WHEN JOHN GILBERT stands before an audience of prisoners preaching about the evils of drugs, none is as well qualified to deliver the message as he.
Gilbert has been there, done that.
The Baptist minister has handled enormous amounts of illegally acquired money, and knows the intrigue of smuggling contraband drugs across borders, but has also suffered the pain of incarceration and seen a family he loves destroyed in the process of his pursuing the ill-gotten gains.
In Barbados last week for a regional meeting of Prison Fellowship International, Gilbert shared his life story with the SUNDAY SUN in an interview that brought home the stark reality of what it means to be a drug dealer and the costs.
The 54-year-old was born in Guyana and moved to St Croix when he was very young. One of eight children, most of whom excelled in careers, he grew up in a home where he said he constantly heard his brothers, sisters and their father telling him, “You are not going to be anything in life.”
The ridicule drove him from St Croix at age 17 to Arizona, United States, where his brother was stationed in the US Armed Forces.
“I was, lost, looking for me. I got into Arizona and started searching for myself.”
In the search he worked for car wash companies and did other menial jobs along that line, until he was laid off.
Friends persuaded him there was work that would be worth his while.
“I had friends selling drugs and they said to me, ‘Look at you working for people and you struggling and we selling drugs and we have it good’.”
They won him over.
“I got into the drug business and got in so far, we started transporting drugs from Arizona to New York.”
He clearly remembers that first trip: transporting a stash of drugs from Arizona to New York in 1991.
“You pack it in your bags, you wrap it up real good, cover it up with clothes and towels and then you carry it to the plane. The first time it was nerve-racking because you stand there and your bag has to go through the scanner and you notice these people can’t recognise what it is from the way you pack it.
“They teach you how to pack it and so it gets through. And you are there, waiting nervously on the other side for your bag to pass through the scanner.”
His bag came out on the other side without detection of its illicit contents and he breathed a sigh of relief: “Wow. I am home free.”
He was picked up in New York by the contacts there. They gave him the money which he took back to Arizona.
As the business flourished suitcases were used to transport the growing quantities of drugs. There was an upgrade to tractor trailers and cars as different methods became necessary to transport the growing amounts of illicit cargo from Tucson to New York.
“It was lots of money and I said, ‘Easy come, easy go’.”
Married before he got into the drug business, Gilbert roped in his wife.
“I got my wife to pick up money for us in New York. I got my mother-in-law to pick up money for us in New York.
“Unfortunately, you involve people in this thing that you can end up hurting,” he said, but “they knew and they took the chance because, unfortunately, sometimes family members, they like the perks.”
Having $100 000 in cash in hand and being exposed to the temptations of New York shopping can shatter the stoutest resistance.
Gilbert’s family would later pay the price. He was eventually caught, arrested and jailed.
“Unfortunately, my wife had to do that time with me, my kids had to do time with me,” he said.
The father of a son and daughter explained: “They were on the outside and they would visit me in prison. That’s a strain, that’s a struggle because they have to take care of you, now you are in prison, with their resources.”
One of his drug associates had been arrested in New York and the information coming out of that arrest led the police to stake out Gilbert’s home. They found marijuana and cash.
“When the police officers came to our house, they had to go to the bank to get money counting machines to count the money that was at the house.”
Prison, however, did not put an end to his drug dealings.
Gilbert said there were drugs there as well and he could not bear to witness the unfair treatment meted out to some fellow prisons who were also dealing. He got involved in the business to support them, he said.
“I sold drugs in prison for a long time. I talked a nurse into smuggling drugs into the prison for us, paid her house off while I was in prison and I gave the money to these inmates, and took very good care of these inmates who did not have anything.”
Gilbert had grown up in the church in St Croix and it was that foundation that set off the light in his head one day on the prison’s softball field. He heard this little voice inside him say: “Look at your life.”
“I looked at my life for the first time and began to realise what a mess I had made of my life.”
It was the turnaround that took him back to the church.
“I grew up in church, left church, so I decided to go back to church and in prison I went back to church,” Gilbert said.
“When I had that awakening, I walked back into the building I was staying in. I stood at the top by the door and yelled out to everybody, ‘I am done with this life and I am going back to church’.”
Prisoners laughed at him.
“What are you going to do with your stuff?” they asked. He gave them all the drugs he had.
Today, Gilbert credits the Prison Fellowship with guiding him through his imprisonment. Through their inspiration, he studied the Bible, law and learnt about business.
When he was released from prison, he went back to church and into business, starting a small janitorial company with his wife. He later returned to St Croix and to his old church, Frederiksted Baptist Church, which he has been pastoring for the last three years.
Today there is gratitude for his own salvation from a dark life. There is also the pain and struggle of trying to save his 28-year-old son from the same fate.
“My son was 19 years old when I got out of prison. He was about three and a half when I went to prison. Unfortunately, today he is messing around with that stuff and I am fighting for him. I realise he is where he is at because of my behaviour and my actions in the past so I have got to fight.”
When Gilbert tried to persuade his son to quit drugs “because you know what happened to your dad”, his son’s reply brought tears to his eyes.
“Daddy, I was fascinated by your life,” was the response of his child, a young man who has had several brushes with the law and been imprisoned for short periods for drug offences.
But his father has vowed never to give up on him.
“The drug business is a dangerous thing and that’s why you see sometimes in prison, here goes a father, here goes a son; here goes a mother, here goes a daughter.
“My son has a six-year-old son and I am afraid he will grow up and model his father.”
That’s why Gilbert vows he will “never turn back” from the Christian path he is on.
