October 14, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Sam Goodwin had traveled to 180 countries, and Syria was to be number 181. Two hours into his adventurous visit there, a total transformation of his life began. His book is Saving Sam, and his website is https://www.samrgoodwin.com — Here's Sam with his story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, a story about faith, family, resilience, and hockey.
Saint Louis Blues run to the twenty eighteen Stanley Cup
to be precise.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Here to tell his.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Story is Sam Goodwin, author of Saving Sam, a true
story of an American's disappearance in Syria.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Take it away, Sam, which.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
One stands out to you the most that maybe had
the higher expectations this year that just hasn't lived up
to them. Well, I think the changes that the Saint
Louis Blues made in the off season. I mean, this
isn't just a local flavor that I'm giving you.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
You ask anybody around the National Hockey League.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's the answer.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
When I look back on their roster that year, they
really did have a lot of the pieces that are
necessary for winning the Cup. But that doesn't necessarily mean
that a team's gonna win the Cup just because they
have the pieces.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
A break away fro Riley it over time.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Can he be the hero? Yes?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
During that season, the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen season, the
Blues at roughly the halfway point were at the bottom
of the NHL, but they pretty incredibly turned things around
in the second half of the season.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
They peaked at the right time that year.
Speaker 6 (01:28):
Six station all to the most, winning over time.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Unbelievable throughout, primarily their playoff run.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I was traveling quite a bit. I was in the
South Pacific, I was in Singapore. I remember watching them
the Western Conference final from Iraq.
Speaker 7 (01:54):
This series is over, the wait is over, and the
Saint Louis Blues or the state.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
And they win their first Stanley Cup of franchise history.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And I'm in a Syrie in prison.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I started playing hockey when I was about four or
five years old and played my entire life for play
hockey through high school, the year junior hockey in Texas,
and then from there. I was recruited to playing Division
one in college and remained close to the game. I
unfortunately had pretty bad concussion injuries and that sort of
was the end of the road for my formal playing career.
(02:34):
But I had an opportunity to help launch a tech
startup business in Singapore and kind of unexpectedly ended up
playing quite a bit helping to grow the game in
a non traditional market. I coached the Singapore national team
for about five years, and ran charity hockey schools around
Asia and Philippines, and I coached the North Korean national
(02:58):
hockey team. I coached ballvolleyball, and cobble. I went to
a Formula E race in Saudi Arabia. I originally only
planned to be in Singapore for about three months.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I ended up staying for six years.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
During this time, I traveled as much as I could.
I had the world's best airport in my backyard, had
a little bit of flexibility in my work schedule. I
was in my early twenties and when I traveled, I
didn't like to repeat places. So even if I went
somewhere and had a fantastic experience, the next weekend, the
next holiday, the next opportunity, I would just go somewhere different.
(03:39):
And in early twenty eighteen, I realized that I had
traveled to about one hundred and twenty countries in the world.
And it was at this point when I remember thinking, well,
how many are there.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
There are one hundred and.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Ninety three fully recognized un sovereign states. So I thought
to myself, well, maybe I could.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Go to all of them.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
The competitive athlete in me like setting goals and working
toward achieving them. I was going to give this a shot.
I had no idea if I could do it. I
didn't even know what that would look like, but I
became committed to working toward achieving something that I thought
was extraordinary. About a year later, I had traveled to
(04:28):
a one hundred and eighty of one hundred and ninety
three countries in the world, and Syria was number one
point eighty one of one ninety two. Syria a country
that's experiencing arguably the most tragic humanitarian disaster of our lifetime,
the attack on contract who produced terrible images of children
(04:48):
poisoned by nerve gasts. By conservative estimates, half a million
people have died in the conflict. The UN stopped counting
at two hundred and fifty thousand. But one of the
most significant things that I had learned through my travels
is that places that are negatively perceived or that we're
not supposed to like these were places where I had
(05:09):
many of my best experiences and where my perspectives were
most meaningfully impacted. So despite everything that was happening, I
was confident that the same was going to be the case,
and on May twenty fifth, twenty nineteen, I went to
the northeast region of Syria and it was frankly all
(05:30):
a very straightforward process. I went into an immigration office
on the Rock side of the border and they stamped
my passport, went to cross the river to another office
on the Syrian side and they stamped my passport there.
And then I got in a taxi and went to
Kmishli and I didn't feel unsafe. I'm not saying it
felt totally comfortable, because it was still serious, but there
were certainly places.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
In the world where I felt a lot more uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
This is an area of the country hundreds of miles
from any ongoing conflict, and I was frankly excited to
be there was a place that I had wanted to
visit for a long time. It's one of the most culturally,
religiously historically significant places in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's the cradle civilization.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Just two hours after I arrived, I was walking through
a roundabout on the way to meet up with my guide.
I was talking to my mom on FaceTime when all
of a sudden, a black truck pulled up next to me.
Two armed men jumped out of the backseat and instructed
me to get inside, and I didn't have a choice.
(06:37):
And as we sped down back alleys of the city,
the officer sitting next to me, he reached into his
pocket and he pulled out a blindfold and he put
it over my eyes and accused me of espionage, of
being an American spy and collaborating with terrorists. And these men,
I learned were loyal to the Syrian president. But charllessad
(06:59):
the truck then stopped. I stepped out of the truck
and they took the blindfold off, and I looked up
above me and I was underneath a massive Syrian military
airplane out on the tarmac of an airport. And at
that point they handcuffed me behind my back, took me
over to the ladder, and threw me into the cargo
(07:20):
hold of the plane. About thirty minutes later, the plane
took off.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
When we come back more of Sam Goodwin's story on
Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of our
American Stories. Every day on this show, we tell stories
of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories. Send
us your story small or large to out email oas
(07:48):
at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That's oas at Ouramerican Stories
dot Com. We'd love to hear them and put them
on the air. Our audience loves them too. And we
(08:09):
continue with our American Stories and with Sam Goodwin's story.
When we last left off, Sam, a Saint Louis native
who made it his goal to travel every country in
the world, found himself detained and thrown into the belly
of a plane in Syria. And you'll be hearing not
just from Sam in this segment, but from his father,
his sister, and his mother. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Sometimes I asked, how often have you ever been flying
on an airplane.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
But didn't know where it was going.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
We landed in what I learned to be Damascus, which
is the capital city of the country, and I was
taken from the airport, driven into the center of town.
Take it into the basement of a facility that I
now know is called Siria's Military and Elligence Prison Number
two fifteen, a facility notoriously known for housing political prisoners.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
Shocking allegations of systematic executions and torture carried out by.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
The Syrian regime.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Femnesty International says it has evidence that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Around there and the officer who was in charge escorted
me to a cell in the back of the basement,
and it had no window.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It was all concrete.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I had nothing but a small blanket to lay on
the concrete floor as a bed. When he put me
in there, I'll never forget. He went to the inside
of the cell door and he said, feed, water, toilet, knock,
and he did a knocking motion on the inside of
the cell door, and then he said otherwise, quiet, no talking,
and he slammed the door and laughed. I was stunned
(09:51):
and in disbelief about what had happened in just a
few short hours. I mean by the life had spiraled
out of control in the most terrifying of ways. I
felt exactly the way they wanted me to, hopeless utterly
cut off from any control of my life. The only
human interaction I had was for a few seconds in
the morning and evening when the guards brought bread and
(10:13):
boiled potatoes and water. But the most challenging part for
me was the uncertainty. I had no idea what was
going to happen to me. Was I going to be
in that cell forever? Was I going to be released
in five minutes? Was I going to be released in
a week. Were they going to open the door and
(10:34):
shoot me, or torture me or stop feeding me? Based
on the information that I had, I believed that all
of these things were possible, and trying to entertain all
of these potential options twenty four to seven was emotionally
and psychologically exhausting. On date twenty three and twenty four,
(11:01):
in solitary confinement, I was I was interrogated for three
hours on both days, handcuffed, blindfolded. A man from across
the room began talking to me in perfect English, but
he basically started from the day I was born and
worked his way all the way up to the present day,
asking everything about me, where I was born, where I lived,
(11:22):
where i'd played hockey, where I had worked, my school,
my siblings. And he told me, Sam, if you don't
start telling the truth, I'm going to do a one
to eighty with your life. Do you want me to
hand you over to Isis, I'll do it right now.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The news of my disappearance was learned through me going dark.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I was always very good about keeping inside, especially if
I was in more of an unstable place, and I
had communicated that I was going to be in Syria
for just a few days, and they began to worry.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Different people were chasing different leads, but we were certainly
working with the Vatican. We were working with some NGOs
on the ground in Syria, we were working with some journalists.
We cast the net very wide.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
They reached the FBI field office in Saint Louis, our hometown.
Would pretty quickly escalated at some of the highest levels
in the US government in Washington.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
They communicated two key things to our family.
Speaker 8 (12:28):
The FBI told us that if the word got out
into the wrong hands and it was made public, they'd
probably immediately kill Sam or make a situation worse and
use it as leverage. So it was very, very important
that this was super super hush.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
Hush from day one. They said, hey, like this is
tough for us, Like we don't really have much representation
in Syria or in that region. It would be wise
to manage your expectations, which you know, we could kind
of read through what they were saying, like there's a
chance we might not ever see Sam again.
Speaker 8 (12:56):
The only thing might be if you find someone who
has any influence on a sod D. FBI said, one
hundred percent the only way that Sam will be released
is if a sad signs off.
Speaker 6 (13:09):
That just seemed overwhelming to me, just how is this
going to happen?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
My father works in civil engineering, my mother is a
registered nurse turned educator. Both of them are smart people
and they've had relative success in their respective fields. But
they're an average family from Middle America. They had no
idea what to do, and they brief my family accordingly
about when my captivity ended, I came home, I could
(13:37):
be a vegetable, institutionalizing me for the rest of my life.
I was in a situation where everything had been taken
from me, my material possessions, my communication, my freedom. But
(13:58):
in captivity, it's so important to maintain a connection to
the outside, so to speak. And the blues run of
the cop was one of the ways that I did that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
This was just one piece of the puzzle. I to
set it on both He's done, fit's done? What two
seconds left? He gets it done? And the blows what
it over time?
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Inside my cell, I chipped this rock off the cell
wall and I carved a calendar.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I knew when those first four games.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Were and I put small marks on the calendar for
those four games. So that I could think about that
when it happened and have a few seconds of relief.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Freakly, after several days of pacing back and forth, I
finally stopped. I said, hang on a second, maybe there's
some good in this situation, something to be grateful for here.
And I remember an inner voice replying and saying, Sam,
are you crazy. You've just been taken hostage. There's nothing
good here, there's nothing to grateful for. The best this
web being is a period of your life you can forget.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I fought that inner voice and I said, I'm grateful
to be alive. I'm grateful for my health, my education.
I'm grateful for the basic food and water.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I'm being given.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
I mean, I've encountered a lot of people around the
world who don't have access to those things. I mean,
perhaps being in this cell would be an upgrade for them.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
How's that?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
From some perspective, Each one of these small expressions of
gratitude became this silent rebellion against the uncertainty of the situation.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So, after channeling a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Of strength, I didn't want to then just sit around
and do nothing and depite being in this eight by
eight cell I wanted to take action. What I found
was that I could control my thoughts, how much water
I drank, and when I went to sleep at night,
I could control my routine within that cell. Finally, nothing
(15:52):
was more important than my faith. In that cell, I
felt this unbelievable closeness to God, something like I had
never felt before, and my prayers became this uninterrupted conversation
with God. I was constantly saying things out loud, even
though they told me not to talk. I said, God,
I'm here, I'm listening. What are you trying to tell
(16:14):
me today? What can I learn today? What are perhaps
the positives about my situation? And then I finished all
of my prayers by saying the Rosary. I'm Catholic. I
would dedicate each decade to something different. I'd prayed for
my family, my friends, anybody who I thought might be
working to get me out of the situation.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I prayed very.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Art also for the courage to forgive my captors, and
through that I discovered that I was working to forgive
people who weren't even sorry. And I discovered that forgiveness
is not a feeling, It's a choice. And my number
one prayer was always please get me physically unharmed. My
(16:54):
second prayer was then about the timelines. If this was
all going on peacefully, then the next question was when.
And this was the prayer that for me became the
most tricky and intense. And I remember almost positioning it
as like a business deal. I said, God, I know
you have a plan, but would you consider an adjustment
to the timeline?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Can that work with your plan?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
And you're listening to one heck of a story, Sam
Goodwin's story. The book is Saving Sam. You can go
to Amazon or the usual suspects and you can get it.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Here.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
He is in a small prison. He's making marks on
a calendar, trying to set some hope in his life.
Saint Louis blues games and maybe there's something good that
can come of this. He's thinking of himself and he's
looking for things to be grateful for. And in the
end he said, my expressions of gratitude were a silent rebellion,
and he felt closer to God because of that uninterrupted
(17:50):
time with God. When we come back, what happens next
on Sam's story? Here on our American stories? And we
returned to our American stories, and the final portion of
(18:12):
Sam Goodwin's story. When we last left off, Sam, a
Saint Louis native, had discovered ways to make his captivity
in Syria more bearable, including thinking about the Saint Louis
Blues run to the Stanley Cup. But all he wanted
and all he prayed for, was release. Let's continue with
the story. We begin with the audio of Sam's sister
(18:34):
and his family.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
For the first time in their history, the Saint Louis
Blues are the Stanley Cup Champion, Champion CHAMPI.
Speaker 8 (18:44):
Sam had been gone for three weeks now and there
was very, very very little hope.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Up until that point. It was like throwing darts in
the dark.
Speaker 9 (18:54):
There was nothing that was really concretely sticking.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
Everyone was telling us this wasn't gonna end well. Everyone
told us to manage our expectations, or that we would
never see our brother again. There were like no words.
I just felt like this, this is going to take
a miracle.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
On July twenty sixth, one of the prison officials came
to the cell I was in. He called my name
and he indicated that I was being moved, and as
he escorted me out ran he stopped and he said, Sam,
you're very lucky president, I saw it has agreed to
release you.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
This sounds encouraging, but I had been lied.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
To so many times in the past two months that
I had essentially become immune to believing anything like this.
Outside I stepped into a black SUV, which turned out
to be part of a five vehicle convoy that raced
out of Damascus at what seemed to be one hundred
miles an hour. I mean, we didn't stop traffic lights,
(19:48):
We used the shoulder of the road to maneuver around traffic.
Nobody in the vehicle said a word. I remember the
nice cars. The professional nature of the operation made me
think that this was all. All of this was either
really good really bad. I'm about to experience one extreme
of the captivity spectrum here, but I didn't know which
(20:10):
one it was. And we came up to a checkpoint
one that seemed to be some kind of signaking in border,
and as we passed through, the officer of the vehicle
sitting next to me quietly, kind of subtly tapped me
on the leg and I'll never forget he said, Sam,
you're in Lebanon.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
You're safe now.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
And this was also pretty encouraging, but I was still
trying to figure out everything that was happening. But we
drove from there for about another hour into Beroute, the
capital city of Lebanon, and I was taken to the
office of Lebanese Internal Security, sort of like the equivalent
of the FBI here in the US. And when I
walked into the office, my parents were there, which was
(20:52):
this moment that was indescribably emotional, one that many people thought,
what never happened and frankly just a bread taking display
of God answering prayers. Yeah, when I reflect back on
that moment, sometimes I think that if this story were
to ever be adapted for something on screen, if it
(21:13):
were ever be a film, nothing in that moment would
need to be dramatized for the movie.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
We could just.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Take the CCTV footage inside of Lebanon's General Security office
and just put it on the screen. Then, just a
few minutes after being reunited, I was thinking about everything
that had happened in the past nine weeks and I
kind of innocently said to my parent.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I have a story for you.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
And to day looked at each other and then look
back at me, and my mom said, well, Sam, we
have a story for you too. This threw me off
a little bit, because when I was trapped on the inside,
I had no idea about anything that was happening on
the outside. Everything that happened on the outside I learned later.
And essentially.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
They reached the FBI field.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Office in Saint Louis, our hometown, which pretty quickly escalated
some of the highest levels in the US government in Washington.
They said, don't let the press get a hold of this,
because if they do, and Sam's captors feel that type
of pressure, they might just kill him. And from there,
About three weeks later, my younger sister, Stephanie, who was
(22:31):
twenty five years old at the time living in Nashville,
she particularly became entirely overwhelmed with everything that was happening,
and she decided that she needed to haul someone and
talk to them about this and just blow off some steam.
Speaker 8 (22:47):
It was always in the afternoons. I felt like I
was having the hardest time with things. Something came over
me that I felt like I really needed to tell
somebody something, and the only person that came to mind
was Steph, my old college roommate. So I called Steph
and I say, you're never going to believe this. My
brother went missing in Syria. And she says, that is
(23:08):
so awful. Is there anything I can do to help?
And I said, from what I'm told, unless you know
someone who's friends with the sad, all you can.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Do is pray.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
And her response was, is it okay if my dad
calls your dad? And I said, yeah, it is yeah.
Speaker 7 (23:22):
Because it turns out, you know his friend, the general
is one of the few people in Lebanon that have
a relationship with President and as'ad. That was probably the
first time that I'd heard somebody is confident. I don't
think he said we could be successful, but he goes
(23:42):
tag I can help.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
It turns out that roommate Steph is Lebanese and her
uncle is good friends with General Abbas Ibraham, who heads
Lebanon's internal security, essentially the spy chief for the country.
And General Ibraham has a sum a secret back channel
relationship with the Syrians and was able to mediate my
(24:05):
release when so many others were.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Struggling to do anything.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
So this is kind of a situation where the FBI,
the CIA, the White House, Middle East, ENNGO is the Pentagon,
the Russians were all struggling to be effective, but my
sister's college roommate could identify a path to get an
American hostage release from.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Captivity in the Middle East.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Sometimes people ask me if I get my sister a
special Christmas gift every year, which we certainly have a
special bond, but just so grateful that things ended the
way they did.
Speaker 8 (24:40):
I was just like absolutely elated, like just like running
around outside like crying, like I could not believe this,
that like a miracle like basically had been done onto
our family.
Speaker 7 (24:53):
Everything happened extremely quickly. We landed in Beirut and at
a high rate of speed to a military office, and
we get out.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Of this vehicle and we ride this elevator up and
they open it up and Sam is right there, and
I just hugged them and just you know, seem I
just love you so much, and I go, are you okay?
And he said yes. And then I said did they
hurt you? And he said no.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
Once we got comfortable that Sam was okay, so to speak,
he quickly was asking about the Saint Louis Blues Stanley Cup.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
When my captivity ended, I came home.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
It was kind of surreal because I opened up YouTube
and I typed in twenty nineteen Stanley Cup final in
the first video that came up had been posted six
weeks earlier, and when I read the title of the video,
I thought, Oh my gosh, they won. You know, there
must have been a parade, There must have been all
of these celebrations, but I had missed all of it.
When I'm home in Saint Louis or really anywhere and
(25:56):
I see people wearing sweatshirts or see flags or towels
or whatever that say Saint Louis Blues twenty nineteen Stanley
Cup champions, it's a very humbling reminder of where I
was during that time. I don't want to be known
for the things that happened to me. I want to
be known for the way I've responded to them. I
think that when we're at our lowest point, we have
(26:19):
the best chance for a huge breakthrough.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
And people last week quite a bit. Sam.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
If you could go back, would you still travel the
way you did or still go on this trip? And
on one hand, I would never want to relive captivity,
and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. But on the
other hand, and I think more importantly, I would also
never want to give up everything that's come from it,
the opportunity to meet some remarkable people, to grow in
(26:43):
character and in faith and in understanding, really just the
stuff in life.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That actually matters.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
There were a lot of people who said that my
life was over, but in truth it was just getting going.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And a special thanks to Sam Goodwin and his family
for sharing this story. The book is saving Sam and
he does speaking engagements. Folks bring him in, and if
you have a church family might most certainly bring him in.
The story of Sam Goodwin here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, a story about faith, family, resilience, and hockey.
Saint Louis Blues run to the twenty eighteen Stanley Cup
to be precise.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Here to tell his.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Story is Sam Goodwin, author of Saving Sam, a true
story of an American's disappearance in Syria.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Take it away, Sam, which.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
One stands out to you the most that maybe had
the higher expectations this year that just hasn't lived up
to them. Well, I think the changes that the Saint
Louis Blues made in the off season. I mean, this
isn't just a local flavor that I'm giving you.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
You ask anybody around the National Hockey League.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's the answer.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
When I look back on their roster that year, they
really did have a lot of the pieces that are
necessary for winning the Cup. But that doesn't necessarily mean
that a team's gonna win the Cup just because they
have the pieces.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
A break away fro Riley it over time.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Can he be the hero? Yes?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
During that season, the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen season, the
Blues at roughly the halfway point were at the bottom
of the NHL, but they pretty incredibly turned things around
in the second half of the season.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
They peaked at the right time that year.
Speaker 6 (01:28):
Six station all to the most, winning over time.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Unbelievable throughout, primarily their playoff run.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I was traveling quite a bit. I was in the
South Pacific, I was in Singapore. I remember watching them
the Western Conference final from Iraq.
Speaker 7 (01:54):
This series is over, the wait is over, and the
Saint Louis Blues or the state.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
And they win their first Stanley Cup of franchise history.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And I'm in a Syrie in prison.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I started playing hockey when I was about four or
five years old and played my entire life for play
hockey through high school, the year junior hockey in Texas,
and then from there. I was recruited to playing Division
one in college and remained close to the game. I
unfortunately had pretty bad concussion injuries and that sort of
was the end of the road for my formal playing career.
(02:34):
But I had an opportunity to help launch a tech
startup business in Singapore and kind of unexpectedly ended up
playing quite a bit helping to grow the game in
a non traditional market. I coached the Singapore national team
for about five years, and ran charity hockey schools around
Asia and Philippines, and I coached the North Korean national
(02:58):
hockey team. I coached ballvolleyball, and cobble. I went to
a Formula E race in Saudi Arabia. I originally only
planned to be in Singapore for about three months.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I ended up staying for six years.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
During this time, I traveled as much as I could.
I had the world's best airport in my backyard, had
a little bit of flexibility in my work schedule. I
was in my early twenties and when I traveled, I
didn't like to repeat places. So even if I went
somewhere and had a fantastic experience, the next weekend, the
next holiday, the next opportunity, I would just go somewhere different.
(03:39):
And in early twenty eighteen, I realized that I had
traveled to about one hundred and twenty countries in the world.
And it was at this point when I remember thinking, well,
how many are there.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
There are one hundred and.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Ninety three fully recognized un sovereign states. So I thought
to myself, well, maybe I could.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Go to all of them.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
The competitive athlete in me like setting goals and working
toward achieving them. I was going to give this a shot.
I had no idea if I could do it. I
didn't even know what that would look like, but I
became committed to working toward achieving something that I thought
was extraordinary. About a year later, I had traveled to
(04:28):
a one hundred and eighty of one hundred and ninety
three countries in the world, and Syria was number one
point eighty one of one ninety two. Syria a country
that's experiencing arguably the most tragic humanitarian disaster of our lifetime,
the attack on contract who produced terrible images of children
(04:48):
poisoned by nerve gasts. By conservative estimates, half a million
people have died in the conflict. The UN stopped counting
at two hundred and fifty thousand. But one of the
most significant things that I had learned through my travels
is that places that are negatively perceived or that we're
not supposed to like these were places where I had
(05:09):
many of my best experiences and where my perspectives were
most meaningfully impacted. So despite everything that was happening, I
was confident that the same was going to be the case,
and on May twenty fifth, twenty nineteen, I went to
the northeast region of Syria and it was frankly all
(05:30):
a very straightforward process. I went into an immigration office
on the Rock side of the border and they stamped
my passport, went to cross the river to another office
on the Syrian side and they stamped my passport there.
And then I got in a taxi and went to
Kmishli and I didn't feel unsafe. I'm not saying it
felt totally comfortable, because it was still serious, but there
were certainly places.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
In the world where I felt a lot more uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
This is an area of the country hundreds of miles
from any ongoing conflict, and I was frankly excited to
be there was a place that I had wanted to
visit for a long time. It's one of the most culturally,
religiously historically significant places in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's the cradle civilization.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Just two hours after I arrived, I was walking through
a roundabout on the way to meet up with my guide.
I was talking to my mom on FaceTime when all
of a sudden, a black truck pulled up next to me.
Two armed men jumped out of the backseat and instructed
me to get inside, and I didn't have a choice.
(06:37):
And as we sped down back alleys of the city,
the officer sitting next to me, he reached into his
pocket and he pulled out a blindfold and he put
it over my eyes and accused me of espionage, of
being an American spy and collaborating with terrorists. And these men,
I learned were loyal to the Syrian president. But charllessad
(06:59):
the truck then stopped. I stepped out of the truck
and they took the blindfold off, and I looked up
above me and I was underneath a massive Syrian military
airplane out on the tarmac of an airport. And at
that point they handcuffed me behind my back, took me
over to the ladder, and threw me into the cargo
(07:20):
hold of the plane. About thirty minutes later, the plane
took off.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
When we come back more of Sam Goodwin's story on
Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of our
American Stories. Every day on this show, we tell stories
of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories. Send
us your story small or large to out email oas
(07:48):
at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That's oas at Ouramerican Stories
dot Com. We'd love to hear them and put them
on the air. Our audience loves them too. And we
(08:09):
continue with our American Stories and with Sam Goodwin's story.
When we last left off, Sam, a Saint Louis native
who made it his goal to travel every country in
the world, found himself detained and thrown into the belly
of a plane in Syria. And you'll be hearing not
just from Sam in this segment, but from his father,
his sister, and his mother. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Sometimes I asked, how often have you ever been flying
on an airplane.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
But didn't know where it was going.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
We landed in what I learned to be Damascus, which
is the capital city of the country, and I was
taken from the airport, driven into the center of town.
Take it into the basement of a facility that I
now know is called Siria's Military and Elligence Prison Number
two fifteen, a facility notoriously known for housing political prisoners.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
Shocking allegations of systematic executions and torture carried out by.
Speaker 8 (09:10):
The Syrian regime.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Femnesty International says it has evidence that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Around there and the officer who was in charge escorted
me to a cell in the back of the basement,
and it had no window.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It was all concrete.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I had nothing but a small blanket to lay on
the concrete floor as a bed. When he put me
in there, I'll never forget. He went to the inside
of the cell door and he said, feed, water, toilet, knock,
and he did a knocking motion on the inside of
the cell door, and then he said otherwise, quiet, no talking,
and he slammed the door and laughed. I was stunned
(09:51):
and in disbelief about what had happened in just a
few short hours. I mean by the life had spiraled
out of control in the most terrifying of ways. I
felt exactly the way they wanted me to, hopeless utterly
cut off from any control of my life. The only
human interaction I had was for a few seconds in
the morning and evening when the guards brought bread and
(10:13):
boiled potatoes and water. But the most challenging part for
me was the uncertainty. I had no idea what was
going to happen to me. Was I going to be
in that cell forever? Was I going to be released
in five minutes? Was I going to be released in
a week. Were they going to open the door and
(10:34):
shoot me, or torture me or stop feeding me? Based
on the information that I had, I believed that all
of these things were possible, and trying to entertain all
of these potential options twenty four to seven was emotionally
and psychologically exhausting. On date twenty three and twenty four,
(11:01):
in solitary confinement, I was I was interrogated for three
hours on both days, handcuffed, blindfolded. A man from across
the room began talking to me in perfect English, but
he basically started from the day I was born and
worked his way all the way up to the present day,
asking everything about me, where I was born, where I lived,
(11:22):
where i'd played hockey, where I had worked, my school,
my siblings. And he told me, Sam, if you don't
start telling the truth, I'm going to do a one
to eighty with your life. Do you want me to
hand you over to Isis, I'll do it right now.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The news of my disappearance was learned through me going dark.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I was always very good about keeping inside, especially if
I was in more of an unstable place, and I
had communicated that I was going to be in Syria
for just a few days, and they began to worry.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Different people were chasing different leads, but we were certainly
working with the Vatican. We were working with some NGOs
on the ground in Syria, we were working with some journalists.
We cast the net very wide.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
They reached the FBI field office in Saint Louis, our hometown.
Would pretty quickly escalated at some of the highest levels
in the US government in Washington.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
They communicated two key things to our family.
Speaker 8 (12:28):
The FBI told us that if the word got out
into the wrong hands and it was made public, they'd
probably immediately kill Sam or make a situation worse and
use it as leverage. So it was very, very important
that this was super super hush.
Speaker 9 (12:41):
Hush from day one. They said, hey, like this is
tough for us, Like we don't really have much representation
in Syria or in that region. It would be wise
to manage your expectations, which you know, we could kind
of read through what they were saying, like there's a
chance we might not ever see Sam again.
Speaker 8 (12:56):
The only thing might be if you find someone who
has any influence on a sod D. FBI said, one
hundred percent the only way that Sam will be released
is if a sad signs off.
Speaker 6 (13:09):
That just seemed overwhelming to me, just how is this
going to happen?
Speaker 3 (13:14):
My father works in civil engineering, my mother is a
registered nurse turned educator. Both of them are smart people
and they've had relative success in their respective fields. But
they're an average family from Middle America. They had no
idea what to do, and they brief my family accordingly
about when my captivity ended, I came home, I could
(13:37):
be a vegetable, institutionalizing me for the rest of my life.
I was in a situation where everything had been taken
from me, my material possessions, my communication, my freedom. But
(13:58):
in captivity, it's so important to maintain a connection to
the outside, so to speak. And the blues run of
the cop was one of the ways that I did that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
This was just one piece of the puzzle. I to
set it on both He's done, fit's done? What two
seconds left? He gets it done? And the blows what
it over time?
Speaker 4 (14:19):
Inside my cell, I chipped this rock off the cell
wall and I carved a calendar.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I knew when those first four games.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Were and I put small marks on the calendar for
those four games. So that I could think about that
when it happened and have a few seconds of relief.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Freakly, after several days of pacing back and forth, I
finally stopped. I said, hang on a second, maybe there's
some good in this situation, something to be grateful for here.
And I remember an inner voice replying and saying, Sam,
are you crazy. You've just been taken hostage. There's nothing
good here, there's nothing to grateful for. The best this
web being is a period of your life you can forget.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Well.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
I fought that inner voice and I said, I'm grateful
to be alive. I'm grateful for my health, my education.
I'm grateful for the basic food and water.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I'm being given.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
I mean, I've encountered a lot of people around the
world who don't have access to those things. I mean,
perhaps being in this cell would be an upgrade for them.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
How's that?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
From some perspective, Each one of these small expressions of
gratitude became this silent rebellion against the uncertainty of the situation.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So, after channeling a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Of strength, I didn't want to then just sit around
and do nothing and depite being in this eight by
eight cell I wanted to take action. What I found
was that I could control my thoughts, how much water
I drank, and when I went to sleep at night,
I could control my routine within that cell. Finally, nothing
(15:52):
was more important than my faith. In that cell, I
felt this unbelievable closeness to God, something like I had
never felt before, and my prayers became this uninterrupted conversation
with God. I was constantly saying things out loud, even
though they told me not to talk. I said, God,
I'm here, I'm listening. What are you trying to tell
(16:14):
me today? What can I learn today? What are perhaps
the positives about my situation? And then I finished all
of my prayers by saying the Rosary. I'm Catholic. I
would dedicate each decade to something different. I'd prayed for
my family, my friends, anybody who I thought might be
working to get me out of the situation.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I prayed very.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Art also for the courage to forgive my captors, and
through that I discovered that I was working to forgive
people who weren't even sorry. And I discovered that forgiveness
is not a feeling, It's a choice. And my number
one prayer was always please get me physically unharmed. My
(16:54):
second prayer was then about the timelines. If this was
all going on peacefully, then the next question was when.
And this was the prayer that for me became the
most tricky and intense. And I remember almost positioning it
as like a business deal. I said, God, I know
you have a plan, but would you consider an adjustment
to the timeline?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Can that work with your plan?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
And you're listening to one heck of a story, Sam
Goodwin's story. The book is Saving Sam. You can go
to Amazon or the usual suspects and you can get it.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Here.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
He is in a small prison. He's making marks on
a calendar, trying to set some hope in his life.
Saint Louis blues games and maybe there's something good that
can come of this. He's thinking of himself and he's
looking for things to be grateful for. And in the
end he said, my expressions of gratitude were a silent rebellion,
and he felt closer to God because of that uninterrupted
(17:50):
time with God. When we come back, what happens next
on Sam's story? Here on our American stories? And we
returned to our American stories, and the final portion of
(18:12):
Sam Goodwin's story. When we last left off, Sam, a
Saint Louis native, had discovered ways to make his captivity
in Syria more bearable, including thinking about the Saint Louis
Blues run to the Stanley Cup. But all he wanted
and all he prayed for, was release. Let's continue with
the story. We begin with the audio of Sam's sister
(18:34):
and his family.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
For the first time in their history, the Saint Louis
Blues are the Stanley Cup Champion, Champion CHAMPI.
Speaker 8 (18:44):
Sam had been gone for three weeks now and there
was very, very very little hope.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Up until that point. It was like throwing darts in
the dark.
Speaker 9 (18:54):
There was nothing that was really concretely sticking.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
Everyone was telling us this wasn't gonna end well. Everyone
told us to manage our expectations, or that we would
never see our brother again. There were like no words.
I just felt like this, this is going to take
a miracle.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
On July twenty sixth, one of the prison officials came
to the cell I was in. He called my name
and he indicated that I was being moved, and as
he escorted me out ran he stopped and he said, Sam,
you're very lucky president, I saw it has agreed to
release you.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
This sounds encouraging, but I had been lied.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
To so many times in the past two months that
I had essentially become immune to believing anything like this.
Outside I stepped into a black SUV, which turned out
to be part of a five vehicle convoy that raced
out of Damascus at what seemed to be one hundred
miles an hour. I mean, we didn't stop traffic lights,
(19:48):
We used the shoulder of the road to maneuver around traffic.
Nobody in the vehicle said a word. I remember the
nice cars. The professional nature of the operation made me
think that this was all. All of this was either
really good really bad. I'm about to experience one extreme
of the captivity spectrum here, but I didn't know which
(20:10):
one it was. And we came up to a checkpoint
one that seemed to be some kind of signaking in border,
and as we passed through, the officer of the vehicle
sitting next to me quietly, kind of subtly tapped me
on the leg and I'll never forget he said, Sam,
you're in Lebanon.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
You're safe now.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
And this was also pretty encouraging, but I was still
trying to figure out everything that was happening. But we
drove from there for about another hour into Beroute, the
capital city of Lebanon, and I was taken to the
office of Lebanese Internal Security, sort of like the equivalent
of the FBI here in the US. And when I
walked into the office, my parents were there, which was
(20:52):
this moment that was indescribably emotional, one that many people thought,
what never happened and frankly just a bread taking display
of God answering prayers. Yeah, when I reflect back on
that moment, sometimes I think that if this story were
to ever be adapted for something on screen, if it
(21:13):
were ever be a film, nothing in that moment would
need to be dramatized for the movie.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
We could just.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Take the CCTV footage inside of Lebanon's General Security office
and just put it on the screen. Then, just a
few minutes after being reunited, I was thinking about everything
that had happened in the past nine weeks and I
kind of innocently said to my parent.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I have a story for you.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
And to day looked at each other and then look
back at me, and my mom said, well, Sam, we
have a story for you too. This threw me off
a little bit, because when I was trapped on the inside,
I had no idea about anything that was happening on
the outside. Everything that happened on the outside I learned later.
And essentially.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
They reached the FBI field.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Office in Saint Louis, our hometown, which pretty quickly escalated
some of the highest levels in the US government in Washington.
They said, don't let the press get a hold of this,
because if they do, and Sam's captors feel that type
of pressure, they might just kill him. And from there,
About three weeks later, my younger sister, Stephanie, who was
(22:31):
twenty five years old at the time living in Nashville,
she particularly became entirely overwhelmed with everything that was happening,
and she decided that she needed to haul someone and
talk to them about this and just blow off some steam.
Speaker 8 (22:47):
It was always in the afternoons. I felt like I
was having the hardest time with things. Something came over
me that I felt like I really needed to tell
somebody something, and the only person that came to mind
was Steph, my old college roommate. So I called Steph
and I say, you're never going to believe this. My
brother went missing in Syria. And she says, that is
(23:08):
so awful. Is there anything I can do to help?
And I said, from what I'm told, unless you know
someone who's friends with the sad, all you can.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Do is pray.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
And her response was, is it okay if my dad
calls your dad? And I said, yeah, it is yeah.
Speaker 7 (23:22):
Because it turns out, you know his friend, the general
is one of the few people in Lebanon that have
a relationship with President and as'ad. That was probably the
first time that I'd heard somebody is confident. I don't
think he said we could be successful, but he goes
(23:42):
tag I can help.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
It turns out that roommate Steph is Lebanese and her
uncle is good friends with General Abbas Ibraham, who heads
Lebanon's internal security, essentially the spy chief for the country.
And General Ibraham has a sum a secret back channel
relationship with the Syrians and was able to mediate my
(24:05):
release when so many others were.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Struggling to do anything.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
So this is kind of a situation where the FBI,
the CIA, the White House, Middle East, ENNGO is the Pentagon,
the Russians were all struggling to be effective, but my
sister's college roommate could identify a path to get an
American hostage release from.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Captivity in the Middle East.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Sometimes people ask me if I get my sister a
special Christmas gift every year, which we certainly have a
special bond, but just so grateful that things ended the
way they did.
Speaker 8 (24:40):
I was just like absolutely elated, like just like running
around outside like crying, like I could not believe this,
that like a miracle like basically had been done onto
our family.
Speaker 7 (24:53):
Everything happened extremely quickly. We landed in Beirut and at
a high rate of speed to a military office, and
we get out.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Of this vehicle and we ride this elevator up and
they open it up and Sam is right there, and
I just hugged them and just you know, seem I
just love you so much, and I go, are you okay?
And he said yes. And then I said did they
hurt you? And he said no.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
Once we got comfortable that Sam was okay, so to speak,
he quickly was asking about the Saint Louis Blues Stanley Cup.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
When my captivity ended, I came home.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
It was kind of surreal because I opened up YouTube
and I typed in twenty nineteen Stanley Cup final in
the first video that came up had been posted six
weeks earlier, and when I read the title of the video,
I thought, Oh my gosh, they won. You know, there
must have been a parade, There must have been all
of these celebrations, but I had missed all of it.
When I'm home in Saint Louis or really anywhere and
(25:56):
I see people wearing sweatshirts or see flags or towels
or whatever that say Saint Louis Blues twenty nineteen Stanley
Cup champions, it's a very humbling reminder of where I
was during that time. I don't want to be known
for the things that happened to me. I want to
be known for the way I've responded to them. I
think that when we're at our lowest point, we have
(26:19):
the best chance for a huge breakthrough.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
And people last week quite a bit. Sam.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
If you could go back, would you still travel the
way you did or still go on this trip? And
on one hand, I would never want to relive captivity,
and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. But on the
other hand, and I think more importantly, I would also
never want to give up everything that's come from it,
the opportunity to meet some remarkable people, to grow in
(26:43):
character and in faith and in understanding, really just the
stuff in life.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
That actually matters.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
There were a lot of people who said that my
life was over, but in truth it was just getting going.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And a special thanks to Sam Goodwin and his family
for sharing this story. The book is saving Sam and
he does speaking engagements. Folks bring him in, and if
you have a church family might most certainly bring him in.
The story of Sam Goodwin here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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