Episode Seventy-Four: The Byte - Mark Hawkins

Mark's life was falling apart. He'd just discovered that his partner of 12 years was a criminal and that he'd lost everything. With the FBI knocking on his door and now homeless, he discovered his own miracle and the people who were there to build him back up.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 74 of Bite Sized Blessings.

In this interview,

I get to talk with Mark Hawkins,

Who is really kind of a man about town,

A raconteur,

Who has done many,

Many things.

He's a musician.

He's an author.

He runs a Facebook group with 15,

000 members in Littleton,

Colorado.

He's done so many things and has such a diverse CV.

It's kind of hard to describe just who he is.

And this interview does talk about some of that stuff.

But it also talks about what it looks like when a person discovers their entire life is built on a lie,

That the person they thought they knew for the past 12 years is someone completely unexpected,

And what it looks like to have to completely rebuild and change one's life.

This interview is also about friendship,

About fellowship,

About love for those we consider family,

Even though they might not be biologically related.

It's about a community lifting up another human being and rebuilding them,

Reminding them who they are,

And setting them back on a path to healing and wholeness.

It's really a mind-blowing interview.

So now,

Episode 74 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

In the summer of 2017,

I had actually lived with the woman for a dozen years.

And I,

For a decade,

I lived with her in her home in Long Beach,

California.

She is a CPA,

A four-decade long private practice CPA.

And one day,

She went missing out of the blue.

This is one of life events that literally everything started to happen at once.

We lived in quite a prominent house in the Long Beach area on a corner where it's a well-known house.

And the next thing I know is we have the police at the corner,

We have people on the doorstep,

We've got all these different things happening at the same time that she's going missing.

This is like the Twilight Zone story.

I don't know what's happening,

But we can't find her,

Whatever.

And through my investigate,

I'm a pretty good researcher,

I located her.

She was in Gallup,

New Mexico.

Now,

What she was doing at Gallup,

New Mexico,

Lord knows what.

My heart was sinking.

I just literally,

I had no idea what was going on.

I was able to reach her.

And she was clearly in a,

And I didn't know this at the time,

I just knew things were way off.

But she was in a advanced state of paranoia.

She thought I was out to get her.

She thought I was out to get the people to get her and all that kind of stuff.

I'm going,

What is all this all about?

Okay,

The lady has snapped.

And it's all I could do,

Just keep her on the line.

I'm going to grab an Uber,

Get to the airport.

I'm going to come,

I'm coming to get you.

I need to be with you.

Got the last seat on the airplane.

To Albuquerque.

She said she'd meet me at the airport.

I didn't even know if that was going to happen.

She ended up turning,

She showed up at the airport.

She looked like she had a pair of white pants on,

I'll never forget.

And it was like that,

That pair of white pants had been,

Was now turning into a pair of brown pants,

Black pants,

Whatever.

She looked a mess.

She drove to Santa Fe.

That's the only time she ever drove.

That's the only time she drove.

I took the wheel the rest of the way.

We ended up going on a trip through five states.

In the meanwhile,

I'm trying to talk to her.

I've also,

Now I'm a psychiatrist over,

Not,

You know,

In a New York minute.

I also don't know whether the right thing to do is to pull into the police station or to pull into the emergency room or to pull in whatever.

You know,

All these things are filling my mind.

What's the right thing to do here?

And I just kept driving and I kept driving and we'd stay different places.

She didn't want to cross the state line back into California.

She'd try to sit there going,

Okay,

Why all this?

Why all this?

I'm going to cut through the chase.

I'm going to cut through the chase and go to the,

Several years later.

Okay.

She is now spending eight years in prison in Texas for running a Ponzi scheme.

The Fed said that she was doing it since 1996.

My therapists have told me and schooled me in sociopathy.

Anytime,

You know,

If you know the story of Bernie Madoff,

This was that story to the T it just not nearly as large and everything,

But it affects family.

It affects her clients,

People who lost money,

Same thing,

Client slash friends,

Interchangeable,

Our friends.

So overnight,

Basically,

And I don't want to sound like it's poor me,

Poor me,

Poor me,

But I literally,

I lost everything.

And I not only lost my family wasn't sensed with me.

The,

My neighborhood wasn't happy with me because guilt by association.

I mean,

It's just,

What are people going to think?

You know,

And all that kind of stuff.

I'd lost my home.

I'd lost my money,

Anything that I'd saved or whatever was now gone.

And I had at the age of 65,

It wasn't the best of timing to have to start all over.

This story is,

I don't think you were expecting it.

And it's a story of human perseverance.

It's a story of a group.

Excuse me.

It's a story of classmates.

Rebecca's one,

They're called angels.

I was homeless.

Basically,

I was in a state of shock.

I traded in a little smart car,

You know,

Those little smart cars,

Everybody thinks everybody's going to be killed in the next day,

You know,

Whatever.

I love the smart car.

I trade,

It wasn't a good time to have a smart car.

I traded in for a van.

I started,

I went down the van life rabbit hole.

You talk about a rabbit hole,

Van life.

Now I'm leaving.

Now the house of cards has come down.

There's burning wreckage.

Carol had gone up to Oregon.

The federal government was allowing her to,

They took her passport,

Allowing her to go to leave.

She said,

I just don't want to,

Don't want you around or whatever.

She's trying to remove herself from me and all that kind of stuff.

And I sat out on my van trip and I went and visited a dozen classmates throughout the United States of America,

Invited me into their homes,

Invited me into their domains,

Into their whatever,

Arms open.

I called it the healing tour.

I have a name for everything.

Rebecca is an angel,

Will always be an angel.

I call these people angels.

Some of these people I didn't even know in high school,

And yet they had trust in me.

See at the time I had no idea what was going on.

I didn't know she'd committed any kind of crime.

I didn't know she was,

I didn't know what was going on.

And so why don't you want to cross the state lines?

Well,

To me,

To me,

It's because she,

She was in this paranoia thing.

Somehow I was able to get her back into California and to go home.

But I got her across the state lines.

She would not park anywhere close to the house.

And we did actually would not even,

We wouldn't even live at the house for the first part.

We went over to a nearby hotel in Long Beach.

I finally got her back to go back to the house.

And wouldn't you know it,

That,

You know,

The day we get back down there is more wraps at the door.

We were being served every other day by somebody and,

You know,

Boogeyman.

I mean,

Literally they're private investigators.

And I mean,

Some of the seedy stuff that are reserved for jokes in movies,

That literally these people exist because they're like bounty hunters.

I'm not sure who pays them or whatever through all these things.

But I got the stories to match all of this kind of stuff.

Well,

It happened,

Something happened,

There's wraps at the door,

Whatever.

Now she's scared to death and we need to leave again and go flee.

I say it in these terms,

It's a figure of speech,

But she basically had an IV of vodka going through her in the last year.

You know,

I don't know how somebody involved in doing what she did.

Quite frankly,

I don't know how they can make it through.

Part of it was that she literally,

She was an alcoholic.

She just literally was,

It was awful.

I'm so sorry about that.

I can't even imagine it.

You know,

You were in the middle of talking about,

I just want to say one thing before I say this other thing,

But I love the title,

Reunion.

I think it's so beautiful because it has so many levels of meaning as you were saying.

But also,

You know,

Through this,

Through this really unfortunate and life-breaking experience that you had,

You were reunited with the power that's greater than yourself,

Which was another reunion.

And then potentially also reunited with yourself,

Who you are inside,

Who you were always meant to be.

And so I'm just,

You know,

Yeah,

I'm just hearing that and what you're telling me.

I have never actually thought about that,

But that was beautiful.

I thought,

I'm like,

There's lots of layers of meaning here for his story.

It's really lovely.

I've got enough of them.

You just actually offered one I hadn't thought about.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Good,

Good.

Beautiful.

But we were talking before the internet decided to not cooperate for a while.

You were just saying that you basically had begun a van life and you were- But I thought I was outfitted to camp.

I never camped once.

Oh,

God.

And you decided to visit,

You know,

Have a road trip and visit all of these people.

And you were just talking about how this,

I think the miracle was in that,

You know,

Also like connecting with these people.

So I'm sorry,

We got cut off in the middle of that.

So if you want to expand on that,

That would be wonderful.

Yes.

And I've had this thought actually since almost very early on,

Though.

I'm thinking of this in thirds.

There's the crime.

There's the healing tour in which I flee the burning wreckage and literally am now homeless.

And I go to visit these friends.

I have a term for that.

It's called the healing tour.

And then I take this trip and I learn this will bring me to tears,

This part.

You'd have to be me to understand this.

When you've just left truth and trust,

And now these people have enough trust in you,

Me,

Me to invite me,

Not just to have lunch,

To stay in their home.

And I can't say too much about this because at,

Because to protect their privacy and to protect their,

But to protect their lives.

And to protect their,

But I will generically say I learned we all have stories.

It's not like,

You know,

It's a VA moment.

I know we all have stories,

But this one was clobbered me over the head.

And I mean,

I mean,

Literally they confided in me,

Their trials and tribulations,

Somebody that they barely know.

But this healing tour part,

The third part of this was reunion.

Yes.

And I that's a reunion itself.

My trip being on the road by myself,

Solo,

Trying to get my head back together.

It was God so far gone.

And then experiencing what I loosely mentioned to you and what you astutely pointed out is there's a reunion there too.

I was thinking that it sounds like on this healing journey where you visited all these different people,

It sounds like each of them had a hand in putting you back together.

Everybody.

Everybody.

Everybody has played a role.

I use the word roles a lot.

You know,

I'm on this,

I'm in this grand play that this higher being has,

We all,

In my opinion,

You know,

We all have this charted course,

This things,

If things don't work,

If I have failed miserably,

I don't get down on myself anymore.

That's what you did is you rebuilt your life and you kind of went out and you,

You had your tribe and they,

You were there for each other and,

You know,

Profoundly,

Profoundly helped each other.

Because as you said,

Those people that you visited with,

They had their own trials and tribulations.

Absolutely.

But still you were able to be there for each other,

Listen deeply,

And then begin that path of healing for each other.

And so I just,

I just love the story of you,

You know,

You're driving and something taps you on the back and that's completely unexpected.

Maybe it was the great possum in the sky,

But still.

If this,

This,

This entity,

This higher being says,

You've got one more shot at this,

At things,

It would be the message would be of how my tribe,

My tribe,

Again,

They circled the wagons around me to protect me as I was trying to figure things out.

Cause they knew I was gone.

They knew I was gone.

So that's the story.

If I had that one more shot is to tell that story,

Everybody is just so ingrained or so they love the whole crime story and which is sexy.

It's got sizzle.

It's,

It's got to,

You know,

It's,

It's got with all the elements of that going on and that's great.

And I think it's pretty exciting too.

It's that human resilience.

I have a job to do,

And that is to,

If I can make one person's day better,

I've done,

I've done my job.

Thank you for listening to episode 74 of Bite Size Blessings.

It was truly such a powerful and heart healing conversation for me.

The idea that people from our pasts can band together,

Help us to heal and lift us up.

I need to thank Mark for being so vulnerable and so open about what's been happening in his life these past few years.

And I also need to thank the creators of the music used.

Music L.

Files,

Frank Schroeder,

Chilled Music,

Horst Hoffman,

Alex Productions,

And Sasha End.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Size Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to authors,

Musicians,

Artists,

And other items that will hopefully lift and brighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Mark.

Never give up.

No matter what challenges life throws at you,

No matter what kind of stuff you have to wade through,

Don't give up.

Find your tribe.

Find your community and ask for help.

There's no shame in asking for help.

People want to help.

So be like Mark.

Ask for help and truly,

Truly your relationships,

Your friendships,

They'll become deeper and more profound.

So ask for help.

That's what I'm asking this week.

And I'll see you next week.