← This Is Actually Happening
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Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of this Is Actually Happening ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.
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I start getting this feeling that I've never really had before in my life. I describe it like a blanket of dread. Like this very heavy weighted blanket of dread that somebody is just dropping on my shoulders. And it was just this feeling of impending doom, to be honest. Like just something bad is about to happen. Something really bad is about to happen.
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From Audible Originals, I'm wit Misseldine. You're listening to this Is actually happening episode 401. What if you were ambushed on a dark desert highway?
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So my father grew up one of, I think it was 11 kids and grew up very poor. My grandmother was an immigrant from Ireland. It's kind of a joke in the family that my grandmother used to tie some of the kids to a tree because there was no way to keep track of them all, which is true. But it was very much a depression era mindset in the sense that you don't waste food, you value hard work, honesty, integrity, all of that stuff's very important to my father. And then when he joined the military, he got stationed in El Paso and one night he was in a bar in El Paso and that's when he met my mother. My mother was born in chihuahua, Mexico. In 1947. They moved to Juarez, you know, on the border of Texas. She met my father in this little nightclub and they got married in 1964 and had my brother Tom. My brother Steve and I came in 1969 and my youngest brother Will came in 1976. They moved to San Jose, California, and I was born in San Jose, but grew up in Gilroy, California. It was an agricultural town. It's the garlic capital of the world. And we had an acre of land, we had pigs, we had chickens, we had a horse at one time we had rabbits. So we grew up in the country. My mother told me that when I was three months old, my knee was swollen and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. And then I started running a really high fever. I believe they thought it was meningitis. So they put me in the hospital to run a bunch of tests. And then they decided to put me in a crib and tie my legs so I couldn't move my legs. I think it was to try to get the knee under control. I Ended up staying there for an extended time, just tied up with my legs tied. And then I started scratching my face because my mother wasn't able to be with me during the day because she had to take care of the other boys. So she would come in at night. And I think I was mostly alone, just alone during the day. And I just started scratching my face to the point of bleeding. So then they put mittens on my hand to prevent that. And eventually I was losing weight. I wasn't doing good, and the doctors were wanting to run more tests. Eventually, my mother just came in and took me against their wishes. And then when she got me home, I put on weight really fast. I got better. They never really figured out what it was. But something I would say over and over throughout my whole life is, I don't want to feel trapped. I don't want to feel trapped. I don't want to sit at a round table at dinner because that makes me feel trapped. I don't want to have to go to school because I feel trapped. When I would take a nap or sitting in school were almost painful for me. I remember standing at the window and wanting to jump out the window. I must have been four or something because I found naps excruciating. Also, school did not work well for me, my personality at all. I felt trapped at school. I felt restless at school. If I'm being poetic about it. The experience in the crib, I think, showed me, you can be trapped against your will and have to stay in one place. Safety can be taken away against your will at any time. So movement always felt like safety to me. Movement felt like living. It felt like I was alive. So if I went to a dinner party and you can get your food and walk around, I'm totally fine if I have to sit in a chair and talk to people I don't know. And there's no escape that feels like I'm trapped. Not now, but throughout much of my adult life, that's how it was. I had, I would say, a happy childhood. My father started working for IBM and he was trained as a programmer. And it was a great time to grow up. For me in the 70s, it was a lot of me trying to keep up with my older brothers. That was a big focus, is me trying to stand out and them being so much older and bigger than me. The way that I could stand out is being a little more of a daredevil than they were. That was the way that I could stand out. So if there was something that somebody needed to climb up something or jump off a roof or climb a tree or whatever it was. I would always volunteer for those things because it was an easy way to stand out as the runt of the litter, you might say. I loved motorcycles even when I was little. So when I was six, I actually got in my first motorcycle accident and went to the hospital. My cousin was over and my mother warned him that Gary's going to beg you to, to ride the motorcycle, but don't let him, because he was going to take me for a motorcycle ride. So he took me on a ride and I was sitting in front of him. And then of course, I started begging him to let me steer and let me use the controls. And he did. And then I went off the road because a car came. I went over the handlebars. He went over the handlebars. He was 15, I was 6. And so he landed on me. It ripped up my face pretty good. And then when I turned 9, almost 10, we moved to New York and we lived there for five years. I went to a Catholic school. I was kind of a popular kid. And then when I went to junior high school, it really changed. I went from a tiny class to a giant school. And it was kind of like an ugly duckling phase. I broke out in pimples, got all skinny and goofy looking and was bullied. And it really affected me a lot. That lasted for a couple of years and then when I turned 16, I think I put on some weight, I started lifting weights. And there was a point where I just thought, I'm going to be on offense now. I'm not on defense anymore. If you come at me, I'm going to come at you twice as hard. And I don't even care if I lose. I just care that I hurt you. Not anybody, but I'm saying somebody who's a bully. And I got in a decent number of fights, or at least violent encounters, you might say. And then we eventually moved back to California when I was a freshman in high school. When I was 17, I had a girlfriend and she lived in San Jose and I had gone up to see her and we actually went to a drive in movie. And I was taking her home and driving probably way too fast in her neighborhood. And when she said slow down, I did the bonehead thing and I sped up and I was driving my father's pickup truck and I hit a parked car and flipped end over end I don't know how many times, but I landed upside down in the back of another pickup truck when I realized what happened. I guess I was in shock because I jumped out of the windshield. The windshield was completely gone. My girlfriend, unfortunately got hurt. My girlfriend's head had gone through the back of the glass and so she had glass in her head. So it was pretty terrible situation. And all three cars were totaled, and I was the only one driving. That was kind of the type of behavior that I was having where I just would go too far. But that kind of thing kept happening. That theme of taking risks too far. I spent my whole adult life trying to understand why I had those strong impulses. And it's when things are slightly dangerous, I feel more engaged, I feel more alive, I feel more excited by what I'm doing. And it, it would come up, say in rock climbing. If I'm rock climbing and I don't. I don't climb with a rope. I climb just bouldering mostly. But sometimes I'll get up into things that are beyond bouldering, like climbing a canyon wall or things like that. And I realize that, that I have to have enough danger to be excited. Otherwise I'm bored. But I can't have too much danger where something really bad is going to happen. And so figuring out that line throughout my life has been like a Rubik's cue. When I was 17, I had grown up Catholic, and I took it very seriously. I always wanted to know what the meaning of life was. What happens after we die, Those big questions. I felt guilty for the lifestyle I was leading in high school, which was just a normal high school, you know, having sex, drinking. But I felt more guilty than my peers did. I noticed that I taught Sunday school when I was 17, which is kind of funny, but I would do both. So I would stay out all night, Saturday night, literally all night, drinking with my buddies, show up hungover to Sunday school. And that was like a penance thing. Like, okay, I'm living this way, but my penance is I'm going to show up no matter what. But it wasn't really satisfying the part of me that was curious about the meaning of life. And so my best friend, his mother was deeply religious in a fundamentalist Christian altar calls and Pentecostal type of speaking in tongues, like that sort of flavor of Christianity. So she would always talk to me about why I should convert and all this stuff. And so one day I went with her to church and I accepted that religion. And with that, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to really do it. So it's like, okay, now I'm this Guy practicing safe sex would almost be a. A premeditated sin because you had to go buy condoms in advance, right. But then we still end up having sex. And so my girlfriend got pregnant. My mindset was, take ownership, take responsibility, do the right thing. And so I got married right out of high school. I was still 17. And we tried to make a life together. My first son, Nathan, he ended up having severe autism and epilepsy. We didn't know all this at the time, but pretty severe. I went to Bible college. I was working full time. I was going to be an evangelist. We had another kid by the time I was 20. And so it was just a pressure cooker. The four years when I was married, I describe that as feeling like I had a pillow stuffed over my face for four years. And that wasn't the fault of my wife or my kids. It was just the circumstances and also the harshness of the flavor of religion that I had. It was such a harsh version that you couldn't even listen. Like, for me, it's a blackout period, 18 to 22 or 87 to 91. I missed guns N Roses. I missed whatever movies were popular. It was like a blackout period in that way. And then the stress. The stress of not knowing what was wrong with my son because he just had these behaviors that we couldn't explain. And the financial stress, the marital stress, it. Yeah, it felt like having a pillow stuffed over my face for four years. And we split up when I was 22. At that time, I also became very disillusioned with fundamentalism in general. And so I just changed my path. I had been in college, but I finished my psychology degree and really started a different phase of life. At that point, things got a lot better. I changed, obviously, my living situation. After about six months, I was coming back from Reno. I was with my mom, my brother, and my best friend at the time. We stopped at the mall because my mother had won some money in Reno. She was going to buy a video camera. And I was sitting at a little cafe in the mall, and I noticed there was a store called Bare Essentials. I looked in the window and there was a very beautiful woman working there. And I just thought, I'm going to go meet her. I want to meet her. And so I said, I'm looking for something for my mother. And so she's trying to help me to find stuff. She said, do you see anything you like? And I said, well, not on the shelf. I thought that was pretty clever, but it went right over her head. But I Just said, we should have coffee sometime. She goes, yeah, okay. And it was one of those things where we just instantly were like, this is the person that you've been looking for. Anything I say about it sounds cheesy, but it was one of those things where it's like your body acknowledges something. Your body says, yes, I recognize this, and this is where you're supposed to be. So she was a big stabilizing force and in my life. But I. I had a lot of angst and confusion at that time, too, and I think that I needed a way to express that. Me and a couple buddies started a rock band. I was a singer in the band. That was really healthy for me in a lot of ways. A way to get out some demons. And I was writing poetry, and I was studying religion, and I was studying philosophy, and a lot of different things without the constriction of that very small worldview that I had had before. When I graduated from college, I got a job in the recruiting industry. And that's when I really had to cut my hair, had to get a real job. The next part of my life was really about the building phase. Building my career, eventually building my business, buying a house. All the stuff we all do, you know, you're doing the stuff you have to do to be an adult. When I turned 38, my. My life opened up a lot. My youngest was 18. So once I turned 38, I was able to be a dad of two adult boys. And that was when my friends were starting to have kids. I just did things in. In a very different order than other people. Things got easier. I would say I had more options. I had more time and more freedom. And so one of the things I started was rock climbing and bouldering. But I still have that line. I try to walk where I don't want a rope because it makes me feel attached. I don't like that feeling of being attached to the rock. This was an ongoing pattern. Something inside of me wanted to feel that danger, wanted to feel that risk. So I went to Thailand, and I was rock climbing in Thailand, and I had some time. I went up north with a couple of guys who I'd met. One of them told me about this route that he had done on his motorcycle from Chiang Mai, where I was, to the border of Myanmar. And he's just telling me how epic it is and how incredible it is. I just couldn't get it out of my head, this idea of renting a motorcycle and doing this loop. And so the next day, I just made A decision. That's what I'm going to do. And the minute I rented it and took off, I feel like a part of my brain opened up. Like my peripheral vision got wider. I was taking more light into my eyes. Like everything became high resolution. When I got on the motorcycle, it just felt like this is what you're supposed to be doing. I don't know. It became like an obsession for me, like a complete obsession, you know, I did the whole loop and when I got home, that's all I could think about. So I bought a motorcycle. I started traveling by motorcycle. I started riding off road, on road, and doing a lot of long distance travel. For me, it felt like it answered a whole bunch of questions that I had because there was novelty in it. You never know what's around the next curve. There was danger in it. There was exploration. I liked being in my own helmet, I liked being in my own head and thinking through things for hours. But it was the exploration and the movement. So movement has always felt like safety to me. I traveled a lot in Southeast Asia, so I did Cambodia, Nepal, Thailand, a little bit of Myanmar where I could go, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, and then all over the West. Like riding in the desert is really what I primarily do in California, Arizona, and then more recently, Ecuador, Costa Rica. So it just became a huge part of my life. When a birthday party in suburban San Jose turns deadly. 18 year old identical twins are arrested for suspected murder. One of them spends nearly two years in jail before the truth comes out. Authorities locked up the wrong twin. How could one brother let his twin take the fall? And why would the other give up his freedom for a crime he didn't commit? Blood Will Tell is a modern day Shakespearean saga about what we're willing to sacrifice for the people we love and whether our most tragic mistakes are worthy of redemption. Listen to Blood Will Tell, a new series from Audible and Campside. Meet wherever you get your podcasts. In 2016, I started to plan what would be my biggest trip, which was to Mexico. And my destination was actually Central America. Mexico was going to be the biggest part and I'd done some traveling in Mexico before or I've always loved Mexico. I'm half Mexican and my mother had a very difficult time growing up in Mexico. So she was happy to come to America and to be in America and she wanted to be American and she wanted us to be American. So there wasn't as much romance about Mexico, was more about the hardship of Mexico, but I always wanted to discover what was there. I had been to the Yucatan, some of Baja. But what I wanted to do was go really to the most remote parts of the country, One of which was the Copper Canyon in the north, where the Tarahumara Indians are. Those are the barefoot runners, if you remember that book, Born to Run. And that's this particular tribe. They are in and around the places where my mother grew up. So she used to see them when she was a kid. And we have some native blood in our family as well. So that was one place that I wanted to see. And then head south and then get to Guatemala, maybe as far down as Costa Rica. And it was going to be seven weeks. My wife, who's very supportive of that. One of the strange things was before I left, my mother called me the morning I was leaving. And she was very kind of emotional, saying that she had a really bad feeling about this trip and don't go, don't go. And I didn't want to make her feel bad, but I was, I was gonna go. I mean, that was gonna go. So when I crossed the border, I started riding south. And I was headed straight to the Copper Canyon area. And that's a very, very remote area. It is cartel controlled, but there are towns. And the reason that the natives were able to stay for as long as they have is because it's so difficult to navigate that terrain. Like just, just deep, thousands of feet deep canyons that go straight down and then high mountains. And it's a very rugged landscape, very exciting. And I met with them there. They still live in caves, some of them. They don't speak Spanish. You know, they have their own language. There's even different dialects. And the different elevations. And they're very private, but they're also friendly if you talk to them or try to talk to them. And it was just. It was just really exciting. A very beautiful place. I got lost at one point in cartel controlled areas. It's all dirt roads, there's no pavements. And at one point I was in a big storm. And I eventually made it to a town, but then I was having mechanical problems. So I had these mechanical problems that would kind of dog me throughout the trip. And then I made it to Guadalajara, which is a big city. And I had a decision to make. This was two weeks into the trip, like, am I going to push to get through to. To Central America? If I push really hard on this one day, I would try to ride 700 miles to put me really far south within Mexico. And I already been told, don't try to ride that many Miles. So I. I just weighed that decision in the morning and I felt like, no, I want to go to Central America. That's what I want to do. And so I took off. And then I started having mechanical problems again. But I. I got to Puebla, which is a large, beautiful city. You know, I had mechanical problems. It's getting late in the day. Everybody knows you're not supposed to ride at night in Mexico or be on the road at night in Mexico, but I just wanted to go. I felt like I wanted to go. And so I didn't ride at night. At any point on this trip except this one night, I had made arrangements where I could get the motorcycle fixed if I got further south tonight. I needed to get at least to the city of Orabi. And so I took off from the safety of the city at whatever 5:30 at night. And I start riding. As I'm riding, it's getting darker and darker and it's getting colder and colder. And the highways there are different than here because there's no light at all. So if you're in a place where there's no cars, there's no street lamps or anything. So it's literally on this night, I don't think there was any moon at all. So it was just pitch black in like a deep, dark, dark, black. So now it's freezing, it's getting dark. And I start getting this feeling that I've never really had before in my life. I describe it like a blanket of dread. Like this very heavy, weighted blanket of dread that somebody is just dropping on my shoulders. And it was just this feeling of impending doom, to be honest. Like. Like just something bad is about to happen. Something really bad is about to happen. So much so that I've never done this before or since. But I turned on my hazards as I'm riding. So I'm riding on this curvy mountain highway and then it got really cold, like freezing cold. I thought I would check on the side of the road, get a sweater on, check the next hotel. And so I pull off the side of the highway and I made sure that there was no light anywhere because I thought that would be safe. No house, no car, no. No anything. Just literally pull off where it's pitch black. So I pull off. I'm texting my wife and she knows it's now like 8:30 or 9:00 clock at night. She knows I'm on the road, so she's already worried. So I'm texting her, just saying everything's fine. Just getting to the next town. I sent her a text, walked to the back of the bike where the trunk is. I opened the trunk case, get out my sweater, put on my sweater, put on my jacket. And I heard a sound, like a warbling sound. And I spun around. And when I did, there was two guys. You could only see their eyes because they had, like, a head wrap wrapped around. Basically, their whole head is covered by this wrap. Like a terrorist, basically. And you just see their eyes, and they're both holding assault rifles. And when I looked at them, it was almost like my brain didn't know what I was looking at. I'm in the middle of nowhere. It's pitch black. There's no one here. And then I hear something. I turn around, there's two guys with assault rifles pointed at me. Then they started yelling and grabbing me and tell me to go with them. There's no good reason anybody wants to take you away from where you are. If they wanted to rob me, they would just rob me. So I knew there was only bad things that would happen if they took me away from where I was. And I didn't want to leave the highway, and I didn't want to leave my motorcycle, because those are the only ways to get out of this thing. And so I just sat down. I just said, no, no, and I sat. That made them angry, so they grabbed me. And then four more of them come out of the dark. Same masks, same assault rifles. So now there's six guys, and they just start dragging me off into the dark. They're dragging me away and kicking, punching. And at one point, they kind of stop, and they're all just punching me and kicking me. I have no idea. I mean, I. In my head, I literally am thinking, this is that thing. This is the exact thing that they warn you about. And I did the stupidest thing I wrote at night. The dreads blanket was not the same. That was more like a premonition, like a something bad is about to happen. Once it started, it was fear, but also strategic fear, if that makes any sense. So it was like, I'm trying to think, how do I get out of this? What do I do? What am I supposed to do? How do I get out of this? The only way I can describe it is you were a surfer, and you know there's great white sharks, but you live with that. And then suddenly you're bit by a shark, and it takes you to the bottom of the ocean, and it just holds you there. That's what it felt like. Like, I. I have no agency. I have no ability to move. I can't control anything that's happening. And the other part that is different than, say, a great white shark, and I've thought a lot about this, is if you encounter human malevolence, that is. It's something you can't unknow once you know it. Some of them seem to be taking pleasure in it. I would say they seem to be enjoying terrorizing me, hurting me physically. And so there's. There's a different feeling. You're not just bit by a snake. You're. You're encountering something where they're purposely doing this to you and they seem to be enjoying. Leaves a different imprint on you. It changes you in a way that you can't. You. You can't be the same person you were anymore. Most of my adult life, I would say I don't want to feel trapped. And that was a way of saying I don't want to feel like I don't have agency, like I can't move. I ended up being choked pretty violently. And this was a visceral experience. What I didn't want to happen. As far as being trapped or being losing my agency or losing my autonomy, I've never, ever felt anything like this. I can only describe it like being in the jaws of a shark. It doesn't bite you and let you go, though. It bites you and it hangs on and it takes you to the bottom and it just holds you there. Once they stopped dragging me, then we were all stopped and they were punching and kicking, but I had a helmet on and I had a jacket on. Without the helmet, I think I would have been dead. One of the guys kicked me. He was standing in front of me and he kicked me, and his foot ended up just in my stomach. I grabbed his foot, I picked it up, and I threw it backwards. So I threw him backwards. And it was definitely a fuck you. And it was also a reaction when I did that. Everything got way worse. When he flew backwards, he landed on his back, and there was a split second where he looked like a turtle that had been flipped over. And he was like. His legs and arms were moving. And again, this probably lasted a microsecond, but in my mind, I could see his eyes looking really startled. And then it seemed like he looked embarrassed. And then he looked like his eyes just turned to fire, is what I would say. Almost like just this rage just filled his eyes. So he gets up and he's coming at me, and I can tell he's going to hit Me in the stomach as hard as he can. I could just tell. And then he hits me in the stomach. And for a split second, I thought that wasn't so bad. And then right at that moment, somebody from my left hits me in my ribs with a rifle. With the butt end of a rifle. And that breaks four ribs. That pain was instant. And I just. My body just, like, crumbled, basically. I just fell onto the ground at that point. I think what happened was they thought I was trying to fight them, which I wasn't. At that point, they were all getting in on it. And so they're kicking me, punching me. I've got four broken ribs. Then they start dragging me backwards by my neck and my shoulders. So one guy's just choking me. Like, it felt like he was pushing my Adam's apple to my cervical spine. Like he was just pulling my Adam's apple into the back of my neck. As they're dragging me backwards and they're trying to rip my motorcycle jacket off, they're just like, rip, rip. Ripping on it as hard as they can. So they eventually rip it off, but they dislocate my shoulder while they're doing it. So my shoulder kind of is out. Then it pops back in. They got that off at one point. I was just sure I was going to go unconscious because I had no air at all. And they threw me on the ground. And I'm just laying there on my stomach, just, you know, trying to breathe. When they put me down, he took the barrel of his gun and he just stuck it through my face mask onto my eye socket. He just held it. Held it to my eye while he's, like, screaming at me. And then another guy fired a round next to my ear. And they're. They're all screaming at me. I just said. Which is basically. I don't understand anything because they're all screaming at me. I speak a little bit of Spanish, but not. Not when you're screaming at me. And when I said that, that's when everything changed. They, like, stopped what they were doing. They all looked at each other, like, sideways. The one guy who I think was the main guy, I don't know who was the main guy, but he seemed like he was. He just started yelling, money, money, money, money, money, money. Like, in my face. And I was actually very relieved when that happened, because prior to this, I have no idea what's going on. The whole thing I just described. I have no way of knowing what is happening other than they're trying to kidnap me. I Knew that. But it's kind of hard to put into words like what it's like to be in the park where you don't know what they want and you don't know why they're doing this. When the guy put the rifle into my helmet, into my eye socket, the razor's edge between him just yelling at me with his barrel of his gun near my eye and him pulling the trigger, I was pretty sure he was going to kill me. At that point, I assumed they were going to try to kill me. That's. That's what I assume. What I was thinking about the whole time. Besides, how do I get out of this? Is what this would do to my wife if they killed me or if I was missing. So I had sent a text and I was waiting for her to text back when this happened. So we were mid text and she was already nervous that I was out. So I knew that she's flipping out. At this point I was only thinking, I have to get back for her. But it helped my brain to stay online. Really, I have to get back. I have to figure this out. And until they started yelling for money, I had nothing to work with. So when he just started screaming money, I was very happy about that because I'm like, oh, you have a motive. Fine, I can work with this, you know. So the whole thing changed from there. I started trying to say in my broken Spanish, I have money, take me to my motorcycle, I will give you the money. They didn't want that, so they got my keys. Several of them stayed with me at gunpoint on my knees, while the other ones went to the motorcycle. Eventually, one of the guys comes back and he's showing the keys and they'd broken off one of the keys. So they're very frustrated. So that to me was my chance and I just, I just really made my case. So they, at gunpoint, let me walk back to the motorcycle and this is all I wanted. The whole time I had an inreach, which is a satellite emergency locator on there, and it was in a holster. I could call for an SOS for a helicopter by just pushing a button. And they didn't know what it was. So I sort of am pretending that I can't get into my own luggage with the key. I'm acting confused, like, oh, what's this broken key? And I'm moving around the bike and they're barely tolerating this. And at one point I got my hand onto the inreach, which is the emergency satellite locator. And there's a little switch you have to slide to the side, and then you can push the SOS And I had slid the switch, and I was about to push the SOS and then once again, the rifle comes into my eye socket through the face mask and pushes me backwards. They rip the inreach, and that's the end of that. And now they're pissed at me for. For wasting their time. So they just take the keys. They keep trying to get in. I actually helped them to unlatch it, the trunk case. And once that trunk case came up, they literally disappeared into the darkness like a pack of coyotes with a fresh kill. They just vanished instantly. So they got the iPhone, they got the inreach, they got all of my maps, all of my safety gear, my tools. And I don't think they got my wallet. I think they got some cash is what they got. I'm standing there on the side of the highway. They had ripped my jacket off. My shirt is, like, shredded. I've got four broken ribs, my shoulders popping in and out. And they took the keys because the keys are in the trunk case. But I'm just kind of standing there, like, I. I can't even process what just happened. And for a long time after, I wasn't sure. Like, I had to keep checking to see if it had actually happened. Like, there were many times where I couldn't tell if that had actually happened. But I'm standing there, and then out of the darkness, one of them comes trotting back towards me, still with the mask, still with the rifle. And I'm thinking, okay, he's gonna want to finish the job and get rid of the body. Like, why would you want any kind of evidence? And so he's running up to me, and I'm looking at him just like, what are we doing here? And he's running up to me, staring at me with this very intense stare. And he runs right up to me. And when he gets up to me, he sticks out his hand, and I just sort of reflexively stuck out my hand. And he puts the keys in my hand, and he looks at me again, and he just turns around and runs off and disappears. I never saw him again. That was the end of it. I've thought a lot about that, and. And there's different theories as to why he did that. Part of me says it was his first night on the job, and he didn't like the job, and so he was thinking that I was going to be stranded there and came to give me my Keys. Another part of me just thinks they were like, get this guy the out of here. We don't need him standing here making a scene on the side of the highway. I don't know. I don't know why. I have no idea why. I didn't know that. It was the most inexplicable thing, but it felt symbolic to me because I spent my whole life not wanting to be trapped or have my freedom taken away. And then when this happened, it was the most visceral experience of having your freedom completely taken away. Like, no chance to fight back or do anything. So I feel like for the period that they had me, I had no freedom, no autonomy, no agency. And then he comes back and he's like, here you go, here's your keys. Now you have agency. I can make meaning out of that to say, now who are you going to be? You have your life back, and now what are you going to do with this freedom? I'm standing there and I want to get on the bike and take off, but I remember I could barely get my leg over the seat because with broken ribs, the pain is pretty excruciating. And then riding the bike was excruciating. Almost to the point where I was worried about passing out riding. And at this point, I'm completely freaked out because I don't know if the whole place is just crawling with gang members or what. I have no idea what's safe anymore. And so I'm riding for a long time. And eventually on my left, ahead on the highway, there are two cops just pulled in the middle of the highway. I got excited because I thought, I'm going to get some help. So I pull into the middle of the highway where they are, and I. I'm trying to tell them what happened. And they had no reaction. They weren't asking any questions. They weren't interested. And then I said, could you escort me to a hotel or something? I said, I don't know. I don't know if they're following me. I have no idea what's going on. And they said, no, no, we can't do that. But what I did get them to do was allow me to borrow one of their cell phones because I knew my wife was, you know, I was really worried about her. So I called her. And anyway, I called her and she answered and she was just, like, freaking out. Really freaking out. Crying, sobbing, freaking out. She's asking me what happened, what happened? And I don't wanna tell her what happened for obvious reasons. So I said, I Said that I lost my iPhone. I was riding, I hit a bump, the iPhone fell off on the highway. And then she said, well, what about the inreach? And I said, that fell off, too. And so at that point, she's like, they both fell off. How is that possible? Blah, blah, blah. So then I think I said, okay, well, they were stolen. I said, but nothing bad happened. It's just they were stolen. And then she's still asking questions. I said, listen, I have to go. You may not hear from me for a bit because I don't have a way to communicate with you, but I'm perfectly fine. And so then I leave. And again, I don't know where is safe at this point. First of all, I'm in shock as I'm riding. This is where I kept my brain. Like, I would say, did that happen? Did that happen? And then I would have to reach back with my hand as I'm riding and feel for the trunk case. And when I could feel that the trunk case wasn't there, that's when I went, okay, that happened. That happened. And then I'd keep riding. And like, two minutes later, did that really happen? Did that really. And then I would feel again like, no. Yep, that happened. Like, I was. I was not tracking reality properly. So then eventually, I. I did find a town. I got off the highway, I went to the hotel. Basically, I got to my room. I parked my motorcycle in front of my room, and I was in so much pain that I just got into bed. I couldn't swallow because they had pulled my Adam's apple so far back, and I was very dehydrated. So my throat was just like. I remember swallowing was extremely painful. And I'm in bed and I'm laying there, and I had that heavy blanket of dread feeling. Except in this case, it felt like an evil presence. I'm not saying it was an evil presence. I'm just saying the feeling was, there's something in this room with me, and it wants something bad to happen to me. Like an evil type of feeling. And it was heavy, heavy, heavy feeling. Then I had the realization, like, you know what? You rode to the first town, parked your motorcycle at a hotel right off the first exit, and parked your motorcycle right in front of your room. Those cops probably are working with them. They're probably in touch saying, this American guy is running around to whoever will listen, saying he got attacked, and they're probably going to come here, kick in the door, and finish me off. So I was basically just laying there all Night. And the feeling all night, I didn't sleep, was, they're going to kick in the door and kill me. And I remember I just could not wait for the light to come up. Eventually it did. I got out of that hotel, and I remember going to try to. I think I went to a bank trying to get money out, and there was two young men who were in line, and they were looking at me and laughing at me. That's how I interpreted it. Now, who knows? They might not have even been looking at me or laughing at me, but I just remember thinking, were they two of the guys from last night? Do they know who I am? Are they watching me? Like, that's what. Where my head was at? I rode to the town where it happened, which was Esperanza, and I went to the Federales office and I told them what happened. And one of the guys, the main guy there, was actually really, really helpful, and he took it seriously. And because we had the satellite location of my inreach, you know, I said, can I go? Cause I'm still like, I need my iPhone. I need my inreach. And they were going to go to help me to look for it, because I thought it was in the field. He ended up getting, like, maybe three cars with six guys. They're suiting up with, like, bulletproof vests. They're zipping up. They're getting, like, automatic weapons, bulletproof vests. And we're going out to their cars now, and they want me to come with them because they want me to identify these guys. So I get in the back of the car, and I'm driving with them, and I'm thinking, this is really sketchy because they all have bulletproof vests. I don't. I. I'm obviously the only one who can identify anybody. And this could turn into, like, a firefight. We ride out to where it happened, and they get out to go start looking for my stuff, and I stay in the back of the car. Then they come back and they say, we found some guys who have phones. We want you to come and identify them. So now I'm getting out of the car, I'm walking through brush, going to see where they've got these guys holed up. I go over, and it's just some random guys who. They have, like, five different cell phones, none of which are mine. We did find the inreach. We didn't find the iPhone. And I said, well, can I go back on my own and just look for it? Because we have the location of the iPhone. And he was really specific. He's like, no, you cannot go back there. He goes, they know you're here, they're watching you. He goes, I wouldn't go out there by myself. Me being me. He goes, you have to leave right, right now. So I did. I got on my motorcycle and I left. And I got back to Puebla. I checked into a hotel and. And I had to decide whether or not I was going to stay, which was a big decision because I was two weeks into a seven week trip. I thought about it and part of the decision I said, in my head, if my ribs are broken, I think I have to go home. If they're not broken, maybe I can stay. The people at the hotel, I had told them what had happened. And because of the amount of pain I was in, they said, we're going to call a doctor. And they took X rays. But I was told that they are not broken, that they're severely bruised, but they're not broken. So I was really relieved because in my head I kind of had this thing. I was really hoping they weren't broken, because in my head it was like, you bruised me, but you didn't break me. And in the end I just knew I cannot go home because if I do, they write the ending of my story. I was just like, I'm going to write the ending of this story. When I was in Puebla, there was one experience I had where I was walking around in the city and I remember feeling this bubbling, boiling cauldron of rage and anger. Anger like a vengeance. It was visceral, it was biological. And there was two boys. I was walking past a window and there's two boys. There were probably 10. They were just being boys, I think. They flipped me off. They were laughing at me and they. They flipped me off or something. But in that state I was in, I just got up to the window and I put my finger in their face. And I forget what I said, but I said something pretty threatening. And their faces, they both were laughing. And then they just looked terrified. And they moved away from the window like their bodies were just moving back with this terror on their face. And it was that reaction by them that kind of broke this spell of this anger that I was feeling. And I realized I can't control whatever this is, this feeling. And I had the sense, I don't know if my wife is going to want to be with me. Basically, I knew that the person I was when I left was gone. Like, he was gone. And this new person. So far, what I know is he threatens 10 year old children and is really angry. And so that really scared me because I just thought, I know I can't go back the way I was. There's just no way, it's impossible. But I don't know who I'm going to be. And so I remember thinking, I'm not sure that she will love me when I get home. I did have a good trip. The rest of the trip, believe it or not, after that, I mean I, I met great people. I continued the ride. I saw the great pyramids near Mexico City. I took a ship from Mazatlan across the sea of Cortez to the tip of Baja. It wasn't the trip that I had intended to take, but it was a good trip and I finished it properly. When I got home, finally, I was worried, as I had mentioned, that my wife wouldn't recognize me, that she wouldn't still be in love with me. And I didn't think it was fair even to require that she would be because I, I just knew I was going to be different. I was very worried about that. And I was worried I wouldn't be able to control the, the anger that had come about from the experience. But she was, as always, very loving, very supportive. She helped me through a lot of processing this. My therapist used to say, you need to get the emotion up because I wanted to just be angry. I thought I just want to be angry and punch somebody in the face who deserves it. That felt like the right way to go. But my therapist was like, well, that's just, you're just covering pain. That's all that is. What you really are is, is very sad. You're very damaged by what happened to you and you don't want to face that. And that's why it's coming out as anger. So she would say, you need to cry or you need to express this. And I could never cry in front of her. And I couldn't even cry. Like I couldn't generate the emotions when I wanted to. But once in a while what would happen was I'd be listening to a song or I would talk about a story or some goofy thing about a dog coming home to its owner or whatever it was. And this emotion would come up, I would just have this like surge of emotion, like just sobbing. And it was, was all this like gunk coming out when I got home because I had gotten, like I said, the X ray said I had bruises, not that they weren't broken. So I, I kind of used that as part of my identity. Like, I was bruised but not broken. And then I went to a jiu jitsu class and a girl who probably weighed 120 pounds was grappling with me, just doing some basic sparring stuff. And the pain was just like excruciating. Like, I couldn't. I sort of crawled off of the mat. I literally couldn't move one way or the other. I went to bed like that, and when I woke up, my wife was trying to get me out of the bed. So I went to go get X rays and the guy was, he did the X rays and then he's yelling from the other room. He's like, oh, oh. Like that. And I go, I go, are you talking to me? And he goes, four, four broken ribs. And what I think happened was they, because I kept traveling on them, they had sort of started to heal. And then when I was rolling in jiu jitsu, they broke again. And they've never quite gone back the way they're supposed to. But that, that changed things for me because then it was like, first of all, I had. The recovery was six months, and now I was really vulnerable, physically vulnerable, which I hate. I didn't want to feel vulnerable. And I. I think I was riding this high with the rest of the trip. And even the first week I was home, that whole narrative of you're bruised but not broken sort of came crashing down. It's like, no, they broke you. Everything that I hadn't faced by traveling for another five weeks just sort of like came crashing onto me at that point. The part that I was afraid of not being the same person, that was actually true. I mean, there's. There was no way. And I knew that to go back and, and I would have this vengeance feeling and, and the feeling wasn't, they need to pay, it was, somebody needs to pay, somebody in the form of a bully who deserves it. This vengeance thing was coming up, and it was probably tied to the bullying. At least some of the rawness of it, I think was tied to the bullying from junior high. But martial arts was kind of the key that went into the lock in a very particular way. So a lot of the more extreme behavior that I had that was risk seeking just to feel alive, just to feel engaged and alive, that now had a container, it had a place to go that was disciplined. That was a path of meaning, a place where I could connect with other people. And so that started what has now been an eight year path of just martial arts being my path. So for the two years after the kidnapping. I really threw myself into martial arts and also therapy, a lot of therapy, different types of therapy. I was trying to get at it from every angle that I could because I didn't want it to swallow me up. And it felt like something where the memories of it felt like a door in the house that goes down to the cellar. But you don't really want to open that door and if you do, something bad could come out. And so I wanted to kind of coax it down the stairs. I wanted to keep trying to get it out in some way. It was like a wound that needed to be bled out or something. Therapy helps a lot. But it didn't quite get at it for me the way that, say, martial arts did. So for those two years, I was trying a lot of different things. I became certified as a mindfulness instructor, which required a silent meditation retreat. But I still had that more volatile, vengeful leanings where it was like a revenge fantasy that someone who deserves it that I could beat em up basically and that it would be somehow satisfying, which it wouldn't. And it wouldn't do anything. But it's just an impulse that was like a physical impulse. And that really scared me. Two years after I got home from the kidnapping, I had another experience which this was kind of a turning point in some way, but I was on a road trip in Northern California and I was riding my motorcycle. It was very hot, I had neck pain going on. It was a mountain road and I come around a turn and it turns out it was almost a U shape. And so I overshot it, went out of the other lane. I go flipping over the bike and land upside down on my head and my neck bends backwards and my feet kind of go like a scorpion backwards. And then my body flops down. I'm just laying there because I don't know whether my neck is broke or whatever. I didn't want to get up too quick. So I'm laying there and then I start to slowly move and I'm realizing, okay, you're okay. I get the bike out, but I'm thinking, holy shit, here's another thing that could have killed me. And then on that same trip, maybe four or five days later, I'm riding off road in the lost coast of California and I crash the bike. Not a horrible crash, like from a safety standpoint, but I crash it in a way where there's no help. I'm out in the middle of nowhere, Cell phone doesn't work. It took me hours to get out of that and as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, what the fuck is wrong with you? This is your second crash in five days after being kidnapped. When I was young, I used to say, really to myself, if you've never gone too far, you've probably never gone far enough. And I believed it. I think that is true in a lot of ways. It's just. It's an incomplete statement and there's a cost attached to it if you live that way. But whatever that impulse was was still affecting me at age 50. 50. So it wasn't going away for me. I'm going to therapy. I'm doing my best to uncover all this stuff. I'm dealing with it. I'm doing martial arts, I'm meditating. But it was still there. It was still driving my behavior in a lot of ways. I was also aware that I never wanted to give up that part of me. And it still bothers me that I have to. Part of me doesn't want to give up just climbing things without a rope, like, that's. It feels good to me. But somebody said everybody has a program that they work. Most people's is just unconscious, you know, and mine became a conscious program. And that is martial arts. It is putting all of that energy, even that rageful, vengeful energy, into something where it can be channeled. And what I've noticed is the more trained I get as a martial artist, the less interest I have in anything resembling violence that isn't in a contained environment. Literally, year by year, I get more and more calm internally. I sort of answered a lot of the riddles. It just took me 50 years to figure it out. And I remember there was a quote from one of the founders of it, and he says, your fears, your sadness, your trauma, your insecurity, Jiu jitsu will reach inside your heart and rip them out. There's something about that. I don't know what it is exactly. I think we're meant to be way more viscerally involved physically in the world than we are. I think we're so indoor oriented, screen oriented, safety oriented. We're freaked out by each other. We're freaked out by touching each other or hugging each other. Everything is so standoffish. Whereas if you look at mammals, you look at baby bears, what do they do? They grapple, they wrestle, they roll around. You know, you look at monkeys, they're hanging on each other, they're wrestling with each other. We're mammals, and I think most of us probably have those same impulses, but they just get completely put away. And I think martial arts gives you a place to express all of that that also is supportive. And it's a philosophy. It's a philosophy of discipline and self sacrifice and being in it with your teammates. And so it's been the thing thing that would get in there in a way that is 10 times more helpful to my personality than, say, therapy. It's almost like the same fire that makes you potentially powerful can also devour you if you don't learn how to wield it or direct it. And martial arts is where I can channel all that, and it makes me a better person. Before Mexico, I feel like I was performing the role of Gary Stavle, like I was doing what I was supposed to do in business and in life. And I feel like there was a lot of performance to it. I wanted to seem cool, I wanted to seem smart. And once Mexico happened, I do think there's something about coming within a whisker of your own death that reformats your hard drive in a sense. Now, anything that feels false or fake, it just stands out and it feels like something I want to move away from. I felt like I needed to reshape myself into someone. And for the first several years, I did that through blunt force discipline. If you look at the quotes on my garage during those whatever, six, seven years after Mexico, it was everything you want is uphill. When you are not training your opponent is when you meet him, he will win. I would do today what others won't, so I can do tomorrow what others can't. You know, it's just through discipline and blunt force, we're going to carve the person that you're going to be. Now, my primary goal, my whole life was freedom. And in the last year, career wise and otherwise, I've gotten more freedom in my life. A lot more freedom. And I realized that isn't the goal because it's freedom to do what? Freedom is just me sitting in a chair, having all the time in the world. That's actually nothing. It would be freedom to be living life, freedom to be doing the things I care about. Freedom to be with my sons and my granddaughter. Freedom to spend time thoughtfully on the things that matter to me. I've realized that freedom isn't the destination, it's just the door. You enter to get into the nightclub, and the nightclub is what makes a meaningful life to you. Now I would say I'm not performing Gary, I'm just being Gary. My interpretation of it right now is what I would call deep embodiment that's more what I care about. I care about waking up, being outside, walking my dog, practicing martial arts, riding my bike, riding my motorcycle, rock climbing, adventure travel, doing road trips with my wife. The goal is to be embodied and to do things that I think are valuable. That to me constitutes a meaningful life.
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Today's episode featured Gary Stauble. If you'd like to hear some deeper reflection on Gary's story, as well as reflections on the last few episodes and updates about the show, please subscribe to my substack called beyond the story@whitmisseldine.substack.com. if you'd like to reach out to Gary, you can find his email and socials in the Show Notes from Audible Originals. You are listening to this Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts Amazon Music to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the Episode notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. We'd also like to thank Head of Creative Development at Audible, Kate Navin, Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louie, and Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC. Sound recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originates, LLC the opening music features the song Sleep Paralysis by Scott Velasquez. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram Actually Happening on the show's website thisisactuallyhappening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactuallyhappening.com and finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening. Follow this Is Actually Happening on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of this Is Actually Happening ad free by joining Audible.