I have a story that's pretty
intriguing and quite true since it's based on me. Of course, well, I am such
an interesting guy and all. Not really, I have my moments, but the story is
probably a little more interesting than me.
In a nutshell, I have spent a good portion of my life in and out of jails,
prisons, juvi and the like because I'm a recovering addict. After a number
of years of acting an idiot I got out of federal prison for bank robbery and
got my shit together, started a recruiting firm and became quite successful.
A number of years into it I relapsed (hurt my ribs playing racquetball and
started taking vicodin for the pain) went back to prison. After arriving in
prison in California and noticing that there were plenty of cell phones
available for purchase through the black market I bought one and started
running my recruitment business from my bunk in prison. In 2008 I made about
280k using a blackberry working as a recruiter from my bunk (my clients
obviously didn't know). 2009 was a bit rough as I went to the hole etc...and
was only able to work about half the year. I got out in late 2009 as well
and continue running my business.
There is much more to the story, like I had a blog on the San Francisco Bay
Guardian
www.sfbg.com under the name Just A Guy called Prison Report that I
wrote and submitted as well. Feel free to call the editor of sfbg, or email
him to verify: Tim Redmond Or, just Google it.
If you'd like to learn more I have quite a bit written, but haven't
completed it for a number of reasons, namely it's about me and my life continues. I am going to remain anonymous for now
for obvious reasons. PM me.
Here's google search for you:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q="just+a+guy"+"prison+report"&sour
ceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS362US362&ie=UTF-8
Crime Doesn't Pay?
"Good morning Mr. Smith, this is Jacob with High-Tech Executive Search, I'm
calling because we've recently been engaged to find a Director of Marketing
for Computer Services Corp. and I wanted to contact you because of your
excellent reputation as a marketing manager to see if you be interested in
learning more about the position," would be one of my opening lines on my
blackberry from my bunk in my ten man dorm in prison.
Invariably the loudspeaker just outside the dorm would boom with a
correctional officer's voice, "all inmates down" or "Johnson, A-1-Lower,
come to the officer's station", or mail call would begin, during which time
the speaker shouted names for five minutes, of course there was always "Go
to chow." If I was fast enough I would be able to hit the mute button in
time, usually, I just had to hope the voice coming through the speaker could
not be understood by whomever I was speaking with. Often, I would be asked
by a client or candidate, "Where are you, the airport?" and I would casually
agree or say, "No, at the dealership getting my car repaired" and move on.
This is just one of the challenges I encountered as I worked 8-10 hours a
day Mon-Friday as an executive recruiter from my "office" in my dorm in
prison for about 18 months. My "office" was my bunk, which was a double
bunk approx. 7.5' long (including the locker) by approx. 3' wide.
Actually, I began this work adventure in prison on a triple bunk with the
same dimensions, but two bunk mates rather than just one.
From this executive suite I generated, in my first full year, over 270k in
revenue for my employer. All told, for the period of 18 months that I
worked, I generated over 400k. In other words, my client companies paid out
over FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS in placement fees for candidates I
sourced/found and were hired by my client companies. My average fee per
hire was about 18k, and I did this from my bunk in prison using a cell
phone, blackberry, or windows mobile device. This is my story.
***
Before I go into the dynamics about how I would up running a successful
executive search business in prison I will give you a very brief background
of how I ended up in prison. More details about my past and my life and my
story about being in prison will come in the future.
I did nearly seven years in Federal Prison for a number of unarmed bank
robberies I committed when I was younger. When I was released I was thirty
years old and well read, could type, and knew how to use the Microsoft
office suite. I also was clean and sober and had a support network pulling
for me, namely, my girlfriend of, at the time, 9 years.
Before I was released from the Feds I had contacted some temp agencies and
already had an established relationship with an agency in San Francisco.
The day after I made it to the halfway house after being released from
prison I went to this agency and was given a job doing data entry for,
believe it or not, Bank of America.
Ultimately I wound up moving to a different city and running my executive
search firm with my partner. This firm was very successful and I made a
very significant amount of money prior to my being incarcerated for what I
am now in prison for (at this writing original writing I was in prison, I am
out now).
See, I am an alcoholic and an addict. Well, I had certainly stayed sober
since my release and success followed sobriety. But, my financial success
resulted in my drifting from the bedrock of my sobriety and I found myself
chasing happiness in the form of the accoutrements and life one acquires
when making 250-350k a year, but I was sober.
One day while playing racquetball at the club where I was a member I hurt my
ribs. I started taking vicodin for the pain, which lead to my abusing
vicodin and after six years sobriety and "success" I wound up relapsing on
cocaine. Around eleven months after I started taking the vicodin I was
arrested (three times in succession in 10 days) for possession of a
controlled substance. Eight months after being arrested and sitting in
county jail I was sentenced to 4 years in state prison, of which I served
three years two months (80%) because of my criminal past. The normal
sentence, without the criminal history, would have been two years, of which
one serves a bit more than half.
I got arrested in late September, I was sent to prison in June of the next
year, the prison from where I wrote the majority of this piece, and the
prison where I transitioned back into the workforce as an executive
recruiter and supported the family I had hurt so badly with my relapse and
return to prison. Here's how that came about.
***
I don't really remember how I noticed it (he was very cloak and dagger), but
my neighbor in the dorm I lived in had a cell phone. Neighbor, well, I use
the term loosely as I lived in the middle of a triple bunk and my "neighbor"
lived on the bottom bunk of the bunk next to me; the distance between the
bunks is about three of four feet, but neighbor is the term used in prison.
He was a black fellow named Carl and was kind of a dick, he'd been in prison
for 26 years at that time and had yet to get a parole date as he was in for
murder, his attitude reflected this.
I arrived at the institution in June and the only way I had to communicate
was via mail and the collect call phones provided. We were spending a
minimum of four hundred dollars a month on collect calls; a 15 minute call
out of state cost about 20 dollars and I would call 3-5 times a week. Carl
noticed I made a lot of calls so approached me with a proposition: If I were
to pay the monthly phone bill for his MetroPCS cell phone I would be allowed
to use his phone for an hour a day, every day, until the next bill. The bill
was around $60 a month, so this seemed like a pretty darn good deal to me
and my family. I gladly accepted the offer.
This lasted for a couple months until I was put up for out of state transfer
by the State of California who were transferring inmates to various states
like Tenn, Ok, Ari, and Miss in an effort to ease the over-crowded
conditions. When I was put up for this transfer I set out to purchase a cell
phone for myself that I could take with as no one knew what the availability
of contraband cell phones would be like out of state and we certainly did
not want to pay the exorbitant prices we had been paying prior to my deal
with a "C" plus we'd grown accustomed to being able to talk without
interruption every 15 minutes and I could talk to my four year old daughter
without being interrupted every few minutes by a recording saying I was in
prison. To this day my daughter, now six, believes I was in California
working and earning money. Little did we realize how this protective lie
would become truth over the next 18 months.
***
I think it's important to give you an idea of what prison is really like,
not what you see on TV or hear from CDCR, politicians, or what is
erroneously reported by the media. The reason it's important is it will
give the reader a better understanding of prison life and will help you to
recognize the difficulties I faced trying to work full-time from my bunk and
not get caught by the "cops" as well as the difficulties I encountered with
inmates, prison politics, and general prison life.
First of all, the food sucks. While the menu may sound ok, but the Chicken
Chow Mein, Peas, Bread, Salad, Cake, and refreshment are pretty bad (though
the menu sure sounds good). Chicken chow mein is nothing like the real
thing, more like a paste with chicken chunks and some vegetables, peas are
canned or frozen and are low quality, salad is brown edged iceberg lettuce,
bread is cheap wheat bread made by the Prison Industry Authority (PIA), and
refreshment is a saccharin based product with an indefinable flavor. I
tried to avoid going to "chow", often dinner would occur between 5-6pm,
which is prime time to contact executives after the 9 to 5'ers have left, or
when the executives were able to actually review the candidates I had
submitted, but I didn't want to go eat the horrible food anyway.
I realize, as I'm writing this, from 4:30-6:30pm is probably when I closed
many deals.lucrative time frame. Thanks CDCR for influencing me not to go to
dinner, your poor food probably helped me to earn 100k.
I sort of fell into working again while in prison. I got out of going out of
state by getting put on CCCMS, which is the state's program for inmates with
mental health issues. Talking my way into the program was pretty easy, I put
on a good act for the clinician, got on medication (which I didn't take) got
off the medication, but remained in the counseling component, though I only
saw a counselor twice-other than my initial visit-over the course of a year.
One of the reasons I was so adamant about not going out of state was that I
had begun to help out with a friend's search business. After all, this was
before I bought my own phone, I had an hour a day of phone time, often more
if I was tasked with holding the ohone, and one could only play so much
handball or watch so much TV, and in executive search all you really need is
a phone to be useful, a phone and internet to be even more useful, and a
phone with internet and email (blackberry) to be nearly 100% effective. I
have a pretty good mouthpiece, so why not use that gift to source names and
contact information of potential candidates for our open positions. In
fact, why not try and get as many names and locations as possible; we search
primarily for people in sales and marketing roles and companies rarely balk
at giving you the name of their territory sales rep if they believe you're a
client or potential client. So, I started calling all the companies in the
major hubs of my industry niche and compiling a database the good old
fashioned way-smiling and dialing.
Oddly, I realized as I spent a good portion of time using the phone to get
information, that recruiters (and me prior to going to prison) spend far too
much time relying on the internet to find people, that going back to basics
was generating more relevant and up to date contacts than the internet ever
could. I realized that the internet is a great too, but the best tool I have
to be successful in this business is by making contact with actual people
and talking to them. The best search query in Google can never amount to
honest discussion resulting in a name, a number, and why they're good.
A key part of prison life is the "point man" or "point". A point is a
person, or people, who have the job of being lookouts for the cops. Their
job is to let you know when the cops are coming in time, hopefully, for you
to stop what you're doing and hide whatever contraband you're doing it with,
have someone else leave with the contraband, or leave with it yourself. At
any rate, it's their job to make sure you don't' get caught. And, depending
on what you're doing, a "point man" may be looking out for other inmates as
well, since a good portion of the information that leads to the cops to
inmates is provided by other inmates. When a cop is coming the term used in
prison as a warning is "walking" or "man walking".
