- 6 months ago
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00:00Give me the money.
00:01I can remember going, give me the money.
00:04Give me the money.
00:05The gun.
00:05Give me the money.
00:06Broken half.
00:07Oh, no, no, no.
00:08So now it's pointing at my shoe.
00:10And right when it did, this guy comes running out of the back with a cleaver.
00:15I couldn't believe it.
00:19I have taken millions of dollars out of casinos around the world as a professional gambler.
00:25By the time I was 16, I had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cars.
00:32I don't care who you are.
00:35You see some idiot holding a hand grenade, you're going to pee.
00:39And now I'm in a literal tug of war between two factions of the Chechenan mob.
00:47The key to a robbery is letting people absolutely know that you will kill them without saying a word.
00:55My name is Danny Trejo.
01:08And before I became a movie star and machete, I was an armed robber.
01:16I robbed a few stores with a hand grenade.
01:19I'm from Los Angeles, California, born and raised.
01:29As a kid, I was surrounded by girl cousins.
01:35I had a mom and dad that were really too busy.
01:38The only one that ever had any time for me was my Uncle Gilbert.
01:42My Uncle Gilbert was the last of 11 kids.
01:44By the time Gilbert came along, my grandma and grandpa were kind of done with kids, you know what I mean?
01:53And Gilbert was six years older than me.
01:55So me and Gilbert kind of became outcasts together because we always got in trouble.
02:01My Uncle would steal my grandfather's car.
02:10And he'd take me and he would deal weed.
02:14I didn't know he was dealing weed.
02:15And he would pull it to somebody's house.
02:19They'd come out and say, give me three.
02:20And he'd roll up three joints and sell three joints.
02:23And then that's what we did.
02:24The first time I watched Gilbert do a robbery, it was him and a friend named Charlie.
02:32I didn't even know that they were going to do anything.
02:35You know what I mean?
02:36But stopped in front of a liquor store.
02:38They both got out of the car.
02:39They both came out.
02:42And it's funny because they left the car running, you know?
02:46And they were just laughing and counting money.
02:50It seemed so easy.
02:52And they did it so much.
02:54My Uncle Gilbert gave me heroin when I was 12.
03:01I remember him telling me, hold this, I'm holding this, and bang.
03:14And the next thing I remember was that I was outside and I was just sitting there and I
03:19couldn't keep my head up.
03:21It was a great feeling.
03:22And I remember trying to eat this ice cream.
03:26And I would nod and what would wake me up was the dogs.
03:32Hey, get over here.
03:33I don't know if I ever got any ice cream or not, but I'll never forget that day.
03:39And I think from the time I was 12 then to the time I was 25, I tried to recapture that day.
03:49As soon as I started using drugs, I started committing crimes.
03:58You need the money for drugs.
04:00And it's real hard to realize whether you're getting the money to do drugs or doing drugs to get the money.
04:08I committed my first armed robbery at 14, and I remember I stole a gun from my uncle.
04:16I got a revolver, but the gun I got was broken.
04:19You had to hold it like this or it would fall.
04:24And so me and a friend of mine robbed a market on Lancashire Boulevard.
04:29I can remember, I can remember going, give me the money.
04:32Give me the money.
04:33She was an old lady, and I kept saying, no, the box, the box.
04:37Because they kept all the big cash in a cigar box underneath the counter.
04:42When I kept pointing, no, down there, down there.
04:45And when I went there, the gun broke in half.
04:49No, no, no.
04:50So now it's pointing at my shoe, and right when it did, this guy comes running out of the back with a cleaver.
05:03So me and Mike took off running, and my gun is going, you know.
05:09Got away with $11, but it was kind of a fiasco.
05:14We ran away laughing.
05:15But then it just escalates.
05:21It's like robberies become a habit.
05:27You can be driving down the street with $400 in your pocket and go, hey, right there, that's a good score.
05:33And go rob something else.
05:36And I think that's one of the things that Gilbert happened to do, was he hooked me to that easy life, not just drugs.
05:44I spent my teenage years stealing as much as I could, and getting away with it.
05:49The key to a robbery is letting people absolutely know that you will kill them without saying a word.
05:57I threatened people just with intimidation.
06:08Sometimes I didn't even have a weapon.
06:10You know, there's people that couldn't look intimidating with a whole fistful of guns.
06:15And there's other people that can look intimidating just looking at somebody.
06:20I could intimidate.
06:21That was one of the keys to whatever success I had.
06:28I started committing crimes with a friend named Dennis.
06:32Dennis and I went on a 45-day crime spree, robbing anything we could.
06:37Robberies, whether it was strong-arm, whether it was robbing somebody, whether it was just part of the day.
06:47You know, you could do a robbery and get $8.
06:50Or a robbery and get, you know, $17,000.
06:53We used to spend thousands of dollars a day.
06:56I think one of the things that we specialized in was intimidation robberies.
07:06Give you an example.
07:07These guys robbed an armory.
07:09And I remember they had three or four hand grenades.
07:12And they were like real hand grenades.
07:14And I got one.
07:16Just holding it was scary.
07:18And, you know, you can pull the pin on a hand grenade.
07:21And as long as you hold that hammer down, it's not going to go off.
07:27I don't care who you are and how tough you are.
07:31You see some idiot holding a hand grenade and having the pin right here and say, how about I put this in your pocket?
07:38You know, I don't care.
07:39You're going to pee.
07:40The minute they saw that, it was like, they're already opening the register.
07:47They were like, wow, you know, what power.
07:55That's kind of what robbery's all about.
07:57It's not just the money.
07:59It's the power.
08:00Sometimes Dennis and I sold drugs, and sometimes we sold fake drugs, which was just sugar.
08:17Dennis had set up a drug deal.
08:19Yeah, the minute I got a look at this guy, I knew something was up.
08:25The guy buying the drugs, his partner looks a little shady.
08:28I mean, too clean cut.
08:31You know, I knew he was a cop.
08:33I was glad we were selling him sugar.
08:36Dennis had the sugar, gave it to the Fed.
08:40And then the Fed turned around trying to give me the money, and I just looked at him straight.
08:45I looked at Dennis.
08:46Dennis grabbed the money.
08:49And then they left, and then I told Dennis that it's no good, Holmes.
08:54Guy's a cop.
08:55Nah, man, man.
08:56I knew they were in trouble because the Feds mark money.
09:00So did the police.
09:01So what I did, the minute they left, I went and switched out the money at a restaurant where I knew the waitress.
09:08As we pulled into Dennis's, the Feds came from all over.
09:16Boy, all hell broke loose.
09:18There was about 15 different police.
09:21And, uh, wow, were they mad.
09:24Where's my money?
09:25I gave my money.
09:27That's not my money.
09:29Guy was berserk.
09:31Because if they don't have the marked money, they ain't got nothing.
09:34And so this guy beat me all the way to the Federal Building downtown.
09:42I was on the floor of a 1965 Butte Riviera.
09:46Beautiful.
09:47That tan interior.
09:48I'll never forget.
09:49And I'm bleeding all over.
09:51I said, hey, I'm bleeding all over your car.
09:55Kind of looked like the end for me.
09:56I was sentenced to six to ten years for sale in lewd of narcotics.
10:09That means sale in pretendies dope.
10:14While serving my time, I was transferred to San Quentin.
10:19San Quentin is like the only right now place in the world.
10:25Well, everything happens right now.
10:28I can die right now.
10:30I can go to the hole right now.
10:33All this bad stuff can happen to me right now.
10:37People think that people walk around prison going, hey, I'm tougher than you.
10:41You don't.
10:43Prison is probably one of the politest places you're ever going to be in.
10:46Because if you're a killer, I'm a killer.
10:49He's a killer, too.
10:50It's like the last thing you want to do is be rude to somebody.
10:56San Quentin is the pincushion of the world.
10:58And here is where everybody gets stabbed.
11:01There's no such thing as a fair fight.
11:04You know, a fair fight is me coming up behind you,
11:07stabbing you three times and walking away.
11:09It's not that I did something wrong or that you did something wrong
11:13or that we pissed somebody off.
11:15It's like this guy didn't get a letter.
11:18Do you understand?
11:18This guy didn't get a letter from his wife
11:20and just felt like stabbing someone.
11:29In San Quentin, you might get stabbed.
11:32You can use a magazine to protect from being attacked.
11:36Let me show you a little quick.
11:38Armored.
11:38I don't think they make,
11:44do they make look magazine anymore?
11:47Anyway, there's a magazine, a look,
11:48and it was a big one.
11:50You put it right here.
11:52Cover your shirt.
11:54Put a belt so it'll stay.
11:56And it's like, boom!
11:58Somebody hits you.
11:59Might knock the wind out of you.
12:01But you're protected.
12:02I was surviving prison, but what happened on Cinco de Mayo
12:14literally changed everything.
12:20Cinco de Mayo, 1968.
12:23Powers that be in prison did probably the stupidest thing in the world.
12:27They invited an outside college baseball team to play a bunch of drunk Mexicans.
12:35They bring in some absolute Caucasian baseball team.
12:39They all look like Ricky Schroeder.
12:49The third baseman, I'll never forget, man.
12:52This big white boy just had gum chewing like double bubble.
12:57You're just big old white.
13:00You're not allowed gum in prison.
13:03And this guy is just like letting everybody know I'm chewing gum.
13:10And Ray, Ray had come down from Tascadero, which is the mental hospital for the criminal scene.
13:16I remember Ray said, damn, I wish I had some gum.
13:20Ray had gone up, asked that guy for some gum.
13:22He goes, no, I'm not supposed to give you any.
13:25And bam, bam, Ray smacking him.
13:29And in prison, when something goes down, it just all goes down.
13:34It's kind of like if you had a thousand rat traps.
13:45They all go.
13:52In a prison riot, anybody who's got a resentment just goes for it.
13:57And it was alleged that I hit Lieutenant Givens in the head with a rock.
14:08I remember seeing them bleeding.
14:10It was just like chaos.
14:11And then they blew that whistle.
14:14When the whistle starts blowing, that means they're going to shoot.
14:17The minute that boom, bam, me and Ray both turned up and we fell.
14:23And Ray, kind of like a little kid, are they going to hurt us?
14:26No, no, we're already hurt.
14:29Don't worry about us.
14:31They marched us to the hole.
14:36There's the solitary, which is you're in a cell by yourself.
14:41And then there's a hole, which is completely dark, quiet.
14:46And that, I think they outlawed that now.
14:48When we were in the hole, I was questioning my whole life.
14:53I was 24 years old.
14:56That's a baby.
14:57Because they said we attacked guards.
15:00Those are gas chamber offenses.
15:03I remember asking God to let me die with dignity.
15:08So I remember.
15:08Let me die with dignity.
15:11I will say your name every day.
15:14And I will do whatever I can for my fellow inmate.
15:17I said inmate, because I never thought I was getting out.
15:26I got out of the hole a month or so later, and I started going to AA.
15:32That changed my life.
15:33And it helped me never to touch drugs or alcohol again.
15:40And I started helping my fellow inmates.
15:43And when I went to parole board in July of 1969, and I started talking about AA and the good guy,
15:52I turned to him, and he said, we're kicking you out of here.
15:59And I was stunned.
16:01They were just tired of seeing me.
16:02After I got out of prison, and I became a drug counselor, my whole life changed.
16:13My whole life came from a taker to a giver and a helper.
16:18That's all I do.
16:20No more life of crime for me.
16:25I'm Richard Munchkin, and I have taken millions of dollars out of casinos around the world as a
16:31professional gambler.
16:32I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, and I was fascinated with games from the time I was very little.
16:44The winters back there are brutal, so we would stay inside and play games.
16:49In high school, my older brother invited some of his friends over to the house to play poker.
16:55We were literally playing for nickels and dimes. And at the end of the day, I was ahead, $5.20.
17:03And it was like the heavens opened and the angels began to sing. And I thought, oh my god,
17:10I can actually make money playing cards. Like, this is the greatest thing in the world.
17:17So I started playing as much as I could.
17:20Basically, I went through college playing poker. That was how I earned a living while I was in college.
17:26And then one day, I was playing backgammon with a friend in a bar in Chicago.
17:32And he told me that he had a system for beating blackjack. There's a way of counting the cards
17:40and being able to keep track of them, and you can actually have a mathematical advantage.
17:44And he recommended a book called Playing Blackjack as a Business. And I got it, and I read it,
17:49and I thought, okay, this makes sense. This is math.
17:52For my 21st birthday, I flew out to Las Vegas, and I started practicing to become a professional
18:02card count. Counting cards is a method for keeping track of low cards and high cards and the ratio of
18:09those two things. And blackjack shoe, you know, is like six decks of cards. And when you play,
18:16cards are removed from the shoe. And that does affect what's going to happen the next hand.
18:23And when there are more low cards in the deck, that favors the house. So you want to bet as little as
18:29possible. When there are more tens and aces in the deck, the count goes higher. That favors the player,
18:35and you want to bet as much as possible. So smaller cards favor the house, and higher cards favor the
18:41player. That's basically how card counting works. And the question that I get asked most often is,
18:50isn't that illegal? And the answer is absolutely not. It's not illegal anywhere in the United States or any
18:57country I've ever been to. In the nice places, they come up and they say, we don't want your action
19:02anymore. And in the not so nice places, they can be pretty nasty. In the old days, card counters would
19:09get roughed up. In Las Vegas, they have been around the longest and been exposed to card counting the
19:16longest. The further you get away from Las Vegas, the less the casinos understood, and really the more
19:25money you could make because they just thought you were getting lucky. People would call me and say,
19:32I found a great game in Korea, or I found a great game in Russia. Those phone calls are worth literally
19:39millions of dollars. One of my friends calls me once, and he says, I found a game that's really good.
19:48That means that I'm going to go strap $50,000 in cash to my body, leave the wife and young kids at home,
19:57and head to an airport. And in this case, I was heading for Moscow.
20:01I had never been to Russia before. I had no idea what I was getting into. I mean,
20:15it's Russia. They can just say, we think you're a card counter. We've decided that's illegal.
20:21We're just taking the money back. My trip was about to go from a dream to a nightmare.
20:38I had never been to Russia before and had no reason to go because prior to this, they had no casinos.
20:44And the casino people really didn't understand the games. And they were giving away the store.
20:50The rules were so good. Any blackjack player that heard would have immediately jumped on a plane and
20:56flown over there to try to play. I go into this little casino and it's off the lobby of a hotel.
21:04And there is a nightclub that's closed. I go look in the nightclub. It's dark. There's, you know,
21:10chairs and tables and a little stage. And then way in the back, I see a door with a porthole window
21:16with light behind it. I think it's the kitchen, but I go back there and I push through the door and
21:22here's this little casino. There's six or eight tables. There's only two customers in the whole place.
21:29But I sit down and I start to play.
21:32I bought in for 2000 and the maximum bet on this table was 500. And I start to win.
21:42And the count goes higher. And so I start betting the maximum the table allows.
21:50And I just get lucky.
21:54Sometimes it has nothing to do with my skill. You just get lucky.
22:00I won every hand. It was ridiculous.
22:06But I'm a little bit worried because when we go into a casino to play, we set a number. How much
22:15is this casino comfortable losing? If you win over that, bad things start to happen. So we want to go
22:23right up to the ceiling and stop. So in Russia, I have no idea. I'm shooting in the dark here.
22:31In 15 minutes, I'd won $26,000.
22:39Now, the pit boss is a young guy. He looks like he's wearing his father's suit. And every hand I win,
22:46he just starts to look sicker and sicker. And the color starts to drain from his face. And I keep
22:53thinking, this is not going to end well. So I finish the shoe and I think I better just cash out. And now
23:00the same guy is the cashier. And he says, look, I'm sorry, we don't have enough cash to pay you.
23:07I say, how much do you have? Basically, he gives me back my 2000. So I'm left with 22 $1,000 chips.
23:19And then he tells me, the owner will be here tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. He'll have your money.
23:24And now I'm starting to think, oh boy, this is going to be a problem. I'm going to get screwed out of
23:30$22,000. I immediately go to the Cosmos poker room and see Jeff. Now, Jeff is an Australian guy
23:41who discovered all these blackjack games in Russia early. And he has moved here and has been here for
23:48years. Jeff runs the poker room at the Cosmos hotel. So he knows every casino and everything that is going
23:57on in the gambling scene in Moscow. And I tell him what happened. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, they can't
24:03afford that much. He says, this is the way it works in Russia. The laws and the police and the courts,
24:10worthless. Every business has what's called a roof. And your roof is your local mafia boss. If you have a
24:21dispute, you go to your roof. And that casino's roof is Chechenyan mob. And he says, and you're in luck
24:28because my roof here at the poker room is also Chechenyan mob, but my roof is higher than their
24:36roof. And I say, okay. And he says, would you take $18,000 for the 22 chips? I was like, done. Let's do it
24:45right now. Jeff says, I have to leave. But this is Natasha. And here's this Russian woman. And she's
24:55mysterious, like a femme fatale, kind of scary, like if you had sex with her, you might not live
25:01through it. And he says, Natasha will take care of you. She will introduce you to our roof and meet at
25:07the other casino. So I'm just sitting there waiting and waiting. And about 10 o'clock at night, Natasha
25:17comes up to me and she says, we go to get your money. And we drive back to the other casino.
25:28So we get out of the taxi and we walk into the lobby and there's two huge guys with a little guy in
25:34the middle. And they're all wearing black turtlenecks and black suits. And I look over
25:40at the closed nightclub and they have a metal detector there and two big security guards.
25:48And those security guards are not happy. It seems pretty clear these two groups of mobsters do not
25:55like each other. Natasha starts talking to the little one. So it's clear to me that these are
26:02my Chechenian mobsters and the guys over at the metal detector are their Chechenian mobsters.
26:09She says, okay, we go. And now we all start heading for the metal detector.
26:16As we're going, the guards start talking to the guys behind me in Russian. And as we're going,
26:23the volume is getting louder and louder and louder. And to the point now they're yelling at each other.
26:29And as I'm going through the metal detector, one of the guards grabs me by the wrist
26:35and starts pulling me in. And one of the guys behind me grabs me by the other wrist and starts
26:40pulling me out. And now I'm in a literal tug of war between two factions of the Chechenian mob.
26:49And I'm thinking, what the hell am I doing? I just want to play cards. How did this happen to me?
26:55I didn't think I was going to get out of there alive.
27:02I pull loose and we all back out into the lobby. And Natasha says to me,
27:08those men do not want these men to go inside. I said, yeah, I kind of got the message. And she says,
27:15you and me, we go in and if they have the money, okay, if not, don't say a word, just come back out.
27:22Okay. We go into the casino and it's the same pit boss and he is white and sweating.
27:30And he says, this is very bad. You should not have brought those men here. They should not be here.
27:38And I said, do you have my money? And he says, I have some. I said, how much? He says, 1,000.
27:48The guy gives me the 1,000 and I give him one chip. He says, you come back in a week and I give you
27:57another 1,000 and another week, another 1,000. And I say, I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm going to be back
28:04in America. So I'm going to give the chips to them. The other mobsters out there in the lobby,
28:10they'll collect the money. And he says, oh no, only you can collect this money. I said,
28:14you'll have to take that up with them. So we go back out to the lobby and I still have 21,
28:21$1,000 chips. And I want to leave. I'm supposed to leave tomorrow. My only hope is that these guys
28:29are going to give me the $18,000. Natasha talks to the little guy in Russian and he keeps shaking his
28:36head. No problem. Give me the chips. I said, well, Jeff said like you would give me $18,000.
28:44For the chips. And I don't want to, it's like, oh, okay. You give them to Jeff.
28:51I called Jeff and Jeff says, leave the chips with Natasha and come down in the morning and pick up
28:57your money. I was like, Jeff, no, I'm not going to give up my chips to anybody without getting the
29:02money at the same time. I'm certainly not going to trust this Chechen mobster. And I'm not just going
29:09to leave the chips with Natasha. I'm not even going to leave them with Jeff. No, you get the chips when
29:15I get the money. And he says, all right, well just come down in the morning. I'll have the money for
29:20you there in the morning and then you can give the chips to Natasha. So I go up to my room and I try to
29:27sleep, but I, I can't. And plus it's, it's a really cheap hotel. And there are hookers that walk up and
29:34down the hallways knocking on people's doors. This is definitely not America. There is nothing here to
29:42protect me. Look, if I lost the $21,000 in the casino, that's fine. That happens all the time. It's
29:50nothing. But to lose it in this way, I'm just feeling awful. The next morning, I go to the poker room.
30:00Natasha is there. I say, do you have the money? And she nods her head. And I say, where is it? And she
30:09goes over to a cabinet. She comes back with $18,000. I don't even count it. I'm like, thank God.
30:20And I give her the chips and Jeff's roof will collect the full 21,000 after I'm gone. It was
30:28one of the happiest transactions of my life. I immediately jump in a cab and I drive directly
30:35to the airport and I got on the plane. I had somehow survived a literal tug of war between two
30:44factions of the Chechnyan mob. Counting cards is never worth risking your life.
30:51My name is Sari Lopez and I was America's most prolific child car thief.
30:56I was addicted to the rush of stealing cars.
31:01I was born in Portland, Oregon and I was adopted at three days old. I was raised in an amazing home.
31:07My parents were super caring, loving. They made me feel special at all times. I just always felt like
31:14the black sheep that I never really fit in. My parents had blonde hair and blue eyes and then there's
31:21me. Like I always felt really different. I had a completely different personality. I was always
31:28more outspoken. I always did whatever I wanted. And then I hit my adolescent years probably about 14
31:35years old and I met a group of kids that were definitely into criminal activity.
31:41I think the main connection with these people was that they were just as lost as I was.
31:46They didn't really have identity. They all came from broken homes.
31:49A lot of them didn't have parents. If they did, they were on drugs. They already had been in
31:54juvenile. So they were just kind of lost too. And so I quickly got into that crowd and that's where
31:59I felt mostly at home. So my friend Wontan was one of my closest friends growing up. One night,
32:06Wontan and I were drinking and he wanted to go steal a car. Basically, he just said, let's go,
32:11let's go. And I was like, okay, let's do it. So we're walking in a parking lot in the middle of the night.
32:18So of course we had to be quiet and it was super dark. I was the lookout. I had to make sure that
32:22no one saw us. So he's going car to car, trying to open the handles and boom, there's a car door
32:28that opens. My heart is pounding. I'm super nervous. I'm shaking. I'm thinking in my mind,
32:35let's go. Let's hurry up. Let's go before the cops show up, before someone hears us. So Wontan has his
32:40backpack and he pulls out this screwdriver and then this hammer and then he puts it into the
32:45ignition. He twists it and the car starts. And then the engine goes on and I'm thinking in my head,
32:52I can't believe you just did this. And of course, we're going to celebrate. We get some 40s and we party.
33:00So after I stole the car with Wontan, I decided that I could, was definitely capable of stealing cars
33:05whenever I wanted on my own. I was 14 years old when I stole my first car. Between the ages of 14
33:15and 16, I had stolen about 15 cars. So each car I stole was upwards of $30,000 to $50,000. By the time
33:24I was 16, I had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cars.
33:31Sometimes I would use a screwdriver trick and then sometimes I'd have to hotwire a car.
33:38You have to actually take a little plastic cover off the steering wheel and then there's going to
33:42be wires inside. Once you have the starter wire exposed, you're going to tap it to the two power
33:48wires that are connected and the ignition should start. In my mind, I didn't really think about
33:56the consequences of the things I was doing. It's almost like no remorse. Not so much no conscious,
34:02but I felt like just really no remorse to what I was doing. And the more things I did and the more
34:09crimes that I committed, the colder I became. And it was easier to do something bigger and more each
34:15time and not feel bad about it. I'm thinking in my head that I'm never going to get caught.
34:26When I was in the county jail, this white boy came in there and I found out he could hypnotize you.
34:33He hypnotized me and two other guys to be loaded on weed. And weed actually got loaded. I mean, we were
34:40like laughing and joking and yeah, the munchies and he was really good at hypnotizing. But then they
34:48pulled him out. Yeah. He turned out to be Charles Manson. It was before all the stuff at Chaney Ranch and
34:56all that stuff. When I seen him on the wall, are you kidding? We saved that kid the county jail. I
35:04couldn't believe it. One night, Wonton and I were partying and we decided to steal a car so we could
35:09go to his dad's house in Tacoma. So we find the car in a parking lot and he does his thing. I hop in
35:17and we take off. So we pick up our friend Jeremy and he's like this 15 year old kid and we head to
35:23Tacoma. And we were up there for a couple nights and we were partying and we decided to come back to
35:28where I live because I needed to pick something up for my mom. I just had this intuition that morning
35:34when I woke up that something was off, something was different and something was about to go down.
35:38So that day I decided not to drive the car and I asked Jeremy to drive. So I head to the post
35:44office and we pull in and as we pull in, there's a police officer sitting there. So I'm in a stolen car
35:51and I have a 15 year old driver driving us that doesn't really even know how to drive.
35:56I'm super freaked out. I'm having an anxiety attack. Wonton has a gun in the car so of course
36:02we're like, no, you cannot stop. We gotta go. But we didn't know that this police officer
36:08has been looking for us. So he had been watching my house because he knows we have a stolen car.
36:17And we see him pull out after us and we're like, go Jeremy, go, hurry up.
36:21I mean, at this point, Jeremy's freaking out. He's like, oh, what am I going to do?
36:26What do I do? What do I do? You know, he doesn't really know how to drive that well.
36:29So we tell him to go straight and then he takes a right.
36:35Straight ahead is a bridge and Jeremy's doing about 65, 70. One wrong move. We're all going to die.
36:41So he splits the bridge and we keep going and we keep going straight and we head down this street
36:49called Ocean Beach Highway. And it has like, it's a four lane road, but there's like a median in the
36:54middle where people turn and we're, we're driving straight down this median. At this point, there's
36:59like eight or nine police officers behind us chasing us. So Jeremy doesn't know what he's doing. He's like,
37:05okay, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Do I go straight? And he's like,
37:07okay. And all of a sudden, Wonton says, no, go left, bust the left. So he takes the left doing like 90.
37:13The car starts screeching. We started drifting. And I just know in my mind that he's not going to make
37:18it because it's going too fast.
37:23I feel this smash. I hear this huge loud noise. The car had crashed into a telephone pole.
37:30There's literally a telephone pole in the middle of the car, right where the console is between the
37:34seats. There's a pole sitting there. So at this moment, the police surround the car with guns and
37:39they're ordering me to get out of the car. Well, I told them I can't. The door is, you know, because
37:43there's literally the pole in between the car. I couldn't get out of the car. I'm stuck in this car
37:49for 30 minutes with my hands up and they have their guns drawn and they're telling me, you know,
37:53you're under arrest and not to move. I felt so, so guilty, so helpless.
38:00The fire engine comes up and cuts me out of the car. After I get out of the car,
38:06they just arrest me. They didn't check anything to see if I was okay.
38:17I was sentenced to nine months in county jail for evading the police and grand theft auto.
38:24Honestly, I was scared. I was scared walking into jail for the first time.
38:28I had a lot of time to think about my life.
38:32So right when I got out, I quickly meet a guy that I started a relationship with.
38:36We fell in love and I find out that I'm pregnant.
38:43In that moment, I completely changed the way I thought about this criminal lifestyle.
38:48I needed to be responsible and definitely not be in the streets. I knew that I definitely had to grow up.
38:57The greatest right of my life has been being a mom.
39:05Sorry.
39:06I had been a drug counselor for quite a while before I started acting. I was helping this kid stay
39:16clean. He thought he was going to use. I went down to help him and I walked onto the movie set of a
39:23movie called Runaway Train with John Voight and Eric Roberts. And the director came up to me and said,
39:31let you be in movie. That changed my life. I became a movie star.
39:37My life is a dream. It's ridiculous. If I wouldn't have gone down to help that kid,
39:47everything good that's happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else.
39:53You know, so I'm still a drug counselor. That's where I really needed to be. Not just to help
40:01people, but to help me. I mean, and every once in a while I ask God, how am I doing? He goes,
40:08you're almost out of hell daddy. Keep it up.
40:21I talked to my Russian contact Jeff some months later, and he did tell me that they were able to
40:27cash in all 21,000 of those chips, but it took them six months to get the money. I never found out
40:36exactly how they collected all that money. And really, I don't want to know. And I knew I could
40:44not tell my wife that story. I'm currently officially retired. Although, as my friends say,
40:50that is until I get the right phone call. Retiring is easy. I've done it six or seven times over the
40:56course of my career. It's crazy to look back and really, really think about all the moments
41:06that I had, the crazy moments that I put my parents through, and all the high-speed chases I was in,
41:12and to say that, thank God, I'm still here. I mean, I don't regret anything that I've done in my past.
41:17I don't ever think that I wish it didn't happen because it all played out for a reason.
41:22And it made me who I am today.
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