A New Kind of Hustle
by Christian Piatt

Part 1

Jerry has lived more in his life than most people ever will, or probably ever care to. He considers his current role as a leader among the residents at Samaritan House to be a blessing, especially compared to the hell he faced before he came.

Escaping the street life he knew as a youth, he became the head orderly in surgery at Hendricks Memorial Hospital for twelve years. Jerry found stability and satisfaction in his work. Following his work in the operating room, he worked for General Dynamics for eight years. His wife of twenty-one years worked for an insurance company, and together, they enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. Jerry says he got used to the way of life he, his wife and six sons shared. They bought a brand new house, drove a new car, and wanted for nothing. But fortune soon cast a dark shadow, and he was laid off. To make matters worse, his wife quit her job when the home office of her company relocated to another state.

Jerry tried his hand at the clothing business, receiving his license as a tailor and opening his own clothing store. Business was modest, but Jerry admits that he had gotten used to the lifestyle he had known before. No stranger to the street from his youth, he began to hustle drugs to turn some easy money. “I went back to my street ways,” says Jerry. “Robbing, shooting, selling drugs, you name it. I did it.”

The money rolled in, but Jerry became enamored with his own game. He started using the same drugs he would sell, smoking crack and injecting drugs on a daily basis. His habit, at its peak, cost upwards of $1,000 a day, and Jerry became less focused on financial comfort, and increasingly obsessed with his next fix. “I would do anything to get what I needed,” he says. “I was the guy in the alley way you didn’t want to come up against. It ain’t no game out there. No game at all.” In the meantime, his entire family turned their backs on him.

As if to emphasize his point, Jerry lifted his shirt to reveal two bullet-hole scars in his ribcage. He carries a mobile oxygen system with him every day because of the damage the injuries caused. But Jerry was still undeterred. Perhaps to his detriment, his hustling skills drove him to run two crack houses at one point, until he was finally run out of town. “The police busted in, took me to the edge of town and told me to never come back,” he says of one incident in Carrollton. Fortunately, for him, the house was free of incriminating evidence at the time. But it also meant that he felt even more unstoppable; that is until one day when his body could not take any more abuse.

Part 2