Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. Guys. Welcome back to the Mike Force podcast. I'm with Anthony from Unchained Fit. And there's a lot of resilience in kind of all the methodology and talkings that I do, because I think a story that defines you is the one where you fail. You get beat down, you get locked up, you get put in chains, and then you get back on your feet, rebuild your life and continue to move forward. And you can have microcosms of this. I mean, it could be a relationship drama, it could be you falling out from a profession, it could be failure in your everyday life. But getting back up on your own two feet is important to talk about. And I don't think there's a story of that resilience that could be better told than Anthony's story about his falling down, getting chained up, and then picking up the pieces and starting all over again. Here he is in the studio. Welcome, Anthony, to the podcast.
B (1:14)
Thank you, Mike. Yes, sir. It's an honor. Thank you.
A (1:17)
I'm glad to have you, man. I, I, when I was told about you from Tyler, our mutual friend, he runs Ops or Wolf 21, a CBD brand that I have, he had mentioned that he was so impacted by some of the things that you did, the things that you talked about, the fact that you've been locked, that you were locked up for nearly 10 years of your life and here you are in your 40s like me breaks my heart because I, I feel like I got a little taste of that, but you were completely immersed in that. Let's start from the beginning because obviously I want people to get to know you on the podcast. Who are you and where'd you come from? How did this start for you?
B (2:03)
Yes, sir. So, name is Anthony Autry. I'm from, grew up mostly in the Pacific Palisades on the west side of Los Angeles. So I was a good upper class, upper middle class upbringing, standard issue there. Family vacations, private schools. However, at seven years old on Christmas Eve, things changed. Parents came into the room, said they're getting a divorce. Next morning, dad was gone. So things were very different at that point. Started getting into a little bit of trouble at that point. Getting kicked out of the private schools addiction started at 10, so started smoking weed, drinking alcohol, wanting to be part of the cool kids, you know, I never really felt like I was part of that crowd. And so I was doing things that I wouldn't have normally done if I was just by myself. I wouldn't have been smoking and drinking, stuff like that. Managed to get Kicked out of the all the private schools, started going to public schools. Fifth grade, got a little bit of trouble. Sixth grade, got caught with marijuana in class in sixth grade and just the addiction progressed quickly. Went to pharmaceuticals, hallucinogenics and got into cocaine all within my early teenage years. Stayed away from the meth and heroin because there were some kids at that point and heroin was the big thing and some of the older siblings of my friends were overdosing and dying. So I stayed away from those. I just saw a lot of the real bad stuff that was happening with those two particular drugs. Played sports, played a lot of sports, did really well in sports. Baseball was city all stars. Football was looking like potentially having a scholarship. I ended up making the great decision my senior year not to play because I didn't want to play the position my coach wanted me to play in high school years. A lot of my friends going to public schools. So this was like mid, mid late 90s. And a lot of my friends were from inner city, mid city Los Angeles. And around that time the area that I was in was like the Rampart district. And so back then I think we all recall like the Rampart scandal. So those were really interesting times at that point. Guys that I grew up with were becoming from the neighborhood gangs and were putting in work for the neighborhood, you know, doing serious things. And so things got really serious at that point in time of course, and this was not for me, you know, I just made the decision to move out of California, went to Arizona for college for a little bit. Didn't get much schooling done. Just took my addiction with me. I just did the geographical change. I was there for a couple years. Went to Texas again for school, didn't go to school, but started working, managed a sales company, did really well, brought it to being the top running office in the nation and then came back to Southern California after about four and a half years. So I had missed my family. My brother, he was in San Diego, had started a construction company and went to go be back with my family things. Things were going well with the construction company. We were doing commercial and residential. We got up into, into Los Angeles. My father had started, he had owned a construction company back in the day. He got back into the field and was a super on some custom spec houses in Bel Air, Brentwood area. So we got into this investment developing and we're making really good money for some, you know, 20 year old kids. Again, our addiction, our drug habits, mostly cocaine. At that point in time we're just partying really hard, you know, spending a lot of money. San Diego, we would do like the Hard Rock intervention pool parties with the, you know, $20,000 bungalows over the weekend and just were blowing a lot of money, money I wish I still had today. But the drugs continued. So I was always like a full, like a functioning addict. And I think that was the biggest problem. My brother ended up having some heart problems, so he kind of backed off a little bit. And then at that point was the first time I got in trouble. At 20, 26 years old, I started dating a girl that I knew from high school and saw her and she was a good looking girl. She modeled for Bud Light and a bunch of stuff like that, which kind of made the. Gave me the excuse to kind of tolerate some things that I thought were. She was just not all there. She was in, you know, anyways, we. She had an alcohol, she had an alcohol problem. And well, one night wasn't the first time actually. And so there were red flags and I should have gotten out of this relationship, but I didn't. This one night she was drunk, attacked me, got out of the apartment. Police were there and arrested me. This was 2008. So right then, at that point in time in Los Angeles, there was a domestic call. The guy is going that shifts with standard issue. After everything that kind of happened with OJ For a long time it was just like, men are going, going, going in today. It's different now. It's like both parties go or nobody goes. So I went in. She knew what I. I didn't. When they were taking my pictures, my mug shot pictures, they saw I had some bruising on me, took off my shirt. I had like eight hematoma bite marks all over me. From her. She had no injury, no injuries. And talked to her a day or so later like, hey, this what's going on here? And she was like, no, I know, I'm sorry, I'll fix it. I'm like, okay. She comes into court at our arraignment like a week or two later with her mom. And her mom never liked me. And I knew something was up at that point. At that point she totally changed her story. Said I punched her numerous times. She's like, I don't know, 5 10, a buck 15, buck 20. Like if I punch you numerous times, there's going to be some kind of evidence that I punched you. Nonetheless, I was, I didn't bail out. I was in, I was in custody and I was fighting the. Then fighting a case. Had no experience really with the judicial system and didn't know how they operated, how they just basically it's let's make a deal and LA county courts have upper 90 percentile conviction rate. So fought the case for a few months, ended up bringing a private attorney. My public defender told me, hey, take it to trial. This is, you know, I know you're innocent. Nothing happened. However, they were hanging like three years over my head, which seemed like an eternity at that point in time. Brought in a private attorney, got all the way to jury selection selection, which would be the last time they offer you a deal. And that day when he came in, the couple prior court dates, I started having some action. Things were starting to go my way and was looking better. Jury selection day comes, he gets a murder trial call, can't show up, his substitute comes in. And I literally watched the D A take one folder off the table and put another one on on the table. And I was like, that's probably not good. And so it was basically my original deal that they stuck with, which was a felony. A year in county, 52 week anger management program, three years probation. And so it was either take that or go to prison, you know, or take it to trial and I could lose. And here was a kicker too is they told me in court, they said if you take this deal, you'll be out of here maybe two weeks or so. They're like today, tomorrow or two weeks. And I'm like, okay, so if I take this, I'm out of here in two weeks? And they're like, yes. I was like, okay, I take the deal. That was April 10th, May, my birthday comes up in late May. I call my attorney, I'm like, what's going on? He's like, oh, your Release date is August 3rd. And I'm like, how does that happen? Like I want to request the minute report. That's not what was stated in court. He said it happens. Tough luck. From that point on, my life was ever changed. Made me a felon. I had no idea the ramifications. I had known what it would cause, but didn't realize living it is a whole nother ball game. Got out, completed probation, was going to complete probation. I had a couple month extension due to restitution that needed to be paid that I was unaware of. So they just extended a couple months. At that point in time though, I did catch another case. My brother and I had bumped heads, gone our separate ways. I was lone wolfing it and was hanging out with a guy who was a neighbor and went over to another Guy's house in the neighborhood. These guys were smoking meth. And so at 30 years old I made the decision to smoke meth. And at that point everything really changed. I'd done cocaine for a long time and I was like, wow. I was like, this is just from this. I'm like, this is what I was chasing the whole time with. That didn't take long. Matter of months. My job, I was always showed up on time. I never missed a day of work. But my work was like, hey, you need to go to rehab, you have a problem. And I was like, well I haven't missed work, I'm not late. Like I guess I don't have a job. So there went the job. Eventually the apartment went. There was an incident where the police came knocking on the apartment door before I no longer had a place to live. And I was in my boxers, opened the door because I was on probation, had to comply. They chased me through the apartment. I end up Superman and off the patio and my boxers kind of tuck land is like about a six foot drop a good distance wide and up on my feet and I'm running down the street and just my boxers in broad daylight, barefooted, had my phone in my hand. I ended up getting away. But I found out at that point in time I was on posters in the car for LAPD's Pacific Division and it just was nuts. A couple days later I was in another foot pursuit that involved a helicopter. Got away again that time. Eventually they would catch me, but I'd get caught, go in, they'd offer me a program, get out to a program, screw that up and then I'd go on the run again. It was just this vicious cycle that continued for about six years. Within that time actually was a real tragic thing happened was doing time in LA County Jail during this time. I'll touch on this because LA County Jail 2008, around that time was there was a lot of stuff going on with sheriffs and sheriff gangs that were in the jail. And so when I started going to LA County Jail, it's when like the 3000 boys were there, which was a pretty big thing. They ended up getting indicted with Sheriff Lee Baca and Tanaka under, under sheriff. But so I was around these guys when I was doing time, which was a real serious thing. You know, these guys were a bunch of juiced up guys all blasted up and they would just be beaten guys with mag lights all day long. It was, it was, it was pretty bad. Like if you looked at them, they would smash Your head against the wall and crack you upside the head. So county jail in LA county was way different than it is these days. But anyways, that's another story. When I was in LA county jail I was everywhere. I was in supermax, which is high security. Of course, out at wayside Pitches detention center which does exist. A lot of people think there's no supermax in a county jail. LA county jail has one.