Partners in Crime, Partners in Recovery

Criminals. Then cellmates. Now father-and-son are turning the page together.

In recovery circles, a common ghost unites us all, but our paths are as imitable as our own fingerprints.

A man I live with in this sober community told me his remarkable story, and with his permission, I’m sharing a small fraction of it. It’s the stuff of holy shit non-fiction — dark, hopeful, and urgent.

We’ll call him Jack. He lives in the room next door to mine. We hear each other snore through the wall. This week we are on coffee duty together. He is compassionate, funny, and an astonishing storyteller.

This is a father-and-son story like no other. I’ll try to be brief. Because I want you to stay with it.

“As soon as I held him in my arms as a baby, I knew we’d always be best friends.”

A tough life landed Jack “into the drug scene at 13,” he tells me. Heavy stuff. Crack, coke, heroin. Hard to kick, and even harder to avoid crime that covers the costs — the cost of living, the cost of survival, the cost of addiction.

Fast forward years. Jack hears that his son is exploring the same path. Fentanyl was lacing lives and collecting dead kids. Jack wanted to help his son, as counterintuitive his method seemed to straight society.

“I couldn’t stop him and I didn’t want him hiding it,” says Jack. “So I gave him numbers for safe suppliers so I knew he’d be alright.”

After being kicked out of his mother’s house, the boy joined Jack, and the father-son bond solidified. That relationship quickly manifested in a life of crime together. Jack ultimately wanted his son safe, and crime was safer under a parent’s watch.

“[My son] said he had to know how to do it all, and that it was something he needed to do. So I showed him, and we were together from then on.”

They were inseparable. They started running a phone to sell coke. They became one of the main arteries of heroin distribution on the Island. There was money, escorts, and a skewed sense of adventure. They robbed at gunpoint. They stole over 50 vehicles together.

“We’ve been in a hundred high speed police chases,” says Jack. “We always got away because of a rule that if you’re doing over 120 and a danger to the public, the cops have to pull over.”

But addiction and crime always come to collect. The father and son exploits gave way to the drudgery of survival.

“We were stealing copper out of the sewers, which is an act of terrorism if you get caught messing with infrastructure.”

Trap houses. Tents. Streets. Dirty needles. Sleeping in shifts. Scoring. Nodding off. But always together.

Jack tells the story of a police officer who once pulled them over and admonished him for dragging his son into a life of crime.

“I told him if my son wants to be a pirate, I can’t stop him from being a pirate. But at least if I’m there being a pirate with him, we were going to be the best goddam pirates we could be.”

Jack quietly laughs with a sense of pride when he tells me the cop paused and considered this.

“He said he kind of admired it. He said ‘OK, I see where you’re going with this, man.’”

Police patience eventually ran out. Father and son went to prison. And there, they were together again — this time, as cellmates.

“No one in jail had ever seen a father-and-son duo sharing a cell. But it was comfortable. We were used to each other. And again, I knew he was safe.”

Out of prison, Jack faced a fork in a road, one littered with drugs and debris behind him.

“I was completely broken, a heroin addict. I was so tired. I couldn’t do it alone.”

One day while Jack was hiding out in the woods, his son pulled up in a new truck loaded with stolen merchandise, ready to get the ball rolling again.

“I told him ‘I don’t want stuff anymore, son. I only want you. You mean everything to me.’”

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In what Jack calls an inexplicable connection, both men applied to the same treatment centre without knowing. Today, Jack is here. Clean, sober, and solid. His son is still doing time and they support each other over the phone.

“He said ‘dad I’m really proud of you for doing this, it’s so awesome you’ve made this decision on your own.’”

Jack has been waiting for his boy to come through these doors any day, but his son was denied bail just last week. Everyone in Jack’s supportive circle are convinced his son will soon be here with us. And father-and-son will be partners again, in recovery and reinvention.

“I now see us one day reintegrating into the community. I can see light at the end of tunnel.”

Jack finishes our talk with a line his son recently told him. It’s the one that seems to mean the most.

“I can’t wait to look up to you again, dad.”

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