Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos (21 page)

I also realized that because I had been a criminal through my drug use, I could relate to the druggies and other criminals who were our clients in the bail bonds office. Unless I chose to tell them of my past, the people we posted bonds for often did not relate well
to me. For once I felt I had something I could control, and that was knowledge. My new level of self-esteem allowed me the option to tell a client about my past—or not. When I did, most times I could change the way they looked at me and felt about me. Knowing that I had been able to get off the street gave hope to many people who walked in our door. Knowing I could make a difference with just a few words was powerful, and I knew that somehow I wanted to dedicate my life to helping others. I just didn’t know how I would do that—yet.

When it came to the
Dog the Bounty Hunter
show, however, at first I was really shy.
International
television? It scared the crap out of me to realize that millions and millions of people would see me. I also did not feel at all comfortable around the cameras that, during filming, were around all day every day. I’m sure you can imagine how hard it is to act normal when a huge lens is held a foot away from your face.

Part of my discomfort with the show was because I didn’t feel I had a place on the team and didn’t feel I had anything to contribute. But as I gained experience I got traction as a map expert and navigator. When that happened, when I knew I was really helping, I felt like I went from assisting Beth to having a real job. I began going to the office every day and also began stocking up on gadgets of my own because I had already learned that every bounty hunter needs his or her own supply of handcuffs, flashlights, and the like.

Having the right gear was important to my success in my new job. Whatever I had done in life I had always wanted to do well.
Bail bonds and bounty hunting were no different. I wanted to be good at this. Really good. I thought back to the day I received the visit from Child Protective Services, when they checked up on baby Abbie. Even though I had to wash clothes in a tub and dry them with a fan in front of the fireplace, my baby was clean and healthy. I did the best I could with what I had and I was proud of that, just as I was beginning to be proud of my new career.

One of the biggest mistakes I made in my life was not continuing my formal education. I loved learning, and considering my circumstances when I was in school, I earned good grades. But school was just too hard after Abbie was born. Having dropped out, I had a hard time getting any kind of a job. People see my ninth-grade education and immediately assume I am dumb. My commitment to doing a job well and my love of learning meant that when I realized I could become licensed in bail bonds I jumped at the chance. I studied hard and ended up having to take the written test several times before I passed. It was a frustrating time, but I didn’t give up. This was an opportunity that was important to me. My efforts paid off, and soon I was the youngest licensed bail bonds agent in Hawai’i. That I had accomplished one of my goals was hugely empowering to me and helped me stay focused on the new path I had mapped out for my life.

I was eighteen years old when I became licensed. If there had been a licensing process for bounty hunting I would have gone after that, too. The state of Hawai’i, however, does not require any licensing of bounty hunters, as some other states do.

I still like bail bonds better than bounty hunting, but in our family it is hard to do one without the other. A lot of my most memorable bounty hunts have aired on various episodes of
Dog the Bounty Hunter,
but there is one bounty hunt that I wish had aired on the show because it kept us on our toes. The only reason it didn’t air was because we didn’t get our man, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. And that’s the thing about what we do. We are not always successful. On
Dog the Bounty Hunter,
footage shows us going out and eventually making a successful capture, but there are hundreds of hours of footage that have never been used because we either never found our subject, or he or she got away. That’s how it worked on our reality show.

In this particular bounty, Kris, a young Asian man, had $200,000 worth of warrants. No matter how you look at it, that’s a lot of money. We chased this guy all over town for weeks, camera crew in tow. Finally we tracked down his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend who said Kris occasionally crashed on his couch.

After several days of on-and-off conversation, our ex-boyfriend informant gave us a tip that Kris would be at a nearby McDonald’s that evening. At this point we just had a skeleton crew available. There was a producer and two camera guys. Dad and Beth were out of town, so Big Travis (father of Barbara’s son), my brother Leland, and I got in place well before our guy was supposed to show up.

At the appointed time we saw our informant pull into the parking lot, talk briefly with our escapee, and then leave. The subject was
in an old Jeep Cherokee, and we had been told the vehicle had bad brakes. Obviously, the more information we can get like this, the better. We may not need it but you never know what odd tidbit may become useful, or even save one of us from getting hurt.

We had two vehicles, one idling in front of the other. Leland was in front and I was in the second car. When the subject began to pull away, Leland and I both began talking on our radios together. The result was that neither of us could tell what the other was saying—or intending to do. By this time we were in the middle of an intersection, and our subject was getting away.

Just as I radioed Leland to see what he wanted me to do I saw him ram his car into the fleeing subject’s vehicle. I tried to hem the guy in from the other side. Oddly enough, Leland had just returned from taking a class at Blackwater (the US Training Center) on “pit maneuvers,” so he was putting his new driving training into action. Before I could stop, Leland jumped out of his car and ran to Kris’s car, Mace in hand.

In the confusion, our cameraman fell out of my car and onto the street. My bumper and license plate were dragging, and by the time Leland got back into his car, having missed his Mace opportunity, the subject was pulling away. I wanted to go back and pick up our cameraman, but Leland was already in hot pursuit and told me to leave him. We probably looked to outsiders like some kind of cartoon characters. All our efforts were to no avail, however, as our guy managed to get away.

The worst part of it was that Leland and I then had to call Dad
to tell him about the wrecked cars and that our guy got away. I can tell you there were a lot of other phone calls I would rather have made! If that wasn’t bad enough, several weeks later the subject got into a showdown with the Hawai’i State Police, and they were the ones to apprehend him instead of us. If we don’t get our guy, we don’t get paid.

I’m glad Kris was returned to custody, although, of course, I was really bummed that after all our hard work someone else made the capture. After all, part of my ability to recover a sense of self-esteem that I either lost early in life or never developed at all is to feel that I make a meaningful contribution to our family business. I know this work may seem bizarre to the TV viewing public at times, but at the heart of all the hype and strange behavior, bounty hunting is still all about making the public safer by getting wanted criminals off the streets.

My dad attributes his hunting skills to his father and his love for hunting wildlife, but I believe he has something much more special than that. I remember being on the hunt for one man in an episode of
Dog the Bounty Hunter
and his sister convinced us that our suspect was not in the house. However, Dad kept saying, “I feel him. I know he is in there.”

Just as Dad suspected, the man was home, hiding in a closet. How did Dad know? He has a gift and his bounty hunting skills are the greatest of any man in the world. I like to think that I inherited at least some of those skills. My years on
Dog the Bounty Hunter
were some of the greatest times of my life. Spending time with
my family, long car rides, and the bonding we did was happiness beyond measure. I loved being part of the posse, and loved that we brought a new adventure every week to millions of fans. But most of all, I’m so grateful that I had the chance to be a part of my father’s dream.

★

T
he autumn of 2005
and winter of 2006 I spent learning the ins and outs of the bail bonds and bounty hunting business. I realized that I had absorbed a lot when I was living with my dad as a child, so I used this knowledge as my base and expanded from there.

A lot of the business is instinct. What do you feel about the person who wants to make bail? What does your gut say about where a bounty might be hiding? This even extends to how you treat the person. Some need hard-core language and physicality before they realize the seriousness of their situation, while others need a pat on the back and some encouraging words. You’d better know which to give right away because if you are wrong, you could be in a lot of trouble.

I also spent that time getting reacquainted with my family. Six years is a long time to be away from people you love, especially when you are a teenager for most of that time. Everyone had changed and matured, including me. I especially loved getting to know my little brother and sister, Garry Boy and Bonnie Jo. Things had smoothed out between us since our first introduction, and I felt blessed to be part of their lives. Among other opportunities, I found that the kids often took time to talk to me about what was going on with them during our rides in the car to and from their various schools. It was, and is, a wonderful way to bond.

★

Sometime early in 2006 I pulled up at a traffic light, looked at the car next to me, and saw Bo Galanti. Bo was part of my AA group of friends. He had begun doing odd jobs for my dad, and I had seen him many times at Dad’s and around town since my return to Hawai’i.

On this particular day Dad and Beth were out of town and I was taking care of all the kids. I had come down with a bad cold a few days before, and when Bo learned I was sick he invited himself over to help. That evening he helped with dinner and the next day helped with some household shopping. Bo was impressed that I did all the cooking, cleaning, and child care in my dad’s home, especially because he was a single dad to a young daughter himself.
That fact was attractive to me, and a month or so later, after he shyly asked me for a kiss, we began dating.

Our dating wasn’t as simple as two people wanting to be together, though. I first had to get permission from Dad and Beth. When I had come back to Hawai’i, Beth had set up a lot of restrictions on my life, and dating was one of these. I know she felt that rigid structure of my days would help me in my recovery, and I am sure it did. But now that I had been back for more than a year and was doing very well I was finding many of the restrictions too rigid. After all, I had turned nineteen the previous June, and according to the law I was a legal adult.

I was a little nervous about asking Dad and Beth about dating Bo, though, because while I wasn’t sure how old he was, I knew he was older than I. I was sure Dad and Beth would look at the age difference, think of Brendan, and say no. But I was to be surprised. Instead Dad said, “Sure. We know Bo, and he’s a great guy.” I was so excited!

Bo and I quickly became inseparable and I learned that Bo’s daughter, Serene, had been born the previous fall. You don’t see single dads caring for infant daughters very often, and I was amazed at how sweet Bo was with Serene. His love and affection for her were obvious, and I thought he was so handsome.

One day I went to Bo’s house and found him crying. Serene wasn’t eating and Bo was terrified that she was ill, so I asked him to show me. When Bo tried to shove a spoonful of peas into Serene’s firmly closed mouth, I said, “Serene is only six months old. She
doesn’t need to eat all that much.” And with those words, right then and there I decided to take this man and baby and make them into a family with Abbie and me.

I had gone an entire year without doing drugs or dating, which—considering my background and the women in my life who always had to have a physical relationship with a man—was something of a record. During that year I had begun to develop dreams and goals of my own. One big goal was to have a home for lost teen girls, girls who were pregnant and had nowhere to go, girls who were beaten down by life and who had no hope of making good choices because none had been made for them. Any man I took into my life would have to support that dream, and Bo did.

I was also impressed that Bo was not intimidated that I was Dog’s daughter. My dad by this time was an international star, and many men were afraid to approach me because of that. Of course, Dad’s reputation as a tough guy figured into that mix, too, but Bo had come from a tough background himself. I am sorry to say that he was a victim of childhood beatings by his father. I also didn’t see Bo attaching himself to me because I was a regular cast member of
Dog the Bounty Hunter,
as many other men might have. The fame that goes along with a successful television program was the main enticement to some men who were interested in dating me. I was so pleased that I had matured enough to understand that, and that I could now deflect that kind of interest without too much trouble.

Before my sobriety, I would have “needed” attention from men,
no matter what the reason. But now I knew that if someone wanted to be close to me only because I was on television, then I had zero interest in being with him. Being on TV was what I did. It wasn’t who I was.

★

While my love with Bo was new, Dad and Beth were ready to take their love to a new level. A wedding was in the works, and it was going to be captured for the show. We were all so excited. Dad and Beth had been together for more than a decade as a couple and had known each other far longer than that.

The wedding was scheduled for Saturday, May 20, 2006. The Hilton Waikoloa Resort and Spa in Kona on the Big Island was booked for the big day, and invitations for the more than two hundred guests were sent. If you think details of a regular wedding are hard to pull together, imagine the added details of coordinating them for a reality television show. Beth and the A&E producers were huddled together for months making sure the day would go exactly according to plan.