A frightening incident followed by an act of human kindness pushes Darryl to confront his drug addiction and determine what makes life worth living.
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Transcript
JOLIE HALES
A quick note before we get started. This story contains scenarios involving drug use, as well as an accident involving a child that may be difficult to hear for sensitive listeners. But if it’s any comfort, I promise we won’t be leaving you on a low note. Ok, let’s get started.
There’s a saying that has stuck with me over the years, and it goes something like this -- “Treat people as though they’re already the person they could become, and they’ll be more likely to become that person.”
I can’t count the times where I have worked so much harder to do something well or to meet a goal, because someone believed or even expected me to do it, and do it well. It’s one thing to set a standard for yourself and then strive to achieve it, but when other people believe you can and will achieve that goal, especially when you yourself are doubting -- it amps up the motivation.
But what about when the task at hand seems impossible? Does belief from others make any difference at all?
Today’s story is about exactly this -- a life on the verge of very destruction where few people believed change was possible.
Until someone did.
I’m Jolie Hales, and this is Podsitivity.
Long blond rocker hair on a man in his 60s isn’t the norm, unless your name is Darryl Reilly.
DARRYL
I've looked like this since the 70s and it's just who I am...
JOLIE HALES
And it’s not just the hair. It’s the rock and roll t-shirts. It’s his necklaces, his voice, even the very way he presents himself. Darryl is simply a product of honest rock and roll enthusiasm, and cutting his hair is just out of the question.
DARRYL
I wouldn't be me. I wouldn't be recognizable. I think it would just change me, too, if I did.
JOLIE HALES
By profession, Darryl is in sales. But beyond offering merchant services to retailers and restaurant owners is his real passion -- playing guitar.
DARRYL
I'm a Les Paul player. That's a certain classic sound from the 70s and people either like Les Pauls or Stratocasters. I definitely like Les Paul. I love the crunch and the thickness of the sound and the way it comes through..
JOLIE HALES
And he’s been inspired by classic rock bands over the decades.
DARRYL
You know, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath old Aerosmith. I just love that kind of stuff. Old blues stuff. All that other stuff people have never heard of.
JOLIE HALES
Over the years, Darryl has played guitar in a number of local bands. These days, he often finds himself easily the oldest member of the band, but often with the youngest enthusiasm.
DARRYL
Yeah, I'm a 60 year old teenager..
JOLIE HALES
Ever since he was young, he’s been found with a guitar in his hands. His friend, Skip, another like-minded rock and roll enthusiast, remembers growing up with Darryl.
SKIP
Daryl was part of a group of guys that grew up near our church.
JOLIE HALES
In those days, getting together to jam was the preferred pastime for many of the people in their bustling Southern California subdivision. In fact, guitarists Dave Mustaine of the bands Metallica and Megadeth, as well as Mark Norton from the band Kiss -- both grew up in that same area.
SKIP
All those homes were built around the same time. So all these young parents moved in and within a few years, all their kids were the same age and they all started rock bands.
JOLIE HALES
At one point, Skip’s latest band broke up, so he started a new one called “the Shades,” where Darryl filled in as interim guitarist while their new guitarist got up to speed. And since those days playing with the Shades, Skip and Darryl crossed paths over the years through their mutual love for playing rock and roll.
Those were the good ole’ days, when more radio stations blasted classic rock, and long loose locks were ever the norm.
And for some, like Darryl, those days never really ended.
But that’s not to say that there weren’t some bumps in the road of his life. Some big bumps, even, where the guitar sat untouched and gathering dust, its owner removed from the world that was once his pleasant reality.
Days where it wasn’t even certain if Darryl would live to play another day.
It started in the 1980s. Darryl, in his 20s, had been living a good life filled with music and friends, when a woman introduced something to his friend group that would turn his life -- as it often does -- in an unplanned and undesirable direction.
Methamphetamine.
DARRYL
When we first started doing it, I started telling my friends. Look, this is no good. Look how bad you feel the next day, it can't be good. I couldn't talk them into it and I finally went along with it and then my life became a mess. I didn't know how to live again live without it anymore. It was just a mess.
JOLIE HALES
Meth, or “speed” as it’s often known, is a drug with the reputation of destroying countless lives over the decades. In the year 2020, nearly 1% of the U.S. population reported that they had used meth in the last 12 months, making its current use numbers not as epidemic as the current opioid crisis, but still problematic enough that each of us probably knows someone struggling with meth, whether we know it or not.
In fact, I had a colleague a few years ago just vanish from the office and never come back, sending weird emails at odd hours in the night and kinda saying some crazy things in these messages, and my suspicion based on the circumstances and what I knew, was a meth addiction. To this day, I haven’t even been able to reach my friend, and I don’t know what has become of her and her young child. Needless to say, meth can be quite destructive.
The drug is known for putting a person into a sort of state of euphoria, where they feel like they can take on the world, and they become hyperactive and talkative, moving much faster and more erratically than usual, while having very little appetite and they often skip eating anything at all. Their heart races, they sweat, they feel hyper alert, and when that euphoric state starts to wear off, many will seek out more drugs to try to keep it going.
DARRYL
You’re euphoric. That’s one of the worst things about it because you feel so good, you don't realize your life is crumbling around you.
JOLIE HALES
But while its users may feel euphoric, that sense of euphoria is a lie. In reality, the drug is eating away at their body, and while it’s incredibly addictive, even a single dose can have lasting physical consequences. Meth is made with toxic ingredients found in nail polish remover and flame retardants, and it can cause seizures, strokes, heart attacks, and death, among a long list of a lot of other adverse effects, like how it destroys your teeth and blotches up your face, and all that other stuff. And as you can imagine, over time, it can really mess you up.
And in the 80s, it entered Darryl’s life. And with the entrance of meth came the exit of much of the good around him.
DARRYL
It's real powerful stuff. Then once in a while you have to sleep for three days and come down because you can't move. You haven't been eating, you haven't been sleeping. It's horrible on your body. It's a miserable life. You sit there and you you watch normal people know you can't do that.
JOLIE HALES
Suddenly he couldn’t keep a job.
DARRYL
Before that, I, you know, I had jobs as good. I was responsible. Everything's good. Then everything got such a mess. I used to work at First American Title. I got booted out of there for doing drugs.
JOLIE HALES
After years, he found himself unable to keep an apartment, and was soon living in a motel, but couldn’t even keep himself together enough to stay there.
DARRYL
I got kicked out of one into another one. So you'd pay for every day and then hope you had enough money the next day to get in a room. It was just terrible. I would walk around being a crazy guy. Everybody knew I was a crazy guy. Regular people didn't want nothing to do with me, and I don't blame them and there was a lot of self hatred. I didn't like myself anymore.
JOLIE HALES
Eventually, he ended up getting a job with a fundraising scam, where he would call and swindle kindhearted individuals to give up large sums of money to a false charity.
DARRYL
I'd show up to work, they would have a pack of cigarettes ready, and an issue of speed for me, when I walked in the door because they knew if they gave me my speed and my cigarettes, I'd be there all day and make 'em money. Where you call up and pick on people and get money from them for charities, where the charity got very little of it.
JOLIE HALES
This so-called “charity” company had a reputation of hiring people with drug problems, because they would be most desperate for work and the least likely to report anything to authorities.
DARRYL
Everybody in there was a drug addict.
JOLIE HALES
In fact, years later, the owner of this charity scam company ended up being sentenced to almost 100 months in federal prison for personally collecting millions of dollars through all these charity scams. But throughout the 90s, they were running at full scale.
DARRYL
You'd have these charities that has had good sounding names, but they got very little. I got 35% right off the bat and then it went on. It was just horrible. You'd pick on the same people because you knew they would just keep giving and that, that was bad.
JOLIE HALES
And for years, this was Darryl’s existence. A drug addiction, a scam for a job, and living in motels.
DARRYL
Then all of a sudden, I met a girl. Than we got pregnant.
JOLIE HALES
Uh oh. This amp’d things up a notch, to say the least. It’s one thing to live a reckless life on your own, but once you introduce an innocent child to the picture, it’s a whole different story.
Lawrence, a baby boy, was born on May 27, 1996.
DARRYL
A beautiful little boy.
JOLIE HALES
And instantly, Darryl was terrified. Suddenly, he had a responsibility he couldn’t brush aside, but he was also deep into his addiction and had been for years.
He didn’t know what he was going to do.
DARRYL
We had a kid and I knew I'm in a mess. I've got to something here. This is a mess. I’ve got a kid to raise.
JOLIE HALES
The baby’s mom, who we’ll call Melinda to protect her privacy, had originally shared in Darryl’s drug partying lifestyle, but she pretty much dropped the drugs from her life and decided she wanted to be the parent that this baby deserved.
But Darryl, who knew in his heart that he needed to change, couldn’t pull himself out of the deep hole he had dug all these years. Even throughout his girlfriend’s pregnancy and the birth of their child, Darryl continued to be addicted to meth.
DARRYL
You hated yourself. You knew what you were doing was wrong but you didn't know how to not do it anymore.
JOLIE HALES
Despite the addiction, Darryl knew he loved this little baby he had helped bring into the world, even allowing for some good moments.
In fact, ironically, the motel they were living in was directly across the street from one of the world’s most iconic destinations for happiness: Disneyland.
Sometimes, Darryl would take his newborn baby outside at night to watch the Disneyland fireworks over the motel rooftop, or walk across the street and watch the water shows just outside the gate.
DARRYL
I would take Lawrence over there and ride the parking lot tram, because he's a little kid, and he would think he'd been to Disneyland and been on a ride. And it was like, I can't go in there, that's not for me. That's for regular people. That's for real people.
JOLIE HALES
Regular people, who didn’t have a meth addiction. And Darryl just couldn’t shake his.
DARRYL
It's just miserable. You know you're doing wrong, but you don't know how to do anything else. You know it's wrong. The first thing you do every day is try to get that fix -- get those drugs. And until you do that, everything's messed up. It's just a miserable, horrible existence.
JOLIE HALES
Melinda, living in the motel with Darryl where she was trying to care for a newborn, was starting to get frustrated. Now that she was pretty much straight, she could see her boyfriend, her baby’s father, wasting his life away with drugs. He was rarely home, and when he was, he was in no state to be a true companion and father.
Then in October of 1996, when little Lawrence was four months old, everything came to a boiling point.
They had a fight.
DARRYL
She was really done with me. I had just been gone for a couple days on a bender and she was done.
JOLIE HALES
Melinda had stuck around for months, hoping Darryl could turn things around for their son. But it wasn’t working.
DARRYL
I was really bad. This was my fault. All this was my fault. I was really bad. I hated myself. I loved my son. I didn't realize how bad it got. I thought it was getting better because I was doing it less, but it was bad.
JOLIE HALES
So Melinda scooped up their baby and tried to walk out -- intending to stay with family until she could figure out her next move.
But Darryl wouldn’t let her take their son. He grabbed the child and the fight continued, with Darryl refusing to give the boy back to his mother.
DARRYL
I took the baby from her when she was leaving. I mean, I was a really bad person. I took him. I wasn't lettin' her take my son.
JOLIE HALES
Finally, in the exhaustion of the fight, Melinda only agreed to leave without the baby under the agreement that Darryl would take the baby to his father’s house for the night. And that’s what happened. Darryl brought the baby to his dad’s house for the evening.
But Darryl didn’t stay there for long. Early the next morning, before he could even have a quality conversation with his dad, he grabbed baby Lawrence and he disappeared, heading back home -- if you can call a motel a home. And when he got there, he did what he always did. He got high.
And, if you’re like me, this story is already painful enough -- even aggravating. To imagine this helpless, innocent baby in these circumstances is just heart wrenching, and it's not hard to become even infuriated at parents who put children in these circumstances. So if you’re feeling along those lines, you’re not alone. What Darryl was doing was not ok, and it was only a matter of time before there were some dire consequences.
And as fate would have it, those consequences would play out beginning that very day.
It was October 8th, 1996, in the city of Anaheim, home to Darryl and Melinda’s motel.
Melinda was still staying with family after their fight when Darryl had already left his father’s home.
Later that day, in the middle of the afternoon, Darryl wanted to make a phone call, but in the mid-1990s, people didn’t have cell phones, and residents of this motel were only allowed to make five outbound calls per week from their in-room phones, which Darryl had already done. So to make his call, he’d need to walk down the street to the nearest gas station pay phone.
And even though he was still high, Darryl knew it wasn’t acceptable to leave a four-month-old baby by itself in a motel room, so he scooped up baby Lawrence and stepped outside.
The sun was still shining and the weather was a comfortable Southern California 70 degrees.
Darryl hadn’t walked far from their motel when he decided to cross West Street at the intersection with Katella - a busy multi-lane resort intersection near the Disneyland parking lot and the Anaheim Convention Center.
Witness accounts vary slightly and so details are a little muddy here, but it appears that Darryl, who was high on meth, stepped into the intersection almost directly in front of a car, giving the driver little time to respond. Before he knew what was happening, the sedan plowed into Darryl’s legs at around 40 miles per hour, launching him over the hood and into the windshield and partially onto the car roof, while baby Lawrence flew out of his arms, across probably around six lanes of the entire width of busy Katella street, and then landed on the pavement legs and head-first, bent at the waist, on the other side of the street. Darryl rolled off the car and onto the asphalt in a sort of this hyper daze.
It was an awful scene. Immediately onlookers stopped their cars and rushed to Darryl and the baby, who were separated by quite a distance, which is a testament to the sheer force of the impact.
Thankfully, baby Lawrence was alive, but was badly injured with two broken legs and clear head trauma.
Darryl, laying on the pavement with people surrounding him, remembers feeling no pain at all, despite having multiple broken bones. Likely an effect of being high on meth.
DARRYL
I remember very little about this accident. I remember laying down there and knew I didn't even hurt. No pain. I didn't realize how that I was hurt. Had a bone stickin' out of my leg. I mean, I was in really bad shape. So I said, is my son okay? It is the only little thing I remember, they said, yes, he's over there. Oh, I'm gonna go get him.
JOLIE HALES
Darryl tried to get up to find his baby, but the people around him held him down, perplexed at his apparent inability to feel pain despite his consciousness.
An ambulance arrived minutes after the accident and rushed Baby Lawrence to UCI Medical Center’s trauma unit, located just a couple miles away. And another ambulance arrived to treat Darryl.
Many of the police on the scene recognized Darryl from past run-ins, and they assisted the medical team and traffic control, with some quietly seething with dislike for the man or saddened by the predictability of the situation. The news media -- newspaper and TV reporters from all the major Southern California networks, soon showed up and reported on the incident. The story of the auto-pedestrian collision involving a father and baby became a front page news story.
The driver of the car, a teenage girl who was clearly shaken, but thankfully unharmed, stayed at the scene and cooperated with police.
DARRYL
Then the next thing I remember is them putting me in the ambulance and me talking to the ambulance people like everything's okay. I had no idea I was hurt so bad. Just in complete shock -- no pain.
JOLIE HALES
The ambulance rushed Darryl to the same UCI medical center trauma unit, where he quickly went into surgery.
DARRYL
Then I remember waking up on the gurney. I'm being pushed, and an ex-girlfriend happened to work at that hospital. A girlfriend before I got messed up. I just remember looking up and seeing her crying her eyes out, and I just said, "Hi Cat." I mean, it was just so -- I had no idea. I was hurt like this. It's a good thing, because I don't have nightmares. I would be if -- I don't remember much. And then, the next thing I remember is the next day that I've had, they had put rods in my legs and arms. I was going through a surgery the next day. The doctor is telling me what was going on, being surrounded by five doctors, all with glum looks on their face. My legs swelled up. It was just really bad. I couldn't talk at first because I had tubes down my throat.
JOLIE HALES
Sufficeth to say, Darryl was a physical mess.
And down the hall was the most innocent person in this story -- little baby Lawrence -- Who by the grace of God, turned out to be incredibly resilient. After flying across a wide and busy street and landing on the asphalt, his body proved to be strong. He was put into a body cast from the waist down and bandaged on his head, and it wasn’t long before he was smiling at doctors and nurses, despite his unconventional plaster baby clothes.
DARRYL
We should have been killed. We both should have been killed. The doctor had told my brother, when he was there signing papers that this is all a formality. People that get hurt like this don't live. They probably won't be alive tomorrow.
JOLIE HALES
But yet, they were alive. After a horrible, stupid mistake born of a serious, life-destroying addiction.
And for the first time, with no meth in reach, that really started to hit Darryl.
He had soon gone into surgery upon arriving at the hospital, where rods were put into his broken legs, linked to fixators to keep them from moving.
And when Darryl opened his eyes, it was the first time since before the accident that his judgment wasn’t clouded from methamphetamine.
His high was over, and he realized just what he had done.
DARRYL
Just immediately, just remorse. It was just horrible.
JOLIE HALES
He had recklessly stepped into traffic, not only risking his own life, but the life of those driving on the roads. He could have caused a multiple-car accident and injured others. And worst of it all -- he had been holding a baby -- his own baby. A sweet, innocent child who despite Darryl’s drug abuses, he truly did love -- a child who looked up to his father with resounding dependence and trust. Even now, that sweet child, recovering in his own hospital room, had no idea that the cause of his newfound pain was that of his daddy.
And now that the drugs had worn off, Darryl knew it. He knew it, and the thought twisted his insides in such a way he had never felt before. This was his fault. No excuses. No denials. The news reporters, the police, the teenage girl behind the wheel -- all were at the corner of Katella and West because of him. But beyond all of them -- Forget that the public was learning about the foolish father who had stepped into traffic. That didn’t matter. What did matter was the fifteen-pound little boy rooms away. His baby Lawrence.
The thought tore him apart.
DARRYL
I realized everything was bad -- my son was hurt and all this. It was all because of me.
JOLIE HALES
Darryl wasn’t the only one facing the horror of what happened.
Melinda, who had returned to the motel room expecting to find her baby and boyfriend there waiting for her, instead found an empty room, with no sign of either of them.
DARRYL
She comes back to the hotel looking for us, somebody stops her. "Oh, they're at the hospital." "Oh, who are they visiting? What's goin' on there?" "No, they're in the hospital. They're hurt. They got hit."
JOLIE HALES
Horrified to learn from others at the motel that her baby was not at the hospital to visit someone with Darryl, but was actually admitted to the hospital trauma unit after being in a serious auto-pedestrian accident, Melinda -- struggling to keep herself together -- headed straight for UCI Medical Center.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Melinda for this episode, but as a mom myself, I can’t imagine stepping into the hospital room and seeing my child for the first time after an accident like that. “Heart wrenching” doesn’t begin to describe what it must have been like.
And at the same time, I can’t imagine the mother’s fury she must have felt toward Darryl for being responsible for the whole thing.
And as Darryl tells it, there definitely was fury.
DARRYL
All of a sudden, she shows up at the hospital and she's mad at me again. She had just been to see the baby and then she's mad at me, which I don't blame her, to the point that the nurse was gonna kick her out of the room and I told her -- I couldn't talk, and I'm like -- no, no, it's okay. It's okay.
JOLIE HALES
Right there in the hospital, Melinda let Darryl have it.
She railed into Darryl with anger, despair, exasperation -- every emotion we could possibly imagine.
And after she hashed everything out in front of Darryl, who was laying near motionless in his hospital bed, she did something I found to be unexpected -- even very surprising.
She forgave him.
And it’s one thing to forgive someone for their part in a horrific situation, but it’s quite another to choose to keep that person in your life. And yet, that’s exactly what Melinda did.
Maybe it was because she finally saw an opportunity for Darryl to really come clean -- to rid himself of this horrible addiction, or maybe she just couldn’t picture her life without him, or had a picture in her mind of what he could become -- a picture that Darryl himself had probably forgotten years ago.
Whatever the reason, Melinda did not break up with Darryl at that moment, but instead chose to stay by his side as he recuperated from the accident, and beyond.
And, I mean, I don’t know about you, but I highly doubt I would have stuck around for even five seconds. But -- you know, really, I also don’t know what it would be like to be in their shoes, and come from their backgrounds, right? So whether others thought she was incredibly kindhearted or incredibly foolish, Melinda chose to stay with Darryl.
And she stayed by his side for 26 years.
But there was another influencing factor in this story -- what would happen to Baby Lawrence.
When Darryl’s blood test results came back positive for having meth in his system at the time of the accident, it became clear that his custody was no place for a child, yet alone a young baby.
So social services came and put Baby Lawrence in the custody of the state. After spending a few weeks at the hospital, Baby Lawrence was placed with a special foster mother who had experience working with injured children, while social services searched for a long term foster family.
DARRYL
It was a special trained woman that took injured babies, and she didn't like me either, but I don't blame her. I don't blame anybody for not liking me at that time. I didn't like me, how could anybody else?
JOLIE HALES
Given the circumstances, it seemed pretty clear to many at the state that Baby Lawrence would never again live with his biological parents, and that he would grow up most likely in the custody of adopted parents. I mean, after all, they had seen so many addictions ruin families, never to be repaired.
DARRYL
They couldn't leave him with somebody like me who took them out high and got him hurt like that. And they really wanted me to fail. They hated me. I was hated. I got a baby hurt. I was hated, I hated myself for it, too.
JOLIE HALES
While Darryl had been found with drugs in his system at the time of the accident, he didn’t have any physical drugs in his possession at the time that would lead to criminal prosecution. But while it appeared he wouldn’t be going to jail, his home wasn’t a huge step up from that. Remember -- Darryl and Melinda lived in a motel, making them fit how many would define the term “homeless.”
And a motel is no place for a baby to grow up.
So just like that -- their baby was gone.
And Melinda and Darryl were faced with do or die circumstances. Straighten up, get life on track in a permanent way, or never live with their son again.
DARRYL
I think she knew we either had to do this together or give him up. I mean, she was just a good hearted person. She believed in me. She saw something in me that I didn't know I saw.
JOLIE HALES
But was getting Baby Lawrence back even possible? Aside from cleansing their lives from addiction, going through required counseling and taking a number of classes required by the state, they would need to earn enough money to get out of motel and into an apartment, but Darryl was virtually immobilized in a hospital bed -- it would clearly be weeks before he would be discharged, and then who knows how long it would be after that before he could walk again, let alone work again. Melinda’s ability to work was already drastically reduced by injuries and disabilities sustained growing up from a sad combination of childhood abuse and a debilitating car accident. There was no way she could dig them out of the financial hole all by herself.
And she couldn’t help but wonder, was there any hope at all?
What she didn’t know was that just a few blocks away, an old friend was thinking about the accident.
SKIP
I remember somebody either calling me or telling me about it, and I was just floored because it was such a terrible accident. I didn't know if he was alive. I didn't know if Lawrence was alive.
JOLIE HALES
Remember Skip? The fellow rock band enthusiast who had crossed paths with Darryl in various bands growing up?
It had been years since Skip and Darryl had had any contact. Probably more than a decade.
SKIP
I didn't even know they were in a motel locally. I knew nothing..
JOLIE HALES
Skip was sad to learn not only of the accident, but how Darryl’s life had plummeted beforehand.
SKIP
But he was still a friend, he was still a Shade.
JOLIE HALES
While other former friends of Darryl’s were saddened by the news, most people did what most of us do in these circumstances -- Prayed for the best and moved on with their lives until they got further news.
But for Skip, the thought of the accident, his old bandmate, the struggles of addiction, and a little innocent baby gnawed at him throughout the day. He couldn’t just let it go.
So after asking around, he tracked down a tearful Melinda at her motel, where he was thankful to learn that both Darryl and the baby had actually survived the accident.
SKIP
I asked her what the situation was -- it was really hopeless. They had nothing. I mean nothing. And they were going to get -- if I'm not mistaken, they were gonna get evicted from the motel. So they were done.
JOLIE HALES
While Darryl and Baby Lawrence had survived, their family’s story was still this tragedy unfolding before Skip’s eyes.
SKIP
I said, you know, where you gonna go? And she was just like, "We have nowhere to go. We have no money. There's no income. Darryl can't work, obviously."
JOLIE HALES
Skip offered what words of kindness and support he could to the broken woman in front of him, and then he left, pondering her words.
At the time, Skip was actually vice president of a local record label, where he got to stay close to the music he loved. And before that, he had worked in public affairs for a rock and roll radio station.
So the thought hit him -- Why not use his public affairs background to help this family?
So he did what he knew how to do from his time working at the radio station. He called a press conference. And wouldn’t you know it -- the press actually showed up. So he stood in front of a room filled with newspaper reporters, and said --
SKIP
I said, look, we have a family in crisis, you know, they have no place to to live. They've got nothing. You know, the father and the child got into this horrible accident. If the baby survives, and, you know, if the father survives, they're gonna need a place, a safe place. And so we wanted to start up a fund where people could donate.
JOLIE HALES
He outlined a process where people could donate money to help Darryl’s family. And the reporters, many of whom were already familiar with the accident, listened.
SKIP
Of those newspapers that showed up, the story got out and it reached a lot of people.
JOLIE HALES
And immediately, checks started coming in.
Skip worked with Melinda to ensure the money was put into a proper account. And when Melinda came to the hospital and told Darryl what his old rock buddy had done, he was blown away.
DARRYL
I couldn't believe it. I didn't think I was worth anything but there's people that thought I did and that helped me. People believed that we were worth helping.
JOLIE HALES
Donations ranged from $500 down to a few dollars.
DARRYL
Even a homeless couple came in and gave me five dollars while I was in the hospital. Saw it in the paper and walked in the hospital, said they were living in a car, and they gave us five dollars.
JOLIE HALES
A donation that he’ll never forget.
DARRYL
That's just the thing. When you can help somebody even a little bit, you know, one person gave us -- walked in and gave us five dollars, and that -- it not only helped us monetarily. It just made us feel like we had worth.
JOLIE HALES
The largest donation came from the president of the very bank he used to work for, before he lost his job due to drug addiction.
Darryl and Melinda were baffled. The newspaper articles faulted Darryl for the entire accident, and yet people were still willing to give him a hand.
With funds available, hopelessness began to melt into hope for Darryl and Melinda.
This meant they might have a chance.
And for Darryl, this was a chance he did not intend to squander. His years of meth addiction had to be over.
DARRYL
I was in the bed. I could rest. I could get clean. I can get it all out of my system. Oh yeah, I knew what I just did. I'm lucky I didn't kill my kid. I -- how could I dare do that again?
JOLIE HALES
And Melinda, ever the supportive companion, kept her eye on Darryl as they pressed forward.
DARRYL
I was on thin ice. Any slip up I made, she was gone. We had to run a perfect program. We had to do that. We knew it.
JOLIE HALES
They zoned in on one goal: get back Baby Lawrence. Not just get him back, but earn him back, and back to a home and family fit for a childhood.
DARRYL
We came together. We were a team. We were gonna get our son back. We were gonna get cleaned up and that would help me made it, because we were a team, we were doing something. That made our relationship stronger. We had a mission. I wouldn't have been able to get through the social service and everything -- I just physically couldn't have got to where I needed to get to and did what I had to do.
JOLIE HALES
For four weeks, Darryl was in hospital care away from the drugs that had controlled his life for so long. He used this time to reprogram his brain into ignoring the desire to get high, and instead focus on their goal of getting their son back.
DARRYL
I knew what I had to do. I had to get well first. I mean, it was a big deal for me just to get from a hospital bed to sit up, get on a walker, and walk five feet and come back.
JOLIE HALES
While Darryl healed at the hospital, Melinda was busy working with Skip to track and deposit all the donations. And in just a few days’ time, they had been given more than 5-thousand dollars.
Enough to say goodbye to the motel.
DARRYL
People were very generous.
JOLIE HALES
Melinda used the money to put down a deposit and pay six months rent on an apartment.
SKIP
She just started handling things. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And she was flawless. So I was, you know, I was very, very happy to see that. But Daryl did, too. They loved their baby so much. That this was a real wake up call.
JOLIE HALES
After four weeks, Darryl was was released from the hospital, and even though he was still in pretty dire physical condition, he was determined to be a new man, starting with fulfilling his civic duty.
DARRYL
I got out of the hospital on election day and we went and voted.
JOLIE HALES
But even going out and voting was a whole to-do for someone as banged up as Darryl.
DARRYL
I couldn't walk. I had a broken arm, broken femurs, broken fib and tib, broken knee. I still got rods, three rods here, and I had these big quarter inch pins drilled into my leg and I walked around with that for at least six months.
JOLIE HALES
But when he finally entered his new home, he knew life was going to be different… in a good way.
DARRYL
Our house was full of groceries.
JOLIE HALES
And so began their new life.
Since it was before the days of crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe, all of the donations that made this apartment possible had been mailed in by hand, and Melinda had saved every donation envelope. And since Christmas season was around the corner, Darryl and Melinda wrote and mailed Christmas card thank you notes to every donor.
DARRYL
And then more money came in after that. And that wasn't so they'd exchange for money. That was just to show appreciation and we thought that it was right around the holidays. We'll do it that way.
JOLIE HALES
And from there, they stayed focused on their primary goal: bring their son home.
DARRYL
Pushing me in the wheelchair, getting us to all our appointments. To 'em we had to take a bus and then go about 10 blocks, and we made every visitation, every meeting, every drug test. We didn't miss anything, because we knew that we had to do a perfect program or give up our son.
JOLIE HALES
Once Baby Lawrence had healed enough to be free of his little body cast, he had been placed with a foster family.
DARRYL
This wonderful family from Hungary. I remember, Attila and Silvia -- He was a big table tennis star. I saw him in the paper a few times of having a table tennis company and everything doing good, and they were wonderful people.
JOLIE HALES
It was comforting to know that their baby was in good hands.
DARRYL
We had regular visits with him. It started off where we'd just go down and see him, and then monitored visits outside, then overnight visits. They do it like that to make sure you're okay and gonna take care of him. Then they saw he was well adjusted.
JOLIE HALES
And Baby Lawrence seemed happy throughout it all, showing love for Darryl and Melinda, as well as for his foster parents, without bias.
DARRYL
I remember one time we were doing exchange and this was when I'm better, we've got an apartment and they bring them over and Attila, the foster father, brings him and he goes ‘Bye dada. Hi dada.’ It was really funny.
JOLIE HALES
But the road to regain custody wasn’t easy. Darryl’s body was taking its time to heal, but he would need to get a job before the donation money ran out.
The charity scam business he had worked at before even reached out and offered him the opportunity to work for them again. This time, work from home. But Darryl rejected the offer.
After years of scamming so many people with false charity pleas, he had ironically been given a second chance by real charity, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with that old life again, even if it meant risking finding no work at all.
And in the meantime, he pressed on with hope, knowing his baby was with a good family.
DARRYL
At one point, we were almost saying maybe we should just give them to them. Maybe he'll be better off with him than us. If we didn't believe we could give him what he needed, we were going to do that. Why should we take him out of that good home if we can't provide him a good home.
JOLIE HALES
But earning decent money didn’t come easy. A couple months after getting out of the hospital, Darryl found a job that made it possible to work with his injuries -- selling long distance phone services.
DARRYL
And then we went there one day and they were gone. The whole place was gone. I guess they weren't making money.
JOLIE HALES
Imagine that regaining custody of your very child depends on you being able to work, but then your job suddenly just disappears without notice, and you’re unexpectedly left jobless again.
DARRYL
They the took me for a week's pay and they were just gone.
JOLIE HALES
But just as Darryl and Melinda were wondering if they even had what it takes to provide a good home for Baby Lawrence, the supervisor from the disappeared long distance phone services job gave Darryl a call and helped set him up with another sales job.
A brilliant stroke of luck, you could say, if you believe in luck. Or maybe it was something else.
DARRYL
A lot of times in my life when things were just really bad, something has popped in to fix it. Okay -- when we ran out of those apartments -- that six months ran off, it wasn't working really good. We didn't really have a place to go.
JOLIE HALES
The donation money had been well spent and given them the chance that they needed, but it was gone -- I mean, this was Southern California. Even in 1996, apartments were not cheap.
With the snafu of Darryl’s job just packing up and disappearing one day, all he and Melinda had left was $500, and that wasn’t going to be enough to stay in their current apartment, nor would it be enough to pay both rent and pay for a deposit on another one.
DARRYL
We didn't know what we're going to do after that -- Be in motels and stuff. And I changed my counseling session to another day. And there was a guy in there that rented apartments.
JOLIE HALES
Darryl, who normally went to his counseling sessions at night so he could work during the day, moved his appointment on this particular occasion to a daytime appointment. And while he was there, he overheard a guy talking to someone else about how he rented apartments to people. So, Darryl struck up a conversation with the guy and found out that he came from the same kind of background as Darryl did -- and he understood what it was like to try to pull yourself out of a pit.
DARRYL
I hear him talking to someone else. I told him, I need an apartment and all of a sudden we were in a new apartment.
JOLIE HALES
The man had compassion on Darryl, and was willing to take a chance on him.
That was around the same time he was offered the new job, and things just started to fall into place.
Skip remembers watching Darryl’s transformation.
SKIP
Child Protective Services kept checking on them over time, you know, making sure nobody was on drugs. They had new drug testing all that stuff, making sure the place was safe, you know, like exactly, they did their job. All right? And it was difficult for them at first, but that was a turning point for him. You have to understand, when something like that happens, it's do or die. You either give up on your family, everything you are inside, or you do everything you can to rise to the occasion to handle your stuff, you know? And Darryl did that.
JOLIE HALES
And then finally, about a year or so after Baby Lawrence had been put into foster care, it was time for him to come home.
This time, his parents were free of addiction, living in an apartment, making ends meet, and waiting with open arms.
DARRYL
The day they brought him home from social service, he was happy. He knew he was -- somehow, he knew he was coming home. He was home for good. Because he was just happy, doing the happy dance, showing me all the toys and stuff he brought. 'Look at this. Look at that.' He was just little and somehow he understood that he was coming home and that was it -- he was home.
JOLIE HALES
His foster parents lovingly turned Baby Lawrence, who was more of Toddler Lawrence, over to Darryl and Melinda. Even though they had had frequent visitations and they knew this day was coming, I can only imagine what that must have been like for the foster parents. Which, I mean, honestly, I could do probably an entire episode on good foster parents, because as far as I’m concerned, they are angels in this world.
DARRYL
They fell in love with Lawrence. We have a whole photo album of just his life with them and everything he did.
JOLIE HALES
And from there, life was good. It was a different life -- a new life, gifted to them by the kindness of an old friend and a number of strangers who took a chance on someone who some would say had never really earned that chance.
I asked Darryl what it was like to raise his child without being under the influence of drugs.
DARRYL
I was there. I actually noticed it. I mean, we were buddies. He was my boy from the beginning.
JOLIE HALES
He and Melinda got married and they raised Lawrence together, and it was soon apparent that Lawrence had inherited a little something from his dad.
DARRYL
He loves his music. He's a musician. I remember that I just had instruments around. You just left them around. I got a little electric piano for him, a couple guitars and stuff, and then some bongos and he loved the bongos, so I bought him a cheap drum set. And that's what he decided to do and I would try to play with him and it was hard because he had trouble keeping a beat. And then he learned. He was really good. Now he's a decent guitar player, too. At first I tried to teach him guitar. No, no, just let me play with it. Then, one time he came and asked me how to play something. I don't remember what it was, but I think that's a little too complicated to start off with and he said, no, I want to do it anyway. And then he got it.
JOLIE HALES
It’s been more than 25 years since Darryl’s accident took place, and Lawrence, obviously no longer a baby, made a full recovery and is living life as a thriving adult and a talented drummer. Melinda and Darryl stayed together all those years until separating just a few months ago, but even though she’s no longer part of Darryl’s everyday life, he’ll never forget her role in bringing him back from the brink -- for her loving support, motherhood, and friendship. For being one of the people who believed in him.
And over all those years, Darryl stayed clean. Aside from one relapse several years ago where he pulled over and lit a pipe in the parking lot of what he thought was an abandoned building, which turned out to be owned and operated by the sheriff’s department.
DARRYL
I could have got on America's Dumbest Criminals.
JOLIE HALES
Imagine his surprise when multiple cops quickly showed up outside his car.
It was almost as though the universe was not going to let Darryl go back on his commitment to live a drug-free life.
And even though it’s been two and a half decades since everything happened, it’s clear when you meet Darryl that the lessons learned in those days have stuck with him all this time, driving him to do whatever he can to help others whenever it's possible.
DARRYL
I give back when I have the ability and I see somewhere I can help, I feel I need to. I mean, I'm happy to do it, but I feel like owe it to pay it forward.
JOLIE HALES
He’s fed the homeless, donated gifts and needed items to children in foster care, he's worked with Make-a-Wish, he's even played with a band at homeless shelters, as a kind of pick-me-up for those who are there.
I met Darryl when I was leading a volunteer leadership council for a company in Orange County, and Darryl served on that council and he really did advocate for every charity event we participated in, and he showed up to all of them. And I barely knew anything about him when he just one day opened up and he told me this incredible story of his life, and it was clear that rather than just tell people of the change he underwent throughout it all, he lives that change.
And as for Skip -- the old friend of Darryl who put the donation cogs into motion -- they still play together every now and then.
These days, Skip runs this nonprofit music school for kids called the Jimmy Alan Studio, where he helps provide instruments and lessons to youth who aren't able to learn music in schools.
DARRYL
He teaches you how to tune. If you can't afford an instrument he provides it for you and gives you lessons. So he teaches a beginning guitar, then he gets other people to volunteer and teach for him, and many people have been very good. A lot of really good musicians came out of there.
JOLIE HALES
I asked Darryl what he would say to Skip after all this.
DARRYL
Skip, you saved my life. If you wouldn't have helped out when you did, you saved my life. A lot of times when you help somebody, it's not really going to help them, they're going to do that. But there are those people that any little thing you do could mean everything. That could turn them around. It made me feel that I was worth something when I didn't feel I was worth anything. If these people believed in me enough to send in donations, maybe I should believe in me.
JOLIE HALES
He also had a message for the many people who donated money to his family -- Many of whom are still out there, probably spreading kindness without any recognition.
DARRYL
Everybody that helped, if you see this, you've helped greatly. You helped my family. You saved my family. Number two, if you help somebody, it could change their life. Even a little bit. Even if the monetary isn't much to help them, just let them know that you think they're worth something. Sometimes, you think, oh, I'm just gonna give them that, he'll just buy booze with it. Well, maybe he is, but maybe not. Sometimes a little bit of help can just change someone's life, completely, and it did mine. It gave me back my self-worth, my self- respect. I got back into becoming a productive member of society again. And it just did it, just -- everything. In fact, if that didn't happen, to tell you through, if that didn't happen, I didn't get straightened out, I would either be dead right now or even worse, still alive and addicted. That would even be worse.
JOLIE HALES
And honestly, one of the most interesting aspects of this story is Skip, and I’ll tell you why, at least how I see it.
It’s easy to give charity to someone who is a victim of a tragedy that is beyond their control. I mean, for instance, if a drunk driver hits and hurts pedestrians walking across a crosswalk, it’s easy to feel this immense sympathy for the people who were hit, because they did nothing to deserve it. They were just, ya know, living their lives like you and me.
But in Darryl’s case, I mean you really can’t beat around the bush and say that Darryl was a defenseless victim. On the contrary, it’s pretty easy to argue that this whole tragic situation was a direct result of his bad choices.
And, all that said, going back to that hypothetical example of the drunk driver hitting pedestrians -- Let’s say that the drunk driver was also desperately injured and couldn’t afford necessary treatments. It’s easy to want to give charity to the pedestrians. But how often do we -- myself included -- think of giving charity to the drunk driver? And it comes down to this conundrum of justice versus mercy, and where the right place is to plant a flag, and I mean, if you’re like me, you never want to enable bad behavior, right? But you want to do what’s right, and you believe in helping others.
So I asked Skip about all of this -- about why he felt moved to start a fundraiser for a man who was ultimately responsible for injuring the innocent. Especially when he came with a track record of long-term drug abuse -- how did Skip know that others’ money would be put to good use?
SKIP
When you have a crisis like that, who the hell am I to make a judgment on whether or not I think they're worthy? Okay? I mean, that Jesus guy said you shall not judge, right? Smart guy, that Jesus. Because honestly there's just no way you really know what they're going through. There's no way you really know what kind of person or people they are. They were two people with a child, both the father and the baby were gravely injured, and that's all the information I needed. That's the way it should be, isn't it?
JOLIE HALES
If you want to see pictures and links from Darryl and Skip’s story, you can visit podisitiviypodcast.com. You can also find Skip’s nonprofit music school on Facebook by searching Jimmy Alan Studio, and that’s “Alan” spelled “A-L-A-N.”
And of course, a very special thanks to Darryl and Skip for taking the time to talk to me and tell me their story -- I know it’s at least impacted me and given me a lot to think about.
Also, if you want to help support our efforts to tell true uplifting stories, the best way to financially do that is to sign up for our Patreon, where every dollar really does count. In fact, a special shout-out to our newest Patreon supporters -- Henry, Sharli, and Eric. As far as I’m concerned, you are heroes of the day, my friends!
You can also support us by leaving us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify -- they allow reviews now -- or honestly by just sharing the podcast with someone who might benefit from hearing one of these stories. As you might guess, these episodes take a lot of time to produce, especially being a mom, who's also the family breadwinner, and pregnant -- not to complain. It's just -- ya know, it's a lot. But it's great. I love doing it. But the more people who hear this podcast, ya know, the higher those listener numbers are, the more it motivates me to keep dedicating that little time that I have, because I really do believe in the importance of shining a spotlight on the goodness of others.
Anyway, I hope you have an amazing day filled with people just like you, and always remember, you’re worth more than you know.