Original subtitles

Did anyone give you anything to carry?

From day one, I was a hustler. And so this was a big opportunity for me.

This was the real drug world.

I've never been in a situation this tough before.

That's when the pain started They were trying to kill me

I thought I was going home

Dancing has always been an expression and a way to take me away from the

of my world or problems that are going on.

I could go out and dance and escape and feel happy for a while.

I always thought I'd be a dancer.

All right, gentlemen.

Let's hear it for the lovely Luscious Lace.

But this wasn't what I had in mind.

In 1995, I was 26 years old. I was working at a strip club called House of

in Orlando.

I was always complimented on being able to actually dance because a lot of

strippers, they just walked around, danced around, danced around.

But I got out there and I danced.

But my temper was terrible.

I'd already been fired from almost all the other clubs in town because I'd

either been fighting or I'd been rude to a customer.

I was full of anger.

I was a terrible person. I was a terrible person.

I wasn't a person that cared about a lot of other people.

Get a job, Bozo.

I only cared about myself.

My mother and I, we always had a rocky relationship.

We were never that lovey -dovey mother -daughter type.

No need to ask if you found a proper job.

I pray for you.

I pray for you every day.

Jesus might forgive you, but not me.

When I was a kid, I felt like my mother didn't care about me.

She got drunk all the time.

She was around other men.

She kind of forgot about me.

And at age 14, I ran away from home.

I was living on the streets on my own.

I was sleeping in garages under park benches.

So I learned how to survive.

Surviving meant finding different ways to hustle out a plate of food or hustle

place to sleep.

It was hard.

It made me tough.

I always tell people, society made me this way.

You know, it's like Frankenstein making the monster, now you have to deal with

it.

The rave scene was where I escaped the pain of real life.

The answer would drown everything else out, and I wouldn't have to think about

being completely alone in the world.

That's when I started dealing with drugs.

I did it to be able to supply myself with what I wanted.

That way I wouldn't have to pay for it.

Whatever somebody needed, I would find, I knew somebody that had it.

Hey, Tina, como estas?

Cocaine wasn't my drug of choice, but it was my drug of choice to sell because

it was more of a profit.

Carlos and Luis were cocaine dealers.

Two Peruvian guys, they were the ones that you could go to and get the really

good stuff.

Always a pleasure.

I'll call you.

Hey, wait, Tina, hold on.

They told me that they needed girls to bring drugs back from Peru.

And we'll pay you, say, 5 ,000 bucks.

Huh?

Yeah, right.

Now, how desperate do you think I look?

I was not naive.

If I was going to do something like that, I'd have to have a lot more.

See you later, masturbator. Good luck finding someone.

But I was a hustler.

Actually, if you need girls, you know where I work.

I work at a strip club. I know girls that would probably do it. And they told

me, well, if you can do that, then do it.

200 for a girl. How does that sound?

Okay.

It was going to be super easy.

I knew exactly who I was going to ask.

I really didn't care about the risk to them.

I only cared about myself.

I was putting on my makeup, waiting for the right time.

I know what you two are up to.

They wouldn't take much convincing at all.

That's how much they liked cocaine.

How would you like to get your hands on some actual good stuff?

Gratis. That means free.

And they agreed to it right away.

But then the night before, they were supposed to fly out.

They came to me and told me they changed their minds and they didn't want to do

it.

It was last minute. The girls slinked out.

I went to the Peruvian guys.

Look, Tina, you don't understand.

You need to find somewhere.

They're like, well, someone has to go.

Someone has to go.

And they finally, they said, well, what will it take for you to go?

Me?

Yeah, you.

And I told them, I said, I'd have to have a lot more money than what you're

offering. I mean, a lot more.

And they said that they didn't have any more cash to offer.

But we do have the product.

They had the cocaine.

That's a whole different story right there.

Half a kilo.

Half a kilo.

I could sell it for over $25 ,000.

I'd never had $25 ,000 in my hand at one time ever in my life.

This was a big opportunity for me.

Okay. I'm in.

All right.

Good. Now the problem was...

I needed someone else to go.

Do you want to go to Peru with me?

Where? Peru.

We can get $5 ,000 each.

Leah was a girl that was around a lot. She was in the party team with the rest

of us.

Ah, Peru.

Yeah. $5 ,000?

Yes. And I told her that it wasn't dangerous.

Free vacation, free everything.

I used people for what I could get out of them in the moment.

I didn't care whether it hurt them or not.

So we got on our plane, and we went to Peru.

Oh!

We arrived in Lima.

We opened the curtains, looked out, and you could see, like, see, like, the

ocean and everything out there. Oh, my God, Tina, look.

And I reach over, and I pick up this little table tip.

If you're caught carrying drugs out of this country, you could get a life

sentence.

Put it back down? Oh yeah, well, it's a nice ocean over here, isn't it?

Completely just been blocked. I didn't even think about it because I'm not

getting caught anyway.

Carlos and Luis came to the hotel room.

Nice room you got here, girls.

They gave us some cash and told us to enjoy ourselves.

I'll see you in four days.

They told us not to really talk to too many people and not to really tell

anybody why we were there.

We went out and hung out in the club.

We partied for four days.

But Leah was a very pretty girl. She always called attention to herself.

She wasn't very street smart.

She was just annoying.

I just wanted to get home. I wanted to get it over with, and I just wanted to

get rid of her.

Get in the car. Come on, come on.

We're going to go.

And it came a time when it was time for us to leave.

When we got into the car with Carlos and Luis, their nerves started to set in.

They started driving out of the city.

And then they turned in to this dark road.

They opened the gate.

All I saw were like men with machine guns and weapons everywhere.

Suddenly everything got real.

This wasn't just picking up a couple of grams or a half an ounce of ecstasy in

Fort Lauderdale.

This was the real drug world. This was the real drug world.

Carlos and Luis left us there.

I had no idea what was about to happen to us.

That's when I started freaking out.

It was completely crowded in there, full of men with big old machine guns.

I can be very scared on the inside, but I can come off as very calm on the

outside.

They told me to take off my clothes, everything except for my underwear.

I was used to being in a room full of men naked, but they weren't carrying

machine guns.

They were very aggressive. They were very pushy.

Hurry up. Take your clothes off. Hurry up. Take them off.

On the outside, I was calm, but I was very scared. I was very scared because

I'd never been in a situation this tough before.

They started pulling out the packages of cocaine, and they started just putting

them on my body.

They took this roll of duct tape and wrapped it around me as

tight as they could.

They kept telling us, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. And it felt like

the pressure and the nerves and everything was just building up.

I had no idea how much I was going to carry.

I just knew they were going to put as much as they could on me.

Leah was nervous and she was jumpy.

The man that had been putting the drugs on me, he handed me a pill and he told

me to take it. We need you calm.

They told me that it was to keep me calm, to calm my nerves.

I took the pill.

They moved on to Leah.

She didn't want to do it.

I told Lita, just take it.

They gave me a bodysuit.

They had me put the bodysuit on over the packages.

They gave us big baggy clothes, so you couldn't see anything.

They had us, like, bend over, squat down.

Move around a little bit just to make sure that we were able to move and we

comfortable getting us used to it.

By that time, I was already feeling that feel.

And whatever it was, I felt pretty darn good.

By the time I got to the taxi cab, I

felt like I was floating on air.

I was completely relaxed.

I saw the lights of the airport come up, and we pulled up into the drop -off

zone.

Leah.

Leah.

Wake up.

As we were getting out, I was in, like, complete daze. It was like a cloud, like

you're walking through fog.

Leah.

Separate counter.

We said, okay, one's going in one door, one's going in the other door, and we'll

both go to separate counters, and I'll see you on the plane.

When I walked in the airport, it was quiet. It was late.

I could feel the drugs on me, and I was worried that maybe somebody might

notice.

You could see police walking around with these big, huge machine guns.

It was just like if I made the wrong move, they'd shoot me.

But it's too late to turn back.

It's too late to stop.

I walked up to the counter and got in the line.

I wasn't shaking. I wasn't showing any fear.

And she asked me, Did you pack your bags yourself?

Yeah.

I knew I had to stay calm.

Did anyone give you anything to carry?

I had to look straight in her eye.

I knew I had to convince her.

No.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

And she gave me my pass and told me to go ahead and move on.

Thank you.

Have a nice flight.

I was one step closer.

I thought I was going home.

But all of a sudden, I see Leo.

They lifted up her shirt.

and saw the body suit, but they couldn't see what it was.

She said, baby, baby, I'm pregnant.

You could see that it was square.

It wasn't a round baby, like baby bone.

Leah looked at me.

I turned around and kept walking.

If she didn't make it, that's her problem. It's her fault.

It's not my fault.

All I was thinking about was getting on the plane, step by step.

One foot in front of the other.

My adrenaline picked up so fast, but I knew I had to keep it calm. I had to

walking. I had to make it look like there was nothing crazy going on inside

head.

But then two men with black masks grabbed ahold of me.

And that's when I about myself.

They escorted me down the hallway.

I'm going to miss my flight. Let go of me.

At the end of the hallway, they opened the door.

Stop! No!

There was Leah.

She just gave me this look like, now what?

Like a scared puppy look.

Like, how am I going to get out of this?

Play dumb, play dumb, play dumb, play dumb. That's what you do.

Take off the body, too.

I was scared.

That's mummies. That's what they were calling us, the mummies.

Mummies, mummies, mummies, mummies.

They cut the first bags off, and they open up one of the bags, and they look

it, and they find out that it's cocaine.

Yeah.

They were weighing out the drugs.

It came to a little over 9 kilos.

9 kilos.

Ah, 9 kilos.

It's a big moment for them.

They were asking us, well, who are they for?

Who are you carrying them for?

Coming from the streets, I know that there's a law that you don't snitch. The

consequences could mean your life.

Who are they for?

And I kept telling them. I don't know. Who are they for?

I don't know their name.

They don't know.

They don't know.

Suddenly,

everything became so real, I wouldn't be going home.

We were sent to the prison to await sentencing.

I was scared to death.

It was a real prison.

We walked in. The smell started hitting you.

The smell just like dead fish or just like garbage.

When they took us to our cells, we were separated.

It's dark in there.

The floor is all cement. It's all dirty.

There was a mattress on my bunk.

I pulled it up, and I discovered there were hundreds of roaches.

I ended up sharing a cell with a woman that was there for murdering her

She was a nice enough lady.

I just fell right back onto the same thing that I always did.

I always just put myself into survival mode and figured out the hustle that I

needed to make to survive.

They don't provide you with anything.

They don't give you a toothbrush.

They don't give you drinking water.

You have to pay for water that's been

boiled, otherwise you have to drink the water out of the hole.

So I needed some money.

I hadn't spoken to my mom yet at all.

You know, you always think that when you fall down, you think your mom's going

to save you.

No matter what kind of relationship I'd had with my mom in the past, I was

hoping she was going to help me.

I dialed the number.

Hi. Hello.

I said, Mom.

It's me, Tina.

I'm in prison in Peru.

My mom said I know.

The U .S. Embassy already called.

Mom?

And she hung up on me.

It made me feel like I was completely alone in the world. There was nobody

I could turn to.

I'm locked behind these gates.

I didn't know how I was going to survive at all.

Life in prison, it was hard. It was hard for everyone.

But it was easier for the girls that had the money.

Leah's parents had hired this very expensive lawyer.

Leah's lawyer was taking care of Leah and not me.

I had no legal aid.

I had no family support.

I was on my own.

Once they'd gotten by, and I found out that Leah had been transferred to

prison.

And then I received my sentence.

Six years and four months, and I wasn't even six months into my sentence yet.

I thought about escaping every day.

I thought about it every single day.

I looked out the window, and as I watched the birds fly, I always...

trying to figure out how it was that I was going to fly over that wall the way

that they were.

I really didn't know that's what was going to happen, though.

It got to the point, come December, Christmas time was coming, and I was

You know, I was thinking about home.

So I got a bottle of perfume.

Vinyl perfume was 100 % alcohol.

My idea was, it's Christmas Eve, I'm going to celebrate.

Cuba libre, they call it.

Well, it was with perfume instead of rum.

Merry Christmas.

There was just like instant, instant drunk.

I was drunk.

It was like a psychedelic kind of thing with the perfume.

I was so high.

Merry Christmas.

And all of a sudden I hear all this horrible noise going on on the patio.

Everybody yelling and screaming, and I couldn't make out what they were saying.

I said, well, I'm going to go investigate things.

There was a riot.

All these girls, they've got like matches. They're setting on fire.

Girls taking their shirts off.

And I can't figure out what's going on. I still don't know why this is

happening.

I'm thinking they're doing all this in the front of the prison.

What is going on in the back?

In the distance, you could hear all the girls rioting and yelling.

But back here, it's quiet, dead quiet, crickets.

All the guards are gone. They're up front watching the girls take their

off.

There was a big, huge, old, rusty, rusty gate.

And at the time, they had been doing construction inside the prison.

And in my crazy head, I saw my way out.

I looked down, and the gate is probably about that far from the ground.

I just was digging with my fingers, digging like a dog would, just digging

hole up under the gate.

I dug it deep enough to where I could crawl through.

I started grabbing the pieces of wood and putting them up against the wall.

My crazy head, I saw a staircase that I was building.

It was like magic.

I was like, are you kidding me? It's Christmas Eve. I'm going home.

Going home.

I started climbing.

And I just dug my fingers into the sides of that piece of wood and climbed up

the wall.

Adrenaline had kicked in along with the alcohol.

I mean, I was high. I was drunk. I felt, yeah, that liquid courage kicked in.

There was no stopping me. There was no stopping me. I was going.

I don't know how I did it, but I managed to climb three stories with my bare

hands.

I saw freedom.

I saw...

I saw the rooftop of houses.

And there's maybe a five - to six -foot space between me

and them.

But one of the ladies looked out her window and saw me.

I gave her a look and told her, shh.

She just started shouting, La Gringa!

The American, she's escaping.

All of a sudden, I saw a police officer at the other end, and I saw the fire

come out of his rifle.

They were trying to kill me.

I didn't stop and think.

I reacted.

I ran and I jumped.

When I woke up, it was already dark.

I looked up.

I sat up, and I wasn't hurt.

I didn't. I was alive. I'd escaped.

But I didn't know if I was alone in the house or not.

I'm, like, feeling around for a light switch.

Flip on a light, and there's bars on the windows and bars on the doors.

So it was impossible for me to get out there.

There was a whole window with no bars on it.

My crazy plan from there was hold myself out and kind of hang and drop.

I fell again.

My leg was asleep.

I thought to myself, wait a minute, I wasn't down that long. How is my leg

asleep?

I looked down.

All the bones were out of my leg.

I started crawling.

And all of a sudden, out of the door from the house in front, come these

They're like, what happened? What happened? Oh, my God, look at her legs.

No, no, no, no, not the police, not the police. Help, help me.

They thought that I was a burglar.

They called the police.

An ambulance pulled up.

They rolled me straight in on a gurney.

I was in shock.

My pain hadn't kicked in yet.

They took my leg and they poured something on it.

That's when the pain started.

It burned.

It hurt so bad. I screamed and yelled.

They told me I had to be quiet.

They meshed it together somehow.

All this with no pain medicine.

Keep asking for pain medicine.

They told me that I couldn't have anything unless you pay for it.

And they wrapped some kind of gauze around my leg and just left

me lay there.

a shackle on this ankle and a shackle on my arm.

It hurt so bad.

They would come in once a day to clean my wound.

I mean, I didn't even have antibiotics.

They told me I couldn't have any because I couldn't afford it. I didn't have the

money.

They just let me lay in my own filth.

I sat in that hospital bed for almost a month.

And then one night, I have some news for you.

The nurse came in.

She said,

I'm sorry you can't lay here without antibiotics.

We're preparing you for surgery tomorrow morning.

Your leg gets infected.

You're going to get gangrene.

You're going to die if you do that.

She said, we're going to amputate your leg tomorrow.

And I screamed and I cried.

I tried to pull the handcuff off and freaking shackle.

Cause my plan was to throw myself off that second story. When we were up on

second floor, I was going to kill myself. I was going to kill myself. I

couldn't, there was no way.

There was no way I was going to live like that.

I had struggled so much.

I had finally passed out.

When I woke up, I looked down at my leg.

Standing in the doorway were a really nice -looking couple.

Are you Tina Myers?

Hi, Tina.

And they said, well, we're here, and we're going to pay for your operation.

It felt like a dream. It felt definitely surreal.

Why?

They were affiliated with the church, and they just said they'd heard about me

and they wanted to help.

This was something I'd never seen in my life.

I always thought that people were always trying to get something back for doing

things for other people.

Not everybody is just in it for themselves.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

I told them thank you millions and millions of times.

Thank you.

I was going to get to keep my leg.

The lady, she gave me a little pink Bible.

And instead of they would see me later, they would come back and visit me.

It was like a couple of angels came down and touched me.

It was a beautiful thing.

After the operation, I stayed in the hospital maybe another two weeks.

before they returned me to the prison.

They loved me.

I was a legend to them already. I was a living legend there.

I was the only woman that had ever escaped from one of their prisons.

La mujer araña, spider woman, that's what they called me.

I was still stuck then.

But some of us just need to be beat up a little bit more before we learn what

we're supposed to learn.

Hola. One day I was called down to the mail room.

Tina Meyer.

She says, you got a package.

I said, oh, really? I got a package?

And along the wall, there was a whole bunch of packages, a whole bunch of

I said, well, which one's mine?

She says, all of them.

All of them?

She says, yeah, your mom sent them all to you.

My mom has saved up her food stamps and all the little bits of money that she

had.

She sent me everything I needed.

I know that she had given up a lot to be able to send that to me.

She sent me a letter and told me, Tina, I'm sorry it took me so long to write

you.

But you're my daughter.

And you always will be.

At that point, I didn't know my mom actually loved me.

That she didn't care about me.

I mean, it took a long time for me to find out that she did.

It gave me a lot of strength.

It gave me a reason to not give up.

Have a look in the little book.

It's just a corny little thing I picked up in the thrift store.

But I hope that it will help you to find a way to forgive me.

I knew that I wasn't going to be able to dance professionally at all. I knew

that was over with.

But it was like life had just started over.

Like I was given another chance right there.

Before I went to prison, I wasn't a very nice person.

Now it's time to stop and think about who I wanted to be.

Months passed by.

Hola.

I completely immersed myself in their culture.

I learned the language so fast.

In four months, I could read it, write it, and speak it.

They have a saying in Spanish, a la fuerza.

Forcefully, I had to learn it. Forcefully, I had to learn a lot of

About two years into my sentence, there was a pastor that

started coming to the prison.

You must be Tina.

He was an American pastor that had a church in Peru.

I could talk to him. I could express myself to him.

And he wasn't judging me.

He was a very good man. Very good man.

Tina, listen.

I'm arranging to expedite your parole.

What? I'm going to get you out of here.

What?

Oh, my God.

And plus, he was going to give me means to earn money while I was waiting for my

transfer to the United States.

I knew I was getting out.

When they finally did let me leave, she walks me out through the patio,

everything else, and she opens the gates. She shut the gates behind us.

And then the doors open.

It was the best feeling in the world.

And I feel my knees just buckle. And as I start to fall, all of a sudden these

arms grab me.

I asked him, well, why are you doing all this for me?

He says, because one day you're going to be able to give it back.

It should be a blessing for someone else in the future.

I had asked around quite a few times who in a couple were that had helped me.

But no one seemed to know who they were.

No one seemed to know what church they were from.

No one seemed to know anything about them.

I had that Bible. I carried that Bible that she gave me. Dad traveled so many

different places with me.

I kept looking. I never found them. Never found them.

While I was on parole there, the pastor would give me different jobs.

And I would teach kids English for free in one of the poorest, poorest parts of

Peru.

I thought I had been poor.

But I learned that I was rich in so many more ways than I thought.

After everything, after all the years, I did finally get to patch things up with

my mom.

Unfortunately, my mom got sick with cancer.

While she was sick, I got to come and care for her.

While my mom was laying there, I forgave her for everything.

I forgave her.

Now I have three kids.

They're doing very well, very smart.

I am a music promoter. I promote independent music.

I get to watch their dreams come true.

I totally believe the pastor will be proud of me because I have worked my

off to become a better person.

And he may not be proud of me for not going to church,

But I think he'd be proud of me as a person.