Chapter 12: By 8 a Petty Thief, By 28 a Full-Out Gangster
I was stealing small things by the time I was eight years old. Back then, stores were simple—just a checker at the register and maybe one guy stocking shelves. No cameras. No security. Just aisles full of opportunity.
The little strip mall was only a block from our house, and it became our playground. We hung out there most of our childhood. Why wouldn’t we? It had everything we needed. Hungry? Grab a bag of chips. Thirsty? Swipe a soda. Need money? Snag something somebody wanted and sell it for cash.
The stores were our hangout—and our supply chain. They stocked everything we wanted to steal. We weren’t getting money from our parents, and we weren’t asking. We figured it out ourselves. That strip mall was our economy, our hustle, our training ground.
I must’ve been a pretty good thief, because I don’t remember ever getting caught. We were slick. Fast. Smart. We knew the blind spots, the routines, the timing. It was instinct.
And when we needed legit cash, we’d hit Schnucks and turn in soda bottles. A couple bucks went a long way back then. Chips, candy, maybe even a comic book. It wasn’t about greed—it was about survival. About independence. About learning how to move.
By the time I was 28, I wasn’t just stealing chips—I was running deals, collecting debts, and moving weight. I’d gone from petty thief to full-out gangster. The stakes were higher, the risks sharper, but the instincts were the same. Read the room. Know the angles. Stay ahead.
Looking back, it’s wild how early it started. How the strip mall became the classroom. How soda bottles turned into bundles of cash. How a kid with sticky fingers became a man with street power.
But that’s the story. That’s the arc. That’s the truth.
By 8 a Petty Thief, By 28 a Full-Out Gangster (continued)
By the time I was ten, my world revolved around two places: the woods behind our house and the Grandview Plaza shopping center. That plaza was everything. Life would’ve been a different story without it. It wasn’t just a place to shop—it was our playground, our hangout, our hustle zone.
We were always running through the stores. Ducking in and out, grabbing snacks, scoping out what we could swipe or flip. There was even a cinema at Grandview Plaza. If we had a few bucks—or a few soda bottles to cash in—we’d catch a movie. If not, we’d just loiter, laugh, and stir up harmless trouble.
By day, I was a Catholic school kid. Uniform, discipline, rules. By afternoon, I was either deep in the woods or roaming the shopping center. The best of both worlds. Structure by day, freedom by night.
We walked home from school, so carrying books was out of the question. Not that it mattered—I never really got good grades anyway. I wasn’t built for classrooms. I was built for motion. For instinct. For figuring things out on the fly.
Life was exciting, to say the least.
J.C. Penney’s had a TV section, and we’d wander in just to kill time. Sit there like we were shopping, but really just watching whatever was on. It was our version of hanging out at home—only with better screens and no parents.
We had to be home for dinner by six. That was the rule. Both parents worked, so they weren’t hovering. They had no clue what we were up to most days. And that was fine by us. We had freedom. We had a crew. We had a rhythm.
I also loved playing sports. Baseball, football, whatever was in season. That was happening too. Between the woods, the plaza, and the ball fields, my days were full. Fast. Loud. Wild.
Looking back, it’s easy to see how it all started. The independence. The hustle. The thrill of figuring things out without a roadmap. I wasn’t just surviving—I was learning how to move. How to read people. How to stay one step ahead.
Chapter 12: By 8 a Petty Thief, By 28 a Full-Out Gangster (continued)
When I was 11, all five of us went to summer camp. That was the first time I was around kids who were ten times worse than we ever thought about being. I mean, we thought we were bad—stealing chips, skipping homework, running through the plaza—but these kids? Whole different league.
They were full-blown juvenile delinquents. Loud, wild, foul-mouthed. We didn’t even cuss that much. Sure, we’d drop a word here or there, but these kids didn’t know any word that wasn’t a cuss word. Every sentence was a string of profanity, like they were trying to set records.
I remember thinking, “Damn… maybe we’re not so bad after all.” Turns out, we were probably just normal for our age. Mischievous, sure. But not reckless. Not broken.
Summer camp was a real learning experience. Not just the activities or the counselors—but the exposure. Seeing how other kids lived. How they acted. How they carried pain or chaos in ways we hadn’t yet.
All in all, it was fun. We were just out of our league when it came to being “bad.” We learned a whole new dictionary of cuss words that summer. Stuff we’d never even heard before. And while we didn’t come back hardened, we came back changed. A little wiser. A little tougher. A little more aware.
Those kids were a group of problem children. No doubt about it. But they taught us something. About the world. About survival. About how lucky we were to have a strip mall and soda bottles and woods to run through.
We learned a bunch that summer—lessons that would last a lifetime.
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