January 17, 2024 • 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
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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
are right near us. Folks in our neighborhood and our families,
in our churches, in our businesses, and here in 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 the 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.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
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. I was in Mister Dunnscience class and
I remember leaning over to my friend Ryan saying, 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
(01:25):
the courage. I asked one of her friends to ask
her if she would go to the eighth grade graduation
dance with me, 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,
and she put me in the friend zone. And that
would be a pattern that we don't want for the
kind of the long haul, you know, looking back at
(01:46):
my childhood, and 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 do remember is it got to be about my
first grade year my mother joined the army. She kind
of bounced around from job to job and couldn't find
(02:08):
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
a giant custody battle. My dad was a very responsible
hard working, structured individual, and the obvious best place for
(02:31):
me would have been with my father, But the court's
tendency is to always place the child with the mother
unless there's just an absolute, you know, crazy circumstance that
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
(02:52):
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 you'd want to tell a kid 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. Didn't want to leave my brother
in that environment without me to be there with him.
(03:14):
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 there ruling. After all
the time and money and everything that was spent in
that custody battle, and I remember leaving the courthouse that
day at seven years old, six years old, whatever it was,
(03:35):
and my dad looking down at me as we waited
for the light to turn across the road. He 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 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
(03:57):
to Germany, we lived in what's called the ac 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, would drink every night,
and they would fight every night, and sometimes it would
become abusive, and sometimes the screaming and all those things
(04:18):
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 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,
(04:39):
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 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.
(05:01):
And that 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 look back on it. I
remember coming home from school one day. It was one
of my last days of fourth grade, and I came
home and my mom had been, you know, free from
drinking for a year, free from partying. Our life was
(05:22):
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 that
peace and calm was over. I was old enough to
equate beer with pain, and you know, my mom drinking
(05:43):
beer and alcohol with pain and suffering from my brother
and I and 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 hated her.
And then I wanted nothing to do with her. And
then I wanted to and move back to the States,
and I wanted to move in with my dad. Then
(06:04):
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
pick us up, and she actually gave us a ride
to school on 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,
(06:27):
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,
I had this core belief that all Christians were these
gossipy judgmental people, and so I hated them.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
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
(07:27):
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(07:49):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we're back here at
(08:14):
our 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.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
My mom moved back from Germany and she went to
Colorida Springs. So I went and spent a summer with
my mom in Colorado. Well, my brother was 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
(08:52):
like that, but never personally. And you know, I remember,
you know, drinking a beer and then you know, trying liquor.
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 the more I drank, the more
I fit in, and the more I drank, the more
(09:12):
comfortable I was in my own skin. You know, they
call it liquid courage, but it was so much more
than the liquid courage. For me. It was liquid I
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, hot daan that whole summer
and the following summer, I went back to Colorado and
(09:35):
I started to smoke pot. And as I smoked pot,
it was the same thing, you know, I 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
(09:56):
of it was fitting in and all of those things.
And I would go and I was able to to,
you know, buy liquor for these parties, which made me
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 his sixteen year
old And meanwhile I was, you know, working a job
at Dylan's, which is a Kroger store, and playing football,
(10:18):
playing baseball, and somewhat maintaining my grades. I went from
a straight A student to probably about a C student,
and I 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 on
all these tests, the standardized tests, and I didn't care
(10:40):
about school anymore. All I cared about was the social aspect,
the partying, the girls, and being wasted. Basically, the summer
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
(11:00):
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,
whatever around and the craziest things would happen. Man. So
I spent the whole summer riding around with them, you know,
just seeing him be 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
(11:21):
I'm like, that's what I want to do. So I
went back to Kansas that summer. And here's the thing.
Up to that point, I was excelling in football, and
I did really well in baseball too, But 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
(11:44):
were expected to do really really well that year, and
I was so torn between really wanting to pour myself
into football or pour myself into this party life. And
I had tried cocaine when I was out there, so
I was really starting to do more serious drugs as
I'm going into my senior year. And started my senior
year and I got about two weeks into it and
I snuck out of the house and I went and
(12:06):
tried ecstasy with some of my friends, and a couple
of the guys were actually football players on the team,
and 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 hits peak. So I decided to quit
(12:26):
football and move back to Colorado with my mom. And
what that basically meant is I was on my own,
and I just started partying full blown. And I started
working for Casey and started selling weed and 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
(12:48):
ability to rise 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 cocon 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
Xanax to go to sleep, and then I would wake
(13:09):
up the next day, and really the next evening at
like four or five in the evening, I'd wake up,
I'd blow my nose and snot and cocaine and blood
would come out. 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
(13:30):
friend tried to introduce me to crack, and I'm like,
this isn't for me. So then he he had me
try crystal meth, and that was it. And once I
did crystal meth, it was There was no having to
take Xanax to go to sleep, there was no drinking
whiskey to mellow out. It was just it was wide open.
(13:50):
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 cocaine and had bonded out
and got probation and all those things, and didn't slow
me down. I continue to use drugs, continued to party,
didn't go to my probation appointments, didn't do any of
those things. And I got to a point where I
(14:12):
was very well known in Caliver Springs for my ability
to sell drugs and do a number of other things.
And I remember getting a phone 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 apartment and
(14:34):
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 individuals that were Hispanic guys,
Mexican guys, and they had handkerchiefs on over their faces
(14:54):
but they were in suits. It was weird, and I'm like, well,
I'm either going to get killed or this is going
to go really well. And you know, they sat down
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 to do what they 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
(15:17):
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, bent
four and a half months in jail, County jail on that,
got probation again, 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
(15:39):
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 some drugs. I was
supposedly the ring leader of that whole thing. I don't
know how true that was, but that's the way it
was in the cops size and they busted a house
that had some of those motorcycles in them, and they
(16:03):
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 ringing all
these rings. So he and a bunch of other people
had told the cops that I was responsible for, you know,
all this crime that was going on. And 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
(16:25):
said that you know who had told on me? I
was out driving around up to no good. I'd been
up for four days. We drove by the guy's house
who 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,
(16:47):
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 I told on me,
and he said, you know, told me, Well, I didn't
tell any Brian O'd never telling 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
(17:08):
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 grabbed a
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
(17:30):
a guy who was states evidence, so he was an
informant that I did all these things too, so that
aggravated it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And my goodness, what a story. And when we come back,
you won't believe where it turns and where it goes
Brian Dawson's story, one of our staffers here and our
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
More after these messed.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And we returned to Brian Dawson's story here on our
American Stories, And let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
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.
And shortly after that, I became one of Colorado Springs
most wanted criminals, most wanted fugitives. And it was intense.
(18:40):
I mean they were raiding houses, they were setting up
perimeters all throughout Colorda 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. If you ever followed Dog
the Bounty Hunter, Dog the Bounty Hunter did most of
his shows in Colorado Springs, some and why, but most
of them were in color To Springs, and Dog the
(19:00):
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, too threatening or menacing or whatever
for him to go after me. So it became very real,
and there was a couple of near misses where they
almost had me and I was able to escape from him,
(19:21):
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 Colorida Springs, and they finally
closed in on me. And I remember sitting in the
apartment that day. I was watching the Chappelle Show. It
was my last day out, July nineteenth, two thousand and seven.
I'm watching the Chappelle show. Cook and brought Worst in
(19:42):
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 window was so I'd taken a
nylon rope, a repelling rope, and I tied it to
(20:02):
the bottom of the recliner, and I hear the door pounding.
Carter Springs police open 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 recliner sticks and wedges
right in the window, just like I wanted it to.
And as I'm hanging there around both sides of this
apartment building, these police come flooding and there's forty or
(20:23):
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 pulled up a little bit on the rope,
unwrapped the rope in my hand and dropped and I
(20:45):
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.
I'm just like out, these dogs don't bite me. But
that was it, and an officer stuck his knee in
my back and cuffed me. They put me in the
(21:07):
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 peace
for whatever reason, and I ended up getting into County jail,
(21:28):
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
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 guy, this prison guy. So
I get into a bunch of fights. You know, I'm
going up to these older kind of gangster guys and
(21:50):
they're saying, why I need you to go beat this gup?
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 concrete cell.
It's about eight foot by twelve foot and there's a
bunk in there. There's a metal bunk with a fire
retardant mattress and a fire retardant pillow and a sink
(22:11):
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 timeframe that
I was in administrative segregation, I had a revelation. It
(22:33):
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. Because people come to me because
I've been through them before. They asked me, you know,
(22:53):
what would you tell them? And this was the one
thing that happened that I'm sitting in the administrative segregation
in this in this cell myself, been there for a
couple months, and all of a sudden, I realized, this
is my fault. This is all my fault. And I
know that seems sillier, it sounds, you know, stupid or whatever,
but really no, this is all my fault. Because up
(23:15):
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 corrupt system. You know, all these district attorneys, I mean,
you name it. I blamed everybody. But then all of
a sudden, I realized this is my fault. And it
was so liberating and it was so freeing because I
(23:36):
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 these circumstances through my choices. And
from that moment forward, I made a decision that I
(23:57):
was going to do things differently, and I did. And
it wasn't 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. And
from that moment I got on the phone, I called
my grandma with tears in my eyes and told her
that I was going away forever. And she said, you know,
(24:20):
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 burn 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
show up to the court date to be a witness
in my trial. If I went to trial that day
(24:41):
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 sells, 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
and started at eight years, and a mediator went back
(25:02):
and forth between the district attorney and my lawyer and
I back and forth, back and forth. 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 end up with swastkas all over my
face and turn into that guy. I want to change
my life. I want a chance at changing my life.
(25:23):
I said, tell her, I'll give her a year. 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, and you roll up
(25:43):
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
(26:05):
there and I was there for a little while, and
they sent me to my first facility in Wafenold County
Correctional Center. It was Wallsonburg, 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,
(26:26):
from our case managers to 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 Wallsenburg, and
then I started taking college classes. And then I became
a guy that helped other guys get their GED And
that's what I did for working there, as I was
a tutor and I helped people get their GEDs.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And when we come 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.
(27:37):
And we returned to 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.
(27:57):
And so he's reoriented himself and his life right there.
And what may be the very worst place in America
to be is a young man. Let's return to Brian's story.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I was there for about nine months, but the very
first person I met when I walked into Wolsenburg. Was
a guy with the name of Charles Frederick and he
comes up to me. He's this big guy, big burly guy,
and he says, hey, my name is Charles, and 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
(28:30):
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.
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
(28:52):
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
that would go on for about nine months. He got
shipped to another prison. I left that prison. They shut
that prison down and my security level dropped and I
(29:13):
bounced around a little bit for a couple of years,
and then I ended up in Sterling Correctional Facility in 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
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
(29:35):
he goes, well, i'm the chaplain's assistant. I can get
you in some programs. I'm like, okay, yea 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,
you know, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, whatever, Just come as you are.
And I went there and it was it was okay,
(29:56):
but I experienced fellowship and I met other Christians that
were like Charles, who are true, genuine Cristians who lived
this out. 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 that went on for about thirteen weeks.
That class was over, and then Charles got me into
another program called the Truth Project, which is put out
(30:16):
by Focus on the Family and doctor del Tacket. 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 know that they believe these things.
And I almost got to a couple of fights with
(30:37):
those guys. And about three weeks into it, we were
walking back to the unit and Charles just asked me.
He says, Brian, why don't you just give him a chance.
And I'd been asked that question before and fought it
and fought it and fought it, and for whatever reason,
I said, okay, Charles. So I went back to my
cell that night and I prayed, Okay, God, I need
(31:00):
to believe these things to have a relationship with you,
give me some kind of a sign. And I went
to bed that night and 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, and it's really dark in the cells,
and we had we're allowed to have digital clocks in there,
and the digital clock with the red numbers in the
(31:21):
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 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,
(31:44):
maybe there's something to this, And it was a Sunday
morning at three sixteen. So I got up and I
went to 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, and my friend Ramone was a big black
former gang that had become a Christian. And there was
nothing softer week about this guy. So I'm like, Okay,
(32:04):
I'll go with him. And I'm sitting in the very
back row, in the very far aside 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 and I say, what's an invitation? And he
goes He can say, oh, that's where you go make
a decision for Christ, or you invite Jesus in your
hearty and say any of that stuff. He said, if
(32:24):
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 a man's man. He's a prison chaplain
and he doesn't do hugs, he doesn't do any of
those kind of things. And he grabbed my hand to pray,
(32:46):
and I could feel a callous is 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, because it's hardened and it's angry, and
it's angry towards Christians. So I want him to soften
(33:08):
my heart so that the truth can come in. And
Chaplain 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 to describe it, but it was
very real. And I would later find out that Chaplain
Davis and Charles had been praying for me for about
(33:31):
a year and a half that I would get saved,
And from that moment forward, I began to read my Bible.
I read my Bible every single day. I would get
up and read my Bible, read my Bible. I was
at every single church service that they offered, any faith
based program they had in 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
(33:52):
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.
I got on the phone with my mom and she
was running a Facebook page for me. She says, you
got a friend request from a girl. 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 Ewan. Why.
(34:18):
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,
did you tell her I was in prison?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
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 godlining
this up for something bigger. But I was scared to
death because she's rejected me so many times in the past.
(34:48):
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 this is 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,
knowing that the answer was going to be inside of
that envelope. And I opened the envelope and pulled out
(35:13):
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 that you know that
we're meant to be together. And I remember reading that
sitting 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
(35:36):
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 and the size and
scope of my sentence. So it was. It was a very,
very tough two years. But I graduated and Christina was
there for the graduation and the first visit I was
(35:56):
allowed to go on. Actually before I graduated, Christina and
I got married. We 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 step
son Brennan, who's an absolute stud, brilliant, smart kid, does
very well in sports. And my girls are three years
(36:16):
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, four beautiful children about to be five. But
(36:40):
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 animosity towards she
now lives on my property and she's me MO to
the kids, and she got saved about two years ago
and she's a completely different person. So again, like I
could not have sat in jail all five, six, seven
(37:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
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, 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
(37:31):
of things that can get people out of a jam,
and sometimes it's God and sometimes it's.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
A secular counselor.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
But we don't shy away from the religious aspects of
people's lives. Here 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 is, country's
(37:58):
filled with stories like this.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
We're tired of the negative stories.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
We want to hear stories of real hope, not the
silly kind. Brian Dawson's story a beautiful family, a beautiful
story of love and redemption. Here on all American stories
here
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
are right near us. Folks in our neighborhood and our families,
in our churches, in our businesses, and here in 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 the 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.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
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. I was in Mister Dunnscience class and
I remember leaning over to my friend Ryan saying, 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
(01:25):
the courage. I asked one of her friends to ask
her if she would go to the eighth grade graduation
dance with me, 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,
and she put me in the friend zone. And that
would be a pattern that we don't want for the
kind of the long haul, you know, looking back at
(01:46):
my childhood, and 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 do remember is it got to be about my
first grade year my mother joined the army. She kind
of bounced around from job to job and couldn't find
(02:08):
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
a giant custody battle. My dad was a very responsible
hard working, structured individual, and the obvious best place for
(02:31):
me would have been with my father, But the court's
tendency is to always place the child with the mother
unless there's just an absolute, you know, crazy circumstance that
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
(02:52):
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 you'd want to tell a kid 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. Didn't want to leave my brother
in that environment without me to be there with him.
(03:14):
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 there ruling. After all
the time and money and everything that was spent in
that custody battle, and I remember leaving the courthouse that
day at seven years old, six years old, whatever it was,
(03:35):
and my dad looking down at me as we waited
for the light to turn across the road. He 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 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
(03:57):
to Germany, we lived in what's called the ac 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, would drink every night,
and they would fight every night, and sometimes it would
become abusive, and sometimes the screaming and all those things
(04:18):
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 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,
(04:39):
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 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.
(05:01):
And that 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 look back on it. I
remember coming home from school one day. It was one
of my last days of fourth grade, and I came
home and my mom had been, you know, free from
drinking for a year, free from partying. Our life was
(05:22):
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 that
peace and calm was over. I was old enough to
equate beer with pain, and you know, my mom drinking
(05:43):
beer and alcohol with pain and suffering from my brother
and I and 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 hated her.
And then I wanted nothing to do with her. And
then I wanted to and move back to the States,
and I wanted to move in with my dad. Then
(06:04):
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
pick us up, and she actually gave us a ride
to school on 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,
(06:27):
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,
I had this core belief that all Christians were these
gossipy judgmental people, and so I hated them.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
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
(07:27):
great American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
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Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(07:49):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we're back here at
(08:14):
our 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.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
My mom moved back from Germany and she went to
Colorida Springs. So I went and spent a summer with
my mom in Colorado. Well, my brother was 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
(08:52):
like that, but never personally. And you know, I remember,
you know, drinking a beer and then you know, trying liquor.
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 the more I drank, the more
I fit in, and the more I drank, the more
(09:12):
comfortable I was in my own skin. You know, they
call it liquid courage, but it was so much more
than the liquid courage. For me. It was liquid I
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, hot daan that whole summer
and the following summer, I went back to Colorado and
(09:35):
I started to smoke pot. And as I smoked pot,
it was the same thing, you know, I 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
(09:56):
of it was fitting in and all of those things.
And I would go and I was able to to,
you know, buy liquor for these parties, which made me
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 his sixteen year
old And meanwhile I was, you know, working a job
at Dylan's, which is a Kroger store, and playing football,
(10:18):
playing baseball, and somewhat maintaining my grades. I went from
a straight A student to probably about a C student,
and I 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 on
all these tests, the standardized tests, and I didn't care
(10:40):
about school anymore. All I cared about was the social aspect,
the partying, the girls, and being wasted. Basically, the summer
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
(11:00):
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,
whatever around and the craziest things would happen. Man. So
I spent the whole summer riding around with them, you know,
just seeing him be 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
(11:21):
I'm like, that's what I want to do. So I
went back to Kansas that summer. And here's the thing.
Up to that point, I was excelling in football, and
I did really well in baseball too, But 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
(11:44):
were expected to do really really well that year, and
I was so torn between really wanting to pour myself
into football or pour myself into this party life. And
I had tried cocaine when I was out there, so
I was really starting to do more serious drugs as
I'm going into my senior year. And started my senior
year and I got about two weeks into it and
I snuck out of the house and I went and
(12:06):
tried ecstasy with some of my friends, and a couple
of the guys were actually football players on the team,
and 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 hits peak. So I decided to quit
(12:26):
football and move back to Colorado with my mom. And
what that basically meant is I was on my own,
and I just started partying full blown. And I started
working for Casey and started selling weed and 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
(12:48):
ability to rise 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 cocon 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
Xanax to go to sleep, and then I would wake
(13:09):
up the next day, and really the next evening at
like four or five in the evening, I'd wake up,
I'd blow my nose and snot and cocaine and blood
would come out. 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
(13:30):
friend tried to introduce me to crack, and I'm like,
this isn't for me. So then he he had me
try crystal meth, and that was it. And once I
did crystal meth, it was There was no having to
take Xanax to go to sleep, there was no drinking
whiskey to mellow out. It was just it was wide open.
(13:50):
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 cocaine and had bonded out
and got probation and all those things, and didn't slow
me down. I continue to use drugs, continued to party,
didn't go to my probation appointments, didn't do any of
those things. And I got to a point where I
(14:12):
was very well known in Caliver Springs for my ability
to sell drugs and do a number of other things.
And I remember getting a phone 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 apartment and
(14:34):
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 individuals that were Hispanic guys,
Mexican guys, and they had handkerchiefs on over their faces
(14:54):
but they were in suits. It was weird, and I'm like, well,
I'm either going to get killed or this is going
to go really well. And you know, they sat down
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 to do what they 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
(15:17):
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, bent
four and a half months in jail, County jail on that,
got probation again, 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
(15:39):
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 some drugs. I was
supposedly the ring leader of that whole thing. I don't
know how true that was, but that's the way it
was in the cops size and they busted a house
that had some of those motorcycles in them, and they
(16:03):
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 ringing all
these rings. So he and a bunch of other people
had told the cops that I was responsible for, you know,
all this crime that was going on. And 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
(16:25):
said that you know who had told on me? I
was out driving around up to no good. I'd been
up for four days. We drove by the guy's house
who 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,
(16:47):
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 I told on me,
and he said, you know, told me, Well, I didn't
tell any Brian O'd never telling 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
(17:08):
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 grabbed a
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
(17:30):
a guy who was states evidence, so he was an
informant that I did all these things too, so that
aggravated it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And my goodness, what a story. And when we come back,
you won't believe where it turns and where it goes
Brian Dawson's story, one of our staffers here and our
American Stories.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
More after these messed.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And we returned to Brian Dawson's story here on our
American Stories, And let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
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.
And shortly after that, I became one of Colorado Springs
most wanted criminals, most wanted fugitives. And it was intense.
(18:40):
I mean they were raiding houses, they were setting up
perimeters all throughout Colorda 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. If you ever followed Dog
the Bounty Hunter, Dog the Bounty Hunter did most of
his shows in Colorado Springs, some and why, but most
of them were in color To Springs, and Dog the
(19:00):
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, too threatening or menacing or whatever
for him to go after me. So it became very real,
and there was a couple of near misses where they
almost had me and I was able to escape from him,
(19:21):
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 Colorida Springs, and they finally
closed in on me. And I remember sitting in the
apartment that day. I was watching the Chappelle Show. It
was my last day out, July nineteenth, two thousand and seven.
I'm watching the Chappelle show. Cook and brought Worst in
(19:42):
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 window was so I'd taken a
nylon rope, a repelling rope, and I tied it to
(20:02):
the bottom of the recliner, and I hear the door pounding.
Carter Springs police open 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 recliner sticks and wedges
right in the window, just like I wanted it to.
And as I'm hanging there around both sides of this
apartment building, these police come flooding and there's forty or
(20:23):
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 pulled up a little bit on the rope,
unwrapped the rope in my hand and dropped and I
(20:45):
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.
I'm just like out, these dogs don't bite me. But
that was it, and an officer stuck his knee in
my back and cuffed me. They put me in the
(21:07):
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 peace
for whatever reason, and I ended up getting into County jail,
(21:28):
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
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 guy, this prison guy. So
I get into a bunch of fights. You know, I'm
going up to these older kind of gangster guys and
(21:50):
they're saying, why I need you to go beat this gup?
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 concrete cell.
It's about eight foot by twelve foot and there's a
bunk in there. There's a metal bunk with a fire
retardant mattress and a fire retardant pillow and a sink
(22:11):
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 timeframe that
I was in administrative segregation, I had a revelation. It
(22:33):
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. Because people come to me because
I've been through them before. They asked me, you know,
(22:53):
what would you tell them? And this was the one
thing that happened that I'm sitting in the administrative segregation
in this in this cell myself, been there for a
couple months, and all of a sudden, I realized, this
is my fault. This is all my fault. And I
know that seems sillier, it sounds, you know, stupid or whatever,
but really no, this is all my fault. Because up
(23:15):
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 corrupt system. You know, all these district attorneys, I mean,
you name it. I blamed everybody. But then all of
a sudden, I realized this is my fault. And it
was so liberating and it was so freeing because I
(23:36):
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 these circumstances through my choices. And
from that moment forward, I made a decision that I
(23:57):
was going to do things differently, and I did. And
it wasn't 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. And
from that moment I got on the phone, I called
my grandma with tears in my eyes and told her
that I was going away forever. And she said, you know,
(24:20):
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 burn 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
show up to the court date to be a witness
in my trial. If I went to trial that day
(24:41):
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 sells, 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
and started at eight years, and a mediator went back
(25:02):
and forth between the district attorney and my lawyer and
I back and forth, back and forth. 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 end up with swastkas all over my
face and turn into that guy. I want to change
my life. I want a chance at changing my life.
(25:23):
I said, tell her, I'll give her a year. 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, and you roll up
(25:43):
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
(26:05):
there and I was there for a little while, and
they sent me to my first facility in Wafenold County
Correctional Center. It was Wallsonburg, 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,
(26:26):
from our case managers to 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 Wallsenburg, and
then I started taking college classes. And then I became
a guy that helped other guys get their GED And
that's what I did for working there, as I was
a tutor and I helped people get their GEDs.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And when we come 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.
(27:37):
And we returned to 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.
(27:57):
And so he's reoriented himself and his life right there.
And what may be the very worst place in America
to be is a young man. Let's return to Brian's story.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I was there for about nine months, but the very
first person I met when I walked into Wolsenburg. Was
a guy with the name of Charles Frederick and he
comes up to me. He's this big guy, big burly guy,
and he says, hey, my name is Charles, and 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
(28:30):
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.
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
(28:52):
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
that would go on for about nine months. He got
shipped to another prison. I left that prison. They shut
that prison down and my security level dropped and I
(29:13):
bounced around a little bit for a couple of years,
and then I ended up in Sterling Correctional Facility in 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
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
(29:35):
he goes, well, i'm the chaplain's assistant. I can get
you in some programs. I'm like, okay, yea 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,
you know, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, whatever, Just come as you are.
And I went there and it was it was okay,
(29:56):
but I experienced fellowship and I met other Christians that
were like Charles, who are true, genuine Cristians who lived
this out. 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 that went on for about thirteen weeks.
That class was over, and then Charles got me into
another program called the Truth Project, which is put out
(30:16):
by Focus on the Family and doctor del Tacket. 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 know that they believe these things.
And I almost got to a couple of fights with
(30:37):
those guys. And about three weeks into it, we were
walking back to the unit and Charles just asked me.
He says, Brian, why don't you just give him a chance.
And I'd been asked that question before and fought it
and fought it and fought it, and for whatever reason,
I said, okay, Charles. So I went back to my
cell that night and I prayed, Okay, God, I need
(31:00):
to believe these things to have a relationship with you,
give me some kind of a sign. And I went
to bed that night and 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, and it's really dark in the cells,
and we had we're allowed to have digital clocks in there,
and the digital clock with the red numbers in the
(31:21):
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 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,
(31:44):
maybe there's something to this, And it was a Sunday
morning at three sixteen. So I got up and I
went to 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, and my friend Ramone was a big black
former gang that had become a Christian. And there was
nothing softer week about this guy. So I'm like, Okay,
(32:04):
I'll go with him. And I'm sitting in the very
back row, in the very far aside 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 and I say, what's an invitation? And he
goes He can say, oh, that's where you go make
a decision for Christ, or you invite Jesus in your
hearty and say any of that stuff. He said, if
(32:24):
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 a man's man. He's a prison chaplain
and he doesn't do hugs, he doesn't do any of
those kind of things. And he grabbed my hand to pray,
(32:46):
and I could feel a callous is 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, because it's hardened and it's angry, and
it's angry towards Christians. So I want him to soften
(33:08):
my heart so that the truth can come in. And
Chaplain 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 to describe it, but it was
very real. And I would later find out that Chaplain
Davis and Charles had been praying for me for about
(33:31):
a year and a half that I would get saved,
And from that moment forward, I began to read my Bible.
I read my Bible every single day. I would get
up and read my Bible, read my Bible. I was
at every single church service that they offered, any faith
based program they had in 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
(33:52):
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.
I got on the phone with my mom and she
was running a Facebook page for me. She says, you
got a friend request from a girl. 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 Ewan. Why.
(34:18):
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,
did you tell her I was in prison?
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
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 godlining
this up for something bigger. But I was scared to
death because she's rejected me so many times in the past.
(34:48):
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 this is 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,
knowing that the answer was going to be inside of
that envelope. And I opened the envelope and pulled out
(35:13):
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 that you know that
we're meant to be together. And I remember reading that
sitting 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
(35:36):
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 and the size and
scope of my sentence. So it was. It was a very,
very tough two years. But I graduated and Christina was
there for the graduation and the first visit I was
(35:56):
allowed to go on. Actually before I graduated, Christina and
I got married. We 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 step
son Brennan, who's an absolute stud, brilliant, smart kid, does
very well in sports. And my girls are three years
(36:16):
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, four beautiful children about to be five. But
(36:40):
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 animosity towards she
now lives on my property and she's me MO to
the kids, and she got saved about two years ago
and she's a completely different person. So again, like I
could not have sat in jail all five, six, seven
(37:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
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, 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
(37:31):
of things that can get people out of a jam,
and sometimes it's God and sometimes it's.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
A secular counselor.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
But we don't shy away from the religious aspects of
people's lives. Here 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 is, country's
(37:58):
filled with stories like this.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
We're tired of the negative stories.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
We want to hear stories of real hope, not the
silly kind. Brian Dawson's story a beautiful family, a beautiful
story of love and redemption. Here on all American stories
here
Host
Lee Habeeb
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