I became consumed by the stolen car business and by the admiration I received from people who knew. It gave me power and an identity I hadn’t experienced before. When I walked into a club, all eyes turned to me as if I were an alpha wolf. Looking back, I understand the twisted appeal this image had for me, but as a young champion fighter, pumped up on steroids, I craved that respect and attention. It was a good identity to have, especially after so many years as a victim. After a year as a car thief, I drew admiration from some, and resentment and jealousy from others. Ultimately, it was some of those others who betrayed me. I attacked the Bug-In event in Irvine like it was a flock of sheep, and I included the rest of the Darque Knights to share in the spoils. It was all foreign to them. They couldn’t see beyond the method they knew already—scoping, finding the car, stealing it, and changing it over or selling the parts. That’s a painfully slow method, and they were lucky to get three cars a month.
When I exposed them to the thousand or more cars involved at the Bug-In event, they were overwhelmed. They never even imagined that world existed, and for them it wasn’t a fit. But it was a world I not only fit into but thrived in. I interacted with the people at those events and spoke their language as if I were one of them. It was made easier because I worked at Precision VW and Porsche, a job I took in order to learn how to build high-performance engines. The owner, Mike, liked me and taught me everything he knew about VWs and Porsches.
Mike was a car thief and drug dealer before he opened his own shop, and I soon discovered he still had his hand in the cookie jar. I escape artist told him what I was doing, and Mike became one of my most trusted fences. I sold him most of the high-performance engines, transmissions, and parts I stole.
The Darque Knights saw how I worked with Go-Go to steal cars, secure contacts, and make more money from the Bug-In operation than they could ever imagine, but they weren’t pumped up about doing the same thing.
Adrian was the single exception. Adrian had allowed me into his world and trusted me with his secret, so I did the same for him when he came to me. I explained my operation to him and let him know that, although I would remain the Darque Knights’ Sergeant of Arms, my operation was between him, Go-Go, and me. I would gather the information, pick the targets, and deal with the fences. Adrian and Go-Go would steal the cars and strip, cut, or deliver them.
From the start, the three of us worked like a well-oiled machine. My business grew to heights only I had imagined, evolving into a high-end car theft operation that included Porches, BMWs, Mercedes, and whatever cars the clients wanted.
It’s easy to say I was just a car thief, but to me it was much more than that. For me, stealing cars was an art form. Any idiot can pull a gun on someone and take what they want, but what I did was different. To carefully plan and study a mark, then skillfully take it and not get caught, was nothing less than pure poetry in motion. I took pride in being a car thief, like any professional takes pride in his unique talent and knowledge.
It’s not that I advocate that lifestyle or try to justify stealing cars. It’s just that at that period of my life it was my trade, and I experienced an intense elation at certain points in the process. Stealing a heavily guarded car gave me even more of that emotional rush. The harder the mark, the higher I got. Part of the excitement was from the risk and reward of the situation, but a huge bonus was knowing my reputation would grow with it.
With my new business in place, I had graduated to high-end marks and bigger possibilities. Of course, with more possibilities the risk of getting caught also grew.