Hialeah, Florida
1965–1971
We entered the McDonald’s and saw them immediately, and I knew we were in for a rough time. Sitting in one corner of the fast-food joint was BD, our school’s star running back. About half the team’s offense clustered around him. These were the tallest, beefiest kids in our school, and they didn’t have the slightest issue with throwing their weight around.
They saw me, the scrawny sixteen-year-old outcast from our high school. I was fast, agile, and becoming a decent martial artist, but I was also small, outnumbered, and with my then girlfriend, a beautiful, intelligent redhead named Carmen. A brawl was the last thing I wanted to expose her to, especially one that I couldn’t win. Looking at the numbers, I knew if anything developed, I would surely take a beating.
I made eye contact with BD the running back. In that split second, I knew a hassle was coming. I could see the anticipation, the eagerness to stir something up. He’d always been a bully; much of the school feared him. I was smaller, with a prettier girl—an easy target in his mind.
The football players stood up in unison. Taking a cue from BD, they flung a few insults my way, then made crude remarks about my “smokin’ hot” girlfriend.
I fired back with an earnestly delivered, “Fuck you.” De-escalation was not my strong suit. BD’s eyes lit up in indignant fury. The squad headed our way. I grabbed Carmen’s hand, and we bolted from the burger joint at full speed. Sometimes, there’s no point to getting beat down and getting the people around you hurt.
They chased after us, shouting and taunting, but we evaded their pursuit and made it a hundred or so yards to the Arby’s restaurant where I’d been working. There, our manager Ron—a Vietnam veteran of the navy’s legendary Underwater Demolition Teams—asked us what was going on.
We told him, and he grew angry. Ron was a huge man, tough as nails and always up for a good fight. He belonged to a local biker gang and brawled regularly on the weekends with his crew. Rumor had it that his dad was allegedly connected to the Mob.
Needless to say, when half a football team was looking to give you a beatdown, Ron was a solid guy to have in your corner. He waited for the football players to reach the Arby’s parking lot, then went outside with one of his friends to confront them, where he demanded to know what they were doing. BD made the mistake of telling him they were looking for me. That was Ron’s cue to get things going.
“Ric is my little brother,” he announced as he calmly walked up to BD’s posse of jocks. “You want a piece of Ric, you come through me!”
They wanted a piece, all right. Fists started flying, and football players started going down. Hard. Ron and his friend were like terminators. The jocks never stood a chance. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the two bikers beat them all to the pavement in a matter of seconds. I had never witnessed that kind of surgical violence or how quickly its application demoralized opponents.
Lesson learned. Avoid the fight if you can. But if you have no choice, go in for total destruction and take the fight out of your opponent. Half measures will only get you hurt.
The truth was, Ron wasn’t overstating our relationship to those guys. He and I had worked together for almost a year, and he’d become the big brother I never had. He lived by a code of honor I respected while avoiding the criminal stuff other bikers got into. But he was always up for a good brawl, and if his knuckles weren’t sore, it wasn’t a good weekend.
The next day at school, the football players saw me in the hallway. I mentally prepared myself for a last stand. They turned around and went the other way. Knowing Ron was in my corner was money in the bank. They left me alone, knowing the inevitable retaliation would be way more heat than they could handle. Sadly, if I had not missed that karate demonstration at the high school, they never would have tried to confront me in the first place. Plus, I would not have left the dojo. Yet another peripheral lesson: shit happens for a reason!
Of course, in the moment, none of that eased my pain and resentment over being ostracized by Jim. There were no other dojos in town and no other organized martial arts classes to take. I had no outlet. Thanks to BD, I realized that survival in Hialeah would require that I get strong.
We had one gym in town. It happened to be in the same strip mall as the dojo. The gym rats were a tough crowd, pure street. They weren’t there to get ripped for the beach. They were there to get buffed out to dominate in a fight.
I joined the gym and threw myself into daily workouts with the same zeal I did with karate. At the same time, I mowed through Arby’s roast beef sandwiches and milkshakes in an effort to bulk up. Ron marveled at my appetite and encouraged it. He even started calling me “Chest,” as my pecs were the first body part to show progress. Unlike at the dojo, I was building strength without an honorable purpose.
It was there at the gym I met Albert San Pedro, a.k.a. “Big Al,” and his circle of friends. I suppose today they’d be called a gang. Really, they were a group of kids who banded together for sheer survival and venting of teenage testosterone. They’d gravitated together for mutual protection after getting trapped between the other two forces on the streets: the football players who bullied them and a nascent African American gang that had just taken root in our area. In our world, if you didn’t have somebody to watch your back, you’d become a target by a lot of very dangerous people.
It wasn’t the dojo, but with Albert and the rest of his friends, I felt like I had a place again. Loyalty was valued. We looked out for each other and our families. But as those friendships deepened, I was drawn deeper into the street. We ran hustles. We stole hubcaps and more. We protected each other. We later developed a strong association with the Miami Crowns, a much more developed street gang, of which I eventually became a full member.
My tanking grades and questionable friendships alarmed my parents. By the end of my freshman year, they decided to pull me out of Hialeah and send me to nearby Miami Springs High School.
Unbeknownst to them, Albert and the rest of his gym crew—el Chinito, Rubio, la Mona, Milton, Popeye, El Richard, and many more—all went to Miami Springs. The move to get me away from trouble actually solidified my connections to it. Of all the guys I ran with back then, Rubio became my only enduring friendship out of the bunch. He got smart early, moved away from the area, and built a good life and family for himself.
We’ve stayed in touch through the many decades since we rolled together with the Miami Springs crew.
The gym served as the nexus of our high school relationships. We hit it together almost every day after the final bell rang. By my senior year, I could bench-press 280 pounds, Albert over 320. I went from small and scrawny to solid, strong, and tough.
One day at school, the Miami Springs football players approached Albert and said, “We’ve got a fight coming with the Cubans. Are we going to have to worry about you?”
The football team wanted no beef with Albert’s group. Albert said, “I don’t give a fuck about those guys.”
Thus sanctioned, the two sides squared off later in the week. We were left alone; everyone knew our rep. We were not afraid to fight and would always inflict damage.
Another afternoon, one of the “tough” guys at the school decided to target me. In the school’s parking lot, he tried to bully me. I would have none of it and fired back. Fists flew, and the fight got furious. I kicked, punched, and grabbed the guy, flipped him onto a car. Easy day, right? I was going to pummel him against it. Out of desperation, he sank his teeth into my left middle finger and wouldn’t let go. I kept hitting him, and he kept biting me, so I grabbed the car’s radio antennae that we’d broken off in the fight and started whipping him with it. That did the trick. He stopped biting me, but by then, I had another issue: the car’s owner.
I happened to choose the worst possible car in the parking lot to damage. It was owned by the biggest and toughest African American kid in the school. He asked around and found out I damaged his car. That afternoon, the school was abuzz with word that he and his pals were looking to exact revenge.
Albert came to me with a couple of his usual suspects. “Don’t worry,” he reassured me. “This is an opportunity to show them all who we are, nothing to fear.” If we stood against the biggest kid in the school, Albert knew we’d be at the top of the heap. He’d be the leader of the toughest of the tough.
The end-of-the-day bell rang. We quickly assembled our five Hialeah boys. The African American kid met us on the front lawn of the school, flanked by four of his own pals. Fair fight. One on one. We went at it, swinging and dodging. The fight was one for the record books. We held our own, and by the end of it, we were still standing. We may not have won the crushing victory we wanted, but we did enough damage that afterward, the African American kids said we were square. It was a pivotal moment for us. The African American kids were a powerful bloc in the school, and now we’d secured our flank with them. As for everyone else, we showed them we had no fear and plenty of teeth. From then on, pretty much everyone left us alone. Albert was considered one of the top dogs, and we were his posse.
Unfortunately, Julito, a close friend of the finger-biter, ratted us out to the principal a few days later. I was suspended for fighting. My father was furious. After I told him what happened, he went down to the school to explain to the principal that I had not started the fight, I’d ended it. The principal was about to rescind the suspension, but right then, Julito was brought into the front office dazed and bleeding. Chinito had caught him in the halls and pummeled him for violating the first rule of the street: you never rat anyone out—even your worst enemies.
The principal looked at my father and said, “The suspension stands.”
Funny note: this incident actually came up during the background investigation for my clearances into the CIA. Yes, that is how thorough and intrusive these BIs (background investigations) are.
With our place now well established in the Miami Springs pecking order, Albert turned his attention to making money. At the time, I held multiple jobs, working at Doral Country Club as a maid’s assistant, the lowest position on staff. I also spent some nights as an apprentice in a small shop learning how to cut and polish prescription glasses; my father wanted to make sure I developed some useful skills before I graduated. My junior year, I found work at Bart’s Men’s Wear, an upscale gentlemen’s clothing store that sold high-end clothing and formal wear. The part of me cultivated by my mom really enjoyed that job. While I could hold my own in the street, I learned to clean up well, tie a tie, and wear GANT shirts and Weejuns penny loafers. In fact, it was my growing toughness and my “Ivy League” dress that got me accepted into the Crowns, where I met my lifelong friend, Max.
While I worked multiple jobs for barely minimum wage, Albert had an entrepreneur’s mind. He figured out that if he could rent a meeting hall, he could host parties that we euphemistically called “open houses.” He provided the entertainment, took the entry fee, and pretty soon he was running a veritable underground moveable party scene for the under-twenty-one Cuban set.
It grew and made more money. They were fun mixers, and Albert showed he had a shrewd, innate business instinct that he developed and refined in the years to come.
Meanwhile, on the side, we still got into a fair amount of low-level trouble. I could see far enough down the road to know this way of life would be a dead end. Drugs were just starting to hit the Miami scene. Other rival groups were starting to get into it. Things were getting rougher, and our rivals were getting more dangerous and well armed.
Things went bad pretty quickly once the guys graduated from high school. I avoided the worst of it, mainly because of my love of marine science, which drove me into the college path. Ron had taught me how to SCUBA dive, and that became the passion that saved me. While others were buying dope and experimenting with all the stuff starting to flood the streets, I was saving every dime I had either for protein shakes to help me bulk up or for SCUBA gear. Others cut school to party; I’d sneak away to go diving—with a girlfriend, of course!
After that terrible first year at Hialeah High, I became a solid B student, despite the brawling and the trouble we got into around town. School was interesting to me. I liked to learn, and when I applied myself, I did well.
After graduation, I started at Miami Dade Junior College in the Marine Science Technician program. It was a demanding curriculum, taught by a former U.S. Navy dive instructor who expected us to grasp complex biological concepts very quickly. I scrambled to keep up and worked hard. Yet there were times I still rolled with the Crowns and Big Al after classes.
Once, a group of antiwar student protesters decided to stage a rally and burn the American flag on campus. I was outraged. We may have had things rough since coming to Florida, but this country gave us every opportunity to succeed. My family had long since became ardent patriots. Burning the flag was not okay.
So I called Flaco. He and some of our Crowns agreed this was a worthwhile fight. The next day, we crashed their flag-burning party like hell on wheels. After it was over, there were plenty of broken protest signs and bead necklaces on the ground, no hippies in sight, and the flag flew proudly over the campus. The school bulletin ran a piece mentioning how some Cuban refugees had defended the flag.
That was a watershed moment for me. A lot of the time I spent in the streets I felt a sense of guilt for the stupid crap we were doing. I knew the petty theft and the open-house parties weren’t my path. The fighting that came along with defending honor, pride, and a chunk of the ’hood had no higher purpose beyond loyalty to my friends and the thrill of a good scrap. The campus scrum was different. It gave me a true sense of satisfaction. Defending our country from people who wanted to tear it down? That stirred something in me.
Not long afterward, I was sitting in one of the oceanography classes with a fellow student named Glenn Richardson. Glenn looked like a young version of the Marlboro Man, rugged and outdoorsy. We’d known each other casually since I’d started at Miami Dade, and we usually made small talk before class. This time, I noticed he was wearing a green flight jacket that looked supercool. I wanted one immediately.
“Hey, Glenn, where did you buy that?” I asked.
Glenn looked indignant. “You don’t buy these, you earn them!” he replied.
“Whoa, cowboy! No offense, bro! What the hell do you mean?”
He started telling me about the U.S. Air Force Pararescue Jumper (PJ) program that he had joined. He explained he’d learned combat rescue and medical skills. He got to jump out of airplanes. He got to practice rescues at sea. He told me they even got to do SCUBA and underwater operations. Those who joined and became PJs also received the honor of wearing the coveted maroon beret.
As Glenn described the life of a PJ, it fed all my James Bond / Ian Fleming fantasies of a life of adventure and daring. He saw how it energized me, so he invited me over to his house to show me photos of the training and his life in the PJs. By then, he belonged to a reserve unit.
During their next drill weekend, he brought me out and introduced me to his brotherhood. A well-muscled PJ, Alan “Al” Stanek, gave me a short history of the PJs. After World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces recognized the need for a unified organization to perform search and rescue. The Air Rescue Service was born from that need in 1946. The following year, the air force established the Pararescue program. This authorized pararescue teams, along with the creation of the Pararescue and Survival School at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. The commandant of that first school was a pilot, First Lieutenant Perry C. Emmons, who had been assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.
The Vietnam War gave the air rescue program the primary mission for saving our pilots shot down behind enemy lines, often doing so while under fire. But the PJs soon expanded that role to assist any American soldier in harm’s way, and it eventually became known as Combat Search and Rescue.
The PJ teams would go out on their missions in two helicopters, one a “high bird,” which provided backup firepower and often rescue for the “low bird,” which actually facilitated for the PJ to do his rescue mission on the ground. Initially, they flew in Bell UH-1 Hueys—the iconic chopper of the Vietnam era. Later, the teams received Jolly Greens, larger birds with more capabilities, including a refueling probe that extended their range with air-to-air tanking. The Jolly Greens carried two wicked “mini-guns” (the M134 Minigun is a 7.62×51mm NATO six-barrel rotary machine gun with a high, sustained rate of fire of two thousand to six thousand rounds per minute; it features a Gatling-style rotating barrel assembly with an external power source). The PJs would get on the ground, assist the downed aviators—oftentimes the pilots were wounded—and get them into the hovering bird overhead.
Rescuing crews who went down at sea became another major role of the PJs. The brotherhood was a tight one. They were elite, honed with excellent training, and tempered in the furious air-ground firefights over North Vietnam.
When Alan finished with the history lesson, he read to me the pararescue motto: “This we do, that others may live!” From that point on, I knew this was the life I wanted. I had found my purpose.
Without telling my folks, I went and enlisted, with a guaranteed shot at trying out for pararescue, but no guarantees of making it. I passed the written exams and the PT test, and I was accepted into the PJ entry program. I would report for basic training the day after Christmas of 1971.
I knew this was going to be a battle. Between my high draft number and my student status, my parents were not concerned with me being conscripted into the army. My mom was still overprotective, and the idea of losing her son to the military during the Vietnam War was going to be tough on her. I wasn’t sure how to tell them, so I kept quiet about it until early December. I broke the news probably a bit harshly, telling them, “By the way, I joined the air force. I leave December 26 for basic training.”
The shit hit the fan. My father was furious, my mom broke down in tears. It turned ugly. Fortunately, my “big brother,” Ron, stepped in and helped smooth some of this over, talking to my folks about the advantages the military offered. He and my dad had several long conversations. Ultimately, they had to accept it. Their son was leaving the nest for a life that seemed only a distant dime-novel dream a few months before. I couldn’t wait to get started. My folks could only watch me depart and start my own path into the world. Looking back, I realized that break from home was terribly hard on my mother.
She’d lost me once to an orphanage in a foreign country. Now, as an adult, I was leaving them behind for a life I wanted more than anything else.
It was a tough way to say goodbye. But it pulled me away from the Crowns and their increasing descent into a life of hardened crime. For that, I know my father was grateful. The allure of the barroom brawl, of those wild nights infused with the passion of youth—those were his glory days. He knew their power. He’d overcome it himself only by falling in love with my mom. That connection put him on a better path.
The air force, not love, served that purpose for me.
After I left, the Crowns generally went one of two ways. A few became cops. Others stayed street and embraced a full-time life of crime. Many died in the process. Albert made a lot of money in various enterprises. He ended up connected to mayors, police chiefs, and had his fingers in many pies. He became a millionaire with his business dealings, and he used the money to consolidate and grow his power throughout South Florida. It came at a heavy cost.
Several years later, Albert did time in prison for unrelated charges, I heard later that he emerged from that experience and went straight. He became a legitimate businessman using his streetwise entrepreneurial instinct to build a successful life for himself and his family.
All of this went down long after I joined the air force and left the scene. We all remained friendly—people from home always have a role in your life—but in the years ahead, we saw each other only sparingly at funerals or other formal events. They were still my brothers, but our paths diverged so completely that, ultimately, we had little left in common.
I was to travel the planet; they stayed in Hialeah. It created a divide even our shared experiences and memories could not bridge.
Yet almost two decades after I left home, those teenage friendships almost derailed my career at the CIA.