Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010) (17 page)

After I hung up the phone, I immediately began preparing for the big day. I thought back to the first time I heard a preacher speak, at Bethel Temple, the church I attended with my mother when I was just a young boy. His name was Sidney Jones. When I heard him preach, I thought he was the greatest speaker I ever heard. When he ended his sermon that Sunday morning he said he was scheduled to be in Lyman,
Colorado, the following week. I turned to my mom and said, “I’ve got to go hear him again. Will you take me?” Mom agreed.

When I went to watch Pastor Jones for the second time, I was extremely disappointed when he gave the exact same sermon he’d spoken at Bethel Temple the week before. Not one word was changed, even though the congregation was decidedly different. When I asked my mom why he repeated himself two weeks in a row, her best explanation was that it was because the material was so moving and powerful. Even so, I didn’t like the way his repetitiveness made me feel. While I was deeply touched by his message the first week, it lost all of its impact the second time around. Somehow, it felt lazy not to change up the sermon. I figured if I could turn my life over to the Lord, the least this guy could do was tell me a different story week after week. I never forgot how his sermon made me feel and vowed I’d never make that mistake if I ever someday found myself speaking in front of a crowd.

Today when I give speeches, I don’t write them out in advance and I rarely prepare more than an outline. I know there are people out there who may attend my events three nights in a row, so I want to make sure they get their money’s worth every single time. That’s why I usually say what’s in my heart—I know the Lord will always fill my mouth with the right words to say. I’ll alter my speech based on the reactions I’m getting from the crowd. You have to know who you’re talking to if you want to have the biggest impact. I pay close attention to the looks on the faces staring back at me from the audience. If they’re laughing at the right moments, I know they get my humor. If they’re crying, I know I’ve touched their souls. When I see a mother swing her arm around her son’s shoulders because she knows he’s in trouble and loves him anyway, I’ve done what I set out to do—and that is to help people find the courage to take a second chance. Sometimes, not always, but occasionally I believe the Lord directs me at an event in ways I could never have seen prior to it, and my upcoming speech at Huntsville would be the biggest surprise on how impactful His influence can be.

The day we got to the Family Faith Church, I was stunned when I was told that twenty-five hundred people were waiting to hear the
preacher and me. They were lined up as far as I could see. Someone from the church explained that the people waiting were not part of the actual congregation. They were what he referred to as “overflows.” I had had no idea how huge this event would be. The crush of people called out my name:

“Dog, Dog, Dog.”

Now, over the years I’ve gotten used to large crowds, but this time I was really nervous. I had studied the story of Jonah and the Whale for two weeks so I’d have the basis for my sermon. I was ready to get up on the pulpit and lead the congregation with my own unique take on the classic tale of how Jonah was swallowed up by the whale. I was all set—at least I thought I was until moments before I was called up to the podium.

That’s when I heard a voice say, “You’re not preaching Jonah today.” I had to laugh because for once, I had actually planned out and memorized what I was going to say word for word. I figured it had to be the devil whispering in my ear because God would want me to tell His story even if it was in my own special way.

“You know it’s me, Duane,” the voice said. “You can’t use Jonah today. There are some people here who need more than scripture from you. Use what you know, son.” I was frozen with fear because I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do.

It sounds absurd, but I couldn’t bring myself to veer off the path I had planned, for two reasons: first, Beth would freak out, since she and I worked on this speech together for weeks; and second, it was hugely important to me to get a positive reaction from the audience. I was worried they wouldn’t respond to my usual “from the hip” style, which was what I had become most comfortable doing.

My nerves got even worse as I peeked through the curtain from backstage and took a look at the huge crowd as they filled the church auditorium. I closed the curtain, turned around, and began pacing back and forth trying to figure out what I was supposed to do—stick with my planned sermon or obey the Lord’s request to speak from my heart.

Beth kept saying to me, “Do you have your notes? Are you prepared?
You can’t get up there and say whatever you want this time!” Her constant nagging wasn’t helping matters. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized she was right. So when I hit the stage, I asked the congregation to open their Bibles to Jonah, the sixteenth chapter.

I began to read out loud. “I was in the belly of the whale. The weeds came around my neck and choked me to death. My spirit cried unto the Lord….”

And then I stopped.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a single beat, and then said, “How many of you have been to a place where your spirit is so broken that you have broken down and cried?”

The whole church raised their hands. I turned my eyes upward, like I was looking toward God.
OK, big man. This must be what you wanted me to do,
I thought.

And then I said, “Well, welcome to the ‘I barely made it’ club!” The congregation broke out in thunderous applause. I began to tell the story of John the Baptist and how he was beheaded for the words he used. I did something I had never done before: I gave my testimony with various quotes from scripture along the way. This time I really let my words and emotions flow. I spoke of Jesus in a way I didn’t always allow myself to, mostly because up until this moment, I had been told to keep my speeches fairly nonreligious. In the past, I was told not to include Jesus as much as I wanted to. This time, things were different because I was in a church. I allowed my true love of the Lord to fill my mouth and, therefore, the room. It was the most incredible experience. As I spoke from my heart for twenty minutes, the response nearly knocked me off my feet. I felt such love and powerful energy coming from the audience. When the preacher asked anyone with a problem to come forward for an altar call, I literally had to take my seat because I was being crushed by the intense energy and power coming my way. The Lord was showing me how strong the people’s love was.

The whole time I was thinking,
Come get a piece of me. I’ll be here for
you if you need anything. I’ll take the time out, whether ten seconds or ten minutes, to hear what you have to say.
And then I thought I should be saying what I was thinking in my head out loud.

I announced to the crowd, “Come up here if you need something. Come forward.” And they all came. I have never experienced anything like that outpouring of emotion. For just a few minutes, Dog and Jesus were as thick as thieves. It was the ultimate power trip and I loved every minute.

I was proud to be God’s Dog that day, just as I have been proud to be Beth’s Dog, Mary Ellen’s Dog, and so many others over the years. In my mind, I have a direct connection to the Lord. If someone asks me to pray for them, I will. I don’t always get an answer, but God always hears my prayers.

A few months after that appearance, I received a call from the people at the Make-A-Wish Foundation asking me to meet a fifteen-year-old boy who was dying. I try to fulfill these requests whenever I can because they are so meaningful to the terminally ill child and to me. When we met, the boy looked really frail and weak, and it was pretty obvious he didn’t have long to live. Most of the time, parents of the sick children I meet will tell me that they haven’t told their kid how ill they are and they don’t know they’re dying. The parents will ask me not to talk about it with their children, especially if the kids don’t know they’re terminal.

When I met this young man, he immediately told me he was scared. When I asked what he was afraid of, the young boy said, “Dying.” I began to tell him the story of a dream I once had when I was about his age. I was walking along a path when a flower stopped me cold.

“Good morning, Dog,” the flower said.

“Hello, flower,” I answered. I wasn’t sure why the flower was talking to me.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“This is heaven. Everything that was once alive is here now.”

I looked around and began to see many familiar things. There was Max, the horny toad I had when I was a boy. Behind him was my old
dog, Cookie, and behind him was King, the dog my grandpa made me shoot because he got too old. There were three ducks and a bird, too.

“What did Max look like?” the boy asked.

“He still had the same fat yellow belly.”

“And the ducks? Why were they there?”

The truth is, I wasn’t sure why the ducks were there, so I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I drowned those bastards,” which made the boy laugh.

I pulled a feather from my coat pocket and showed it to him. I told him some Apache Indian friends had given me this feather for long life, freedom, joy, and a peaceful soul. When I handed it to him I said, “Anytime you need strength, you take this feather in your hand and hold it close to your chest.”

The boy reached out for the feather and wrapped his frail fingers around the stem. He looked up at me and asked, “What’s going to happen, Dog?”

Whenever I find I don’t have the right words to say, I always fall back on scripture because God always has the right thing to say.

“The Bible says, ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for Thou art with me.’” I paused for a moment to make sure the boy was looking into my eyes. “When you die, son, there will be a light,” I told him. “Get ready because you’re going to walk through this valley called the shadow of death. It’ll be spooky, but fear not, little brother, because He’s there. He’s like your bow and arrow, your tomahawk. As you walk through the valley, you may see demons flying over your head or to the side of you, but don’t be scared. Just keep on walking through the tunnel of light. The Lord will be with you. When you get to the end, He will be there waiting.”

“Do you think I’ll see my pet parrot that died last year?” the boy asked.

“He’ll be right there, waiting with God.”

“This has been a good talk, Dog. Thank you.”

I fought back my tears when we said our good-byes, because I knew my little friend wasn’t going to make it. A few weeks later, I received a
call from his mother saying he had passed away. She told me he started to cough a bit when he asked his father for my feather. His mother went on to tell me he laid it on his chest and smiled the biggest smile she had seen since he got sick. His parents heard him take his last breath, and then he was gone.

“Dog, do you mind if I ask you what you and my son talked about the day you met?”

I told her everything.

“You know, I believe he saw his bird there, Dog,” she told me. In my mind, I had no doubt that he had.

I was sorry for her loss but felt lucky to have met this young man before he died. I’m the guy that has always said “All aboard!” because I know life is truly a journey and a path we all walk along. In the criminal world, I’m sometimes the last guy a fugitive sees a free man. As a lover of God, sometimes I am the last man a young boy sees before he closes his eyes for good. Whatever hat I’m wearing, I wear it proud.

Lucy Pemoni

P
eople rarely like to admit they’ve made a mistake, especially people in positions of power who can change people’s lives with the snap of a finger. In 1997, I reluctantly surrendered my bond license in Hawaii for two years after reaching a settlement with Amwest, my former insurance company. They quickly revoked my appointment and essentially put me out of the bond business and on the street overnight.

This was the result of a terrible and frustrating series of events that began when Richard Heath, an insurance agent from Amwest, came to audit my books because his company suspected there were some unlawful dealings happening in my Honolulu office. After a couple of days of poring over my books, Heath was convinced that I wasn’t the one responsible for any unreported bonds to the insurance company. It was clear they were being written by two former employees who were using my powers and then pocketing excess fees. Once Heath was certain it wasn’t me, he sat me down as if he was the Godfather and made me an offer I had no choice but to accept. I knew he had the ability to rescind my powers by canceling my appointment. If he did that, I’d be out of the business. A few days later, Heath called me to a meeting. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he said my two former employees were willing to testify against me, saying I was the one steal
ing the insurance money. He knew they were lying because I had already proven my innocence. Still, it didn’t matter because I was a convicted felon—an essential point Heath kept reminding me of over and over. If my case went to court, Heath told me, a jury would probably take me down forever. At the very least, I was looking at doing more time in jail.

As I listened to Heath talk, I began to wonder who would bail me out. None of the local bondsmen, that was for sure. They all hated me because I had swooped into town and changed the way everyone had to do business. I also began worrying about my children and what would happen to them. I couldn’t bear the thought of any of my kids ending up in foster care. Heath said he wouldn’t press charges if I agreed to get out of the bond business for a minimum of two years. After I reluctantly took the deal, life as I knew it was over. Suddenly, I had no job, no income, and no savings. With no phones ringing, it all stopped.

Rumors began spreading like a California wildfire. I heard people saying I had embezzled millions of dollars and even tried to kill a man, both of which were utterly absurd. There were whispers wherever I went.

One of the conditions of my deal with Heath was that I surrender my bond license during our two-year noncompete agreement. Since I had no license, several complaints were filed with the Hawaii Department of Insurance. There were lots of people who needed my service and who had already paid me in advance to oversee their bail and bond. When I was forced out of business, many of those people lost a lot of their collateral in bail forfeiture. What this boiled down to was that the cosigners were losing everything because the people they were backing had skipped out on their bail and I couldn’t go after any of them. This was a rare opportunity where they could run with no threat of the Dog tracking them down. Nonetheless, my company still had to pay the insurer for the full value of the bond. During that two-year period, that meant liquidating my collateral to make good on the money owed. I hated doing it, but I was left with no choice.

Most of the complaints were settled outside the system. As for the
other complaints, my problems started when the Department of Insurance began sending me notification letters at the wrong address. The notices went to an address I hadn’t operated out of for five years. The strange part was that prior to my deal with Heath, I always received letters from the department at my current address with no problem at all. It was my legal address on every document filed with the state. It made no sense that they didn’t try to reach me through my correct address.

I was patiently waiting for the two-year noncompete Heath made me sign, as part of our deal, to run out so I could get back to work in Hawaii and start all over again. That would have been the perfect plan had it not been for those complaints I never received. The problem wasn’t the complaints, but my failure to answer. That was an automatic suspension of my license. If I didn’t adhere to all of the rules and regulations, I was in danger of losing my rights as a bondsman.

I called the Hawaii Department of Insurance to make sure they had a correct mailing address so I could deal with any outstanding issues. The next letter I received arrived on December 27, 1997, informing me that my license was in jeopardy for failure to respond to the complaints. The hearing was set for October 29—two whole months prior to receiving the notification. In my absence, the commissioner had revoked my license for five years. The penalty for not answering a complaint is generally a thirty-day suspension and a five-hundred-dollar fine. The revocation of my license for five years was extreme and unfair.

Nobody in the bond business gets sanctioned as harshly as I did. I was also deprived of my due process under the law because I am entitled to get notice of a hearing before it takes place, not after they’ve already made a decision. It was very difficult to get people to listen to me. I knocked on every door imaginable, until finally one lawyer, Howard Glickstein, agreed that I had been robbed of my basic rights. He told me that it would be an incredible long shot, but I knew we had to go for it anyway. There was nothing left to lose.

It took eleven years of perseverance and fighting, but Beth and I fought my case all the way to the Hawaii Supreme Court, until we were finally able to show a panel of judges all of the clerical errors that
were made leading up to my revocation. Finally, in late 2008, our lawyer was victorious. The judge ruled in our favor, saying the corporate division of insurance was wrong. He said the state was required to reinstate my license exactly as it was when they revoked it. The only problem with that ruling was that when they revoked it, I had already surrendered my license in my deal with Heath and moved to Colorado to wait out the two-year noncompete period. So, in essence, the state revoked a license that had already been surrendered.

The reason it took so long to win the case was because it was extremely technical. The laws in Hawaii had changed since I first lost my license back in 1997. Initially, the best compromise the state would agree to was allowing me to take the license exam again. That wasn’t good enough for me. The Supreme Court had ordered my license to be reinstated because the state should never have suspended it in the first place. I could have sued for eight years of lost wages because I wasn’t able to work, but I didn’t. My hands were tied because I also couldn’t go to another state to apply for a license since the first question they would ask would be if I’d ever had a license suspended or revoked in another state. I would be forced to tell the truth. This was exactly the same kind of situation I had found myself in numerous times since I was released from Huntsville, when asked if I had ever been convicted of a felony. My answer was always “Will discuss.” I was conflicted for years by that question. In fact, it wasn’t until most states started regulating bounty hunters all over the country that this common question became something of a problem for me. I had to fight hard to get states to make exclusions in their laws about bounty hunting so that I was not inadvertently put out of the business with the proposed laws.

In 2008, I finally got my official license reinstated, which gave me permission to write bail anywhere and everywhere across the country. For the first time in eleven years, I was legitimately licensed by the state of Hawaii. I already had credibility as a bounty hunter, but receiving my license back gave me the respect from my peers, the state, and the legislative system that had finally righted the legal wrong that had been committed against me.

I know the United States government will never admit that they made a mistake in my extradition case with Mexico, because they never do. I’ve reconciled that fact in my mind because even though I’ve lost many a battle along the way, in the long run, I won the war. I wasn’t extradited—I was allowed to stay in America, my home, my country that I love with all of my heart and soul, plus Luster is still in jail.

Having worked in and around the judicial system for most of my career, I’m used to the government being less than perfect. It’s just a fact of life. I don’t expect much from the lower courts because over the years I’ve learned that real decisions aren’t made until you get to the higher courts. I’ve learned to expect the bureaucratic flimflam. I believe judges in the lower courts are prejudiced. They use their decisions to work their way up the judicial ladder. Judges in the higher courts have already been there, done that. They don’t need to lie or impress people like Andrew Luster’s mother or her high-priced lawyers. Like it or not, justice is political. The system doesn’t like guys like me who are out there fighting for both truth
and
justice.

There’s always been a little rift between local police and bounty hunters, especially this bounty hunter. Even though bounty hunting has been around for centuries, it has never really been considered a job. I can’t stomach picking up a newspaper or hearing a story on the news about inexperienced vigilante wannabes breaking into someone’s home and accidentally shooting or, worse, killing them. These unqualified amateurs are the guys that give bounty hunters a bad name. It takes years of experience to learn the business—not guns or guerrilla tactics. We are officers of the court, but that in no way makes us police officers. It’s hard for many bounty hunters who are just starting out to grasp the difference.

Bounty hunters generally have more authority to arrest than local police, because defendants waive all of their constitutional rights when they sign their bail bond contract. They essentially agree to be arrested by the bail bond agent if they break the terms of that agreement. A bounty hunter can nab a fugitive in any state except Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, and Oregon, because bounty hunting is illegal there.
Me? I don’t care about the state law in those four states. As far as I’m concerned, if I know one of my jumps is hiding out in any of those states, I’m going to get him.

When I was a young boy, there was a local police officer my family knew and who I really looked up to. He was the officer who came to our school to give speeches about safety and awareness. For whatever reason, he used my name a couple times during one of his speeches, which made me feel special in front of my classmates. At the time, I worked the safety patrol, helping the crossing guard do his duties before and after school. One day I decided to take my services to a busy intersection in the middle of town. I stood in the street and began to direct traffic. It wasn’t long before the cops came to pick me up. They called my dad and told him he had to come take me home. I had a great time that day stopping traffic and giving directions to all the drivers. From that day on, I wanted to become a policeman.

Shortly after that incident, I heard the officer had been indicted for burglary. I was devastated when I heard the news because this was a man I admired. When I went to school, kids began teasing me that my “cop friend” was a no-good crook. After he pleaded guilty to his crimes, I began to see all cops as phonies and criminals. I felt that way until I got to prison.

Once I started interacting with the wardens and prison guards, I once again began to respect cops and authoritative guys in the system. I’ll never forget one of the prison guards telling me that he lived in Huntsville prison too.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “You get to go home at night, hug your wife and kids, and I don’t.”

“Sometimes, but mostly I am here more than I’m home. Sometimes I get a home-cooked meal, but mostly I’m in the joint doing time with you.”

I gave it some thought and realized he was right.

For the most part, the guys on the force love me and appreciate what I do. They even send me their service patches from the departments where they work, and I proudly display them behind the desk in
my office. I have patches, badges, and pins from policemen and others who work criminal justice all over the world. I’m always so appreciative of their support. However, there are other cops who will never see me as anything more than a felon—and to them, I will always be on the other side of the law. They’re threatened by what I do because my experience and skills help me bring in the fugitives that they simply cannot bring in themselves. Many officers think my success rate makes them look bad. I’m not out to upstage the police. My only goal is to get my man. But some of these cops still see me as the bad guy, while they’re the good guys.

When I started bounty hunting, I was always trying to prove to the police that I was one of the good guys too. I wanted to be a cop or a United States marshal more than a bounty hunter, but the choices I’d made in the past made that impossible. I love cops and want to work with them because I know we are stronger unified than we are apart. I want their respect for what I do and bring to the table as a fellow member of law enforcement.