbed his hand and he made
drive him to the hospital so they would sew it
up back on. But they couldn't. I guess the hospital
was too far away. And so that's the story of
good Finger that be careful what you name yourself. I heard,
I haven't didn't see it, but I heard he had
(29:41):
a gold hand made that that was a coke up
spoon on the end of one of the fingers. Are
you kidding? No? Cannabis and cash were moved in suitcases,
steamer trucks, and briefcases. I remember my dad's briefcase vividly
because it was always locked, making it rivetingly secret and
(30:02):
grown up ish. Like I've mentioned before, one of the
most enlightening things about producing this podcast is learning that
almost everyone I grew up around had some involvement in
the smuggling industry. Now, this is the mom of one
of my BFFs, who I've known for forty years, and
this moment you're about to hear is the first time
(30:22):
I discovered that she too was a smuggler. She's also
a photographer and has a PhD from two different IVY leagues.
I'm Anita is telling us her story of as we
shell peas sharing and shelling. Ah. So the major way
I have done personal smuggling of money, personal drugs supplies
(30:44):
is wrapping the things up in yarn balls, yarn balls,
yarn balls, and knitting and crocheting as going through custom
So knitting and crocheting as you go through the ball
right right right, right right, or when they started, when
they would start examining my things, you know, I would
(31:06):
probably pull out the yarn ball and start working on it. Yeah,
and what did you admit? M scarves basic. One of
my suitcases broke open as it came out of the
lunge thing and this yarnball with five thousand dollars was
rolling down. Yeah, it was funny. Did the money become
(31:30):
free of the yarn ball? No? I think god, oh no, no, no,
they were They were well constructed yarn balls. So money
stuffed in yarn balls brilliant. And if that doesn't work,
or you don't have yarn, but you have a cat,
smuggle with your pets and toe. I was living in Ecuador.
The good pot came at the time, came from Colombia.
(31:51):
I smuggled a couple of paths of pot on a
bus from Ecuador to Colombia and a pillow in a
box with a cat on top of it. Cat. Yes,
my cat named Muda. She was a gray cat named
Muda in a pillow. Pot wrapped up in a pillow,
(32:19):
and then that the cat was hitting on top of it.
That's great. You're the first person I've talked to who
uses a cat. Yeah, you have a theme as well
as a very cat yarn themed. That's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, Well,
I didn't realize I was following in my dad's footsteps.
(32:42):
I did smuggle pot a few times myself. I was
a sophomore in college studying abroad in the pot legal Netherlands.
Mindful my stoner friends back home were deficient and spectacular
Dutch drugs, I crafted a care package of pot hidden
in European candy bars. Lion bars have four wafers with
(33:02):
light nugat between and a chocolate coating. I carefully removed
the two middle wafers, leaving a structural floor and roof wafer,
and I filled the middle with well wrapped Amsterdam pot.
I then resealed the candy bars with natella, reglued the
wrapper and mailed them to the States. It was a
gift within a gift, two imported treats. Everyone was thrilled
(33:26):
when the Lion Bars arrived in Boston, smuggling pot and
candy bars. It was a labor of love. Definitely not
a sustainable business model if I'd been interested in anything
other than gift giving and sharing the wealth. This is
disorganized crime. I'm Rainbow Valentine and we'll be right back.
(33:47):
My dad likes to quote his lawyer, the late great
Bernie Siegel, who in the early nineties lamented the quality
of the criminal has gone down. I never understood the
quote until I started unfolding this story. My dad and
his colleagues did business based on integrity, trust and ethics.
They were criminals and that what they were doing was illegal,
(34:10):
but they were trustworthy, honest, and reliable, unlike the criminals
emerging in the late eighties early nineties that Bernie bemoaned.
My dad and his friends did business based on a handshake.
So have four thousand pounds of this hash? Are you
selling it like ten pounds a pop? Well, I'm not
selling one at a time. And basically, you give it
(34:35):
out to people who you trust. You give them fifty
pounds here, you know, come back with the money when
you you know, whenever you get it done. Just I mean,
it's same as what they were doing to me was
giving it out to all their friends. I was giving
it out to all my friends. So no money has
passed hands. It's just this trust circle. I mean, it
(34:57):
wasn't I wasn't selling it for cash, yeah, because most
nobody would put up cash for there were anyway. But
that was the whole way it worked forever, is that
huge amounts would be moved to one's close friends associates
if they were doing big amounts. And that's how much
(35:20):
of how I worked and happened is I had my
reputation which was really, I guess obviously stellar enough to
give me hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars
worth of stuff at different points I don't even remember,
you know, because but that was the way we worked,
and it was passed down. But amongst this integrity and
(35:44):
noble deeds was plenty of disorganization. The Lebanese Hashtel ended
up being the one where my dad lost the money
in the backyard that we talked about in episode one,
the BlackBerry story. It was pretty stressful. I couldn't fucking
find at least half a million in cash, Oh my god,
for my pals, but had only lost the money in
(36:06):
the yard because his smuggling colleagues trusted that he would
hold on to the money for him. This Lebanese hash
deal is so important. It got my dad back into
big time smuggling and provided much needed income for our
family after several years of poverty. And with this trip,
my dad is really becoming a professional. He's back on
his feet and to solidify his professionalism after the Lebanese
(36:28):
hash deal, that's what my dad treats himself to the
right off the highway storage unit just a few miles
from our Mill Valley home. So I had this that
was funny, the revelation about the the eucalyptus, and then
remembering how much I'd love to go to that storage unit.
But I don't think I was at I don't think
you are you kidding? You were? Do you think when
you think I wanted some noisy kid around there? What
(36:49):
are you fucking getting me? A teess? Christ you were
the worst. You would say, hey, come on over here, people.
I mean, yeah, you wouldn't. I mean you didn't, But
you're you're you're an attractor. So by the end of
the seventies, my dad, who came into an instat family
at the dawn of the decade, has made and lost
(37:10):
the equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars smuggling pot.
He's quit the pot industry, started and failed a non
drug related business theoretically traded over one hundred thousand dollars
for a baby. Me lost his family and restarted his
smuggling business in a much more professional, serious, and covert way,
making back hundreds of thousands of dollars and regaining his family.
(37:34):
God loves pot dealers. Why didn't you tell her that?
Now we have to? Now we have, we've revealed our
secret that God is watching over us pot dealers. Well yeah,
I mean you know, I'm Rainbow Valentine and this is
(37:55):
Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter. Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written
and recorded by Me, Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are Abby
Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian
Live and Elsie Crowley and Me at School of Humans
and Connell Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music
(38:16):
is by Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with original theme
by Mark Karen and Me. You can follow us online
at Disorganized Crime podcast dot com. Right Story, do it
as with Me, tamble By, Sleeping Princess of the Red says,
(38:45):
keep it real, handshake seals the deal, Wrap stat seal, meal,
Going up. These all golden to Doobi, Young, rich and
groovy Making it up. We roll o, rolling low, Far Country, Roll,
(39:13):
Rolling low, Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country, Low
School of Humans. It was a storage place right near us,
that's what we picked. And it was extremely well tucked
away at the same time as being able to get
trucks in and out quite easily right just top on
the freeway, and it's super like hidden, and that that
specific one was really sort of stashed. Okay, so I
(00:37):
have decided to go to the public storage container. Aware
my dad used to stash, you know, thousands of pounds
of pot. So I wanted to come here on my
way to the city and let's see what it felt like.
When I was growing up, my dad's storage unit was
one of my favorite places because a visit there was
(01:00):
both a rare occurrence and it was a fantastic playland
of furniture for fort building and romping. It was also
across the freeway from my favorite restaurant, McDonald's, which I
only got to go to on my birthday or maybe
if I was super lucky and my dad totally worn
down by my whining after a rare trip to the
(01:21):
storage unit. But this storage unit wasn't where my dad
would store his vintage and water damaged furniture. The furniture
was just there to hide thousands of pounds of pot
that moved in and out of Mill Valley via my
dad's prolific smuggling business. I got to the storage unit
and I called my partner to talk to because I
(01:41):
needed someone besides myself to work this out with. All Right,
the phone is on, this is happening there. You are high.
So I just parked at the public storage shed. It's
not a shed. I mean, there's multiple units where we
used to come here. It's like cover. There's eucalyptus everywhere,
Like it's very it's totally magical actually, like it's a
(02:04):
magical place if you're a kid. It's so it's like
the memories are so vivid of coming here and getting
to play on this furniture that was in front of
the pot which was in the back. Does it feel like,
oh like this this is not the kind of place
you would expect anything to be going on here. It
(02:25):
does feel nestled and hidden and cozy, but that's Mill Valley,
Like everything in Mill Valley is nestled and cozy because
it's a valley. So you have fond memories of this
storage shed, is what you're saying, mega like mega fond memories.
I didn't get to go here very often, and I love,
did you wonder why? I know, I know I should
have wondered why I was so clueless. I didn't wonder
(02:48):
why I never got to do anything fun. I mean,
oh no I did. I got to do fun things
all the time, but I never I was such a loud,
annoying child. I didn't. I was often told, you know,
I didn't get to hang with the grown ups. Yeah,
you were not. You were not a suspicious child. Same
I well, I still am not a suspicious human. Like
(03:09):
I'm not a suspicious adult. Like I am best friends
with everybody, like nothing wrong is ever happening. You're probably
very like you know, they could just be like, hey kid,
you know, go play in this furgniture, and that was
like perfect for them. Yeah, And I'm trying to remember
if I smelled the pot, you know, because there were bales,
like I'm you know, maybe a thousand pounds would be
(03:30):
there or something. And you know what, it's interesting because
it is in this grove of eucalyptus trees, and eucalyptus
smell really strong. Well, that's that's smart, that's best. Something
you should ask him. It's like, Hey, did you take
that to your account? Yeah, no, it's totally true because
eucalyptus are an incredibly strong smell, and if you're unloading
a thousand pounds pot bales, it's a great idea to
(03:52):
do it in a eucalyptus grove. I would came here
to the storage container area the storage units to sort
of see what's going on, and that I feel is
the takeaway is like, Wow, this isn't a aromatic grove.
The storage unit represents sophistication and professionalism in my dad's industry.
(04:13):
He has a permanent and reliable place to store the product.
But before he acquired the storage unit, like what happens
so much in the life of a smuggler, my dad
loses all of his money and has to rebuild. This
is disorganized crime smuggler's daughter. I'm Rainbow Valentine do Young,
(04:41):
free and groovy, making it up. We rolled along country.
He didn't in the Golden Gag State making it up
(05:02):
as well. So it's nineteen seventy four and my dad
has been with Taffy and her toddler in northern California
for four years. Organically, he's built a thriving cross country
pot smuggling business with a couple trusted friends in New
York and his New West Coast contacts, the heavyweight smugglers
(05:26):
of San Francisco's psychedelic Revolution. My dad has been getting
big deal after big deal. There's the Lime Green Pot
dabbling in cocaine dealing, the first Panama Red Trip, a
minor hiccup, getting arrested for bringing a nutcracker filled with
a couple of grams of pot to the airport, and
then in nineteen seventy four it's the second Panama Red
(05:46):
Trip when the young stoned Brooklyn Boys get busted in Indiana.
Remember that's my birthday, my literal birthday. Ah. Yes, the
state of the art home video of my home birth.
That dark and stormy night, my dad and mom are
living in Est Marin in the hippity hobbity house with
(06:07):
five year old Vertica, and in a series of mistakes,
my dad ends up losing all of our famili's money. Broke,
Scared and disillusioned, my parents move and try to start
over in the straight world. When I say straight world,
I mean the normal people world, not the psychedelic drug industry.
My parents are scared of retaliation, and they're scared they
(06:29):
might lose their kids. They dive into business as fashion
designers and merchandisers. After the day you were born and
we lost all our money, I continue to be disillusioned.
So I was very disillusioned, and I wasn't I was
too fearful to go back into the biz. And through
other of our psychedelic friends, we were introduced to this
(06:55):
very unusual asthetic. Having grown up in the forties and fifties,
my mom always made her own clothes and the nineteen
sixties dance parties were all about dressing up in Victorian
costumes found in San Francisco thrift stores. My mom was
obsessed with fashion and costumes. So my parents are friends
with this smuggler called the Millionaire. He's filthy rich from
(07:18):
smuggling et ergotamine tar treat the base that you use
to make LSD and with his boodles of money, he
wanted to start a clothing business. We were introduced by
my dentist. He wanted to make clothing. So Taffy and
I and this other lady he offered to give us
(07:40):
the money to start a clothing company. And ah, you said, hey,
I don't know what I'm doing and blah blah and
this and that. Whatever he said, he didn't care, and
we needed something to do because I had pulled out
again as usual. So we started the clothing company and
we named it after you, Rainbow Valentine, and we made
(08:02):
very high fashion, modest clothes, and it was the most
It was a really horrible time for me because I
hated the clothing business. You had to be born into it,
just like any other and I knew nothing about it
nor anybody in it really. So there I was doing
all this stuff and I didn't realize my job was
(08:25):
to be a salesman. My parents started their clothing line,
designing vulure track suits, which twenty years later, in nineteen
ninety six, put juicy couture on the map, but in
the nineteen seventies, no one was buying that. Yeah, no,
I'm not a great salesman. People say that to me.
I am great at at speaking about what I completely love.
(08:47):
That's what I'm great about, and I'm not. You know,
I was totally tentative in this. Idn't I didn't know
what styles. The gig was just crazy, and it made
me horrible that it just I couldn't do it. I
was traveling to clothing shows, you know, and less in
New York, in LA and Chicago, and it was horrible.
(09:09):
I mean that people had to deal with were horrible
people for me, and the ladies were having a ton
of fun. They just went off merrily designing whatever the
fuck they wanted to make, you know, And I'm I'm
forced to have to try and fucking sell it. I
(09:29):
lost my complete completely lost my self esteem from that
one Taffy and I split up. I just I thought
I was so worthless and I failed, and I failed
my family, and I've lost all this money for you know,
and well I'm a sensitive guy after pouring everything into it.
(09:56):
My parents clothing business failed. They were out of luck,
out of money, and the stress led my parents to separate.
I barely remember this. I was probably two or three.
My dad is devastated, Mom, me and my sister move
in with a couple of my mom's girlfriends, and my
dad moves into a group house filled with the hippiest
of hippies. So even today, after affirming he once traded
(10:19):
acid for a VW bus of redwood, burl slabs and
big Sir My dad insists he's not a hippie, and
his overwhelming memories of the time he and my mom
separated are of being sad and lonely while living amongst
irritatingly hippie hippies. But even in his cloud of depression,
my dad finds his glass half full attitude. I was
(10:39):
really down and sort of disappeared for a minute into
the hippie world, which was not me. But I put
myself back together again. Humpty dumpty that I was so.
My dad, a genuine humpty dumpty, endeavors to put himself
(11:01):
back together again when three big things happened. First, he
gets back into smuggling. In nineteen seventy eight, some of
his New York pals hook him up with a trip
involving a modest load of Colombian pot coming into Florida.
My dad knows he's good at the smuggling business and
he needs to make a living, so he agrees to
arrange a pickup for the product and distribution. He convinces
(11:24):
this psychiatrist friend of my mom's to front him some
money to hire a driver to score the pot in Florida.
The driver knows people to sell it to in Chicago,
this other strange fellow I met, who I really didn't
know very well and then never really hung out with.
After said, oh I got people in Chicago, I can
sell it to Chicago. I don't know, fucking Chicago whatever.
(11:49):
So the driver and my dad had to Chicago to
distribute and collect the profit. And I don't remember the
trip real well that it wasn't particularly successful. I guess
it was mediocre pot and whatever. We finally sold it
but and got the money. But that was my reinitiation
(12:12):
back in in nineteen seventy eight. Well, the trip did
end up being worth it, and now digging themselves out
of poverty, my parents are able to reunite and we
all moved back in together into a rental house in
the Mill Valley, Redwoods. So the next thing that happened
to put my humpty dumpty dad back together was an
old friend came knocking with a thank you gift of
(12:33):
thirty thousand dollars. For a few years in the early seventies,
my parents had helped out their friend the broker, who
was also a fellow smuggler. He was also a junkie,
and my parents would let him stay at their house
and take care of him when he was really doped
up on heroin. And I had been really good to
him in the early seventies when he was constantly fucked
(12:56):
up and trying to kick junk, and we took care
of him and he stayed at our crashed at our
house at different points in blah blah, and we had
no idea that he was actually at the same time
stealing our prescription drugs, which which reading and it hardly
used anyway. Well, later the broker makes a lot of
money smuggling. He also spends some time in a tie prison,
(13:19):
but that's later. Anyway, he wants to make amends for
taking advantage of my parents hospitality and give them a
thank you gift. He I mean, they were rolling in it.
So he said, well, here, you know, for all that
time you really took care of us. Here, here's a
bunch of money. Go buy a house in no Valley.
This money is the down payment on my childhood home.
(13:42):
Finally my family can stop moving and settle down. Now.
The third and final thing that got my family back
on its feet was in nineteen seventy nine, when opportunity
knocked in the form of sixty thousand pounds of Lebanese hash.
You're listening to Disorganized Crime. I'm Rainbow Valentine. We'll be
right back. My family truly gets back on its feet
(14:06):
with this huge hash deal. My dad's New York friend
and colleague, Blondie, was a big smuggler, part of the
international operations, and he came into sixty thousand pounds of
Lebanese hash and he needed everyone he knew to help
him get rid of it. Blondie sends a couple of
his guys to California to talk it over with my dad.
(14:27):
Blondie knows my dad's been doing some smaller smuggles, like
the Chicago one that was a couple hundred pounds of pot,
but this was in the thousands. The way I found
out about it is all of a sudden, the whole
two or three of the boys came and visited me,
and they were just bubbling. We did it, We did it,
(14:48):
we did it. We've we've brought in our first big,
big trip. They were unquestionably the Disorganized Crime crew. Okay,
my dad agrees to the job. Finally he's back in
the big time business since he attempted to quit five
years prior, he's ready to distribute four thousand pounds of
(15:11):
Blondie's sixty thousand pounds of Lebanese hash. So we're going
to send out a truckload of four thousand pounds for you. Okay, geez,
that's a lot. That's like how many elephants through? Four elephants? Well, no,
four thousand pounds, yeah, one elephant. So our family loves elephants.
(15:33):
In fact, the elephant is our family crest. So I
decided to measure the pot in elephants. It's an African
male adult elephant averages thirteen thousand pounds, so Blondie sends
out about a quarter of an elephant in Lebanese hash. Now,
four thousand pounds is also the average weight of a rhinoceros,
by the way, or a fat giraffe according to the Internet.
(15:54):
For those listeners out there unfamiliar with hash, it's a sticky, firm,
resinous material and you only need a pinch to get high.
According to my everyday pot smoking friends, it would take
one into three years to finish smoking one pound of
hash since you only need a nib. So four thousand
pounds is a lot of product. Smuggling requires a lot
(16:16):
of moving parts, with different people in charge of different
parts of the process. Now there isn't a traditional chain
of command per se. It's more of a freelance kind
of gig, but there is a chain of command in
a freelance fashion. My dad would buy the product outright
with a handshake deal and say yeah, I'll take care
of this four thousand pounds of Lebanese hash, and him
(16:38):
and Blondie handshake on it. And everyone's a freelancer. No
one can bail you out. There's no four o one ks.
You're on your own. Everyone's an independent contractor. One of
the most important jobs in smuggling is the driver, also
known as the bagman. For this Lebanese hash deal, the
driver was doubling his professional truck driving career with smuggling. Well, okay,
(17:00):
so the main truck trucker was this guy who was
I mean, who drove big loads around. He was a
professional truck driver. He had a Class A license, and
this load came out in a huge horse trailer or
a cattle trailer or some forty foot huge thing. Were
(17:24):
there livestocking at and the nash No, there wasn't. There was.
I can't remember really it's forty years ago. Over my
dad's twenty two plus year career, he worked with very
few drivers. His main driver, who fastidiously hauled moving trucks
of pot cross country, is one of our oldest family friends.
(17:45):
And we're going to call him Sandwich because he once
owned a tasty eatery that I loved as a child.
When I called mister Sandwich to ask if he'd share
his stories with me, he unleashed a torrent of riveting
tales that he had never spoken aloud ever to anyone.
His children still don't even know about his former smuggling career.
(18:06):
Sandwich is another scrupulous, brilliant, nice Jewish kid from the
East Coast, and my dad relied on him to rent
moving trucks, buy out the marine thrift stores of furniture,
because again my dad would often hide the product behind
furniture and then drive and deliver the product to New York.
(18:26):
He'd rent the truck and then from there he'd go
buy out to Saint Vincent de Paul, buy out a
truck load of furniture of used furniture and bring it
back to the warehouse. We'd pack it up on the
Saint Vincent de Paul thrift store. It is absurd to
learn that even marine thrift stores are significant, because being
(18:47):
a thrift store loving family, I often run into my
family members at marine thrift stores. I have no idea
what he did with the furniture loads, the truckloads. I
really have no idea. I never asked him. Okay, these
sounds are my dad putting on his raincoat in the
middle of our interview. I you know, I was what
(19:08):
I was into, solutions and success. I didn't care how
it got happened. That was not my part of the trip.
That was Sandwich is part of the drip that those details.
Each of us did different parts. That way, we couldn't
ran down each other. Almost together. My dad and Sandwich
(19:30):
would load thousands of pounds of pot into the back
of a moving truck and the front with furniture, and
Sandwich would take a few days to drive the load
to my dad's guy in New York City. Annoyingly, the
drives were almost always in the dead of winter, because
that's when pot harvested in the fall is ready for delivery.
What happened on Sandwich's cross country drives was his business.
(19:54):
My dad relied on him to successfully achieve his task totally,
and my dad didn't concern himself with how it happened
or what may have happened along the way. So mister
Sandwich change his mind about speaking to me on tape,
but he gave me the thumbs up to share his stories.
So Sandwich is driving a rented moving truck with a
(20:14):
load of four thousand pounds of pot from Mill Valley
to New York. It's a snowstorm in January in Nebraska
when the truck breaks down, luckily at a truck stop,
not the middle of the inner State. So Sandwich calls
the truck company from a payphone, of course they're in
cell phones in the nineteen eighties, and the truck company
(20:35):
sends out a new truck and thoughtfully a couple guys
to help Sandwich unload and reload the truck's cargo. Now,
my dad always hired a pilot and someone to ride shotgun,
precisely in case this kind of situation arose. Well, Sandwich
remembers convincing the truck rental guys there braun was unnecessary
(20:57):
and remarkably manage along with his copilot to unpack the
broken truck and repack the new truck in a Nebraska
truck stop in a snowstorm undetected. The snowstorm may have
saved their skin, as frigid Midwest blizzards are less than
ideal conditions for nosynellies or helpful cops looking to assist
(21:17):
out of towners moving heavy furniture and or bales of pot.
Sandwich's other driving close call happened in Wyoming. He, his copilot,
and their moving truck of several thousands of pounds of
pot plus furniture stop at a gas station fuel up,
and each, thinking the other has paid the bill, continue
(21:38):
on their way. Remember this is the eighties, before you
prepaid for gas, So they tootle on down the Wyoming interstate.
When Sandwich here's police sirens and out his side mirror
he sees a cop car indicating to pull over, keep
cool and don't arouse suspicion is smuggling one O one.
Sandwich pulls over and the cop approaches the driver's side window.
(22:03):
Did you guys just buy some gas? Sandwich and his
copilot nod ah, Did you pay for it? The cop asks,
sure he did. Sandwich points to his copilot, who points
to him simultaneously and says, I thought you paid. Both
thought the other had paid for the gas, and in
fact no one had paid. Incredibly, they didn't suspect Sandwich
(22:26):
of being anything other than forgetful, and then instead of
searching the truck and finding the pot, they escorted them
back to the gas station. Sandwich has been integral to
my dad's smuggling career, and along with finding great drivers,
part of my dad's job was also to find places
to put the pot. During the Lebanese hash trip in
(22:47):
the late seventies, my dad had not yet gotten his
storage unit that I loved going to as a kid,
so each new smuggle required finding new places to put
the product. To set this up, I had to find
a cool, quiet landing spot that was in the countryside,
and so I reached out to one of my pals
(23:08):
who lived in Sonoma. He turned me on to a
friend who was actually a musician at the same time
and had a sort of a ranch that he lived
out somewhere and I don't know if it was Healsburg
somewhere out there, and he had a ranch. So we
brought the truck into this ranch in the middle of
(23:29):
nowhere basically, which was great, and we unloaded the whole
thing in his barn. A good location to store pot
according to common sense, and my dad is off the
beaten path. My childhood house was incredibly private and off
the beaten path, but my dad rarely stored large quantities
of pot at my childhood house. That practice mostly went
away along with his life savings on the night of
(23:51):
my birth. Our Mill Valley home was important though for business.
My dad liked privacy and of course needed a place
for all the business vehicles. Plus our house usually contained
hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. Now we're in
Sonoma Counties are full of rambling country back roads dotted
with old farmhouses orchards with storage containers and barns. These
(24:14):
are good locations for storing pot for local delivery. Now
it's also a bonus if the storage location is fragrant
to mask the aromatic merchandise. The Sanoma County farmtown of
Pedaluma was a favorite pot storage location for local delivery.
Now anyone who's from Pedaluma can tell you it regularly
smells like cowshit at various times of the day. Storing
(24:36):
pot for cross country travel, however, is a different story.
The storage location should be near the freeway for easy access.
Move the truck in, move it out, and onto the freeway.
My dad's storage unit in Mill Valley was right off
the freeway and located in a massive grove of fragrant
eucalyptus trees. I took my dad six months to get
(24:56):
rid of the Lebanese hash because apparently it wasn't high quality.
And in the course of the six months he had
to move the stash to several different locations, all in
the world class honeymoon destination of a wine country, and
moving thousands of pounds of product is a pain in
the ass because each new location requires new precautions. In
(25:17):
one spot, he had to build a fake wall. What
idated specifically was I built the thing was so far
twenty feet deep whatever it was deep, and so I
built a false wall about fifteen feet so with sheet
rock and put the whole thing up, and we had
a picture frame hanging on a nail. And that actually
(25:38):
picture frame was in fact a cutout piece of the
picture frame was hanging right sideways like this on the
wall on a piece of sheet rock. But when you
took it off, the sheet rock and everything came off
with the frame you see right, so that you could
get in behind it. It was a secret stash, which
(26:02):
was pretty cool, and it was relative. It was relatively
easy access, but it was Sandra fell. It was a
pan in the ass, and then we seld it to
somebody else had become it was passed down. I sold
it for ten grand you own. No, I didn't known it.
I just had the lace, and nobody ever cared as
long as a ramp jack was sent to the correct box.
(26:25):
So I then sold it to these other guys. So
moving trucks packed with furniture and pot was my dad's
method for smuggling pot cross country. Locally, he packed giant
American cars like Buicks and Chevies with trunk loads of
merchandise and drove slowly, something ever early seen as my dad,
a former New York City cab driver, usually still drives
(26:46):
like one. We also had a big work truck with
two gas tanks and a camper shell with curtains on
the windows. I used that truck to move into my
first San Francisco apartment in the late nineties, and remember
it breaking down right in front of the Robin Williams
Memorial Rainbow Tunnel on the way over the Golden gate Bridge.
Our family work truck with double gas tanks now lives
on a cheese farm in Padaluma. Each smuggler has his
(27:10):
tricks and tips for smuggling in vehicles. The fancy white
Chevy truck my dad bought for the Brooklyn Boys slash
busted birthnight trip was tricked out with a custom camping
loft in the bed of the truck with secret compartments,
which apparently were not so tricky to find. Other smuggler
friends tricked out urvs with secret compartments and fried bacon
(27:31):
on their smuggling drives to mask the pot Aroma free. Freddy,
a smuggler from SoCal, perfected a method for stuffing tires
with pot for his many Mexico California trips. He also
mentioned customizing the gas tank to hold drugs. Loads came
into the San Francisco Bay on giant boats from South
America or Asia, and then smugglers transported the loads to
(27:54):
smaller fishing boats which came into the Saclito Docks or
local beaches. They were then moved to safe houses and
then to people like my dad in work trucks or
cars sometimes came in on helicopters. Free Freddie told me
a story about bales of pot dropped in a California
field from South American helicopters. Upon landing, the pot packaging broke,
(28:16):
scattering buds everywhere. The smugglers gathered as much as they
could find, but the farmer who owned the field called
in a panic a few weeks later about the pot
sprouting up all over his property. My mom has a
story about a smuggler named Goldfinger, and oddly enough, his
nickname foreshadowed his fate. On one smuggling trip that involved
(28:38):
a small plane. This guy Goldfinger, who looked like Goldfinger
in the James Bond movie. And he was red haired,
and he was called colt Finger because he was pretty
ruthless and he was dishuge smuggler and he was going
to meet this little smuggling plane on a runway somewhere
(29:00):
in California. And he drove up with this Porsche and
he jumped out before the plane stopped, and he ran
towards it and he got his hand caught in the
propeller and it cut it off at the wrist, and
all his henchman, you know, his assistance just went, Oh,
(29:20):
my God. So he grabbed his hand and he made
drive him to the hospital so they would sew it
up back on. But they couldn't. I guess the hospital
was too far away. And so that's the story of
good Finger that be careful what you name yourself. I heard,
I haven't didn't see it, but I heard he had
(29:41):
a gold hand made that that was a coke up
spoon on the end of one of the fingers. Are
you kidding? No? Cannabis and cash were moved in suitcases,
steamer trucks, and briefcases. I remember my dad's briefcase vividly
because it was always locked, making it rivetingly secret and
(30:02):
grown up ish. Like I've mentioned before, one of the
most enlightening things about producing this podcast is learning that
almost everyone I grew up around had some involvement in
the smuggling industry. Now, this is the mom of one
of my BFFs, who I've known for forty years, and
this moment you're about to hear is the first time
(30:22):
I discovered that she too was a smuggler. She's also
a photographer and has a PhD from two different IVY leagues.
I'm Anita is telling us her story of as we
shell peas sharing and shelling. Ah. So the major way
I have done personal smuggling of money, personal drugs supplies
(30:44):
is wrapping the things up in yarn balls, yarn balls,
yarn balls, and knitting and crocheting as going through custom
So knitting and crocheting as you go through the ball
right right right, right right, or when they started, when
they would start examining my things, you know, I would
(31:06):
probably pull out the yarn ball and start working on it. Yeah,
and what did you admit? M scarves basic. One of
my suitcases broke open as it came out of the
lunge thing and this yarnball with five thousand dollars was
rolling down. Yeah, it was funny. Did the money become
(31:30):
free of the yarn ball? No? I think god, oh no, no, no,
they were They were well constructed yarn balls. So money
stuffed in yarn balls brilliant. And if that doesn't work,
or you don't have yarn, but you have a cat,
smuggle with your pets and toe. I was living in Ecuador.
The good pot came at the time, came from Colombia.
(31:51):
I smuggled a couple of paths of pot on a
bus from Ecuador to Colombia and a pillow in a
box with a cat on top of it. Cat. Yes,
my cat named Muda. She was a gray cat named
Muda in a pillow. Pot wrapped up in a pillow,
(32:19):
and then that the cat was hitting on top of it.
That's great. You're the first person I've talked to who
uses a cat. Yeah, you have a theme as well
as a very cat yarn themed. That's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, Well,
I didn't realize I was following in my dad's footsteps.
(32:42):
I did smuggle pot a few times myself. I was
a sophomore in college studying abroad in the pot legal Netherlands.
Mindful my stoner friends back home were deficient and spectacular
Dutch drugs, I crafted a care package of pot hidden
in European candy bars. Lion bars have four wafers with
(33:02):
light nugat between and a chocolate coating. I carefully removed
the two middle wafers, leaving a structural floor and roof wafer,
and I filled the middle with well wrapped Amsterdam pot.
I then resealed the candy bars with natella, reglued the
wrapper and mailed them to the States. It was a
gift within a gift, two imported treats. Everyone was thrilled
(33:26):
when the Lion Bars arrived in Boston, smuggling pot and
candy bars. It was a labor of love. Definitely not
a sustainable business model if I'd been interested in anything
other than gift giving and sharing the wealth. This is
disorganized crime. I'm Rainbow Valentine and we'll be right back.
(33:47):
My dad likes to quote his lawyer, the late great
Bernie Siegel, who in the early nineties lamented the quality
of the criminal has gone down. I never understood the
quote until I started unfolding this story. My dad and
his colleagues did business based on integrity, trust and ethics.
They were criminals and that what they were doing was illegal,
(34:10):
but they were trustworthy, honest, and reliable, unlike the criminals
emerging in the late eighties early nineties that Bernie bemoaned.
My dad and his friends did business based on a handshake.
So have four thousand pounds of this hash? Are you
selling it like ten pounds a pop? Well, I'm not
selling one at a time. And basically, you give it
(34:35):
out to people who you trust. You give them fifty
pounds here, you know, come back with the money when
you you know, whenever you get it done. Just I mean,
it's same as what they were doing to me was
giving it out to all their friends. I was giving
it out to all my friends. So no money has
passed hands. It's just this trust circle. I mean, it
(34:57):
wasn't I wasn't selling it for cash, yeah, because most
nobody would put up cash for there were anyway. But
that was the whole way it worked forever, is that
huge amounts would be moved to one's close friends associates
if they were doing big amounts. And that's how much
(35:20):
of how I worked and happened is I had my
reputation which was really, I guess obviously stellar enough to
give me hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars
worth of stuff at different points I don't even remember,
you know, because but that was the way we worked,
and it was passed down. But amongst this integrity and
(35:44):
noble deeds was plenty of disorganization. The Lebanese Hashtel ended
up being the one where my dad lost the money
in the backyard that we talked about in episode one,
the BlackBerry story. It was pretty stressful. I couldn't fucking
find at least half a million in cash, Oh my god,
for my pals, but had only lost the money in
(36:06):
the yard because his smuggling colleagues trusted that he would
hold on to the money for him. This Lebanese hash
deal is so important. It got my dad back into
big time smuggling and provided much needed income for our
family after several years of poverty. And with this trip,
my dad is really becoming a professional. He's back on
his feet and to solidify his professionalism after the Lebanese
(36:28):
hash deal, that's what my dad treats himself to the
right off the highway storage unit just a few miles
from our Mill Valley home. So I had this that
was funny, the revelation about the the eucalyptus, and then
remembering how much I'd love to go to that storage unit.
But I don't think I was at I don't think
you are you kidding? You were? Do you think when
you think I wanted some noisy kid around there? What
(36:49):
are you fucking getting me? A teess? Christ you were
the worst. You would say, hey, come on over here, people.
I mean, yeah, you wouldn't. I mean you didn't, But
you're you're you're an attractor. So by the end of
the seventies, my dad, who came into an instat family
at the dawn of the decade, has made and lost
(37:10):
the equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars smuggling pot.
He's quit the pot industry, started and failed a non
drug related business theoretically traded over one hundred thousand dollars
for a baby. Me lost his family and restarted his
smuggling business in a much more professional, serious, and covert way,
making back hundreds of thousands of dollars and regaining his family.
(37:34):
God loves pot dealers. Why didn't you tell her that?
Now we have to? Now we have, we've revealed our
secret that God is watching over us pot dealers. Well yeah,
I mean you know, I'm Rainbow Valentine and this is
(37:55):
Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter. Disorganized Crime Smuggler's Daughter is written
and recorded by Me, Rainbow Valentine. Our producers are Abby
Watts and Taylor Church. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian
Live and Elsie Crowley and Me at School of Humans
and Connell Burn and Charles Bryant at iHeartRadio. Our music
(38:16):
is by Gabby Lala and Claire Campbell, with original theme
by Mark Karen and Me. You can follow us online
at Disorganized Crime podcast dot com. Right Story, do it
as with Me, tamble By, Sleeping Princess of the Red says,
(38:45):
keep it real, handshake seals the deal, Wrap stat seal, meal,
Going up. These all golden to Doobi, Young, rich and
groovy Making it up. We roll o, rolling low, Far Country, Roll,
(39:13):
Rolling low, Far Country, Roll, Rolling along Far Country, Low
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