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school they sent us to had a fence around it, too. This was a school for troubled kids, and there was security. We were driven to school every morning in the dad’s van. He had to escort us in. Then we had to check in, and in the afternoon we had to check out. Going to the bathroom was a serious deal. You had to punch out and punch back in. It felt almost like being in jail, I thought.
    There were lots of activities there, and I was interested in that. One of them was waterskiing. I had never seen anything like that before. The only water sport I knew was tubing. Waterskiing was amazing. The speed of it blew me away. But I didn’t like living under such tight security, so I hatched a plan to run away. There were three or four other kids in the home. I pitched them my plan and rallied the troops. They went along with it. I told the kids to pack up some clothes.
    I had been a thief for a long time. I had gotten good at going around on tiptoe in the dark and finding things to steal. Back home I had stolen a lot of money from Joe’s wallet. So I snuck into the foster parents’ room and stole some money from the man’s wallet. I found the keys to the family van.
    I knew how to drive a little; my mom had taught me, in our old 1962 Dodge van with a three-on-the-tree manual transmission. But there was an older kid in the home, and he wanted to drive. So I was the ringleader, but he was the driver. We all snuck out of the house and got into the van, and away we went. One by one, we started dropping kids off. Then the driver and I headed for Sacramento.
    Why Sacramento, I don’t know. I think there was some field trip we’d wanted to go on, maybe a concert, that we hadn’t been allowed to attend. We had this crackpot plan to head to the big city. We were going to meet some other guys and get some money and have a big party.
    We almost made it. We got all the way to Sacramento. But we were running out of gas, and we didn’t have much money. One of the other guys, not the one who was driving, thought he was a big hoodlum. He said, “We gotta find some people to rob.” This guy said he knew the area and knew where to go. On some level, I knew this was a bad idea. These guys were older than me, and this was a little more severe than what I was used to. I tiptoed around in the dark and stole pocket change. But now we were driving around the city looking for someone to mug.
    For better or for worse, we never found them. We were still driving around trying to locate some victims when the cops pulled us over. They asked, “What are you guys doing?” We were three underage guys in a stolen van, driving around in the middle of Sacramento. We must have looked out of place. They took us in. I don’t know what happened to the other guys, but I got sent to the huge juvenile hall in Sacramento. This was a big deal. I had to walkthe line. I knew I was in real trouble. When they locked me up there, I knew I was in big, big shit.
    There was a hearing. I was sentenced to four months in a juvenile facility. They gave me an orange jumpsuit that didn’t fit. Until then, as a ward of the court, when I did something wrong the counselors were upset but their attitude was that we could give it another shot. But this time I was being given a sentence. I was being punished. I was a prisoner.
    I got sent to a rural facility near Red Bluff, California. The kids were not as tough as in Sacramento, not as jacked up. It wasn’t as scary, and the staff was nicer. But it was like jail, no doubt about it. I was given a set of blues and whites—blue pants, blue shoes, white shirt—and sent to a special school inside a mobile trailer. I had a job in the kitchen. Part of my job was going to Costco in my blues and whites with this stoner dude, this hippie refugee from the 1970s, for supplies.
    I may have been a prisoner, but I was only twelve years old. I didn’t see my family during this period. My