September 15, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, you are about to hear the miraculous story from one of our own here at Our American Stories. Bryan Dawson went from being your local suburban high school football player to being considered such a nefarious and menacing fugitive that the world-famous bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman refused to pursue him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And this next story, well it's close to home, and
by the way, the best stories that we all have
a right near us. Folks in our neighborhood and our families,
in our churches, in our businesses, and here at our
American stories. We've gotten to know one of our workers,
(00:31):
an affiliate sales guy from Alabama and a great guy,
a great family. Well he shared his story with me
and I was just well, it wasn't just me, it
was everybody in the room listening. It was as if
we were hearing a movie being told, a great movie,
a compelling movie, was a heck of a story, and
so we asked him to tell it. And so, without
(00:54):
further ado, this is a story about everything folks, love, hate, family,
and redemption. I had a pattern in my life with
girls putting me in the friend zone. The very first
girl that ever put me in the friend zone, I remember,
was in eighth grade and I was in Mister Dunscience class,
and I remember leaning over to my friend Ryan and saying,
(01:14):
who's that And neither of us knew who she was,
and I developed the courage to ask her to eighth
grade graduation dance, and I guess what I mean by
developed the courage. I asked of her friends to ask
her if she would go to the eighth grade graduation
dance with me, and and she said yes. After that,
I told her how much I liked her, wanted to
be with her, professed my you know, undying love for her,
(01:37):
and she put me in the friend zone. And that
would be a pattern that we want for for the
kind of the long haul. You know, looking back at
my childhood, there's a couple of key moments that really
stick out to me, you know, as far as I
can remember, you know, my mom and my dad never
really being together, Like that's never a memory that I
can remember them actually being together being married. But I
(02:00):
do remember, as it got to be about my first
grade year, my mother joined the army. She would kind
of bounced around from job to job and couldn't find
anything solid, and she really wanted to do something to
support us. And I have a brother, Brad, who is
he's two years older than me, but we have different dads.
She eventually got stationed in Germany and that launched into
(02:22):
a giant custody battle. My dad was a very responsible,
hard working structured individual in the obvious best place for
me would have been with my father, but the court's
tendency is to always place a child with the mother
unless there's just an absolute, you know, crazy circumstance that
(02:42):
would lead them to do otherwise. But at that point,
I was going to be with my dad, and my
mom had me go out to lunch right before really
they were going to make their decision, and we had
a lunch with my brother, and she basically said, well,
you don't want to leave your brother to you, and
you know there's castles in Germany, and basically said all
the things to that you'd want to tell a kid
(03:04):
to make them want to go that way. And I
just remember the biggest feeling having is that I didn't
want to leave my brother. I didn't want to leave
my brother in that environment without me to be there
with him. And I was I think seven years old
at that time. And I went back and told the
judge that I didn't want to go with my dad,
as I had said previously, that I wanted to go
with my mom, and that was ended up being the ruling.
(03:26):
After all the time and money and everything that was
spent on that custody battle, and I remember leaving the
courthouse that day at seven years old, six years old,
whatever it was, and my dad looking down at me
as we waited for the light to turn to cross
the road. I said, you know, I'm very disappointed in you.
And that kind of set a pattern really for the
rest of my life with my father that I was
(03:47):
kind of a disappointment. And then when we moved to
Germany and my mom was still with this abusive guy.
He's the one that convinced her to join the army.
And when we moved to Germany, we lived in what's
called the to me, so we didn't live on base.
We lived in an apartment above a pub, and the
pub was called Klaus's Pub, and my mom and her husband, Dave,
(04:09):
would drink every night, and they would fight every night,
and sometimes it would become abusive, and sometimes the screaming
and the all those things got to be so bad.
My brother and I would always wonder if it was
going to be us next, And fortunately we were never
physically abused. But you know, I remember wanting to protect
(04:30):
my mom, but only being you know, eight years old
and small and having this desire to protect my mom
and inability to do so, and it kind of developed
feelings of cowardice that I wasn't able to protect my mom.
That all came to an end when we started going
to church, and well, she she left Dave. We moved
(04:50):
on Base. We started going to church, you know, Sunday morning,
Sunday night, and on Wednesdays, and every time the doors
were open. We got involved and really began to experience
a sense of belonging. And then went on for about
a year and there was no drinking, and it was
like this stability in our lives. It was like the
calm and the storm of my life as I looked
back on it. I remember coming home from school one day.
(05:12):
It was one of my last days of fourth grade,
and I came home and my mom had been you know,
free from drinking, free years free from partying. Our life
was you know, so much better. I mean, I came
home and there was a beer sitting on the end
table beside the couch, and I looked at the beer,
and I looked at my mom, and I knew that
we were going back into that lifestyle and that all
(05:34):
that peace and calm was over. I was old enough
to equate beer with pain, and you know, my mom
drinking beer and alcohol with pain and suffering for my
brother and I in instability. And I remember being fueled
and filled with hatred and anger towards my mother, and
I remember screaming at her and telling her that I
(05:56):
hated her. And then I wanted nothing to do with her.
And then I wanted to move back to the States
and I wanted to move in with my dad. Then
when I moved in with my dad, I used to
go to church with my friend and his mom, and
we would go to church and it would be fun
and it would be fine, but then we'd get in
the car and his mom would gossip about everybody in
the church all the way home. And then she would
(06:16):
pick us up, and she actually gave us a ride
to school in the days that the weather was bad,
and she would just gossip about people in the church
the whole way to school and the whole way back,
and I'm like, you people are ridiculous. And so what
I did is I took a few Christians and I
labeled all Christians as these few, right, And so my mind,
(06:37):
I had this core belief that all Christians were these
gossipy judgmental people, and so I hated them. And when
we come back, we continue with this really raw and
really real story, and it's Brian Dawson's story here on
our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American
(07:28):
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(07:49):
help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our
American Stories dot Com. And we're back here at our
(08:14):
American Stories and we continue this remarkable story again, one
that comes close to home, as close as can be
right here on our own staff. Let's continue with Brian
Dawson's story. My mom moved back from Germany and she
went to Colorado Springs. So I went and spent a
summer with my mom in Colorado. Well, my brother was
(08:38):
two years older than me, and he had friends that were,
you know, drinking beer and drinking liquor and going camping
and smoking pot and doing all that kind of stuff.
And I went out there. I'd never been exposed to
any of that stuff personally, obviously seeing my mom drinking
and things like that, but never personally. And you know,
I remember, you know, drinking a beer and then you know,
(08:58):
trying And the first first liquor I ever tasted was
hot damn one hundred. And I was the little brother
of not only my big brother, but that whole group.
And I fit in and and the more I drank,
the more I fit in, and the more I drank,
the more comfortable I was in my own skin. You know,
they call it liquid courage, but it was so much
more than liquid courage. For me. It was liquid I
(09:19):
can actually deal with life. Everything in my life. I've
always been very intense and very all in whatever it
was that I was doing. And I began to drink heavily.
I was drinking tequila whiskey. I'm hot day in that
whole summer and the following summer, I went back to
Colorado and I started to smoke pot. And as I
smoked pot, it was the same thing, you know, I
(09:40):
just enjoyed not being who I guess I thought I was.
You know, I eventually made it when I was sixteen
years old. I got my driver's license, I made a
fake ID on a computer, and I got to the
point where I could go and buy liquor. And then
I became very popular for that reason. So there was
a lot of it was fitting in and all of
those things that I would go and I was able to,
you know, buy liquor for these parties, which made me
(10:02):
like the coolest person in the party. And you know,
I would drink to the point of blacking out once
or twice a week. And this is as a sixteen
year old. And meanwhile I was working a job at Dylans,
which is a Kroger store, and playing football, playing baseball,
and somewhat maintaining my grades. I went from a straight
A student to probably about a C student, and I
(10:25):
just I stopped caring about school. Which is interesting because
up to that point, when I started, you know, drinking
and doing drugs, all I cared about was school. I
got straight a's, I scored off the charts and all
these tests, the standardized tests, and I didn't care about
school anymore. All I cared about was the social aspect,
the partying, the girls, and being wasted. Basically, the summer
(10:47):
between my junior and senior year, I went out to
Colorado and my brother was a driver for a I
wouldn't say notorious, but a pretty big time drug dealer
in Colorado Springs. His name was Casey, and my brother
had a driver's license and a nice truck. So Casey
would just have him drive him around and you know,
they'd be dropping you know, mostly pop, but you know,
(11:07):
whatever around and the craziest things would happen. Man. So
I spent the whole summer running around with them, you know,
just seeing him be this this alpha male that everyone
looked up to and everyone respected, and he had money,
and he had girls, and he had all these things.
And I'm like, that's what I want to do. So
I went back to Kansas that summer. And here's the thing.
(11:29):
Up to that point, I was excelling in football, and
I did really will in baseball too, But um, I
excelled in football, and we had a great football team
that year, and I was really coming into my own
as a defensive end and a tight end on offense,
and we were expected to do really really well that year.
And I was so torn between really wanting to pour
(11:49):
myself into football or pour myself into this party life.
And I had tried cocaine when I was out there,
so I was I was really starting to do more
serious drugs as I'm going into my senior year. And
I started my senior year and I get about two
weeks into it, and I snuck out of the house
and I went and tried ecstasy with some of my friends,
and a couple of the guys were actually football players
(12:10):
on the team, and UM, I remember trying to sneak
back in and I got caught, and he told me
that I had to quit football and go to rehab,
or I could quit football and go to Colorado, but
I wasn't going to continue playing football. This is really
when the resentment with my dad hit his peak. So UM,
I decided to quit football and move back to Colorado
with my mom. And what that basically meant is I
(12:30):
was on my own and I just started partying full blown.
And I started working for Casey and started selling weed,
and UM got involved in that lifestyle. And then I
started doing cocaine on a pretty regular basis. And as
I did cocaine, I realized, hey, man, I can't pay
for cocaine selling weed. So I started selling cocaine. And
I just had this knack and this ability to rise
(12:51):
to the top in these in these I guess, you know,
drug dealer ladders of influence. I just had a knack
for that life. And so I started selling a little
bit of coke, and next you know, I was selling
a lot of coke, and I was doing a lot
of coke, and it got to the point it was
so bad. I would have to take Zanex to go
to sleep, and then I would wake up the next day,
and really the next evening, at like four or five
(13:12):
in the evening, I'd wake up, I'd blow my nose
and snot and cocaine and blood would come out, and
my nose would just be bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.
As soon as it would start to kind of slow
down a little bit, I would do another line and
start drinking. And then that was what I did, And
it got so bad to where I couldn't even like
breathe out of my nose anymore. My friend tried to
introduce me to crack, and I'm like, this isn't for me.
(13:35):
So then he had me try crystal meth, and that
was it. And once I did crystal meth, it was
There was no having to take Zanex to go to sleep,
there was no drinking whiskey to mellow out. It was
just it was wide open. And already at this point
when I started doing meth, I already had my first
felony arrest. I was arrested with a half ounce of
(13:57):
cocaine and had bonded out and got probation and all
those things, and didn't slow me down. I continue to
use drugs, continue to party, didn't go to my probation appointments,
didn't do any of those things. And I got to
a point where I was very well known in Colorada
Springs for my ability to sell drugs and do a
number of other things. And I remember getting a phone
(14:19):
call from a girl named Camille, and she said, I've
got some pretty serious guys that I know that want
to talk to you about, you know, kind of you
partnering with them or working with them. And so I
came to her her apartment and I walked into her apartment.
I remember it. It was kind of an uneasy feeling,
and there was some very mean looking, dark, nefarious looking
(14:47):
individuals that were Hispanic guys, Mexican guys, and they had
handkerchiefs on over their faces but they were in suits.
It was weird, and I'm like, well, I'm either going
to get killed or this is gonna go really well.
And you know, they sat out and just talked to
me and asked me a bunch of questions and asked
me what I could do for him. And I think
they were kind of new to coming into Colorado Springs
(15:08):
to do what it was that they were wanting to do,
and they needed somebody to help them, so they asked
me to do that, and I did that, And not
long after that, I ended up getting in a high
speed chase with the cops and ran and I had
a briefcase with meth and a pistol, got pulled over
with that, got arrested, and spent four and a half
months in jail, County jail on that, got probation again,
(15:29):
got out, went right back to it. I mean, by
that time, a lot of my connections had either gone
back to Mexico or had been arrested as well. And
I got into basically, I mean, I guess what it
looked like was we would steal four wheelers and motorcycles
and things like that and give them to Mexicans that
were bringing back across the border into Mexico, and then
they would pay us in drugs. I was supposedly the
(15:51):
ring leader of that whole thing. I don't know how
true that was, but that's the way it was in
the cops eyes. And they busted a house that had
some of those motorcycles in them, and they pressured the
guy who was there, and he told on me and said,
you know it was me. I was the one that
was doing this. I was running all these rings. So
he and a bunch of other people had told the
cops that I was responsible for, you know, all this
(16:13):
crime that was going on, and um. I eventually got
arrested and I did another four months in county jail
and ended up bonding out after those four months. And
in that time I got my discovery and it said
that you know who had told on me? I was
out driving around up to no good. I've been up
for four days. We drove by the guy's house who
(16:35):
told on me, who was the main informant in the case,
and the guy was with kept pumping me up. Oh no,
we have to go in there. You know, we can't
let him, you know, just let him tell on you
and you're not doing anything. And so we went, you know,
went up to the front door, knocked on the door,
and he opened the door and walked in the house
and asked him why he told on me, and he said,
(16:55):
you know told me, Well, I didn't telling you, Brian,
I would never tell on you. And I knew that
he had. He was the informant in my case. So
I began to beat him up, really really bad, and
the guy was with hit him in the head with
a blunt force object. It was called a blackjack, and
it cracked his head open, and I thought he was
going to die. So, you know, we we grabbed a
(17:17):
few objects out of his house and we left, and
by the time I got back to my house, I
ended up getting arrested and charged with attempted murder, aggravated robbery,
and extortion. And on top of all that, this was
a guy who was state's evidence, so he was an
informant that I did all these things too, so that
aggravated it. And my goodness, what a story. And when
(17:39):
we come back, you won't believe where it turns. And
where it goes. Brian Dawson's story, one of our staffers
here in our American Stories. More after these minutes, and
(18:11):
we returned to Brian Dawson's story here on our Americans Stories,
And let's pick up where we last left off. I
was on the run. I bonded out again, and I
was out on like I don't know, a couple hundred
thousand dollars worth of bonds, and I was supposed to
go to a court date and I ended up not
going to that court date. So I became a fugitive.
(18:32):
And shortly after that, I became one of Colorado Springs
most wanted criminals, most wanted fugitives. And it was intense.
I mean they were raiding houses, they were setting up
perimeters all throughout Colored Springs as I don't know if
you've ever seen them, like, they basically have roads blocked
off and they're showing pictures of meat every car that
stops and goes through there. Um, if you ever followed
(18:53):
Dog the Bounty Hunter, Dog the Bounty Hunter did most
of his shows in Colorado Springs, some and whiye, but
most of them are in Colorado Springs. And Dog the
Bounty hunter was on a seventy two hours seventy two
fugitive sweep when I was on the run, and he
said he wasn't going to go after me because I
was supposedly, you know, two threatening or menacing or whatever
for him to go after me. So it got it
(19:15):
became very real, and there was a couple of near
misses where they almost had me and I was able
to escape from him, and then they finally caught me
and I was in my safe I guess called a
safe house. It was a third story apartment in color
the Springs, and they finally closed in on me. And
I remember sitting in the apartment that day. I was
watching the Chapelle Show. It was my last day out,
(19:36):
July nineteenth, two thousand and seven. I'm watching the Chapelle
Show Cooking Brought Worst in this apartment and I look
out the window and I'm on the third story and
I see the front end of a cop car and
I know that it's a cop car, and I knew
that was it. I just knew. I knew, Okay, well,
this is it. And there wasn't much in the apartment,
but there was a recliner that was wider than the
(19:57):
window was so I had taken a a nylon rope
or repelling rope, and I tied it to the bottom
of the recliner and I hear the door pounding. Carter
Springs police opened up and they're kicking indoors making their
way down to me. So I kick out the window
and wrap my hand around the rope and I jump
out the window and the recliners sticks and wedges right
in the window, just like I wanted it to. And
(20:18):
as I'm hanging there around both sides of this apartment building,
these police come flooding and there's forty or fifty cops
made up of El Paso County Sheriff's deputies, Carter Springs
Police department. They come pouring around the side with their
guns pulled and drawn on me. You know, get on
the ground, Get on the ground, Get the f on
the ground. And I'm like, I don't know where else
I'm gonna go. And I look up and there's cops,
you know, cops above me. Cops blow me. So I
(20:41):
pulled up a little bit on the rope, unwrapped the
rope in my hand and dropped and I dropped three
stories and I landed and it's a miracle that I
didn't get hurt there. But I landed and rolled and
then there was two canine units right there with the
dogs barking in my face. And I remember laying there
and I could feel the heat from the dogs and
I'm just like out with these dogs. Don't bite me.
(21:02):
But that was it, and an officer stuck his knee
in my back and cuffed me. They put me in
the back of the cop car. And the craziest thing
is I remember the relief that I had as I
sat in the back of that cop car because I
knew it was all over. I remember Rihanna's Umbrella song
was on in the cop car as we were heading,
you know, to County jail. I just had a sense
of piece for whatever reason, and and I end up
(21:25):
getting into County jail, where I would find out that
I was facing three hundred and eighty four years in prison.
With facing that much time, I started to get involved
in with some some rough groups in the jail, thinking
that I'm going away to prison for the rest of
my life. I have to make a name for myself.
I have to be tough. I have to be this
this guy, this prison guy. So I get into a
(21:46):
bunch of fights. You know, I'm going up to these
older kind of gangster guys and they're saying, why I
need you to go beat this guy? And I need
you to go beat that guy. So I'm doing these
things and I eventually end up in administrative segregation, which
is when you are in a crete cell m it's
about eight foot by twelve foot and there's a bunk
in there. There's a metal bunk with a fire retardant
(22:07):
mattress and a fire retardant pillow and a sink that
is attached to a toilet. It's a one piece toilet
sink and a desk and that's it. That's all you
have in there. And I was in there for twenty
three hours a day and I would get one hour
where I could go make a phone call, take a shower,
and I would go back in my cell. And I
was there for several months. And in that time frame
(22:29):
that I was in administrative segregation, I had a revelation.
It was one of the it was an epiphany. It
was an AHA moment, and it seems silly, but it was.
It was. It was huge. As I look back on it,
it's the point as I try and counsel people who
have been through these things before or that are going
through these things now, and because people come to me
(22:50):
because I've been through them before, they asked me, you know,
what would you tell them? And this was the one
thing that happened. And I'm sitting in administrative segregation in
this cell by myself, been there for a couple of months,
and all of a sudden, I realized, this is my fault.
This is all my fault. And I know that seems sillier,
(23:10):
it sounds, you know, stupid or whatever, but really no,
this is all my fault. Because up to that point,
I'd blamed it on my mom. I'd blamed it on
my dad. I blamed it on the judges. I blamed
it on everyone but me. I blamed it on the
corrupt system, you know, all the district attorneys. I mean,
you name it. I blamed everybody. But then all of
a sudden, I realized this is my fault. And it
(23:33):
was so liberating and it was so freeing because I
realized if my choices created this circumstances, certainly I could
make better choices that would create better circumstances. And I
came to this realization that my choices are what create
my circumstances, not the other way around. I wasn't a victim,
that I'd created the circumstances through my choices. And from
(23:56):
that moment forward, I made a decision that I was
going to do things differently. And I did. And it
wasn't easy. I had habits, I had, you know, thought patterns.
I had all these things that were wrong. But I
knew that I could make better choices than I was
responsible for my choices, and I started doing that. From
that moment I got on the phone, I called my
grandma with tears in my eyes and told her that
(24:16):
I was going away forever. And and she said, you know,
I can tell there's been a huge change in your life, Brian.
I can't put my finger on it. I don't know
what it is, but I can tell there's something very
different about you, because up to this point they all
cut me off. I burned every bridge in my family.
They were done with me. She said, we're going to
get you an attorney, and she did. And the next
day I went to court. Someone that was supposed to
(24:38):
show up to the court court date to be a
witness in my trial. If I went to trial that day,
didn't show up, so they had to postpone it for
two weeks. Total miracle. The attorney was able to take
my case and get me into what's called a mediation hearing.
And what a mediation hearing is is where you basically
go into arbitration with your sentence, and it's like a
used car seals well, i'll give you this, well, no
we want that. Well i'll give you this, and no
we want that. And they started at thirty two years
(24:59):
and I at eight years, and a mediator went back
and forth between the district attorney and my lawyer and
I back and forth, back and forth, and they finally
came down to a fifteen year sentence with a crime
of violence, sense and answer. And I told him I
don't want that sentence to answer. I don't want to
be labeled a violent criminal. I don't want to go
to some hardcore prison and ended up with swastikas all
over my face and turn into that guy. I want
(25:20):
to change my life. I want a chance at changing
my life. I said, tell her, I'll give her a
year if she drops that crime of violence. So I
ended up getting sentenced to sixteen years, and they dropped
the crime of violence. And I went back to my
cell after that mediation, and I knew that God had
moved in my life. So I got sentenced. I got
sentenced to sixteen years, and then I went to the
Denver Reception Diagnostic Center. This is a maximum security prison,
(25:43):
and you roll up in a van and there's rolls
upon rolls of razor wire. There's gun towers with armed
guards in the gun towers. They've got these little mirrors
that go under the vans that see if there's bombs
under the vans, and it's just it was very sobering.
It was very real that hey, I'm in prison, that's
happening now. And I went in there and I was
(26:05):
there for a little while, and they sent me to
my first facility and Wherefno County Correctional Center. It was Waltsonburg, Colorado,
and it was a private prison. And there's a lot
of bad things that surround the idea of private prisons,
but I had nothing but a very positive experience there.
It was very evident that everybody there that was involved
with the staff members there, from our case managers to
(26:28):
the teachers and things like that, that they wanted criminals
to be rehabilitated, and they had a lot of programs.
So I immediately started taking programs. I got my GED
while I was at Walsenburg, and then I started taking
college classes and then I became a guy that helped
other guys get their g D. And that's what I
did for working there, as I was a tutor and
I helped people get their gds. And when we come
(26:48):
back the final installment of this remarkable story, one that
hits close to home, our own Brian Dawson. His story
continues here on our American story, and we return to
(27:38):
Brian Dawson's story and what a story it is, and
again this one hits close to home. He's one of
our people. And by the way, it just shows you
that anything can happen in a person's life. Here he
is in prison, and he's already you can hear it.
He's a changed guy and he wants to just get
through this and come out on the other side. And
so he's re oriented himself and his life right there.
(28:01):
And what may be the very worst place in America
to be is a young man. Let's return to Brian's story.
I was there for about nine months. But the very
first person I met when I walked into Wolsenburg was
a guy with a name of Charles Frederick. And he
comes up to me. He's this big guy, a big
burly guy, and he says, hey, my name's Charles, and
(28:22):
I'm a Christian. And this is a faith pod. So
in these prisons they had these pods are called faith pods,
and it was basically pods or units made up of
about one hundred and twenty inmates, and it was dedicated
to discipleship. And I don't know how I landed in there,
why I landed in there, but I was there, and
Charles began to just tell me about Christ, tell me
about who Jesus was, tell me about the Gospel. I
told him, Charles, I don't want to hear that stuff.
(28:44):
You know, I don't care, and you know, he just
said okay, and then he began to talk to him
about other things, and he met my physical needs. He
gave me coffee, he gave me shorts, he gave me
you know, things that you know you get in there.
You got nothing other than a couple of pairs of
underwear in a green suit. So he helped me some
of those things and just became my friend and as
conversation would permit, he would tell me about Christ. And
(29:05):
that would go on for about nine months. He got
shipped to another prison. I left that prison. They shut
that prison down in my security level dropped and I
bounced around a little bit for a couple of years,
and then I ended up in Sterling Correctional Facility and Sterling, Colorado.
The first person I see there's Charles again and he
starts telling me about Jesus Christ again, and I'm like, man,
I don't want to hear this stuff. Well we're there
(29:27):
for a little bit, and he goes, hey, you know
you got parole coming up in a couple of years.
It would be good for you to have some certificates to,
you know, show the parole board. I'm like okay, and
he goes, well, I'm the Chaplains assistant. I can get
you in some programs. I'm like, okay, I go ahead,
sign me up. So he signs me up and they
end up being faith based programs and I'm like, oh,
I hate you, Charles. But the very first program I
went into was a come as you are, we love everybody,
(29:50):
you know, Muslim Buddhist, Christian, whatever, it just come as
you are. And I went there and it was it
was okay, but I experienced fellowship and I met other
Christians that were like Charles, who are true, genuine christ
who lived this out. Um. They didn't just say they
were Christians with their mouth. They lived it and you
could see the wisdom and things that they had and
I was attracted to that. And um, that went on
for about thirteen weeks. That class was over, and then
(30:12):
Charles got me into another program called the Truth Project,
which is put out by Focus on the Family and
doctor Dell Tackett. Amazing program, but when I got in there,
it was not come as you are. It was this
is what the Bible says. And I didn't like that.
And I would sit we would watch a video for
an hour and then we would have table discussion. At
the table discussion, I would argue with everyone there and
tell them how stupid they were for believing what they
(30:33):
you know that they believe these things. And I almost
got into a couple of fights with those guys. And
about three weeks into it, we were walking back to
the unit and Charles just asked me, says Brian, why
don't you just give him a chance? And I'd been
asked that question before and and fought it and fought
it and fought it, and for whatever reason, I said, okay, Charles,
(30:53):
so um. I went back to my cell that night
and I prayed, Okay, God, if I need to believe
these things to have a relationship with you, give me
some kind of a sign. And I went to bed
that night. I remember being in a really deep sleep
and I had a nightmare. And in that nightmare, I
fell off of a cliff and I woke up, startled
out of a nightmare and kind of and I looked,
(31:15):
and it's really dark in the cells, and we had
were allowed to have digital clocks in there, and the
digital clock with the red numbers in the cell said
three sixteen. The only Bible verse I'd ever known as
a kid at all was John three sixteen. And if
you know John three sixteen, it answers the question that
I asked him. That's exactly right, Yes, you do need
(31:35):
to believe those things. And I tried to go back
to sleep and just brush it off, but I looked
back at the clock and I felt like it was
three sixteen for like thirty minutes and I'm like, okay,
maybe there's something to this. And it was a Sunday
morning at three sixteen. So I got up and I
went to the church services that they offered in the prison,
and I went and found my friend Ramone. I always
had this idea in my head that Christians were weak,
(31:56):
and my friend Ramone was a big black former gang
bang or that had become a Christian. And there is
nothing softer or week about this guy. So I'm like, okay,
I'll go with him. And I'm sitting in the very
back row, in the very far side as he goes
through the sermon. And at the end of the sermon,
the pastor does what he calls an invitation. I look
at Ramon, I say, what's an invitation? And he goes
(32:19):
he'd say, oh, that's where you go make a decision
for Christ, or you invite Jesus in your heart. He
didn't say any of that stuff. He said, if you've
got something in your life it's hindering your relationship with God,
you can go up there and pray with that man
about it. So I went up there and I prayed
with Chaplain Davis. And to tell you a little about him.
He's a hard man, a callous man, a cowboy, he's
(32:39):
a man's man. He's a prison chaplain, and he doesn't
do hugs. He didn't do any of those kind of things.
And he grabbed my hand to pray, and I could
feel a callouses on his hands, and he slaps me
on the shoulder with his other hand and he says,
how can I pray for you? And I told him,
I said, look, you know I don't I'm not here
to make any decisions. I just I need you to
pray that God would move this callous from my heart,
(33:01):
because it's hardened and it's angry, and it's angry towards Christians.
So I want him to soften my heart so that
the truth can come in. And Chaplin Davis prayed that,
and I remember looking up after we were done praying,
and he's in front of one hundred and thirty inmates
with tears pouring down his face, and I knew something
was very real about this, and I didn't know how
(33:21):
to describe it, but it was. It was very real.
And I would later find out that Chaplin Davis and
Charles had been praying for me for about a year
and a half that I would get saved. And from
that moment forward and I began to read my Bible.
I read my Bible every single day. I'd get up
and read my Bible, read my Bible. I was at
every single church service that they offered, any faith based
(33:41):
program they had, and that prison I was there, there
was a huge change. I went from telling these people
they were stupid for believing what they did to absolutely
believing it, basically overnight. That went on for about a year,
and my friends all had pinpals that they were writing
when they were in prison. So I prayed and said,
all right, God to have a pin pound And I
got on the phone with my mom and she was
(34:02):
running a Facebook page for me. She says, you got
a friend request from a girl and I'm like, okay, cool,
who is it? And she goes, do you know a
girl named Christina Ewen. I'm like, yeah, I know Christina Ewen. Why.
She goes, well, she sent you a friend request, she
remembered you, and that she's been trying to find you for,
you know, on and off for the last ten years. Said,
(34:25):
did you tell her I was in prison? Ye? I
told her you in prison. She doesn't care she wants
to write you. I'm like, well, that's crazy. So I
got her address and everything we did, all of our
correspondence was based on christ and what God was doing
in our lives, and that was it. And that went
on for several months, and I just knew that this
was too crazy for it not to be God lining
this up for something bigger. But I was scared to
(34:46):
death because she's rejected me so many times in the past.
And I had to write a letter. And I sat
down and wrote this letter and said, look, you know,
I just I feel like, you know, this is kind
of something that may be meant to be, and that
you know, I know it's asking a lot of you,
but you know this has meant for something more. I
get the letter back and I remember hearing it at
mail call and seeing that the letter was from Christina,
(35:06):
knowing that the answer was going to be inside of
that envelope. And I opened the envelope and pulled out
the letter and began to read it, and in the
very first paragraph, she said, Brian, I've been thinking the
exact same things, and I know God wants me to
be with you, and that I'm supposed to be here
for you through this time and you know that we're
meant to be together. And I remember reading that sitting
(35:28):
in prison, and I mean I could have floated up
the steps to go back to my cell. It was.
It was amazing. So but I put in for a
halfway house about six months after that, so I ended
up getting accepted to that program, my very first time
putting in for a halfway house, which almost never happens
with the severity of my sentence, in the size and
scope of my sentence. So it was. It was a very,
(35:50):
very tough two years. But I graduated and Christina was
there for the graduation and the first visit I was
allowed to go on. Actually before I graduated, Christina and
I got married. We got we eloped, I guess you
could say. We got married at my grandma's house. So
my wife and I now have three daughters, plus my
stepson Brennan, who is an absolute stud, brilliant, smart kid,
(36:14):
does very well in sports. And my girls are three
years old is Gracie, two year old is Reagan, and
our one year old is Abigail, and we have another
one on the way. So not only do I have
and this is kind of a cool caveat to the story.
I've got a little piece of property with a little house,
and you know, the wife of my dreams and beautiful children,
(36:37):
four beautiful children about to be five. But I just
moved my mom's She has a camper, and I just
moved her camper onto my property. And my mom, who
I had obviously all that resentment and animosity towards, she
now lives on my property and she's mema to the kids,
and she got saved about two years ago and she's
a completely different person. So again, like I could not
(36:59):
have sat in jail all five, six, seven years ago,
whatever it was, and said, Okay, in five or ten years,
this is what I want and ever thought it would
be what it is now. And what a story, folks.
And I'm tearing up here because I know Brian and
to imagine that that can happen in people's lives anyone listening,
(37:20):
having someone in prison someplace that you just don't think
they can come back from. My goodness, it's possible. And
we do faith based stories here, folks, We don't shy
away from it. There are all kinds of things that
can get people out of a jam, and sometimes it's
God and sometimes it's a secular counselor, but we don't
shy away from the religious aspect of people's lives here
(37:42):
on this show. We don't preach, we don't proselytize, but
we don't remove it. And my goodness, Brian Dawson's story
is unimaginable without God. And send your stories, by the way,
if you have a story like this, and I know
you do, because my goodness, this country is filled with
stories like this, and we're we're tired of the negative stories.
We want to hear stories of real hope, not the
(38:04):
silly kind. Bryan Dawson's story a beautiful family, a beautiful
story of love and redemption. Here on our American stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And this next story, well it's close to home, and
by the way, the best stories that we all have
a right near us. Folks in our neighborhood and our families,
in our churches, in our businesses, and here at our
American stories. We've gotten to know one of our workers,
(00:31):
an affiliate sales guy from Alabama and a great guy,
a great family. Well he shared his story with me
and I was just well, it wasn't just me, it
was everybody in the room listening. It was as if
we were hearing a movie being told, a great movie,
a compelling movie, was a heck of a story, and
so we asked him to tell it. And so, without
(00:54):
further ado, this is a story about everything folks, love, hate, family,
and redemption. I had a pattern in my life with
girls putting me in the friend zone. The very first
girl that ever put me in the friend zone, I remember,
was in eighth grade and I was in Mister Dunscience class,
and I remember leaning over to my friend Ryan and saying,
(01:14):
who's that And neither of us knew who she was,
and I developed the courage to ask her to eighth
grade graduation dance, and I guess what I mean by
developed the courage. I asked of her friends to ask
her if she would go to the eighth grade graduation
dance with me, and and she said yes. After that,
I told her how much I liked her, wanted to
be with her, professed my you know, undying love for her,
(01:37):
and she put me in the friend zone. And that
would be a pattern that we want for for the
kind of the long haul. You know, looking back at
my childhood, there's a couple of key moments that really
stick out to me, you know, as far as I
can remember, you know, my mom and my dad never
really being together, Like that's never a memory that I
can remember them actually being together being married. But I
(02:00):
do remember, as it got to be about my first
grade year, my mother joined the army. She would kind
of bounced around from job to job and couldn't find
anything solid, and she really wanted to do something to
support us. And I have a brother, Brad, who is
he's two years older than me, but we have different dads.
She eventually got stationed in Germany and that launched into
(02:22):
a giant custody battle. My dad was a very responsible,
hard working structured individual in the obvious best place for
me would have been with my father, but the court's
tendency is to always place a child with the mother
unless there's just an absolute, you know, crazy circumstance that
(02:42):
would lead them to do otherwise. But at that point,
I was going to be with my dad, and my
mom had me go out to lunch right before really
they were going to make their decision, and we had
a lunch with my brother, and she basically said, well,
you don't want to leave your brother to you, and
you know there's castles in Germany, and basically said all
the things to that you'd want to tell a kid
(03:04):
to make them want to go that way. And I
just remember the biggest feeling having is that I didn't
want to leave my brother. I didn't want to leave
my brother in that environment without me to be there
with him. And I was I think seven years old
at that time. And I went back and told the
judge that I didn't want to go with my dad,
as I had said previously, that I wanted to go
with my mom, and that was ended up being the ruling.
(03:26):
After all the time and money and everything that was
spent on that custody battle, and I remember leaving the
courthouse that day at seven years old, six years old,
whatever it was, and my dad looking down at me
as we waited for the light to turn to cross
the road. I said, you know, I'm very disappointed in you.
And that kind of set a pattern really for the
rest of my life with my father that I was
(03:47):
kind of a disappointment. And then when we moved to
Germany and my mom was still with this abusive guy.
He's the one that convinced her to join the army.
And when we moved to Germany, we lived in what's
called the to me, so we didn't live on base.
We lived in an apartment above a pub, and the
pub was called Klaus's Pub, and my mom and her husband, Dave,
(04:09):
would drink every night, and they would fight every night,
and sometimes it would become abusive, and sometimes the screaming
and the all those things got to be so bad.
My brother and I would always wonder if it was
going to be us next, And fortunately we were never
physically abused. But you know, I remember wanting to protect
(04:30):
my mom, but only being you know, eight years old
and small and having this desire to protect my mom
and inability to do so, and it kind of developed
feelings of cowardice that I wasn't able to protect my mom.
That all came to an end when we started going
to church, and well, she she left Dave. We moved
(04:50):
on Base. We started going to church, you know, Sunday morning,
Sunday night, and on Wednesdays, and every time the doors
were open. We got involved and really began to experience
a sense of belonging. And then went on for about
a year and there was no drinking, and it was
like this stability in our lives. It was like the
calm and the storm of my life as I looked
back on it. I remember coming home from school one day.
(05:12):
It was one of my last days of fourth grade,
and I came home and my mom had been you know,
free from drinking, free years free from partying. Our life
was you know, so much better. I mean, I came
home and there was a beer sitting on the end
table beside the couch, and I looked at the beer,
and I looked at my mom, and I knew that
we were going back into that lifestyle and that all
(05:34):
that peace and calm was over. I was old enough
to equate beer with pain, and you know, my mom
drinking beer and alcohol with pain and suffering for my
brother and I in instability. And I remember being fueled
and filled with hatred and anger towards my mother, and
I remember screaming at her and telling her that I
(05:56):
hated her. And then I wanted nothing to do with her.
And then I wanted to move back to the States
and I wanted to move in with my dad. Then
when I moved in with my dad, I used to
go to church with my friend and his mom, and
we would go to church and it would be fun
and it would be fine, but then we'd get in
the car and his mom would gossip about everybody in
the church all the way home. And then she would
(06:16):
pick us up, and she actually gave us a ride
to school in the days that the weather was bad,
and she would just gossip about people in the church
the whole way to school and the whole way back,
and I'm like, you people are ridiculous. And so what
I did is I took a few Christians and I
labeled all Christians as these few, right, And so my mind,
(06:37):
I had this core belief that all Christians were these
gossipy judgmental people, and so I hated them. And when
we come back, we continue with this really raw and
really real story, and it's Brian Dawson's story here on
our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American
(07:28):
stories we tell and love America like we do, we're
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(07:49):
help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our
American Stories dot Com. And we're back here at our
(08:14):
American Stories and we continue this remarkable story again, one
that comes close to home, as close as can be
right here on our own staff. Let's continue with Brian
Dawson's story. My mom moved back from Germany and she
went to Colorado Springs. So I went and spent a
summer with my mom in Colorado. Well, my brother was
(08:38):
two years older than me, and he had friends that were,
you know, drinking beer and drinking liquor and going camping
and smoking pot and doing all that kind of stuff.
And I went out there. I'd never been exposed to
any of that stuff personally, obviously seeing my mom drinking
and things like that, but never personally. And you know,
I remember, you know, drinking a beer and then you know,
(08:58):
trying And the first first liquor I ever tasted was
hot damn one hundred. And I was the little brother
of not only my big brother, but that whole group.
And I fit in and and the more I drank,
the more I fit in, and the more I drank,
the more comfortable I was in my own skin. You know,
they call it liquid courage, but it was so much
more than liquid courage. For me. It was liquid I
(09:19):
can actually deal with life. Everything in my life. I've
always been very intense and very all in whatever it
was that I was doing. And I began to drink heavily.
I was drinking tequila whiskey. I'm hot day in that
whole summer and the following summer, I went back to
Colorado and I started to smoke pot. And as I
smoked pot, it was the same thing, you know, I
(09:40):
just enjoyed not being who I guess I thought I was.
You know, I eventually made it when I was sixteen
years old. I got my driver's license, I made a
fake ID on a computer, and I got to the
point where I could go and buy liquor. And then
I became very popular for that reason. So there was
a lot of it was fitting in and all of
those things that I would go and I was able to,
you know, buy liquor for these parties, which made me
(10:02):
like the coolest person in the party. And you know,
I would drink to the point of blacking out once
or twice a week. And this is as a sixteen
year old. And meanwhile I was working a job at Dylans,
which is a Kroger store, and playing football, playing baseball,
and somewhat maintaining my grades. I went from a straight
A student to probably about a C student, and I
(10:25):
just I stopped caring about school. Which is interesting because
up to that point, when I started, you know, drinking
and doing drugs, all I cared about was school. I
got straight a's, I scored off the charts and all
these tests, the standardized tests, and I didn't care about
school anymore. All I cared about was the social aspect,
the partying, the girls, and being wasted. Basically, the summer
(10:47):
between my junior and senior year, I went out to
Colorado and my brother was a driver for a I
wouldn't say notorious, but a pretty big time drug dealer
in Colorado Springs. His name was Casey, and my brother
had a driver's license and a nice truck. So Casey
would just have him drive him around and you know,
they'd be dropping you know, mostly pop, but you know,
(11:07):
whatever around and the craziest things would happen. Man. So
I spent the whole summer running around with them, you know,
just seeing him be this this alpha male that everyone
looked up to and everyone respected, and he had money,
and he had girls, and he had all these things.
And I'm like, that's what I want to do. So
I went back to Kansas that summer. And here's the thing.
(11:29):
Up to that point, I was excelling in football, and
I did really will in baseball too, But um, I
excelled in football, and we had a great football team
that year, and I was really coming into my own
as a defensive end and a tight end on offense,
and we were expected to do really really well that year.
And I was so torn between really wanting to pour
(11:49):
myself into football or pour myself into this party life.
And I had tried cocaine when I was out there,
so I was I was really starting to do more
serious drugs as I'm going into my senior year. And
I started my senior year and I get about two
weeks into it, and I snuck out of the house
and I went and tried ecstasy with some of my friends,
and a couple of the guys were actually football players
(12:10):
on the team, and UM, I remember trying to sneak
back in and I got caught, and he told me
that I had to quit football and go to rehab,
or I could quit football and go to Colorado, but
I wasn't going to continue playing football. This is really
when the resentment with my dad hit his peak. So UM,
I decided to quit football and move back to Colorado
with my mom. And what that basically meant is I
(12:30):
was on my own and I just started partying full blown.
And I started working for Casey and started selling weed,
and UM got involved in that lifestyle. And then I
started doing cocaine on a pretty regular basis. And as
I did cocaine, I realized, hey, man, I can't pay
for cocaine selling weed. So I started selling cocaine. And
I just had this knack and this ability to rise
(12:51):
to the top in these in these I guess, you know,
drug dealer ladders of influence. I just had a knack
for that life. And so I started selling a little
bit of coke, and next you know, I was selling
a lot of coke, and I was doing a lot
of coke, and it got to the point it was
so bad. I would have to take Zanex to go
to sleep, and then I would wake up the next day,
and really the next evening, at like four or five
(13:12):
in the evening, I'd wake up, I'd blow my nose
and snot and cocaine and blood would come out, and
my nose would just be bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.
As soon as it would start to kind of slow
down a little bit, I would do another line and
start drinking. And then that was what I did, And
it got so bad to where I couldn't even like
breathe out of my nose anymore. My friend tried to
introduce me to crack, and I'm like, this isn't for me.
(13:35):
So then he had me try crystal meth, and that
was it. And once I did crystal meth, it was
There was no having to take Zanex to go to sleep,
there was no drinking whiskey to mellow out. It was
just it was wide open. And already at this point
when I started doing meth, I already had my first
felony arrest. I was arrested with a half ounce of
(13:57):
cocaine and had bonded out and got probation and all
those things, and didn't slow me down. I continue to
use drugs, continue to party, didn't go to my probation appointments,
didn't do any of those things. And I got to
a point where I was very well known in Colorada
Springs for my ability to sell drugs and do a
number of other things. And I remember getting a phone
(14:19):
call from a girl named Camille, and she said, I've
got some pretty serious guys that I know that want
to talk to you about, you know, kind of you
partnering with them or working with them. And so I
came to her her apartment and I walked into her apartment.
I remember it. It was kind of an uneasy feeling,
and there was some very mean looking, dark, nefarious looking
(14:47):
individuals that were Hispanic guys, Mexican guys, and they had
handkerchiefs on over their faces but they were in suits.
It was weird, and I'm like, well, I'm either going
to get killed or this is gonna go really well.
And you know, they sat out and just talked to
me and asked me a bunch of questions and asked
me what I could do for him. And I think
they were kind of new to coming into Colorado Springs
(15:08):
to do what it was that they were wanting to do,
and they needed somebody to help them, so they asked
me to do that, and I did that, And not
long after that, I ended up getting in a high
speed chase with the cops and ran and I had
a briefcase with meth and a pistol, got pulled over
with that, got arrested, and spent four and a half
months in jail, County jail on that, got probation again,
(15:29):
got out, went right back to it. I mean, by
that time, a lot of my connections had either gone
back to Mexico or had been arrested as well. And
I got into basically, I mean, I guess what it
looked like was we would steal four wheelers and motorcycles
and things like that and give them to Mexicans that
were bringing back across the border into Mexico, and then
they would pay us in drugs. I was supposedly the
(15:51):
ring leader of that whole thing. I don't know how
true that was, but that's the way it was in
the cops eyes. And they busted a house that had
some of those motorcycles in them, and they pressured the
guy who was there, and he told on me and said,
you know it was me. I was the one that
was doing this. I was running all these rings. So
he and a bunch of other people had told the
cops that I was responsible for, you know, all this
(16:13):
crime that was going on, and um. I eventually got
arrested and I did another four months in county jail
and ended up bonding out after those four months. And
in that time I got my discovery and it said
that you know who had told on me? I was
out driving around up to no good. I've been up
for four days. We drove by the guy's house who
(16:35):
told on me, who was the main informant in the case,
and the guy was with kept pumping me up. Oh no,
we have to go in there. You know, we can't
let him, you know, just let him tell on you
and you're not doing anything. And so we went, you know,
went up to the front door, knocked on the door,
and he opened the door and walked in the house
and asked him why he told on me, and he said,
(16:55):
you know told me, Well, I didn't telling you, Brian,
I would never tell on you. And I knew that
he had. He was the informant in my case. So
I began to beat him up, really really bad, and
the guy was with hit him in the head with
a blunt force object. It was called a blackjack, and
it cracked his head open, and I thought he was
going to die. So, you know, we we grabbed a
(17:17):
few objects out of his house and we left, and
by the time I got back to my house, I
ended up getting arrested and charged with attempted murder, aggravated robbery,
and extortion. And on top of all that, this was
a guy who was state's evidence, so he was an
informant that I did all these things too, so that
aggravated it. And my goodness, what a story. And when
(17:39):
we come back, you won't believe where it turns. And
where it goes. Brian Dawson's story, one of our staffers
here in our American Stories. More after these minutes, and
(18:11):
we returned to Brian Dawson's story here on our Americans Stories,
And let's pick up where we last left off. I
was on the run. I bonded out again, and I
was out on like I don't know, a couple hundred
thousand dollars worth of bonds, and I was supposed to
go to a court date and I ended up not
going to that court date. So I became a fugitive.
(18:32):
And shortly after that, I became one of Colorado Springs
most wanted criminals, most wanted fugitives. And it was intense.
I mean they were raiding houses, they were setting up
perimeters all throughout Colored Springs as I don't know if
you've ever seen them, like, they basically have roads blocked
off and they're showing pictures of meat every car that
stops and goes through there. Um, if you ever followed
(18:53):
Dog the Bounty Hunter, Dog the Bounty Hunter did most
of his shows in Colorado Springs, some and whiye, but
most of them are in Colorado Springs. And Dog the
Bounty hunter was on a seventy two hours seventy two
fugitive sweep when I was on the run, and he
said he wasn't going to go after me because I
was supposedly, you know, two threatening or menacing or whatever
for him to go after me. So it got it
(19:15):
became very real, and there was a couple of near
misses where they almost had me and I was able
to escape from him, and then they finally caught me
and I was in my safe I guess called a
safe house. It was a third story apartment in color
the Springs, and they finally closed in on me. And
I remember sitting in the apartment that day. I was
watching the Chapelle Show. It was my last day out,
(19:36):
July nineteenth, two thousand and seven. I'm watching the Chapelle
Show Cooking Brought Worst in this apartment and I look
out the window and I'm on the third story and
I see the front end of a cop car and
I know that it's a cop car, and I knew
that was it. I just knew. I knew, Okay, well,
this is it. And there wasn't much in the apartment,
but there was a recliner that was wider than the
(19:57):
window was so I had taken a a nylon rope
or repelling rope, and I tied it to the bottom
of the recliner and I hear the door pounding. Carter
Springs police opened up and they're kicking indoors making their
way down to me. So I kick out the window
and wrap my hand around the rope and I jump
out the window and the recliners sticks and wedges right
in the window, just like I wanted it to. And
(20:18):
as I'm hanging there around both sides of this apartment building,
these police come flooding and there's forty or fifty cops
made up of El Paso County Sheriff's deputies, Carter Springs
Police department. They come pouring around the side with their
guns pulled and drawn on me. You know, get on
the ground, Get on the ground, Get the f on
the ground. And I'm like, I don't know where else
I'm gonna go. And I look up and there's cops,
you know, cops above me. Cops blow me. So I
(20:41):
pulled up a little bit on the rope, unwrapped the
rope in my hand and dropped and I dropped three
stories and I landed and it's a miracle that I
didn't get hurt there. But I landed and rolled and
then there was two canine units right there with the
dogs barking in my face. And I remember laying there
and I could feel the heat from the dogs and
I'm just like out with these dogs. Don't bite me.
(21:02):
But that was it, and an officer stuck his knee
in my back and cuffed me. They put me in
the back of the cop car. And the craziest thing
is I remember the relief that I had as I
sat in the back of that cop car because I
knew it was all over. I remember Rihanna's Umbrella song
was on in the cop car as we were heading,
you know, to County jail. I just had a sense
of piece for whatever reason, and and I end up
(21:25):
getting into County jail, where I would find out that
I was facing three hundred and eighty four years in prison.
With facing that much time, I started to get involved
in with some some rough groups in the jail, thinking
that I'm going away to prison for the rest of
my life. I have to make a name for myself.
I have to be tough. I have to be this
this guy, this prison guy. So I get into a
(21:46):
bunch of fights. You know, I'm going up to these
older kind of gangster guys and they're saying, why I
need you to go beat this guy? And I need
you to go beat that guy. So I'm doing these
things and I eventually end up in administrative segregation, which
is when you are in a crete cell m it's
about eight foot by twelve foot and there's a bunk
in there. There's a metal bunk with a fire retardant
(22:07):
mattress and a fire retardant pillow and a sink that
is attached to a toilet. It's a one piece toilet
sink and a desk and that's it. That's all you
have in there. And I was in there for twenty
three hours a day and I would get one hour
where I could go make a phone call, take a shower,
and I would go back in my cell. And I
was there for several months. And in that time frame
(22:29):
that I was in administrative segregation, I had a revelation.
It was one of the it was an epiphany. It
was an AHA moment, and it seems silly, but it was.
It was. It was huge. As I look back on it,
it's the point as I try and counsel people who
have been through these things before or that are going
through these things now, and because people come to me
(22:50):
because I've been through them before, they asked me, you know,
what would you tell them? And this was the one
thing that happened. And I'm sitting in administrative segregation in
this cell by myself, been there for a couple of months,
and all of a sudden, I realized, this is my fault.
This is all my fault. And I know that seems sillier,
(23:10):
it sounds, you know, stupid or whatever, but really no,
this is all my fault. Because up to that point,
I'd blamed it on my mom. I'd blamed it on
my dad. I blamed it on the judges. I blamed
it on everyone but me. I blamed it on the
corrupt system, you know, all the district attorneys. I mean,
you name it. I blamed everybody. But then all of
a sudden, I realized this is my fault. And it
(23:33):
was so liberating and it was so freeing because I
realized if my choices created this circumstances, certainly I could
make better choices that would create better circumstances. And I
came to this realization that my choices are what create
my circumstances, not the other way around. I wasn't a victim,
that I'd created the circumstances through my choices. And from
(23:56):
that moment forward, I made a decision that I was
going to do things differently. And I did. And it
wasn't easy. I had habits, I had, you know, thought patterns.
I had all these things that were wrong. But I
knew that I could make better choices than I was
responsible for my choices, and I started doing that. From
that moment I got on the phone, I called my
grandma with tears in my eyes and told her that
(24:16):
I was going away forever. And and she said, you know,
I can tell there's been a huge change in your life, Brian.
I can't put my finger on it. I don't know
what it is, but I can tell there's something very
different about you, because up to this point they all
cut me off. I burned every bridge in my family.
They were done with me. She said, we're going to
get you an attorney, and she did. And the next
day I went to court. Someone that was supposed to
(24:38):
show up to the court court date to be a
witness in my trial. If I went to trial that day,
didn't show up, so they had to postpone it for
two weeks. Total miracle. The attorney was able to take
my case and get me into what's called a mediation hearing.
And what a mediation hearing is is where you basically
go into arbitration with your sentence, and it's like a
used car seals well, i'll give you this, well, no
we want that. Well i'll give you this, and no
we want that. And they started at thirty two years
(24:59):
and I at eight years, and a mediator went back
and forth between the district attorney and my lawyer and
I back and forth, back and forth, and they finally
came down to a fifteen year sentence with a crime
of violence, sense and answer. And I told him I
don't want that sentence to answer. I don't want to
be labeled a violent criminal. I don't want to go
to some hardcore prison and ended up with swastikas all
over my face and turn into that guy. I want
(25:20):
to change my life. I want a chance at changing
my life. I said, tell her, I'll give her a
year if she drops that crime of violence. So I
ended up getting sentenced to sixteen years, and they dropped
the crime of violence. And I went back to my
cell after that mediation, and I knew that God had
moved in my life. So I got sentenced. I got
sentenced to sixteen years, and then I went to the
Denver Reception Diagnostic Center. This is a maximum security prison,
(25:43):
and you roll up in a van and there's rolls
upon rolls of razor wire. There's gun towers with armed
guards in the gun towers. They've got these little mirrors
that go under the vans that see if there's bombs
under the vans, and it's just it was very sobering.
It was very real that hey, I'm in prison, that's
happening now. And I went in there and I was
(26:05):
there for a little while, and they sent me to
my first facility and Wherefno County Correctional Center. It was Waltsonburg, Colorado,
and it was a private prison. And there's a lot
of bad things that surround the idea of private prisons,
but I had nothing but a very positive experience there.
It was very evident that everybody there that was involved
with the staff members there, from our case managers to
(26:28):
the teachers and things like that, that they wanted criminals
to be rehabilitated, and they had a lot of programs.
So I immediately started taking programs. I got my GED
while I was at Walsenburg, and then I started taking
college classes and then I became a guy that helped
other guys get their g D. And that's what I
did for working there, as I was a tutor and
I helped people get their gds. And when we come
(26:48):
back the final installment of this remarkable story, one that
hits close to home, our own Brian Dawson. His story
continues here on our American story, and we return to
(27:38):
Brian Dawson's story and what a story it is, and
again this one hits close to home. He's one of
our people. And by the way, it just shows you
that anything can happen in a person's life. Here he
is in prison, and he's already you can hear it.
He's a changed guy and he wants to just get
through this and come out on the other side. And
so he's re oriented himself and his life right there.
(28:01):
And what may be the very worst place in America
to be is a young man. Let's return to Brian's story.
I was there for about nine months. But the very
first person I met when I walked into Wolsenburg was
a guy with a name of Charles Frederick. And he
comes up to me. He's this big guy, a big
burly guy, and he says, hey, my name's Charles, and
(28:22):
I'm a Christian. And this is a faith pod. So
in these prisons they had these pods are called faith pods,
and it was basically pods or units made up of
about one hundred and twenty inmates, and it was dedicated
to discipleship. And I don't know how I landed in there,
why I landed in there, but I was there, and
Charles began to just tell me about Christ, tell me
about who Jesus was, tell me about the Gospel. I
told him, Charles, I don't want to hear that stuff.
(28:44):
You know, I don't care, and you know, he just
said okay, and then he began to talk to him
about other things, and he met my physical needs. He
gave me coffee, he gave me shorts, he gave me
you know, things that you know you get in there.
You got nothing other than a couple of pairs of
underwear in a green suit. So he helped me some
of those things and just became my friend and as
conversation would permit, he would tell me about Christ. And
(29:05):
that would go on for about nine months. He got
shipped to another prison. I left that prison. They shut
that prison down in my security level dropped and I
bounced around a little bit for a couple of years,
and then I ended up in Sterling Correctional Facility and Sterling, Colorado.
The first person I see there's Charles again and he
starts telling me about Jesus Christ again, and I'm like, man,
I don't want to hear this stuff. Well we're there
(29:27):
for a little bit, and he goes, hey, you know
you got parole coming up in a couple of years.
It would be good for you to have some certificates to,
you know, show the parole board. I'm like okay, and
he goes, well, I'm the Chaplains assistant. I can get
you in some programs. I'm like, okay, I go ahead,
sign me up. So he signs me up and they
end up being faith based programs and I'm like, oh,
I hate you, Charles. But the very first program I
went into was a come as you are, we love everybody,
(29:50):
you know, Muslim Buddhist, Christian, whatever, it just come as
you are. And I went there and it was it
was okay, but I experienced fellowship and I met other
Christians that were like Charles, who are true, genuine christ
who lived this out. Um. They didn't just say they
were Christians with their mouth. They lived it and you
could see the wisdom and things that they had and
I was attracted to that. And um, that went on
for about thirteen weeks. That class was over, and then
(30:12):
Charles got me into another program called the Truth Project,
which is put out by Focus on the Family and
doctor Dell Tackett. Amazing program, but when I got in there,
it was not come as you are. It was this
is what the Bible says. And I didn't like that.
And I would sit we would watch a video for
an hour and then we would have table discussion. At
the table discussion, I would argue with everyone there and
tell them how stupid they were for believing what they
(30:33):
you know that they believe these things. And I almost
got into a couple of fights with those guys. And
about three weeks into it, we were walking back to
the unit and Charles just asked me, says Brian, why
don't you just give him a chance? And I'd been
asked that question before and and fought it and fought
it and fought it, and for whatever reason, I said, okay, Charles,
(30:53):
so um. I went back to my cell that night
and I prayed, Okay, God, if I need to believe
these things to have a relationship with you, give me
some kind of a sign. And I went to bed
that night. I remember being in a really deep sleep
and I had a nightmare. And in that nightmare, I
fell off of a cliff and I woke up, startled
out of a nightmare and kind of and I looked,
(31:15):
and it's really dark in the cells, and we had
were allowed to have digital clocks in there, and the
digital clock with the red numbers in the cell said
three sixteen. The only Bible verse I'd ever known as
a kid at all was John three sixteen. And if
you know John three sixteen, it answers the question that
I asked him. That's exactly right, Yes, you do need
(31:35):
to believe those things. And I tried to go back
to sleep and just brush it off, but I looked
back at the clock and I felt like it was
three sixteen for like thirty minutes and I'm like, okay,
maybe there's something to this. And it was a Sunday
morning at three sixteen. So I got up and I
went to the church services that they offered in the prison,
and I went and found my friend Ramone. I always
had this idea in my head that Christians were weak,
(31:56):
and my friend Ramone was a big black former gang
bang or that had become a Christian. And there is
nothing softer or week about this guy. So I'm like, okay,
I'll go with him. And I'm sitting in the very
back row, in the very far side as he goes
through the sermon. And at the end of the sermon,
the pastor does what he calls an invitation. I look
at Ramon, I say, what's an invitation? And he goes
(32:19):
he'd say, oh, that's where you go make a decision
for Christ, or you invite Jesus in your heart. He
didn't say any of that stuff. He said, if you've
got something in your life it's hindering your relationship with God,
you can go up there and pray with that man
about it. So I went up there and I prayed
with Chaplain Davis. And to tell you a little about him.
He's a hard man, a callous man, a cowboy, he's
(32:39):
a man's man. He's a prison chaplain, and he doesn't
do hugs. He didn't do any of those kind of things.
And he grabbed my hand to pray, and I could
feel a callouses on his hands, and he slaps me
on the shoulder with his other hand and he says,
how can I pray for you? And I told him,
I said, look, you know I don't I'm not here
to make any decisions. I just I need you to
pray that God would move this callous from my heart,
(33:01):
because it's hardened and it's angry, and it's angry towards Christians.
So I want him to soften my heart so that
the truth can come in. And Chaplin Davis prayed that,
and I remember looking up after we were done praying,
and he's in front of one hundred and thirty inmates
with tears pouring down his face, and I knew something
was very real about this, and I didn't know how
(33:21):
to describe it, but it was. It was very real.
And I would later find out that Chaplin Davis and
Charles had been praying for me for about a year
and a half that I would get saved. And from
that moment forward and I began to read my Bible.
I read my Bible every single day. I'd get up
and read my Bible, read my Bible. I was at
every single church service that they offered, any faith based
(33:41):
program they had, and that prison I was there, there
was a huge change. I went from telling these people
they were stupid for believing what they did to absolutely
believing it, basically overnight. That went on for about a year,
and my friends all had pinpals that they were writing
when they were in prison. So I prayed and said,
all right, God to have a pin pound And I
got on the phone with my mom and she was
(34:02):
running a Facebook page for me. She says, you got
a friend request from a girl and I'm like, okay, cool,
who is it? And she goes, do you know a
girl named Christina Ewen. I'm like, yeah, I know Christina Ewen. Why.
She goes, well, she sent you a friend request, she
remembered you, and that she's been trying to find you for,
you know, on and off for the last ten years. Said,
(34:25):
did you tell her I was in prison? Ye? I
told her you in prison. She doesn't care she wants
to write you. I'm like, well, that's crazy. So I
got her address and everything we did, all of our
correspondence was based on christ and what God was doing
in our lives, and that was it. And that went
on for several months, and I just knew that this
was too crazy for it not to be God lining
this up for something bigger. But I was scared to
(34:46):
death because she's rejected me so many times in the past.
And I had to write a letter. And I sat
down and wrote this letter and said, look, you know,
I just I feel like, you know, this is kind
of something that may be meant to be, and that
you know, I know it's asking a lot of you,
but you know this has meant for something more. I
get the letter back and I remember hearing it at
mail call and seeing that the letter was from Christina,
(35:06):
knowing that the answer was going to be inside of
that envelope. And I opened the envelope and pulled out
the letter and began to read it, and in the
very first paragraph, she said, Brian, I've been thinking the
exact same things, and I know God wants me to
be with you, and that I'm supposed to be here
for you through this time and you know that we're
meant to be together. And I remember reading that sitting
(35:28):
in prison, and I mean I could have floated up
the steps to go back to my cell. It was.
It was amazing. So but I put in for a
halfway house about six months after that, so I ended
up getting accepted to that program, my very first time
putting in for a halfway house, which almost never happens
with the severity of my sentence, in the size and
scope of my sentence. So it was. It was a very,
(35:50):
very tough two years. But I graduated and Christina was
there for the graduation and the first visit I was
allowed to go on. Actually before I graduated, Christina and
I got married. We got we eloped, I guess you
could say. We got married at my grandma's house. So
my wife and I now have three daughters, plus my
stepson Brennan, who is an absolute stud, brilliant, smart kid,
(36:14):
does very well in sports. And my girls are three
years old is Gracie, two year old is Reagan, and
our one year old is Abigail, and we have another
one on the way. So not only do I have
and this is kind of a cool caveat to the story.
I've got a little piece of property with a little house,
and you know, the wife of my dreams and beautiful children,
(36:37):
four beautiful children about to be five. But I just
moved my mom's She has a camper, and I just
moved her camper onto my property. And my mom, who
I had obviously all that resentment and animosity towards, she
now lives on my property and she's mema to the kids,
and she got saved about two years ago and she's
a completely different person. So again, like I could not
(36:59):
have sat in jail all five, six, seven years ago,
whatever it was, and said, Okay, in five or ten years,
this is what I want and ever thought it would
be what it is now. And what a story, folks.
And I'm tearing up here because I know Brian and
to imagine that that can happen in people's lives anyone listening,
(37:20):
having someone in prison someplace that you just don't think
they can come back from. My goodness, it's possible. And
we do faith based stories here, folks, We don't shy
away from it. There are all kinds of things that
can get people out of a jam, and sometimes it's
God and sometimes it's a secular counselor, but we don't
shy away from the religious aspect of people's lives here
(37:42):
on this show. We don't preach, we don't proselytize, but
we don't remove it. And my goodness, Brian Dawson's story
is unimaginable without God. And send your stories, by the way,
if you have a story like this, and I know
you do, because my goodness, this country is filled with
stories like this, and we're we're tired of the negative stories.
We want to hear stories of real hope, not the
(38:04):
silly kind. Bryan Dawson's story a beautiful family, a beautiful
story of love and redemption. Here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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