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- [00:01]
A
As I was getting to know the people who were close to Candice, I started to notice a bit of a pattern. Depending on who you spoke to, the details of the stories differed. I soon realized that when it comes to Candace, if you want to get to the truth, you have to question everything. There was one person in particular that Candice made sure she told everyone about. The ex husband, Patrick. There were lots of different stories about Patrick. Two things stayed the same. That he was abusive and was having an affair. Candice had a restraining order against Patrick. But when we looked into it, we found that they had restraining orders against each other, both taken out on the same day. So in the interest of questioning everything, I wanted to speak with Patrick to try and figure some of this out.
- [01:00]
B
My name is Patrick Leard, 44, lived in Utah my whole life.
- [01:05]
A
Who is your ex wife?
- [01:07]
B
Candice Rivera.
- [01:10]
A
So you're the infamous ex husband that everybody talked about.
- [01:16]
B
Yep. Yep.
- [01:25]
A
This is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills, hosted and executive produced by me, Charlie Webster. I sat down with Candice's ex husband, Patrick, and he told me the other side of what happened between the two of them when they met. Candice was 19 years old. Patrick was 25.
- [02:03]
B
I met her in March of 2005 on the Vegas strip. I was working down there, and a buddy of mine came from Salt Lake to visit me, and we'd just gone to the Cheesecake Factory, and he bet me that I couldn't get a girl to eat off my fork with a piece of cheesecake. And I said, I'll take that bet. I got nobody to eat off my fork. But I met these two cute girls, one being Candice and one being a friend of hers thought she was cute. And they walked off. And I don't know, 15 minutes later, we happened to bump into each other again. And it's funny, I started talking and just flirting and doing all that stuff. And we got to the end of the escalator and she walked one way and I walked the other. And five minutes later, there she was again. That was basically the first night. We texted and called and we just clicked. She was bubbly, and I'm very flirtatious, and that's how it went down, honestly. We became serious within a few months.
- [03:19]
A
Patrick asked Candice to move from her hometown in Colorado to his hometown in Utah. She said yes.
- [03:27]
B
I proposed. That was like four, four or five months into our relationship. We had a lot of fun, did a lot of things, had a lot of friends, different trips and cruises and things like that, like normal younger couples do. We had a lot of fun. We were in love.
- [03:48]
A
Two years after they first met, they had their first child. Five years later, the second one came along. We're going to use their names in the series to protect their identities. With two kids in the house, Candice wanted to help provide for the family. She always wanted to be a nurse. She was inspired by the loss of her twin girls and was getting closer to 30. That's when she signed up for nursing school.
- [04:13]
B
I never went to a graduation ceremony after school, but, yeah, come home, I passed. I tell my family, Candace has passed her test. You know, have this great job. She's going to make a ton of money. We're going to double her income.
- [04:30]
A
At this point, it sounded like there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary in Candice and Patrick's marriage. But that's not the image Candice portrayed. Candice told a lot of people that you're being abusive. Everybody believed her. Was any of that true?
- [04:49]
B
Nope, not a word. Never cheated on her. Never had any reason to.
- [04:59]
A
Patrick was very forthcoming about the fact that he and Candice did not have a perfect marriage. He started telling us some of the things that led to him wanting a divorce. There was one day, Patrick noticed Candace wasn't wearing her wedding ring, and she.
- [05:13]
B
Hadn'T been wearing a ring. And I said, where's your ring at? Oh, it's. It's at the cleaner. It's at Zales getting cleaned. I said, okay, great. Well, I happen to be working near Zales. You know, at lunchtime, went to the Zales, and so get her to the ring and bring it home and surprise her with it. Right. Well, I go in and I ask about the ring, and they're like, your wife doesn't have her ring here. It's not here. Okay, that's kind of weird. Maybe she picked it up. Okay. Anniversary was coming, and I kept asking him, like, hey, where's your ring? I said, did you say you took your ring to Zales to get it cleaned? She said, oh, no, I took it to one of these guys I know that has a jewelry spot downtown. And she tells me the name of it. Triple A Jewelry or something like that downtown. Like, I drove past it, and I'm like, that's a pawn shop. Like, it's a pawn shop. And then months go by, and she's wearing, like, this fake Cubert Zirconian ring that was bigger than the one I bought her. I'm like, well, where's your ring at? You know, let's pick it up. And she finally came clean. And she said that she sold it, she pawned it, never got the ring back even. I mean, we were still married for three more years. I always thought that was really strange. I guess it was just a ring to her.
- [06:44]
A
To make matters worse, as a surprise for their anniversary, Patrick had had a new silver band made especially to go with Candice's wedding ring. The same ring that he then found out she had pawned. Did you give her the band that you'd got made for her?
- [07:00]
B
I did. I gave her the band, yeah. Hoping that one day the ring would resurface and we could put it together. Never did.
- [07:09]
A
In my book, that's a pretty big deal. But even after Patrick found out Candace had pawned her ring, the two of them stayed together. Something much bigger was on its way to test their marriage. Remember in episode one when Candace told her for the Love Book group that she took Patrick's 401k and used it to pay off her nursing school? I asked Patrick about what happened. I had to learn what a 401k was when I first came over to America. So it's like your savings retirement for your retirement.
- [07:39]
B
Retirement savings, right. It's a savings account that, for when you retire, invested in the stock market, basically. So, yeah, I started that long time ago and saved and saved and saved and put money away. And because it just came out of my check, we just went in there and never saw it. And then the paperwork came like, we're going to move everything online, so fill out your stuff online.
- [08:04]
A
Patrick asked Candace to help him set.
- [08:06]
B
It up because I'm not a tech savvy guy. So she knew the online access, she knew the password, but I had no reservations. This is for our future, for our kids if they go to college. Like, I could pull from there for emergency purposes, whatever, you know, like, that's what that Money's for.
- [08:27]
A
The 401k went online and he thought it was fine until he opened it up a bit over a year later and found that he was staring at zeros. There was nothing in the account.
- [08:40]
B
I went to the bank, I pulled all the records to see where the money had gone. It wasn't going far.
- [08:48]
A
Patrick was able to track exactly where the 401k withdrawals were going. To his surprise, they were going from his 401k straight into his and Candice's joint bank account.
- [09:00]
B
She accessed it and started drawing from it. I could see that it was going into our bank, you know, like I could See it pulled and I could see it deposited. She didn't take $5,000 and then $2,000 went over there. Like you could kind of see $5,000 and then $5,000.
- [09:22]
A
It went from your 401k into your.
- [09:25]
B
Like, our savings, like your joint savings. And then she'd move that savings money into the checking account so it kind of looked like she was getting a paycheck. Right.
- [09:37]
A
Patrick said Candice told him she was going to make $75,000 a year as a registered nurse. And she was working.
- [09:46]
B
She would work nights somewhere. I don't, I mean, I, I went to a couple of the different places. She worked a few jobs. She didn't have just one steady job. She worked several different places. She'd leave for work, I'd watch the boys put her to bed, bath, all the dad things. She'd work most of the night, she'd come back in the morning. Sometimes she wore scrubs, sometimes she wore just regular clothes.
- [10:16]
A
But Candice struggled to hold down a job, and she definitely wasn't making $75,000 a year. Instead of coming clean, she took regular deposits out of Patrick's 401k. To make it look like she was.
- [10:30]
B
Making that much a year wasn't going to something scandalous. She was just pulling it to prove that she was making income so I wouldn't be upset that she didn't have the job that she told me she was going to have. Basically.
- [10:46]
A
By the time Patrick found out, Candice had been at it for a bit over a year. She'd managed to take $80,000 from Patrick's 401k. What was it like when you found out that, oh, it had come out of Your account, your 401k?
- [11:04]
B
I was angry, upset, frustrated, stunned. It was unreal. That was like, mind blowing to me that she was doing that to us, like to our family, our savings, because that was really the only savings that we ever had because I wanted to retire at a certain age and we'd retire together after obviously a big argument, big blowout, as any $80,000 mess up would be. She came clean and she just said that she needed the money in the account and she needed to pay school.
- [11:48]
A
If you remember, that's exactly what Candice told her for the Love Book Group, that she took the money from Patrick's 401 to cover the cost of her nursing school. We found Candace's estimated nursing school bill and the cost was just over $11,000, nowhere near the 80,000 she took from the 401k account. So did the 401k lead to your separation?
- [12:16]
B
No, I. No, I was pretty upset. There's. Any person would be. I was pretty close to leaving at that point. I went to my local religious leader and spoke with him and my church and he recommended marriage counseling. And so that's what we did. We both went and tried to work through it. I was upset, I was angry, I was frustrated. I was mistreated and lied to a lot of trust problems. I just tried to forgive and forget, you know, try to move on.
- [12:54]
A
It wasn't a pawned wedding ring or even a drained 401k account that finally made Patrick leave. It was something else.
- [13:03]
B
We were still working through the 401k trust issues and I'd started my own company at this point. Had a business partner, next door neighbor, good friend.
- [13:17]
A
Patrick's business partner knocked on his door one day and asked Patrick if he knew anything about a credit card that had been taken out for their business. The business partner had received a credit card statement in his name with a huge amount of debt racked up on it. But it had nothing to do with him. He had no idea the credit card even existed because it was only the two of them in the business. He assumed if not him, it must have been Patrick.
- [13:44]
B
He thought it possibly could have been me. I said absolutely not. And my heart sunk. And I, and I just knew. I knew right away Candice is gonna like. I just knew. And that's ultimately when I found out that she had taken out a credit card in his name. She came clean and said that she needed it and she felt bad. And that was the day that I packed up my stuff and I moved.
- [14:19]
A
That's when Patrick filed for divorce. Two months later, Patrick met his now wife, who Candice claimed was the mistress. She came along when I sat down with Patrick. The two of them would spend the next six years fighting with Candice in court over the divorce and and custody of Candace and Patrick's two boys. As for Candice, she moved on to pursue her passion for making a difference in the world. Did she ever talk to you about her interests in human trafficking?
- [14:50]
B
No.
- [14:51]
A
Did you hear about when Candice started her businesses and her anti human trafficking organization, Exetus?
- [15:02]
B
Yeah, I was aware of it. Fundraising was something that Candice was good at. She could get a lot of people to believe what she had to say. Getting someone's heart on the hook and being able to, you know, talk to them and say, hey, would you donate? Would you fundraise? She was good at it.
- [15:33]
A
Candice was on the fundraising committee at her kids school and helped with the fundraising at mobs. Now she was bringing in money for something else. Her newly created anti human trafficking nonprofit, Exodus Tribe.
- [15:47]
C
I've been working on something really big. My business partner and I realized there was a gap that my partner and I could fill in the anti trafficking world. We have a million dollar budget that we are still raising funds for but have so far created incredible partnerships.
- [16:03]
A
Candace was going full steam ahead with Exodus. She told her for the love group about how excited she was that she'd finally found her calling. Candice's Facebook posts are read by Emmy Jory.
- [16:17]
C
God gave me certain skills that looked funny together. Medicine and writing and relations and some business advocacy came with it and made more sense. Then over the last couple of years and all of the chaos of divorce, God was like, do I need to be any clearer? So here we are, Exodus guys. We are going to change the world. Really. I can't wait to show you how.
- [16:44]
D
I met Candice and we kind of bonded because we were both going through a divorce and I had a mutual friend that knew her and so we all just started hanging out. Just kind of as it was a funny gimmick of oh, we're like all divorced. We're just like starting from the bottom, trying to like build ourselves back up.
- [17:03]
A
In comes another bestie into Candace's life, Matt. Candace was looking for someone to help out with Exodus marketing and social media. Matt's a nutrition and lifestyle coach who happened to be doing well with his social media content. It was a perfect match.
- [17:20]
D
We just became really close friends and she would always say that I'm her bestie, whatever that means. We just hung out all the time. She started playing with this idea that she wanted to create her own organization for anti sex trafficking. And I said that's cool, like that'll be really good for you. She told me about all of the things that they were going to do. I didn't know much about the anti sex trafficking world at the time. So then what happened is one day she called me and she's pretty emotional calling me and saying that she just got out of court because you know, they were in court hearing about this girl who had been trafficked and it's just been a hard day and wondered if I could just go to dinner with her. So we go to Buffalo Wild Wings and we're just like talking and she's telling me the extent and I was like, this is horrible. Like I didn't realize the Extent of this, this is pretty bad, and it's happening here in Utah. Like, it was a crazy story. Then the next moment I was sitting there, and she's like, now that you know about it, what are you gonna do about it? And I was like, I feel like that's a pretty unfair question to ask me after that. Like, I was like, I obviously, I want to do something about it. So they wanted to be, like, a healing path for people who exited trafficking. Like, you go rescue someone, then what? And so our goal was to create a path, being like, okay, now we got you. Now let's. Let's get you the medical help. Let's get you the therapy. Let's watch you. Let's monitor you for the next two years. Let's help you reintegrate back into the world. So I'm like, yeah, great.
- [19:08]
A
Matt joined Candice and her co founder, Drew. The Exetus team was growing. Candice was pulling in all her besties. She had her nursing school bestie, Danny Remington, and her doctor husband overseeing the medical team, working with victims. And Aura, Candice's bestie from soccer, who was handling all the admin as the assistant.
- [19:30]
C
When Exodus was introduced to me, it was at a very vulnerable time in my life because I was so ready to give of myself. But with my own choosing. The timing of Candace introducing Exodus and me leaving the Mormon Church and it just was. Sounds like it was meant to be. Because before I had been told, God is telling you to do this. God is telling you to do this, this, this, this. And I'm like, I get to choose how I help people. And she's like, you are perfect for this job because I trust you. And I felt so flattered because I'm like, wow, she. She trusts me. And I said, I don't have any skills. I don't have an education. And she's like, it doesn't matter, because someone could have all the skills in the world, and it doesn't mean that they're trustworthy. So I went in not knowing how to do anything, and I thought that she saw something in me that somebody else wouldn't. It meant a lot to me to be trusted that much. So we took our boys bowling, and we sat in the booth, and she told me about Exodus, and she started telling me about all the different forms of trafficking, explained each one. Sex trafficking, labor trafficking. She talked about child militias and how that's the most horrific thing she's been exposed to. She talked about how these children basically will get higher rankings if they kill Their own mothers. And she talked about organs getting sold on the black market and how this was her secret life, was helping people in this world get out.
- [21:29]
A
Yes. Candice sat and told Aura all about the dark underbelly of the human trafficking world at a bowling alley for children while both of their kids were bold in the background.
- [21:39]
C
It made sense because I knew like she had done some humanitarian work. She's like, this is a brand new organization. But she also did say, this is something we've done secretly for a little while, but we need funds. And so I have decided to put my face out there and put my life on the line by, you know, using my face as the faces of Exodus. We need funds and this is the only way to do it is to become a 501c3 and do fundraising and all.
- [22:12]
A
And that's an official non profit.
- [22:16]
E
Yes. Yeah.
- [22:18]
C
She had a business partner who also had done humanitarian work, had gone on anti trafficking operations before and he seemed great. So I said, what can I do? Like, this is something I want to be a part of. The first event was our first gala. It was during COVID so no one was having events and that should have made us not have an event. But it pushed her harder to be the only people having an event.
- [22:51]
A
The nonprofit community is big in Utah and because of that, so is the gala scene. It's a way to rub shoulders and be seen with Utah's elite organizations, put on fundraising events, galas, and invite people with deep pockets. If Exodus was going to make its mark, it needed to establish itself. Despite the fact that it was in the middle of the pandemic and that Exodus had only existed for a couple of months. Candice planned a Swanky Great Gatsby be themed inaugural gala for 120 people.
- [23:29]
C
She wanted to be that organization that people came to because they were hungry to come outside and do something. So we had a mask made that had the Exodus logo on it and she basically just put it all in my hand of this is what I want, this is what we're doing. And I got excited like to dress up for something and to be a part of something really big and to have all these like important people come and support Exodus and raise money. But I had no idea how to plan a gala and how much work goes into it. She just had me do a lot of random things that were really confusing. But then she just kept putting more and more and more on me and she told me Post Malone was going to be there and his people a.
- [24:19]
A
Big deal for their first gala to have the singer Post Malone come, but he's based in Utah and only lives 30 minutes around the corner from where the gala was held.
- [24:29]
C
So got there early, maybe an hour too early, just to make sure everything was ready to go. Candace wasn't there. And I never experienced late Candice. I was like, she has a car full of stuff that we need for the gala. The guests are here. She has the laptop with the list. I can't check anyone in. And just really fuming. And she gets there. And then she got mad at me because I didn't bring a backup laptop. Ultimately, everyone got their seats. The catering ended up being a nightmare because half of the people didn't get their food until it was over. So there was a lot of embarrassing things about it. But I was like, you know what? This is our first gala. There's going to be big, big mistakes that happen. That's just part of it. But Post Malone didn't come. And I was like, candace, why didn't Post Malone come? And she's like, you know what happened? Our security guys by the front door didn't have their name on the list because when you're a big celebrity, you can't have your name on a list because people will know you're coming. And I was like, okay, sounds, sounds weird, but what do I know? And so she's like, Post Malone's people got there and their name wasn't on the list and so they got turned away. And then she said the cast of Housewives also came and had the same same experience and got turned away. So she was acting so mad that the big names didn't come because security didn't let them in. All these other extremely wealthy people were showing up like very business minded people. And it was just exciting to be a part of something. Overall, the event went well. We had candles on each table, so 17 candles lit per table. And that represented the average number of times someone gets raped a day that is trafficked. So as we sat there through the night, these candles were melting. And just a visual of how horrible that is.
- [26:46]
A
Such a powerful image. It can be hard to wrap your head around. Sex traffickers target victims as young as 9 years old. Because the nature of the crime is so hidden, the statistics are significantly lower than a victim's reality. In one case, a victim who was just 12 when she was first trafficked reported being assaulted 30 times a day over the course of four years. Do you remember how much you raised that night?
- [27:14]
B
No.
- [27:16]
C
When I accepted joining Exodus, there was a Very important condition that I had, and that was I would not touch the finances because I said I am not a professional bookkeeper. And I know that handling money in a nonprofit is very serious. And I refuse to be a part of the finances because I don't want the responsibility. I don't want to get in trouble for anything.
- [27:47]
A
To help people understand the Exeter's cause, Candace asked a sex trafficking survivor to share her story at the gala. Candice told people she rescued the survivor and even gave her one of her fancy dresses to wear. For the purposes of our story, we're not going to use her name, Candace.
- [28:06]
F
She was like, yeah, we're going to do some fundraising. Let's do the gala. And she didn't tell me all of the details. She was like, this is amazing. And I was like, you know, bought into that because I was like, there's just so much I've kept secret my whole life. Candice asked me. She's like, it's gonna be amazing if you tell your story. Like, it's gonna really help people donate to the cause. Like, it wasn't meant to be about me or Candace. She was basically begging me. She's like, please do it. Like, no one else is speaking, it's just you. I was incredibly nervous, so I did it. And I kind of blacked out that speech. I was incredibly open with my story. I'm actually really impressed with how much I could share because it was so raw still. But, yeah, people, there wasn't a dry eye in the room. That was the first time I ever shared my story publicly intentionally to help get funds. Because I was really particular. I didn't want it to be about money. And so that was hard for me in general. But then, yeah, it was kind of cool.
- [29:20]
A
This was the first time the survivor had ever told her story publicly. Candice wanted to continue supporting her and brought her into Exetus as a survivor ambassador.
- [29:31]
F
I met her family, like, her boys, fell in love with them, especially the little one. And then she just asked me to start doing favors for her, like, watching the house. She spent a lot of money. Like, she always was shopping, always was getting food, like, always. It was kind of fun. Like, that was our thing. We'd go for drives and get food. I always loved fries, so that's all I would get. So that was fun. And we'd listen to music. Sometimes we'd talk, or I'd just hear her on phone calls all the time. But then she kept getting more distracted and, like, getting into her work more.
- [30:06]
A
There was Another thing distracting Candace. With Patrick out of the picture, she was single and ready to mingle. She popped into the for the love group, this time with a video to tell them all about the drama in her love life.
- [30:20]
C
Life.
- [30:21]
A
Oh, hi. Hello, and welcome to as the World Turns with Candice.
- [30:28]
F
Do you remember that soap opera?
- [30:30]
A
Like, way back in the day, someone.
- [30:32]
C
Said something about my life.
- [30:33]
A
My name is soap opera right now. And it's kind of funny. This is the actual audio from the video Candace posted. She's kneeling up behind a couch in a white polo neck and glasses, recording selfie style. You can see the ring light in the reflection. Candace didn't hold back any of the juicy details.
- [30:52]
C
He put his hand up my shirt. Just telling you. I'm just gonna say it. It went there was all over.
- [30:58]
F
It was up in who and around. And let me tell you, there's a.
- [31:01]
A
Lost space in here.
- [31:03]
C
And he went in all the places, and I feel like such a dork, because when you're in your 30s and.
- [31:09]
A
You'Re making out and you're like, take my pants off. No, don't take them off. Take them off.
- [31:12]
F
No, take them off.
- [31:13]
A
Take off.
- [31:14]
D
Her phone was always flooded with men. And she would meet these wealthy, successful guys. And I would say, where did this guy come from? Oh, we just met through a gala or an event.
- [31:28]
B
I'm like, you did?
- [31:29]
D
Then I would meet these guys. They wouldn't say a word. They wouldn't even make eye contact with me. And for me, I'm like, that's odd. You're a successful business owner. You should have a lot of confidence in a room. Why are you being sheepish? Why are you seeing, like, seeming like you're tucking into a corner?
- [31:48]
A
She had an account on Seeking Arrangements, and she would tell me she'd go on dates, and she'd get paid for dates. Candice's mops. Bestie Danielle knew all the details of Candice's love life. She was the only one who knew that Candice had opened up an account on the dating website Seeking Arrangements, which is a site that matches sugar daddies with sugar babies. So I was the only one that knew. And she'd tell me, like, this is where I'm going. Here's my address. Drop a pin, like, right out of safety. She would tell me, like, oh, my gosh. Like, it was so weird. Like, they put cash in my purse at the beginning. She was so scared to do it, and she was like, we'll come to the grocery store at the same time. So I would There's a really nice.
- [32:33]
C
Like, salad bar and place that you could sit at the grocery store and.
- [32:37]
A
So, like, would meet people for their there for lunch.
- [32:40]
E
She's like, come shop at the grocery.
- [32:42]
A
Store while I'm here so I don't get abducted. Did she say why she was doing it?
- [32:46]
E
For money, Just to make ends meet.
- [32:49]
A
The survivor from the gala was also a witness to Candice's dating life. She would sometimes be at Candace's house. When Candace would have men over, she.
- [32:57]
F
Would invite me over, and then she would have guys over. I would just leave the area because I was like, I don't want to be involved with this shit. Like, there's a couple times she introduced me, she's like, oh, this is so and so. And I was like, cool. And I just took the kids and had them play games with me upstairs or video games. She would invite me first and then invite the guy. And so I was just like, felt kind of stuck. And she'd be like, don't leave. Like, I want to hang out. Like, it's not. He's not going to stay for too long. It just felt really weird.
- [33:34]
A
There was so much going on in Candice's life. While she was busy trying to find a new boo, she also had to pack up her house and move. Her lease was up at the townhouse, and so she moved to a much bigger place in the suburbs of Lehigh, Utah. She dropped her married name, Led, and changed it back to her maiden name, Rivera. At the same time, she was starting an entirely new business, a marketing and branding house called CR House & Company. CR is in Candice Rivera, and she was getting media attention.
- [34:07]
B
Today I get to do a live.
- [34:09]
A
Interview, which is my favorite type, with one of my best friends, Candace. We're excited to be joined by Candice Rivera today.
- [34:16]
C
I'm the CEO at Exodus, and we run operations covertly. I'm not going to tell you those details.
- [34:22]
A
And Exodus was growing fast. In less than a year after the gala, There was a 5K run fundraiser, and a woman climbed Mount Everest and planted an Exodus flag on the top of it. Even though she only had 24 hours in a day like the rest of us, Candice was somehow the woman who could do everything. Candice's Exeter's co founder, Drew, could hardly keep up with all that was happening.
- [34:48]
G
She would make promises about money that was going to come in, and they would just never happen. She'd, like, call me and be like, I just had the greatest conversation with so and so. He was, like, involved in Some kind of gold mining somewhere, and he was going to contribute $5 million, and then stuff like that would just never happen, and I would never meet those people. I finally said, hey, like, I need to. I need access to the bank account. I need to be able to see what's in there. I need to be able to know how much we actually have.
- [35:20]
A
Candice set up the bank account and still hadn't given Drew access. So he was getting concerned about what was happening with the money.
- [35:27]
G
I said, how much is in the bank account? I need to know how much is in the account right now. We need to know our financial status. She said, somewhere around, like, $30,000. So I finally get access to the bank account and actually looked at it to see, like, okay, how much is actually in here? What transactions have actually happened? There wasn't $30,000 in the bank account. There was just enough money requisite to, like, open the account, essentially several hundred dollars, if I remember right. It was not a substantial amount of money, but. And I realized this project is, like, dead in the water. There's no money there. Where did the money go at that point? That was the kind of the end for me. I realized that, hey, I have a mission that I want to accomplish. I have, like, a good. I want to see in the world. I don't believe anymore that this organization that I've created, tried so hard to create is actually going to be the engine that gets us there. I don't see the money coming in. The co founder I brought in is not responding. She's not getting on calls. She's not being responsible, and she lied to me.
- [36:45]
A
The person Drew trusted to help him build his dream had lied to him. So he wanted to see if there was anything else she'd like.
- [36:53]
G
So I remember looking up her licensure in the division of Occupational and Professional Licensing. Doppel. She had told me about being a nurse practitioner. She was not a nurse practitioner. There was no licensure.
- [37:09]
A
It came as a bit of a shock to us too. Candace did graduate nursing school, but she was never licensed. And to be a nurse, you need to have a license. We searched and searched for any record of Candice having any kind of medical license in the entire United States and couldn't find anything. What we did end up finding was her licensing exam results. Candice took the exam four times and failed all four times. I have a copy of her results here. The exam's broken down into eight sections, and she failed on every single section.
- [37:53]
G
That was kind of like a crushing blow. And so then it was a decision like, okay, well, do I need to leave and start over? Ultimately, that was the decision that I had to take, was to just resign from the organization and assume that they wouldn't survive another six months because they didn't know how to do the impact anyway. I was. The only reason the organization was going to have any impact was because of me. When I left, that was all gone. So I didn't think they'd live another six months as an organization, honestly.
- [38:30]
A
Drew emailed Candice to let her know he no longer had confidence that Exodus would be able to achieve what he wanted it to. He was leaving and going to start out on his own. He sent a letter of resignation to the board explaining his decision. But Candice wasn't going to accept accusations of misconduct on her part and started telling everyone that it was Drew who was undermining the organisation. She called an emergency board meeting and they all voted to kick Drew off the board. The fact that he'd already resigned didn't seem to matter. Drew didn't think Exeter's would last another six months without him, but it did. And now Candice had all the power.
- [39:16]
E
Candice called me on my birthday one year.
- [39:20]
A
This is Marisha. She's a nurse, a real one, we checked, and a psychiatrist with over 30 years in the medical field. She taught Candice back in nursing school. Marisha lived in Wyoming, just over the border from Utah, a little over an hour's drive from Salt Lake City. With Drew gone, Candice needed someone who could work closely with victims on the ground. She needed someone who was really experienced. So she gave Marisha a call.
- [39:47]
E
I said, you know, what are you doing? You know, where are you working and whatnot? And she said, I have started the greatest company. And she started telling me about Exodus. She said, this is right up your alley. I shut off my TV and I stood up and I said, I have goosebumps.
- [40:04]
A
This is amazing.
- [40:06]
E
How can I help? What can I do? And she said, I'm glad you asked. I'm glad you asked. Like, an hour of telling me everything they had done, just. I could literally hear her pacing, telling me about it. She was just almost like she was manic. And we do this. We do this for Danny. Danny is our director of nursing and her husband is a doctor. Medical director. And I want you to be our psychiatric. I want you to do all of that and you be that medical director.
- [40:36]
C
I said.
- [40:39]
E
Have you slept? She goes, well, actually, no. And I'm like, you need to take a nap. I can't just fly off and do all of that stuff. I have a practice. What do you need? Right now? We have someone that we've rescued that's actually been found several times. Multiple safe houses. They've been found by the cartel. Do you think you have a place we could hide her and help get her off heroin there in Wyoming?
- [41:07]
A
Drugs are often used as a way to control victims of sex trafficking and stop them from escaping.
- [41:13]
C
And I was like, you're looking for.
- [41:15]
E
Some sort of a rehab in Wyoming? She goes, no, you can just get her off heroin there in some hotel. And I went, what? What? Well, you know how to do that. And I'm like, yes, I know how to do that. But what? Back up. Then I talked to the team, and they had a plan for bringing this girl to Evanston, Wyoming. And I talked to them, and it made a little bit more sense how they do things and what they do to keep people safe and yada, yada, yada. She sent me their tactical plan for clandestine services, and I was like, okay, that actually makes sense. I can deal with that.
- [41:58]
A
Of course.
- [41:59]
E
I'm happy to help. So she gave me all of that contact information. I talked to our pharmacy about the medications we were going to need, and we made arrangements, and I talked to her tactical services people and the people that were coming up from Utah, and we housed this girl in a local hotel, and we took care of her for about a week. She told me where Candace had found her on the street in Salt Lake City, and she was definitely coming off heroin and that the people in the cartel and the gang had found her at various safe houses several times. She was supposed to testify against this person, and they were going to kill her if they kept finding her. They had her under pretty close guard and, you know, managed to get her tidied up in about six days. They did a great job.
- [42:55]
A
That was Marisha's first taste of Exodus. Her and the team successfully got the victim out of you, Utah, and saved her life. Marisha officially joined Exodus and took on the role of director of clinical outreach. Everyone was still under the impression that Candice did have her nursing license. Drew might have discovered that Candice wasn't a licensed nurse, but Candice tarnished his name when he left. He disappeared and never told anyone what he'd found out. Nobody heard from him again. Aura on board of Marisha Aura had been a part of Exetus for a year now as the assistant and was working full time without getting paid. As life started to return to normal during COVID times aura couldn't sustain the commitment for free any longer.
- [43:49]
C
I approached Kenneth and I said, I've got to walk away because if I'm putting in this many hours a week, I've got to look for a job somewhere else. And we were in the car when I said that, and she was kind of quiet and just thinking and she's like, how about I have you be my assistant and so you can do your same role you're doing now and on top of that, be my assistant. And I said, I would love to so I could keep doing the same things but get paid. She started having me run a lot of personal errands. So then I started being frustrated with that because I'm like, if the donors are paying me to work with trafficking victims and I'm running to the store and doing her returns for her, that, like, I don't think they would be okay with that. And then she mentioned that she was stressing about making enough money to pay me. And then I felt so bad about my attitude. Basically. I didn't want her to feel like her money was going to waste. Like, I just worked harder and I was happy to do it up until the Afghanistan operation. And then things really shifted. That's really when things started went south.
- [45:12]
A
Afghanistan felt like really far out there to me.
- [45:15]
C
I was like, where's this coming from? And it was this built up.
- [45:20]
E
I was asked by Hillary Clinton to get people out.
- [45:24]
C
They bought a lot of weapons.
- [45:26]
F
There was lots of guns and money. There was one time I went over to the house when no one was.
- [45:31]
C
There and there were weapons spread, like.
- [45:36]
F
All throughout the living room. I walked in and I saw like these big AK47s just chilling outside their case.
- [45:47]
D
All the gear total, like there was a million dollars worth. For sure it was. We had an arm.
- [46:04]
A
This has been Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills and hosted and executive produced by me, Charlie Webster. Unicorn Girl is produced by me, Charlie Webster and Jackson McLennan. Original score and theme music by Ryan Sorenson, editing and sound design by Nico Polella, assistant producer and fact checking by Emmy Jory. Candice's social media posts are also read by Emmy Jory, mixed by Little Big Room, Additional production support by Fun Meter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.