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Dec 10
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    • #32 – Dan Sanfellipo

    #32 - Dan Sanfellipo

    EPISODE DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit language relating to race and racial biases specifically in the prison culture.

    The California prison system is one of the only prison populations that is legally separated by race. As you will hear in Dan’s story, this separation is a survival mechanism for people to identify with a particular culture in order to survive in that environment.

    This episode also contains explicit language and true stories of extreme violence.

    Dan Sanfellipo’s Story

    Dan Sanfellipo has served 90% of 25 years of his life in prison (he is now 46 years old). His incarceration journey started at age 13 and he is now 8 years sober and a positive, contributing member of society.

    Dan is an incredible human being, and his story of struggling through addiction, years in prison, and eventually finding sobriety is nothing short of miraculous. We were so excited to have Dan on the podcast, and we hope you enjoy hearing the entirety of Dan’s story! Hang in there for one of our longest and most detailed podcast stories – enjoy!!

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    Episode Transcript

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to the Courage to Change Recovery podcast. My name is Ashley, and I am your host. I am here to tell you a little bit about our next guest. His name is Dan Sanfilippo, and he is an awesome dude. Dan has done 90%, we figured this out, 90% of 25 years of his life in prison. He is 46 years old. He started the incarceration journey at about 13. He currently has, I think about eight years of sobriety under his belt and is a contributing positive member of society.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    He came on and shared his incredible story with us. I wanted to give a quick disclaimer, because when we’re talking about the prison population and prison life, there is a lot of talk about race. So much so that I think it needs to be said that the way that Dan and I talked about race was as it relates to prison and prison lifestyle and prison culture, which is a very bold, specific environment, and it needs to be talked about in that way when we are discussing it because that’s the reality. However, it can sound a bit abrasive and politically incorrect if you’re listening to it from having no experience with the prison system.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I say that so that you have some perspective when you hear things, talking about race and bringing race up when normally we would never have that conversation. The California prison system, I don’t know if most people know this, but it is legally separated by race. I believe it is one of the only populations, circumstances, in which people are legally allowed to be separated by race. As you will hear in Dan’s story, it is actually a survival tool mechanism for people to identify with a certain group and culture in order to survive in that environment.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So I just wanted to come on here and say this is going to sound different than a lot of the conversations you’re going to have. Maybe, maybe not. If you don’t relate to it, that’s okay, we are talking about a specific thing. So I hope you enjoy it and get a lot out of it and maybe learn something new, or find something to relate to. Relate to the feelings and see that we can and do recover. All right, now that I’ve prepped you, let’s do this.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Dan, welcome. I’m really grateful that you agreed to be here and to do this.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. No, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I’m super honored to be here, actually.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, so I’m really excited for everybody to hear your story, because you are not the average alcoholic, right? I mean, you were talking about this. People don’t often make it out to sobriety from where you came from, and I do want to get into… We talked about war story, right? In your case, we need to know the war story because it puts into perspective the recovery story, right? Your recovery story is a lot like my recovery story, is a lot like every … We all got sober the same way, but where you came from, what you had to overcome is very different. So I want you to talk to us about that. So all in all you’ve done 25 years in prison, is that right?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    About 90% of 25 years is what I’ve calculated.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay, 90% of 25.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, basically.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay, but what was the longest stretch in there?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It was eight years. Was eight years at 85%, so whatever that comes at.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You guys have a language that I’m not… Okay, you’re going by convictions and sentences. Like eight year sentence, and then how much you did?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, so there’s terms, right? So I did a four-year term. I did a six-year term, I did an eight-year term. I did an 18-month term. I did another three-year term. So those were sentences that they give you.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, and then you do a percentage?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    You have to do a percentage of it based on whatever… I’m a two striker, so it’s 85% versus 50 halftime, or 35%-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re only a two striker?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well, two striker meaning the next one you’re done.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh yeah, next one you’re done. Are we still doing that in California?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I think so. I don’t know. Now that I’ve been out of that world, I don’t even care.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. You’re like, I’m not even going to pay attention. Yeah.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So yeah, I’m the oldest of our immediate family. I have a brother and two sisters that are from my mom and dad. And then my dad had a previous marriage, where I have a half sister that lives in Minnesota, who’s older. We didn’t grow up together though, so I mean, I know her and she’s my sister, but we didn’t live in the same house.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Are your parents still married?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They are.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So your home was a married household. How long have they been married?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    45 years.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. 45 years. And what was it like? You grew up in San Diego, what was that like?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I was born in Burlingame, California–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh yeah, NorCal.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, NorCal, in San Francisco.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s where I’m from, that area.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I think we lived there for like, I don’t know, a year or two. And then we moved to San Diego. I went to mills high school for six months, which I’ll get to there. But yeah, I had pretty much what you would think is, I guess somewhat normal… I mean, I was a kid, just a baby then, but born into this 22 row mansion in Burlingame. My dad’s been a millionaire like five different times throughout his life. Made it lost it, made it lost it, made it, lost it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. That’s very silk and valley of him.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. I totally believe he’s now colic, but he doesn’t… But whatever. But because how can you do that? I mean anyways, you have to have some kind of drive that makes you be able to do that.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Some people never make a million, and today $1 million isn’t really a lot of money.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I mean Burlingame a very affluent area.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Very, yeah, that’s like the Laguna beach or whatever area I call it. But we moved to San Diego, and I mean as a kid I have very limited memories of being a child prior to the trauma and then being just in this whole other hostile world. But for the most part it was a normal family. Dinner at certain time every night. My dad was sometimes there, sometimes wasn’t. He was a workaholic, always working. But around five years old, from what I’m told, my mother became a Jehovah’s witness.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Your mother became? Wow.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yes, she was somebody knocked on the door. She’s a flamenco dancer. Beautiful. Beautiful. She’s Spanish, and my father’s Irish and Sicilian. He lied to her about his age, and she’s older than he is by like five years.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Anyways, he’s been basically an atheist for the most part of… I think he’s still is, but he’s starting to get a glimmer of the various… Because of my experience, there’s got to be something else out there. But so from that point kind of growing up, it became this battle of me watching my father, very egotistical, millionaire made, self made, very intelligent obviously, and kind of not in agreement with my mom becoming this Jehovah’s witness. Of all things, that was not what he wanted his life to be like. And it showed.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I remember going to… Because I’ve always believed that when you feel things, you remember them and it doesn’t matter how far back you go. So I sat at tables with whoever was born at this time, family, friends of my dad’s basically, Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners, and watch him ridicule her in front of his friends. Make fun of her and just kind of like… And she would just take it. She’s probably the toughest woman I’ve ever come across. I’m sure everybody says that about their mom, right? But she would just take it. I never heard her once scream and yell, or fight. I’ve heard him, when we were kids, but he drank a lot and worked a lot too.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I remember those instances where he would put her down in front of people. She was always getting put down because of that. And I remember that. I remember–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But you didn’t grow up Jehovah’s witness? Because my husband’s family is… They didn’t celebrate Christmas, or they didn’t celebrate any holidays. So she did not bring that on to you guys. You grew up basically with your dad’s traditions?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No, no, no. So after she became a practicing, baptized Jehovah’s witness, they battled over that. I obviously wasn’t around, so I never cared anyways, because I didn’t celebrate Christmas, Thanksgiving in the California youth authority, Juvenile or prison. Fortunately for me I didn’t–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    This is not a big issue for you.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, didn’t have that problem. I remember I have just little, very, very small, vague… Those are mainly what I remember, things like that. And going to Mission Bay in San Diego as a kid, riding bikes, and stuff like that. But for the most part, my mind goes, as an addict alcoholic, my mind goes to what’s wrong? Where’s the dirty spot on this white piece of paper? That’s what I zero in on. And going back in my life, now that it’s become apparent to me what happened when I turned nine years old, that’s kind of where everything starts for me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. Right.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I’ll just talk about that. So at nine years old, San Diego, living on Cornatto Avenue in between point Loma and ocean beach, my parents were gone in Australia for a couple of weeks. My mom’s stepbrother had came with my grandfather to watch us kids, and for two weeks I was sexually abused, right?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    By the step?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    By the stepbrother. I don’t call that… That wasn’t when I chose the drink, but he was giving me beers to drink them as fast as I could, and all this stupid stuff that that happens when people are just like that, whatever they do to kids. I still can’t process it. But–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And so you were nine, and how old was this guy?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I would say probably mid twenties. 28, maybe.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    how often… For a guy like you to, and for people to… I mean you’re a jujitsu fighter, you are a, for all intents and purposes, a bad ass. How does that fit into your equation in terms of like, is that a difficult thing to say? Do you feel like, no, I’ve reconciled with that, I think people need to know? Where does this part of your story… What does that feel like for you? It’s a weird question, but.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Doing speaking and different things in different places, colleges, I’ve actually had people come up and just say, “Man, thank you so much for sharing that. I would never say that, but can I talk to you later?”. And that’s happened to me, and that kind of stuff. And so those little kind of release… Because it’s a release for me. It’s like, “Ah, you know what, I’ve done so many worse things”. That’s something that happened to me, if he can’t talk about it… I guess there’s a factor there, right? So I was told specifically don’t say anything. My sisters would be harmed, my parents would be harmed. And for a kid, looking back with hindsight and knowing what I know now about kids and just my experience today, hindsight’s 2020, right? So if you want to know how I’m doing today, ask me next week. Right now I’m in the mix.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But I had to swallow it down, right? And the thing about that particular abuse with my life, is that’s what inflamed and just started this just nightmare snowball of insanity and running. As soon as my parents came home, I could not tell anybody anything, but I ran away the second that they were home.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You ran away from home?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Literally ran out of the house, I was out of here. I was still going to school, and I had friends that were kind of… Ocean beach is really where I was kind of nurtured before I went into juvenile hall. And it’s pretty much middle to lower class, white trash at the time. Bikers, the hell’s angels, the Mongols, were going at it then, fighting with each other, these outlaw biker gangs. And it was pretty much convicts.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s very different now.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, it’s very different.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I was going to say, that’s not the OB I know.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. A lot of convicts running around the streets, tattoo artists, bikers, and there was great methamphetamine at the time. But there was these rats, we were called basically. But the kids that really whose parents are these people, and they don’t give a shit where they are at any point in time at the night. And they were going to school trying to make it, and they were the outcast, right? The punkers.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So that’s who I was kind of hanging out with, and I ran to be away from my father because he wasn’t there to protect me. So I hated him. I couldn’t tell him anything, or my mom, and it was almost like I downloaded exactly what I was supposed to not do and did everything but, to make sure that they felt pain for what I went through. Because I blamed him for not being there to protect me as the man of the house. I mean this is how I’ve–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Was that dialogue in your head? Or just a reaction?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    That’s why I say it’s hindsight. It’s hindsight. It was immediate impulse–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Impulse, yeah.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And it wasn’t just a one time thing. My mother, God bless her soul and her heart, she was like… I mean imagine a mother who’s got not only doesn’t know that this happened, but can’t figure out why all of a sudden out of the blue, she comes back from Australia for two weeks, and her son is not coming home ever again. Doesn’t know what’s going on with him, but he’s out on the streets at nine years old, and she’s worried, like she would be for your own nine year old out on the streets and like, why won’t he come home?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    When I finally talked to her a couple of times, I always had that she was a good woman. My father wasn’t a bad person, but he lost his little ability to have some kind of credibility with me by the way he treated her with that whole Jehovah’s witness thing and ridiculing her.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The running on the streets, it was things like this, he’d pull up to a group of people down in OSA beach at the wall, and pull out a fake DEA badge. That’s how insane he was. Asking where I was, and these guys would drop all their dope. Me and my other friend would go back over there, we’d be hiding–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Grab all of it.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    We’d grab all the dope because these guys all thought he was actually a DEA agent, but he’s just trying to find me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Dad, do it again.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And who’s pulling his strings? The woman at home was like, “You better not come home until you get my son back”. You know what I mean? So there’s so much psychological background behind that. And I get it today, because I understand what he went through. So that went on, it was always… Things like that went on and on and on. Everybody was watching the cops on the streets at three in the morning, and for my dad. That’s what everybody at the beach knew, this dude is crazy. And he saw drug dealers, and he was young then, they had a gun, and he was like, “If somebody does something on my son” or “I catch you guys around him”. They were afraid of him. We were young, right?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Then the older, the grown up… Because I decided to let an outlaw biker gang down there be my family instead of them–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Naturally.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Because I thought the pain that I had in my chest of guilt and shame, and just what had happened, and just the uncomfortable… Just whatever that stuff does to you, when that thing happens to you. I felt better with anything else going on.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Within a couple of weeks of being out there, I’m in these biker neighborhoods or biker parties, where there’s chains and knives, and leather jackets and guns, and people drinking Jack Daniels. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that type of environment, but the women… It’s not your normal party. I had the mother figures, right, that were like… They tried to be the mom for the kid that they probably weren’t a mom for, you know what I mean?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, totally.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    There’s so much, it gets so deep, the level of things I could go back and think of why people did what they did. But I remember the first thing was watching these guys, and they were doing shots. And I’m curious. I would say curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back. So I’m watching these guys do these shots, they’re playing quarters or whatever, and like, “Hey youngster, what are you looking at? Come over here. You want to try this?” So I’m like, of course. So I’d go over and I’d do a shot of Jack Daniels, and that became my big brother for the rest of my life.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Immediately, right, I’m totally cool. I’m that nine year old you just talked about, completely comfortable in this arena where I was not a second ago. I was constantly like, “Whoa, this is crazy.” Just crazy stuff. And those are real guns. But I was just like, “Ah, everything’s cool”. And me and the other kids are getting along better now, we’re all cool.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And then, probably another week, I remember it wasn’t long after that, like another week or two after that. And these guys or a different crew are sitting there chopping up these white lines on this big mirror. They’re spelling out their last name, each of them, and they’re just putting this tooter in their nose and they’re snorting it up. And I’m watching that, and they’re like, “Hey”. And they’re like, “What’s your last name?” I’m like, “Oh” my last name’s long. They’re like “You want to try this?” And I’m like, “Sure”. So I did. And I was up for 14 days.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh my god.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Literally. Because this is in the 80s when there was actually real, not bath salt, not this crap that everybody’s doing today. This was real methamphetamine, real crank, real P2P dope. So Jack Daniels and methamphetamine became my formula for getting rid of that feeling of “I don’t want to be here”. Which I never wanted to be anywhere, because I just wasn’t okay with what had happened. But I couldn’t say anything, and I slowly but surely buried that experience to the point where I didn’t even remember it. It was gone.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Buried it alive.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I’ll circle back to that later, when I came to it. So at 11 years old, I wound up in juvenile hall for grand theft auto. A lot of high speed chases, I should be–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re in the car?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I’m just a kid. Yeah, yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So were they like, “Where are your parents? What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah so I go to juvenile hall, you have to go home. You’re not like, “Oh yeah, well let me out. I don’t live anywhere”, you’re going home or you’re going to a group home or something. So I would go home, and they come to court, they’d be like, “Oh my God, I don’t know what’s going on with this kid”. And that happened. I think I went to juvenile hall, I don’t know, maybe seven times, before I actually got sentenced to the California youth authority at 13.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But I would go, my parents should be in there, my mother would just be sick. My dad would just be like, he doesn’t know what’s going on. And they didn’t know what was going on with me, right? They had no clue. I would go to Texas for six months with a family member, instead of going… As an alternate sentence, and then I’d go to a lot in Oklahoma with another family member. It was okay over there because my cousins, they all drank and it was cool. Drink beers, get in the back of a Camaro and circle the block in Texas, which was like the thing to do.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It was just trouble there too, I’d get in trouble there too. So I’d come back, and maybe I didn’t go to jail there at the time or juvenile hall, but I’d come back and I just manipulate my way back. Like, “Okay, uncle Mike” or whoever was, “I got to go back, I’m ready”. I learned my lesson if you will, or whatever. And then I’d go back and I’d go right back to the same thing.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So after incidences of joy riding and going to juvenile so many times, finally at 13 years old, I remember like yesterday, I’m sitting in there waiting to… I mean they tried to send me, they were going to send me to some Arizona program. I can’t even remember what it is now, but they had horse carriages, and you’d go out for two years. You’re on this trip across America or something. I forget what it was called, but I didn’t qualify for that, because I had too many instances.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I remember like yesterday, my dad and my mom in the courtroom. And the last thing that I got charged for that kind of put me into serious hot water and time, was two counts of accessory to attempted murder and armed robbery at 13 years old, right?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yep, that’ll do it.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I remember that the DA, the lawyer was again trying to fight to get me to go to Texas or whatever, and–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    yeah, send him back to Oklahoma. Send him back to Texas.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. Yeah, anything. Because the DA’s like “Your honor, Mr”, I’ll never forget. Like I said, when you feel things you remember, right? Sitting in the courtroom, “Your honor, Mr. Sam Philipo runs with a group of people who shoot people gratuitously and have no regard for life”. And I looked over, I was like, “Oh, shit”. Because I was always not wanting my mom to know the bad stuff that her angel was doing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    As if she didn’t know by this point.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well she really didn’t. She worried on where I was, but she didn’t… I mean she knew I would get in trouble, but she didn’t know all the stuff that I didn’t get in trouble for. Now here I am going to the California youth authority. They sentenced me to eight years in the California youth authority. So from 13 to 21 is the time that… And I didn’t do it all at once, I did three years. On the youth authority in California, you go up for parole, so you can actually get out after a certain amount of time if you can convince the parole board that you’ve rehabilitated.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And California youth authority… So I just want to say, CYA from what I know of it, which is where they were talking about sending me. So when I hear this stuff I’m like, “Oh my God”. I’m just completely blessed that this did not happen. But I remember when my lawyer, they were talking about that. And it is, from what I understand from what people have said, a scarier place than many prisons. It is absolutely terrifying, and as violent as… California youth authority does not sound, does not give it a name that–

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. No, without a doubt. Without a doubt. I went to Fred C Nellis from 13 to 16. Fred C Nellis is closed now as of I think it’s 12 years now, they’ve closed. Something like that, it was in Whittier. And they closed it because they were breeding, I remember reading an article, they’re breeding too many monsters. Like literally. But that’s what they did. You have 13 years old in the California authority to 25 years old. The range of ages.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, which you can’t do in any other area.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No. And for me, so once you turn 18, then you’re only with the… So if you get in trouble or caught and you turn 18, now you’re going to the youth training school, YTS, which is the precursor to going to prison. If you’re a kid in there, I was in there with a lot of murders and lifers that are going to do life, right? Whatever you could say–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But they were underage?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    You could say that they’re not tried as an adult. Some of these guys never got out. They went to California youth authority, then they went to prison, and from there they’re…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And they knew that that was the way it was going to be? Like that was the plan?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. Because you got to figure in the 80s… well, not ’80’s. ’89 now, so ’86, ’87, ’88, ’89 I was in Whittier, LA. And so there’s like 13 lodges. This place I walk into–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Lodges. I love that they’re called lodges.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    There’s 13 lodges, or whatever you want to call it, with 90 people on each one. Okay. There’s 11 total white boys in the whole institution.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Wait, how many people did you say?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So there’s 90 times 13, and there’s 11 white boys. The rest are blacks, Mexicans, like literal gang bangers.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So you walk in, you’re 13. Are you one of 11 are you 12?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No, I’m one of 11, and this is not with me on the bus coming up. This is total in the prison at the time. You find out real quick how many white guys are here. And there’s one there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Were you like “My mom’s Spanish, my mom’s Spanish”?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    There’s two there. No, I just, because I’m ocean beach, I ran my… I didn’t speak Spanish, because I didn’t, my mother. Yeah, I didn’t know Spanish. I didn’t know Spanish.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. So you couldn’t have.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    You don’t know anything at 13 years old about prison politics, for sure. But there’s more politics in this youth authority world than anything in state prison. And you’re absolutely right, it was 10 times worse there than any experience I had in any of the level four prisons, which I’ve been through in California. Most of them.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Which is absolutely like ass backwards and insane and terrifying to me.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. It really is for a kid. When you have a 25 year old or 18 year old, and they’re in the shower and there’s… I almost got raped a couple of times by three black dudes that were holding me down, literally holding me down in the shower. It was all I could take to reach, pull his calf over to me and literally bite a chunk out of it and he screamed bloody Mary. Then the cops came in. But couple of close calls like that. Fortunately, it never happened in there all the way, but it definitely was attempted many times.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So we had these cliques, and you had to be accepted in order to have a certain level of respect in there. And for me, I kind of got caught up with… What started it for me was I got caught up with a Mexican guy that we were playing cards. We played spades a lot and, and we talked a lot and he was a gambler. And I, obviously, became this… I was able to play cards, and I saw that there was money to be made there, even if it was just little. It was a good way to pass the time.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I watched him… He became a friend, his name was Crow, from Escondido [inaudible 00:00:29:56]. And he was the older guy, but he was cool. He was a cool dude.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Older guy?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. So I’m like 13, he’s like 18, right? But he gets caught up in a mix with the Mexicans, his own his own race. And I watched them shun him, and put him on this level. It’s called where he’s on the level, which means he’s no respect. He can get spit on, punched on at anytime, and he can’t do anything about it or everybody’s going to mess him up. He has to just take it. That’s just part of his thing.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well, one day I’m watching him. I watched these guys go from our dorm… There was honor rooms, there’s like 13 honor rooms, right? And then there’s a dorm, and I watched these guys put their t-shirts around their face and three of them go into his cell, and they start fighting. They beat him up while he’s sleeping.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    From the time I’m young, I’m a loyal friend, right? And I run in there to help him, because he’s screaming bloody murder. So I go in there to help him and make the single, biggest mistake of my life by getting involved in the Mexican’s business and helping this guy who’s already on the level. So now I’ve put myself into the worst possible predicament I can be in–

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Is this the single worst decision you’ve made in your life?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No. At the time, definitely. It was the worst and probably the best, because it put me in a position where now, at night, I’m sleeping on my bunk. There’s bunk beds and then there’s single beds. The single beds were more for the younger, new… So they’re right in front of the cops cage where he can look out and kind of see everything in these single beds right here.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well, I wake up one night, and this is what they like to do. So they’d like to drink Folgers coffee, put their t-shirt, wrap it up around their face so that it’s like a band, and then put a bunch of AA batteries in a sock, three of them, and then wake me up with those. Just pounding me on the head.

    PART 1 OF 5 ENDS [00:32:04]

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And then wake me up with those, just pounding me on the head as I’m asleep. And so I’d wake up, I remember waking up and then getting hit again and getting knocked out. And then when I come to again, I’m in an infirmary. But I remembered one dude’s face. And I don’t know, I see him there because they’ve got him arrested, if you will. And I run after him and I just start beating the hell out of this guy. And that made it worse for me.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well then, I’m at my bed. I get my store and at 13 years old, I was smoking Marlboro reds. They sold them in there in the canteen. So you could smoke in there if you were … It’s weird. Out here you can’t, but in there you could smoke 13, 14, 15, 16. That’s just kind of part of the thing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They weren’t thinking about fining, you guys.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, exactly. They’re making money off of us, off our parents.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They’re like, “All right, just let them smoke.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I remember getting my store, my canteen. I put two bags on my bed and this was the first time I was able to get something that you look forward to being able to get your store bag, coffee, soups, cookies, whatever, something other than the state food that they give you. And I started to learn what being … The manipulative game of life in the streets. So I was told when I put them on my bed, like some Mexican dude guy comes up and he’s like, “Hey man, the cops calling you right there. They’ve been calling you. You better run up there.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So like an ignorant dummy kid. I run up there and the cop, I’m like, “Hey, man, you guys were calling me. What’s up?” I’m standing there for a second. He’s like, “We didn’t call you.” And he’s looking at me like, “Oh God, you just got took.” Now that I look back and I remember that, I go back to my bed, those bags are gone. And I have to ask the only other white guy on my unit, Doug Sager, he was older, he had a job.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m like, “So what I do, man?” There’s 40 seats over here in the day room, it’s the Spanish station. So the only the 40 border brothers that don’t speak English are here. Then you have 40 seats over here with Sureno, southerners that are gangster Mexicans that are American. [inaudible 00:34:17], whatever you want to call them. And that’s in American TV.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And then they got their backs against the walls, and then up in the front, you have like nine Bloods and then seven or eight Crips, I remember, each with their own rows. And then the two seats for the white guys are in the middle and there’s no TV. So we got to figure out what we’re doing by word, like literally in the middle of this old day room. And I remember asking him like, “All right, what am I supposed to do?”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Because there’s serious rules like if you smoke a Camel and you pass it to somebody, they’re non-filtered, before you burn the Camel, you’re going to get the shit kicked out of you. It was serious stupid politics …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So like what’s that?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So we’re sitting here, we’re smoking a Camel non filter and I’m smoking, and I pass it to you or somebody else Mexican or white because we did hang out with the Mexicans if you were okay, because nobody put me on the level or level, because I only had one other white guy. I just put myself in the mix with these guys. They couldn’t actually classify me because I wasn’t their race.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But if you pass that cigarette before you burn the Camel, that was like a rule. If you dropped the-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, like the Camel?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah the little Camel letters on there, the C-A-M-E-L, the Camel on, just little things like that. You drop the soap. You pick it up and you use it, you drop something like people are watching and they’re looking for a reason to just have three guys come beat you up. And the Mexicans had a heyday picking on us all the time because we didn’t have … I wasn’t at a point where we were policing our own yet, which I learned way later. But I remember him telling me, he’s like, “Look, you got to just … There’s nothing you can really do about it. Like what you’re supposed to do is this. But I don’t recommend it.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    He’s like, “You’re supposed to go around to each person in the day room one by one and tell them if you went in my locker, you throw a f, is what they called it. You throw a f. If you went in my locker and you stole my stuff or you went on my bed and stole my stuff. f your set, f your dad, homeboys, F your know barrio, F your mother, if you don’t run up, if you don’t come handle this right now because now I’m disrespecting you, forcing you by disrespecting you with all those F’s to your life to come and beat me up.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And that’s how I’ll know which person did it because I’ve disrespected every single person in there if they took my bag. If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t have to answer to it. But the Mexicans took this as a sign of disrespect not only because me being always the addict, alcoholic, I couldn’t wait. I went around because I said, “All right, cool. Then I’ll do that.” So I did that to every single person, black folks, Mexican.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Seriously?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, in the day room. And I remember the cop in there just going, “This kid is going to die. He’s just a poor thing. First, he gets like he’s not having a good-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So nobody reacted except-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No, nobody reacted right away. So I needed it right away. I went back. I remember going back to my … So then I’m like, “So now what do I do?” That’s what I told him. And he’s like-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So no one reacts?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No, nobody said anything. I mean, they’re looking at me like I’m going to kill you, like you little punk. But I go back to the guy and he’s like, “Now, you just got to wait.” He goes, “But it’s not going to be good.” So I’m like, “I don’t want to wait anymore.” So I go back into the dorm and I start going through all of the lockers. Now the people that have locks are people that are afraid. They don’t have respect. They’re afraid that somebody can go into their locker.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The Mexicans, as many as I’ve told you that word, they don’t have locks in their locker because you better not go in their locker. Well, I went through every locker in there until I found the barbecue bag of chips I remember, card and Marlboros. And when I found it and I knew it was mine, I took that stuff out and I put it in my locker. And now I’ve asked for, not only did I disrespect everybody, but I then just if insult to injury was anything, it was me going in their locker as well because nobody goes in there.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I’m like, “I don’t care. I got my stuff back that my mom bought me,” you know what I mean? “So this is mine.” And I was so emotional about it. I cried, I remember crying and crying and crying. I’m telling the cop, “But my mom bought me that, blah, blah, blah.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did the cops like have any-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It’s like there’s two people, two cops on for 90 people in this place. And then at night, there’s like one in a secure cage watching all these people sleep at night.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Sounds safe.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, and that’s kind of where all … So many, like I’d be in the bathroom and all of a sudden, they call getting bombed on. I got bombed on playing cards where somebody just runs up and hits you in the side of the head. And then they just all start beating the shit out of you. So that happened a lot. And it’s a wonder that I still have a semi functioning brain seriously.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But at one point, I’m sitting out in front of the admin center. I had a job picking up cigarette butts in front of the staffing office in a program administration. And I remember this, I’m sitting on the curb and I’m just like, I’m crying. I cried a lot at that point. And I’m sitting there just crying like, “Man, I can’t do this. Like everywhere I go, I’m just constantly getting beat up.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I see this tractor coming my way and I recognized that the guys got a blue shirt on, the blue prison blues and blue jeans and he’s a Samoan and Mexican guy. And he pulls up and he’s like, “What’s going on youngster?” And I’m like, “I’m glad you ask.” So I started telling him everything going on. It’s like the first time, not in front of a bunch of people, we’re sitting over here. This guy is on the tractor. He’s from YTS Chino. He’s on a job where he works here, but he goes back there YTS to the adult, 18 to 26 or 25 unit in Chino and he starts to … I tell him everything.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m like, “This is what … I’m just tired of this happening to me. Like I can’t do this anymore.” So he tells me, “I’m going to tell you what to do to fix this. If you do what I tell you, this will stop.” I’m like, “I’m all ears. Just tell me what to do.” Like “Dude, tell me go … Tell me what to do.” So he’s like, “The next time anybody comes at you, messes with you, says something, looks at you wrong, you need to … I don’t care if you get a rock, if you take a broom and sharpen it, if you put soap in a sock, if you put rocks in a sock, you need to go to that person and you need to smash him so loud.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    “You need to make sure every single person in this prison and in every other prison around you and in every neighborhood house hears the echo of you.” Metaphorically he’s saying, “Just make sure everybody knows.” And he goes, “You do that once-“

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But what if it’s three people?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … and he said, “Just overdo it.” He says, “Do what you have to do to make sure that you almost kill this person.” You know what I mean? He’s just like, he said, “If you say it loud, as loud as you possibly can, it’ll start to stop and then the next time something happens, do it again. Don’t just try to fight people, sharpen something, stab them, stab them right in the stomach, as many times as you can. Don’t just stab him once and run away, like stay there and keep stabbing on until the cop comes.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And he said, “When you start doing that, everything will stop and people will respect you and they will leave you alone.” So I was like, “Okay, if that’s what I got to do.” I’m going through hell and I have no problem with these Bloods and Crips and these Mexicans. They just torment me every day. I’m standing in line and I’m getting kicked and hit and spit on while in line and nobody is admitting to who it was. They’re like laughing.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But at 14 years old, I started doing that, and it became a habit. Every time somebody disrespected me, it wasn’t just a one time thing. It was like every single time you crossed the line with me, this is what’s going to happen to you, to make sure I never have that feeling again. And so that’s what I learned at 14 years old.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How fast did that work?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Pretty quick. I cut a lot of times. So the three years, 18 months as a first time offender in there is what I would’ve done. I wanted two and three and a half, actually three and a half, and that carried. So then I got out. I was out for six months.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    At what age?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    At 16, and this is when it was the only time I went to high school. So not in San Diego, but my parents said, “He’s getting out, maybe. Let’s move to San Francisco. Let’s get away from everybody in San Diego and see if this will help him.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, it’s reasonable.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I get out. When I first started, there’s a joke because I don’t lift weights, but when I first started lifting weights in there, all I did, like I knew Popeye and I didn’t have anybody else to say, “Hey, this is how you work out.” So all I did was curl. So now, I have these biceps that I can just think about doing a pushup. I’ve got veins blowing up right there, but I don’t do curls.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So people are like, “Dude, you work out?” Like have I trained jiu-jitsu? They’re like, “Man, how much do you lift?” I’m like, “I don’t lift weights.” I mean I do for my legs, I do. So my biceps were overdeveloped at this time. And then towards from the time once I got closer to getting released, I started learning. Oh, yeah, if you do bench presses, you have to do all these other things.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But my point is at 16 years old, I’m at Millbury High School and I’m like … My dream … So let me back up for a second. Junior High is Correia Junior High in San Diego on Point Loma. And I’m like a very fast wide receiver football. I’m fast at the time and to the point where I’m going and practicing with the high school football team and kind of trying out for it. I can catch the ball and I can run fast and I snap my ankle. And I wind up just ruined, like that was my dream.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So now I’m drinking a lot more and doing drugs and just that was it. I was done. So at 16 years old, I’m in Millbury I’m like, “Okay, this is high school. This is what everybody what you dream about.” I knew what junior high was like. I want to have a girlfriend. You see these TV shows, the letter jackets, all these stuff. So I’m like, “Yeah, this is what I want to do. So I want to play football. I’m going to high school, but I’m trying out for the football team.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So it’s late, two weeks late into the season. But because I’m developed in a way that’s like, there’s no other 16-year-old that has the same body that I have. So they let me try out and of course, I make the team like with flying colors and I’m like this all-star guy, because we played football in YA too. So in Fred C. Nelles, we had helmets, pads, everything. I mean, I-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Like, no shivs when we’re playing.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But you learned how to hit. That was a thing, you’re going to hit and you’re going to make people like do and you took it. So when I got there, they were like, “Yeah, we’re going to win, like whatever.” But who is this guy? And they called me mafia man because I had this walk where I have this gangster walk that was just normal for me. It was a normal way for me to walk and squat. And if you take a mix between a Mexican and a white gangster from the time they’re … I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m squatting, I’m walking. I’m like I have this real convict gangster-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Demeanor.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … demeanor. I just was around it. So that’s what became me. And I’m playing football and I meet a couple of friends that are my friends to this day, these Chinese and Mongolian brothers, Ed and Dave Chin and along with a lot of other people there that I met, but we wound up very close. And it was interesting because we only knew each other for that, like six months. And we’re at a party and we’re at Sebastian Park, and these two Tongans, they’re messing with some girl. And I’ve always been the Captain Save-A-Hoe type of person if you will.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I’m like, I’m going to stick up for him because nobody else is going to stick up for them. And anyways, they try to jump me. I pull out a knife. I started stabbing him like I do. And I go right back to prison. So now I’m violated and I’m going to go do two years. But these guys are like, “Whoa, dude, did you hear what that dude did? Like [Rothman 00:47:45], like he’d stabbed those Tongans. Like they’re not ever going to mess with that dude again. But, dude, that’s crazy, like who does that at 16 years old like at a party in high school party, who does that? And he’s just like proficient at it. Not something he’s never done before. Like obviously this dude’s done this many times.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So it was this like they were intrigued, my buddies, and they wrote over the years. So I go back and now, I’m in Preston in Sacramento and I do two years there and it’s a little bit different now. Now, there’s a massive amount of whites, and blacks and Mexicans-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And we should stop and just say that the prison system is the only place where you can legally segregate by race?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But you have to actually.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So I think that’s an important piece, is that many people don’t-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They don’t do that in other states.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, they don’t?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They don’t.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Only in California?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They don’t, and I can only speak on California, but I know from federal-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I didn’t know that.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, so a lot of other states, there’s like in New York, there’s blacks, there’s Mexicans. I mean, there’s blacks and whites that actually are on the same gang or whatever.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, I didn’t know that.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, they’re cellies. In California, it’s just a trip. I don’t know if it’s something to do with being so close to Mexico or what it is because the Mexican Mafia runs the prison systems, period. And even the youth authorities, they did, to the point where the staff members are heavily, heavily influenced by their cousins, nieces, brothers, whoever that is potentially at risk if they don’t play ball in prison. Bring cell phones, bring dough, bring whatever, look the other way. So they have complete control, it’s crazy.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s the part that’s scary. But you have to segregate?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, you have to segregate because otherwise … And it’s a way for the cops to kind of like manage-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, manage the violence?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … effectively and have, if a white does something and it keeps them kind of … But also it’s a survival for the inmates and convicts, is to stick together. And it all started basically with white guys getting raped. That’s how the Aryan Brotherhood started. I mean, I don’t want to start talking about organizations because it’s-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, but I mean I think it’s an … The reason I bring it up is that when you’re talking about it, and I know this from my exposure. But when you’re talking about it, you’re talking very much in the racial terms, and that is not outside of prison norm. Most people don’t have to say, “Oh, my Tongan and Chinese friend, my black friend, my this friend.” I just say Jessica or Sally. You know what I mean? It’s just not something that … I’m not going to identify every person, like my best friend, Serena actually, whatever. And I think it’s an important thing to say that this is very, very vital to survival.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And for the record, I don’t talk like that today. Unless I’m getting away from my meetings too much, then my girls are like, “Have you been to a meeting?” I’m like, “Why?” “Well, because you’re categorizing people on the freeway.” And I’m like, “Whoa.” You don’t do that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. So, but I mean that’s …

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, I’m in a meeting.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But that’s actually an interesting piece of it is that part of your recovery has been moving away from those categories. And I just bring that up just because I think many people have no exposure to the stuff we’re talking about. And so from the unexposed ears, it sounds racist. And what people need to understand is that it’s not, and in the sense that this is a survival mechanism.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And the other piece to it is what happens to people. And what I’m thinking about and what I’ve seen. I’ve worked in the DA’s office and I didn’t end up at CYA but I’ve dated plenty of people that did. And what happens is that in order to survive, you have to commit more crimes, which give you more time, which force you to survive in more time. And this is the-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    If you want to live in peace, at least in more peace than what you were.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I mean, I think that the option of being raped or living in peace, that’s a very wide range, like we’re not talking about fighting every three weeks and living in complete peace. We’re talking about outright everyday extreme violence or this level of nobody messes with me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And I think again, and I’ve talked about this before, you don’t know what you’re capable of until you’re put in these survival situations where that piece of you has to come out and make these types of decisions. And most of us have never had to make that type of decision on a regular basis, let alone year after year after year. And that is why it is so remarkable that you are who you are today given how programmed you were from such a young age, that this was these categories and that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So anyway, I just wanted to hop in and say that as we’re talking about it because I think it’s a really important piece, like this is the requirement in order to survive.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No, and I’m glad you do that because it is important. And I find that for many … I mean, there’s been so many prison movies over the years, but none of them are even close to accurate. Like maybe Felon and Shot Caller are probably the two that have come out.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, good because I love Shot Caller.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, they’re the closest to what it was really like. And there’s still like that’s only 30% of what you see. They don’t let you see. Felon told you a little bit about what happened when the cops were putting us out and gambling on who was going to, blacks and whites fighting Mexicans when we’re supposed to be segregated, like there is no … So they’re putting us in this little handball court to see who’s, and they’re betting. They’re up in the tower betting.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And that’s what the movie actually was about, and it’s true. I’m glad they finally came out because that’s just a glimmer of what went on in there from the time and it was worse in YA. I’m glad you brought that up because I’ve struggled with having to … The people that I want to understand me clearly and that know me, sometimes I’ve had to … And it’s people at work, like I’ve managed floors now and the convict comes out at me when I feel passionate about something or I feel like you have betrayed me.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’ll give you an example. Going through prison, I mean I can go on and on about different things that had happened in prison. But for the most part I think we can get a little bit of a gist of that was what it was like day by day. I mean, when you go in, maybe one part that you touched on is you have to not only become a part of your own race and qualify to be somebody that and why it was called kicking it, but part of the ride if you will, or part of the white race, you have to pass certain qualifications like they want to see your paperwork. What did you get arrested for? Like are you a child molester? Are you rapist?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And everybody puts in their works, so if there’s a rapists or a child molester that’s on the yard, that didn’t show his paperwork or trying to show different paperwork or get by doesn’t have “paperwork”, was a big one.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What does that mean?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Paperwork, just meaning, “Oh, I didn’t get-“

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Like a police report?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    “Yeah, I didn’t get my police report. I didn’t get my …” I forget what it’s called now, “like my form from the PA Probate that shows what you were charged for.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, because rapist, child molester, you’re out?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Meaning we don’t want you to be out, like we want to know so we can come and stab you to death. That’s what we want to know.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re done?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Because that’s us cleaning up our side of the street. We do that, then the Mexicans respect us. When we don’t do that, the Mexicans or blacks don’t respect us. I have to keep my side of the street clean. And if you come in, or you’re a rat. If your paperwork says, “Yeah, John stated openly in court that Mark did it,” or whatever, whatever the case may be, like that person’s going to get stabbed.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And so now, you’re building up the things that the new guys have to go handle to prove themselves. So it is important, I guess, to bring that part up because that you have to do. And I think you and I talked about this a little bit with the posttraumatic stress disorder when we’re talking on the phone that day for two and a half hours. But not only when you go to war, like when you go to war, you’re fighting either it’s because they believed that somebody we knew was a good person or good dude … For us, not good person. I can’t say that.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Good person doesn’t exist in there. It’s good dude. Good dude is in there a whole different term. That means you’ve stabbed somebody or you-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    A righteous cause, right?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, you’ve said what you … You’ve held up the white race or the Mexican, like you’ve handled your business. And handling your business there versus handling your business today for me is a whole different, like it doesn’t mean the same thing. But it still kind of does. You still do what you have to do and that’s the bottom line.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s just a different survival, I mean handling your business here might be calling the utility company. And in there like calling the utility company is a way to survive so that you can your credit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in there-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Paying your rent is handling your business.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, right.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And paying your rent in there is handling your business.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Is that how you sleep at the … That’s the equivalent of keeping the lights on for you and making it so you can sleep on it alone at night and things like that. I mean they are … And if you were to send someone to Afghanistan, maybe there’s a perimeter check you have to do or whatever and it’s the equivalent of handling. I mean it makes sense that in each one of these scenarios there is a different way of functioning and surviving in life.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But what we talked about was post-traumatic stress and what you were getting out was when you go to war, you know who the enemy is.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And you pretty much know where they are. They’re on the other side of that line.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They’re not in a cage with you.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    What people ask me, sometimes because I got diagnosed when I was fighting life the second time for my third strike when they struck the third strike for the purpose of sentencing me, they remove it to give you a shot of not being struck out which is 25 to life. They did that twice for me, but I went to Dr. Amen over here and they … The van brought me here from Vista to off Jamboree where this world-renowned doctor is and he does a SPECT scan, single-photon emission computed tomography.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, they’re so cool.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, and they shoot up with nuclear radioisotope-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Is that the one that makes really warm?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well, it does. You only have a feeling but it bonds with light so they can monitor the activity of the blood flow in your brain. And I wound up having this be my defense on why I was high-speed chase, shooting at cops on the 78 for 16 minutes with dope and guns and all that because I got hot spots in my brain, is what it was I’m coming down to.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But ADHD, PTSD and OCD and verifiable like color copy, cutting edge, new evidence that here’s the problem, because in any situation that has to do with the legal system court, like there was always the MO like, “Okay, you got to know how to fix this. Like if you want to present the right way,” which I learned from parole hearings as a kid, you have to present the problem and you have to present the solution. If you can do that and have a justifiable or logical solution, your chances are greater that you’ll get closer to what you’re looking for versus 25 to life basically.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So the topic comes up with PTSD that, oh well you’re not … Are you vet? I was like, “No, I’m not a war vet.” And then it’s like rolling eyes like, “Oh,” And then right away they said, “Then you don’t have PTSD.” I was like, “Well actually, when you’re fighting war,” which in prison like … Yeah, I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and muay thai and I’ve done martial arts. Any chance I could get when I was on the streets because I always want to learn how to fight from when I was in there, going through that stuff. So I wanted to be able to take care of myself. So I’ve always done martial arts.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But when you’re in prison, when I walked into the state penitentiary when I turned 21 after being out of YTS Chino two months, now I’ve caught a case. That wasn’t in state prison two months later, but I caught a case three counts of armed robbery with a gun. I had three weeks left to turn myself in on a three-week state of execution. I had the three weeks state of execution. Actually I had five days left to turn myself in and I got busted for kidnapping a department of corrections officer out of Florence in Arizona.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I was fighting 50 to life out there and that was a damsel in distress that I can get into where the guy had two different social securities, two different driver’s license, he’s illegal alien. He’s beaten up, somebody who’s an Arab brother and his niece and just all kinds of stuff. And I was like, “Oh, I’ll go do it. I’ll be gone. I’m going to go do three years anyways. They’ll never know it was me. I’ll go check in and make sure that he gives her car back and all this.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I wound up on the front page of the newspaper. And that’s what they said, two counts for the man kidnapped department of corrections officer at Florence, made it look like I was a ninja, because Florence is a prison, the federal prison.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So anyways, but he was a bad person and I always thought I was the crusader like vigilante that was going to help people. So I always thought there was a … I had some part of me that always wanted to do good and wanted to help the underdog, whether it’s a female getting beat up because I was the underdog. So I’ve always had that.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And what wound up happening is when I did go to prison, it was like a walk in the park. Everybody was like, “Whoa dude. Like you can’t do that. We have rules here. You can’t walk over to the Mexicans.” I’m like, “Dude, I was just in federal penitentiary like holding super max with this guy who gave me some information.” They go, “Give the head guy over there,” like he gave me a letter, a kite, which was a letter to go deliver to these guys because he knew where I was going to go.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    How he knew, there’s 34 prisons. You go to the reception center and then they can send you over. How this dude knew I was going to land on Calipatria four yard with a guy’s name on the kite like still blows me away to this day. But that’s why I say the Mexicans are very influential and powerful in there and on the streets. So I wound up like just … They called us YA babies, YA rejects.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    We were like trouble to the rest of the white race that was already in there, kind of in their little program and they’re doing things kind of like cool, everything’s cool. And we come in like, “No, we need to regulate. There’s politics involved, like you need to handle this. And we need to let you know you need to be as bad as I am or you’re nothing.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Well, it’s interesting because-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I’ve got respect for the Mexicans and blacks. And I know these guys, and you know what I mean? “Let me check everybody’s paperwork,” and just …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But it’s interesting because you’re coming from like the immature mindset, you’re taking …

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    That’s why they said, YA babies.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But that’s what I mean. It makes sense because you’ve been taught prison life and that was put into a 16-year-old. I mean, there’s a reason a 16-year-old boy has a higher car insurance rate than a 25-year-old man. And the reason is that there’s a risk-reward situation going on and the 16-year-old is going to take a lot higher risks than the 25-year-old man, believe it or not.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And so it makes sense that when you’re taught prison culture and you’re taught it as a teenage boy with a whole group of teenage boys, it’s going to get real gnarly. As you get older, you probably don’t want to fight as much when you’re in prison, right? As you age, it hurts more.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They don’t want to fight. You don’t fight in there. That’s what I was getting at. They say, “Don’t fight. You have a shank and you stab.”

    PART 2 OF 5 ENDS [01:04:04]

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    [inaudible 01:04:01] you don’t fight, you just… You have a shank, and you stab.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s what I mean, no one wants to hit each other.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    There is no fist fighting. That doesn’t happen.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. That’s painful.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    When something jumps off, let’s say it’s just two people fighting, “Yard down.” So when they yell that, and the siren goes off, you’re supposed to be on your belly, face down in the dirt. It doesn’t matter where you are, you lay down right there, or you’re subject to get shot, period.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    From the tower.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yes. End of discussion.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And they shoot with rubber bullets?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They shoot rubber bullets. Yeah. And then the cops will come running, they break it up, they spray, they whatever. They’ll beat you up to break it up if they need to. So, when that’s just two people fighting. When you have a riot going on, now you’ve got 60 people stabbing each other, swinging and stabbing each other, because now they’re fighting and stabbing. Not everybody has a knife or wants to bring a knife because they don’t want to risk-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, another sentence.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Another sentence, which is a third strike. So it’s very scary, very scary when you’re being told you have three years to do, you’ve got a year and a half left, and you’re number’s up. You need to go stab this dude, or you’re going to get beat up, or stabbed, and you’re going to wind up in the PC yard, protective custody yard, where you’re no longer respected by anybody. You’re a piece of [beep 01:05:23], you’re a rat, child molester, rapist, and you’re going to be in there with all of them. That’s basically where you’re at.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So you have a choice. You can live that way, which if you think you might come back to prison, that’s probably not the best route for you. Or you can go stab this guy.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Can you choose to get beaten up instead of… Can you be like, “Oh, I’ll just take a beating”?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No, that’s not going to happen. You’re going to get stabbed. You’re going to get the same thing that person gets. If you don’t do it, you get the same person that that person has coming to them coming, because you’re not upholding the white race. You’re not handling your business for us. So that means we wouldn’t be able to trust you in a riot, because you’re going to lay down, you’re not going to do anything.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And it seriously is logical in there. It totally makes sense when you’re in that situation. Out here, you and I sitting here right now, it makes no sense at all. It’s like an animal, caveman world that is primitive of… Just, it’s insane. But when you’re in there, it’s a whole different ballgame. Like you were saying earlier, you don’t know what you’re capable of until you’re in that situation.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So that is a psychological program, as well, that gets downloaded, if you will. That does go and apply to other things in life, too, right? For that person’s experiences. But when you’re on the yard, and you have a riot going on, and you’re told by your own people, “If you lay down before we’re done, you’re going to get stabbed, too. You need to go until… We need to be the only one standing.” Last man standing, if you will, and all that drama that comes with that phrase in there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And then, the other group of people’s told the same thing?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, they’re told the same thing. So you go, and there’s shots being fired. Now, so that’s where the PTSD comes in.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Can you get really-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So now you’re fighting with your enemy in front of you, and you have to be wary of a bullet hitting you from behind.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Above.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    From above. Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Which is even worse.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And rubber bullets and shotgun blasts that are wooden bricks, too? They’re just as bad as a bullet sometimes. I got shot in the knee. My knees are still jacked up to this day. But, so, that was the PTSD moment I was trying to describe to you. It’s like, “Not only am I fighting that person who could stab me in the heart… “

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    As you can see, I can get very animated and passionate when I’m talking about… explaining why I am the way I am to the world, and why they need to understand why other people are the way they are is my main purpose of always wanting to elaborate on these kinds of things.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Because they’re not elaborated on enough. They’re not brought up in life. People get out of prison, and we talked about this. In contrast to being an addict, an alcoholic who’s been just comatose for 10 years of just drugs and alcohol and needles and whatever, they have no concept of what reality looks like.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    If you’ve been in prison for five years, you have no concept of what reality looks like out here. You don’t know who Google is. You don’t know where he lives. You don’t know how to get a license. You don’t know how to do anything that every other person in society would expect you to know. They expect you to know. You have to know how to pay for a ticket.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So what were some of the things that you came out and you didn’t know?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Just-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Google? Did you know-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Google. Yeah, no, I had to learn all that. I had no idea about that. You know, “Google it.” Like, “Who the hell is Google? What are you talking about, dude?” But just simple things like getting a job. Anything that an alcoholic or a recovering addict that’s coming out of a treatment center who’s been just on the streets running, and in hotels, and doing whatever, they’ve never showed up to a job for 10 years. They don’t know what kind of etiquette you have to have verbally in a workplace. What’s proper, what’s not?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I was always the manipulator, and I always knew how to look for who… What was the path that was going to get me what I wanted? And in that game it was power. It was influence, it was respect. So, who was running the prisons? The Mexicans. I quickly had a class with a guy that was a…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I’ll give you just an experience in… When I’m fighting that life case for 28 months in Florence, in Yuma, Arizona-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How are are you?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m 21.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    21. Okay.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So, yeah, I was out two months. I caught three counts of armed robbery with a gun out of Riverside, which was somebody that we thought was going to rob us, and I thought they were pulling out a gun. Sometimes I wonder, was I delusional? But it checks out today. I probably wasn’t. I did think they were going to rob us, and I got out of the car and I pulled the gun before I thought they were going to pull a gun. And these guys throw all their wallets down, and then the idiot Mexicans that are in the car with me, they’re Indian. One of my best friends, rest in peace, who died from alcoholism in a wheelchair, he was Indian and these were his cousins. So they get out of the car and they grab the wallets and get back in.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And now, I’m the one that’s holding the gun to this guy’s head. And a light shines on me from behind, and it’s a cop, watching me with a gun to this guy’s head. And I’m just saying, “Oh, God, let’s go,” as we get in the car. But it totally was not how it was supposed to go down. And that’s the story of my life. Like the kidnapping in Arizona and just everything. Because I was constantly always…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I had my own perception of what was right and what was wrong, and I was trying to do that from a drunken, meth-induced state that was only to serve the purpose of getting rid of that feeling that I always had in my chest, not to disillusion me from life and reality. But sitting in there, I’m in a 12-man tank, which is supermax, single man cells. There’s about eight people in there, and these are all very high-profile criminals.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So one’s a Mexican mafia, one guy’s a Black Guerrilla Family, which is a black race, black gang organization in prison. Then there’s some other Mexicans that are pretty high power, like murderers, robbers. And I’m in here because I kidnapped a cop. So the kidnapping gets you right up there, right? So now I’m sitting in here.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I remember this big, just… This guy was walking one day through the day room down there, where there’s three tables. And like I said, there’s only eight of us in a 12-man supermax tank. They felt like that was enough in there to manage. And so, we live in there. They open up the cells and we live in there. Just read the newspaper, there’s TV, and we’re waiting to go to our sentence, whatever. We’re going to court.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And this guy’s walking around in the day room, yelling, “Who’s got the paper?” I remember waking up, he’s like, “Who’s got the paper?” And he just really wants this newspaper. So, finally, after going on and on, and all of a sudden I hear this guy go, “I do,” and he slaps his chest. “I do.” And he’s sitting on the rail up on the second floor, and I look up and it’s this skinny little tattooed Mexican guy that’s 50 years old.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And he goes, “I do,” and slaps his chest, and he looks at the black dude finally, eye to eye. And the black guy looks at him and almost looks like he’d seen a ghost, and just shuts up and just goes in his cell. And I’m like, “Who the hell is that dude? That was interesting.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So then I kind of start making my way to talk to this guy over the next couple of days. I’m like, “Hey, do you need anything. You want me to help you with that paper making notes? If you ever need anything, if this guy decides to come up here, you’re my neighbor.” And he was.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    He was reading the Bible. And why, you couldn’t have a Bible. That was a no-no. And you couldn’t have it in a state prison, because that was a no-no. Why? Because that might make you not want to go stab the person we need you to stop.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, but the prison isn’t the one [crosstalk 01:13:37].

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, okay. Okay.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No. The prison will give you a Bible, and NA books, but your race is not going to… That’s a good reason to get the shit kicked out of you. It’s because you got a Bible in your room.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So this guy’s-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    “Oh, you getting soft on us?” That kind of thing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Sick, sick. But he was reading the Bible, so I was like, “You’re allowed to read the Bible?” Because I’m 21, so I’m still just a puppy. I have no idea what… And I haven’t been to prison yet. I only did YA. And at this point now, I’m waiting to go to the next promotion.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I start talking with him, and he’s reading the Bible. He’s like, “Yeah, I read Proverbs every day. A lot of wisdom.” And he’s got that ese, calm, big old Mexican type that I took to, because I was used to that. And I start telling him all about YA and my experience, and we’d talk. And I’m like, “What’s it like in prison?”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And he’s like, “You know, I can tell you’re good people.” We talked about what good people means. And he explained to me everything about the Mexican mafia, and how he doesn’t have to worry about that dude. And he wants me to take care of a few things when I get there, because he feels like he can trust me more than even those guys that were down below that were in there for some ridiculous, heinous crimes.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So you could be somebody that chopped someone up and threw him in a bag, and you’re cool. But the person that’s raping people, he needs to be dealt with and dead. Which I always found… I have cellies that would come in. Celly is a roommate in prison, and the guy’s explaining to me how he chopped up his parents and put them in separate bags. And the thing that made him frustrated with himself was that the second bag he dropped out the window missed the dumpster. Like, how could he miss?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    He was like, “I could not believe I missed. And then it busted open and I had to go clean it.” And I’m like, “Dude.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What do you say to that?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    “You’re out of my cell right now.” I’m not sleeping in here with this-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, you… Oh.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Oh, yeah. No, yeah, I couldn’t… I’m like, “Hey, this dude… Love you, bro. Cool. Got all the respect in the world. You’re not sleeping in the cell with me, period. I’m not going to sleep in here with you. I don’t know what you’re going to do with that pencil.” And I told the cop, I’m like, “If you don’t move this… ” They’re like, “You can’t just move.” I said, “I tell you what, if you don’t move him out of here now, he’s going to come out of here in a body bag. The second the door opens, I’ll roll him out of here. I’m not going to sleep with this dude in here. So, do whatever you got to do.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I wound up as a single-man cell most of my life in there, which I was totally okay with. I loved it. And I would read Proverbs every day. I held on to that for the rest of my life in prison. I would read it every morning, even though I wasn’t supposed to have a Bible.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    When I got to state prison, and I had Poncho’s [kites 01:16:30] with me, and I got blessed with his OK that I was a good dude, and anything I needed, no matter what it was, like, “Take care of him.” And I right away had access to the heroin, coke, speed that was in there. Food, power, influence, favors. And right away I started… I had already learned how to speak fluent Spanish from all the Mexicans in the Youth Authority.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Interesting.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Literally, that’s all they talked about.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Full on, fluent Spanish.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Fluent street Spanish. And then I’d ask my mom things here and there. Oh, God, that brings up one thing I always want to talk about that trumps everything else, so I could pause on everything else.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    My mother would go from… For those of us that have been in Youth Authority and prison, and we act like we… So this whole thing is about me being a victim, basically is what the story would be, right? To a certain degree. I was a kid, I was in prison. All these things are happening to me. My mother would get in the car from San Diego and drive. She’d get up at 3:00 AM, be in the car by 4:00, drive to Sacramento, nine hours to stand in line.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Maybe she got up earlier than that, I don’t know. But she’d stand in line for an hour to then come in and spend 45 minutes with me, eating a sandwich out of a vending machine. And she did that every Saturday, sometimes Sundays, but every Saturday for years and years and years and years. All through my…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Because again, she had no idea why I was in prison now. She had no idea why I left, why I ran away as a kid. And now here I am, going through this crap, which she heard… Because you can only tell them on the phone so much. But they’re like, “Oh, my God, my poor kid.” And I manipulated her a lot. Those visits were the most important thing to me. It gave me a glimmer of the outside world, because you get so lost in this dark, dreary… It’s almost like a movie. You’re so lost in there.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I learned, when I had girlfriends, people are like, “Oh, you’re going to wait for me?” I would just tell them straight up, “Have a good life, and go get laid all you can. I’m not going to be calling you. I’m not going to be writing you. I’m not going to wait for you to write me. I don’t want you to come visit me.” None of that. I knew I had to focus on this in here. I wasn’t going to be stressed out on somebody else out there, like I see everybody else doing like, “Oh, she left me. When I get out, this guy’s there with my daughter, with this new guy, and I’m going to go out and I’m going to kill him.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Saying, “I need you to do me a favor. You’re getting out next week.” Like, “Oh, God. I don’t want to live like that.” But she would go every… From the time I was 13 years old, dude, it was crazy. Hands down, the reason I’m here today and the person that I am, she has a lot to do with. And her prayers, and her devotion to staying through all those years and being a loyal friend of God. I call her Moses’s sister. Her prayers have gotten me out of… I don’t know what else could have, but those…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The victim that we play as convicts and alcoholics and addicts, basically, they have to do with… When we’re talking about prison, for the mothers that have gone… Just like, their kids were in there, too, and they’re mothers like every other mother, and they’re traveling. They want to be there with their son, or the stepdad, or the brother that is the parents, because the parents are dead. All those people that have come to offer some form of comfort to that world that we were in, and they knew we were in. They don’t get enough-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Credit.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … credit at all.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s interesting when you talk about it, it’s how amazing that she did that. And from a perspective of being a mom, to me it’s, yeah, like that’s what… To me, that is what you do.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    That’s what you would do.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. It doesn’t feel… Not that it isn’t extraordinary, but I totally get it, in the sense that that’s the only way she could be a part of your life.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Right.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And so, that’s it, that is raising your son, right? She’s raising you during those 45-minute visits. And when you’re a mom you do… It was funny, I was talking to my husband about it and we were talking about something, and he was like, “Well, I’m not sure about that.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And I looked at him and I said, “You do understand that any decision that I’m talking about, I would do absolutely anything for our children. So if I’m coming and telling you something, you need to pay attention to this. That it’s coming from the place of willing to lay down in front of a bus.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m just laughing because I’m just thinking of you. I can see how-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, yeah, I don’t f around.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … it’s serious. You better listen.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, yeah. But on the flip side of that, I do let him make a lot of decisions that I, whatever, that I’m like, [inaudible 01:21:33]. But because-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Cater to our ego. That’s just part of how it is.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. But when I say jump, we jump.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No, I get it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s just the way. But, yeah. I get with your… I think that’s the piece. And it’s the-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    My love’s the same way. She does the same thing. She does cater to my ego, but when she’s serious, like, “Oh, wait.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    We’re serious.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    “Stop the play. What’s going on, mama?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Exactly, exactly.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Boss.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So talk to me about addiction in prison.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. So, I look at it like, what I’ve learned now with alcoholism, just being a word that describes my condition. Not anything to do with alcohol, right? So, like I said, hindsight being 20/20, looking back, in prison for me, I would be sober in prison for 15, 18 of those years that I talked about because it was the right thing to do, and I felt better that way. I was either a drug addict, or I was the one that was going to be trusted with the sack to sell it.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And if I’m going to play this game… I would tell other people… I didn’t follow this rule, but I would tell other people, “Don’t gamble.” Like the youngsters that would come in, they’re terrified. Like, “Dude, you’re going to be okay.” Or the ones that were going to prison whenever I was out, I was just like, “Don’t lie, or make promises that you can’t keep. So for that, all intents and purposes, don’t make promises. Don’t gamble-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Don’t gamble.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … and don’t do drugs.” And I did all three.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s how you learned that lesson.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. Yeah. But see, I was able to… I always had the gift of gab, and I was always able to manipulate. I’m like a chameleon, to tell you the truth. I liken myself to a chameleon.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. It’s how you survive.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I can speak. I’m leading the meeting tomorrow at the [Canyon 01:23:30] Club, in front of the Canyon Club crew. And I did 45 minutes speaking for a bunch of bikers in Redondo Beach. And the speech was different, like night and day, to both.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And then I go to treatment centers and talk to people who are drug addicts, that are in their drug addiction. They’re leaving the room to go to the bathroom and do a shot in a treatment center. And I know they’re loaded, because I can see it. And I’m giving them all different pieces of my experience for the purpose of getting their attention, and getting the message across to them.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I learned very quickly through YA, from being around. I don’t know how to explain this point, but I was around every walk of life. The different classes and types of human beings that there are, in the way that they think, and in the way that they respond to certain things, experiences. One reacts this way, the other reacts that way. I can feel people to a certain degree, I can feel exactly and understand them.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You call them empath.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Basically that, empath. And that, coupled with my ability to sell, and manipulate, because I was a drug dealer and you’re dealing with people you’re going to die if you don’t have this meth done the right way, and deliver on time, and make the money that you need to make. So you have to figure out how to make sure that that comes out okay.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And when you start dealing with higher levels of things, like I got blessed in with a couple of organizations in prison, white and Mexican that basically gave… I was in the middle of both. I had both. I had influence, and I had power, and I had trust from both. And I was able to, with the Spanish, and then being able to speak Spanish, I was able to live two worlds where I had the ability to go and get what I needed from the Mexican side of life, and bring it to the white side for the white side’s benefit, until they deemed it that I wasn’t doing that or whatever. Until it wasn’t.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Didn’t at one point you joined, or you were a part of the Mexican organization trafficking?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I was definitely involved in Mexican and white politics and drug trafficking from inside to the streets, from New Sinaloa to Tijuana, all the way up to the Bay area. San Diego, LA. I can tell you pretty much every gang that’s in LA, from Crips, Bloods, to Mexicans. And I shouldn’t know that. San Diego, same thing, Bay area. And just the different people that I’ve known, and the experiences that I’ve had, and been a part of. And the bad things that I did and was there for, whether I did it or not. I did do it. I was there, I was a part of it. And that’s traumatizing. That’s a seriously… Ruining families and killing people. And killing people because of somebody being killed, because somebody saw somebody being killed. It messes you up.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m good today, but for a long time, that was another part of the piece that was inside me that had to get numbed by alcohol and drugs. So inside I didn’t use, I would stay clean. And then when I got out, right away, it was like, go have a drink, get laid, get some money, get high. Get some dope and make some money, because that’s what I knew how to do. And that was a cycle.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So until… I want to say I think 2005… I don’t know, when I had my first threat of doing life. Because we would start in county jail, and we would be fighting… Typically guys like me would be fighting a case for six months, a year, sometimes longer, two and a half years. 28 months when I was fighting that kidnapping.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So people are coming and going, and there’s people on the streets that I know are getting ready to come in at some point because they’re on the run. So then I would get messages out, just like the Mexican… This isn’t just me, this is the process. So I’m going to make sure that you actually hear that I need to talk to your boyfriend. I need to get a message to him, so he needs to be at a certain place, a certain time because I’m going to call collect.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Or, if I know you, too, then you’re going to relay the information over, and he’s going to go get a bunch of dope, stick it up his butt. Wrap it up, stick it up his butt, and when he gets busted, he’s coming in and he’s bringing that to me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They don’t… They had us do pretty close to cavity checks when I was in lockdown.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, you got to get it way up there. You could do cavity checks, you could swallow. But that’s how we hid knives in level four prisons. You had to wrap it with Saran Wrap, and then toilet paper, Saran Wrap.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s high, man.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It’s that, or spend the rest of your life in prison because you got busted with a knife that you had to have. So, you can do that. Or, it’s that, or get rid of all that dope you got because they’re coming to search all the cells. And you don’t want to flush it. You can’t flush the knife, that’s not going nowhere. And you can’t hide it in the mattress. There’s nowhere you can hide it. So that’s what we did for everybody. And so, they knew-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    A lot of lube.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They knew they had to bring it in. Sometimes you didn’t have that. Sometimes it’s just like, “Check this out, dude, they’re coming to your cell right now.” So you can imagine, you got 30 seconds to do something with that, or you’re going to do the rest of your life because you just got busted with a knife-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, I guess it’s going up there.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … in prison on, whatever. It’s a third strike.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, yeah, it’s going up there.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So, yeah, exactly. So, now, that’s going on, guys come in. And I got seven or eight guys that at some point they’re going to come in, and you better be ready. When you’re ready to actually turn yourself in tomorrow-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, right, right. I need you here.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … because the fellows need it. We answered to that, and I answered to it until I was able to tell people what to do. Which I felt was, for me, I saw the easiest and most peaceful way for me to be able to live is to know that I’m running the show on the yard, because other people were idiots.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They would get us into a full-fledged bloody riot, where there’s casualties. People are dying. Your friend that you sat and ate chow with every night, and you played cards with, that’s your buddy that’s not a fighter. He’s a good dude, he’s got a wife at home, his kids. He’s going to die because you couldn’t figure out how to pass the tray to the black dude the right way through the window, because you got issues. You’re trying to prove something to somebody, and now everybody’s going to…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I was like, “How do I get to the point where I’m the one that’s in control of that, and I’ll make sure that there’s peace and diplomatic.” And when things needed to get done, yeah, a lot of times I would have older dudes… The white race wants in there, especially today, they want to prey on their own.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    They would rather beat you up as another white person then go deal with a Mexican or a black person that disrespects me. But I’ll go beat up an old man that can’t fight to get my stripes, and kick him, and break his ribs, and stab him, whatever. So, when they had that kind of thing happening? Why? Because he’s not a skinhead. I don’t want to get into all of this stuff, but I wasn’t okay with that. And so, I would put myself in a position where I was in charge.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I wasn’t the type that was always hurting my own. I made sure we dealt with whatever, and I tried to nip things in the bud with settlements, good compromises that was fair for everybody. Because I was a salesman. So that, coupled with, if you want to test me, you can see what I will do, from what I’ve learned, is gave me the ability to get that position where I was.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And, I would. I would send three guys in and be like, “Okay, dude, you need to make sure that this dude’s bleeding, and that he goes out. Tell him that this is what’s happening, but don’t stab him. But you’re going to take the knife in there as if you did. And you’re going to tell him he’s going to act like he did.” That kind of shit, you know?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And, “Really?” “Yeah, I don’t want you to stab him.” But if we don’t do this-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s on.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … it’s on. But I can’t see old man Jerry… I can’t do that to the dude. That’s not cool. So I did do that when I could get away with it a lot. And when I couldn’t, I couldn’t. And that’s just more stuff to deal with that you have to swallow and push down. But when I did start using was when I was fighting that case, and I had a bunch of heroin come in and I was like, “God, dude, I’m 25. I spent all my teenage years, and then [terms 00:01:32:52]. And now, this is what it has come to? I’m going to do life like those other guys on the level four here that I love to be on, because I get to leave. But it’s mature there to those standards.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I started climbing the walls. Like, “I’m going to take a cop hostage when I go to court. How can I get out of here? Anything’s better than this. I’m going to figure out how to do this. How do I break out of here?” And telling my mom, “Please, just don’t come back, mom. For a year, please. I love you, but… ” And she still, from the time I was 13 to 38 years old, 36, 31, 20. Always there, always praying. Always like, “We’ll figure out how to get you home.” And I’m like, “Don’t come back for a year. I’m going to do life. This is it, ma. I’m doing life.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    That was the second time, because I’m like, “This is the second time. Now they’ve got me with a gun and a high- speed chase, attempted [disparage 01:33:47] on an officer,” all kinds of stuff, right? They call it shooting. Like, if you point it, you’re shooting at a cop. I mean, to a certain degree, basically, in court. If it was loaded, and it was, you may as well have shot him, as far as the charge is concerned.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I’m like, “They’re never going to let me out. So just let me process this. Just come back in a year. I love you. I don’t want you to not see me, but I don’t want you to keep coming back because it’s giving me false hope, and it’s not working for me. I’m going insane. I need to be okay with this. And it’s going to take me a minute, because I’m never getting out.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So that’s when I started using. And I started to… Instead of meth and booze, I started using heroin.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. To shut it up.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. And there was a time in prison where it was not okay to use needles. There was a time on the streets where for us, politically, you couldn’t slam… Like if you smoked out of a glass pipe, that was very bad. You could only snort it. And then, it got to the point where the addicts, the older guys that were laying the rules-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They were worse.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … started doing it, or it became known. And that happened with the inside, too. It evolved the same way. And so I would bring needles, too, along with. We made needles, but we really only needed the tips and we could make the rest out of pins, and latex, and other stuff. Similar we made tattoo guns.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But during that time it was so… I don’t know how to explain it, but I was just like, all the time I had done and all the experience I had in doing time couldn’t prepare me for me getting ready to do 25 to life. There’s no way to explain how you feel.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But, again, the heroin became my best friend. I didn’t want to do meth inside. Never did, because it was like, who wants to stay up for three days and just think about how you got all-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, that sounds terrible.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … all these dudes around. You’re horny, but there’s no woman inside. So it made no sense to do that. But heroin made all the sense in the world. It was excellent. It became my best friend, and morphine pills, and methadone. And there was a time in there where I was just on so much stuff, and when we got locked down…

    PART 3 OF 5 ENDS [01:36:04]

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … where I was on so much stuff, and when we got locked down I was so sick that I had to use somebody else’s syringe, and then I caught some blood diseases and stuff, and it wasn’t good.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Do you want to talk about that?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I don’t. I don’t want to get into that. But I compromised my health, let’s just say it like that, and broke my golden rule and used somebody else’s syringe, which I never did, but I was on so much stuff, a gram a day of heroin. I was getting it and I was still able to manage it. Meaning the yard. I was still able to get everything sold, and make enough extra [inaudible 01:36:43] to support my habit, which I supplemented with methadone and morphine and that. But the behavior was there, but I had to function on the yard, too. I had to be the guy that was able to handle things.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So that’s different when you’re on the streets where you don’t have that responsibility. But I drank all the time, always… I mean, not all the time, but I always was okay with that. We always made booze, and we always drank on the weekends, and smoked weed. I didn’t consider that drugs, right? That to me never was. It was always just…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Part of it.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    When you did the heroin or the speed, that’s where… not only are you facing 16 months extra, but you got all the other stuff that you’re dealing with, with people who are dope fiends in there that are rationalizing, in their brain, that you owe them for this, or whatever the case may, be for them to get theirs.

    Peter Loeb:

    Hi, I’m Peter Loeb, CEO and co-founder of Lionrock Recovery. We’re proud to sponsor The Courage to Change, and I hope you find that it’s an inspiration. I was inspired to start Lionrock after my sister lost her own struggle with drugs and alcohol back in 2010. Because we provide care online by live video, Lionrock clients can get help from the privacy of home. We offer flexible schedules that fit our clients’ busy lives. And of course we’re licensed and accredited, and we accept most private health insurance. You can find out more about us at lionrockrecovery.com, or call us for a free consultation, no commitment, at 800-258-6550. Thank you.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So you get out at 39, and you’re out for three years.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No. So I get out. 39 is-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Sorry, sorry, sorry. You get out-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. Get out earlier and… No, this is before that high speed chase with the attempted disparage when I was… Basically it was just like another term. It was another sentence only it was a lot stricter and more strenuous as far as how much time I was going to do, because I should be doing life. So if I would have got 15 years, which is what I was expecting, that would be better than doing 25 to life, because in 15 years I could get out. 25 to life, you’re not getting out. You’re not getting out. You’re going to do 25-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Why did they say 25 then?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well 25 to life is the third strike law. That’s what Jerry, whatever, put in place. But now they’ve changed it to only if it’s violent charges that you have that, you’ll do life. But-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, talk to me about getting out.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. So each time that I got out I always had to start over, and one thing that happened was when I was engaged to her, I had that business, I had everything. Two things I want to talk about, which is significant during that time. ’98 I got out; ’99, 2000, 2001, I’m in the period that I was out for three years, basically. I think I did one little violation when I got out in ’98 for eight months or something, then I came back out. I was out for three years. In 1998, in Tehachapi State Prison, Level Four out in the mountains, and I’ve been to Calipatria, Chuckawalla, Lancaster, Wasco, Centinela, Chino, Pleasant Valley. I can name them… A lot of prisons.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    In Tehachapi, up in the mountains, I was 20 years old and I had another friend there who was doing life, and I was really fascinated with his ability to… He meditated and he had this aura about him. So I started looking into the stuff that he was doing. To speed things up I had this relationship with a guy named Ram Dass, Richard Alpert. I corresponded with him. He wrote a book called The Only Dance There Is, Be Here Now, Still Here. And he basically was my guru and taught me, through correspondence and his books, basically how to… The Human Kindness Foundation was something that he was a part of, and he sent in books to help people learn the way of the seeker on the conscious path. And basically I started doing transcendental meditation, and got up to,… started at five minutes, and over a years time was at an hour and a half-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh my gosh.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … where I would be floating over. And when you’re in a prison, it’s a lot easier to do.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Totally.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It’s like the guy in the cave that’s across the world and you travel to, “Hey, oh wise man, please tell me the secret to life.” And yeah, of course he knows. He’s not dealing with…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    All the other things, yeah.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. So I was able to get to that point, and literally leave my body and hover over sunsets on the beach, and different things, and I became a fly on the wall that day, and watched everything that happened to me when I was nine years old. It all came back to me, during those two weeks, everything, step by step, I saw it visually, and I knew right away it had happened. But that was the first time from the time that I-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That you remembered it.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    That I remembered it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Wow.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. So I had, I think, three weeks to a month to get out. I mean, I literally had to stop smoking cigarettes, stop taking these little pills and smoking pot, if I wanted to go on this path of consciousness. And I did, for that time, and I learned so much that it carries over to my life today, as far back as it was. And I strive to spend more time meditating. It’s like I strive to do it. But I’d be a black belt already if I could do that. Hopefully in December I will be anyways, but still it’s taken a long time for me to try to get back to just a five minute place where I can start to do that again. But right away, right away… Because the handball, it was like I was on LSD, frying, you know? I could see tracers of it, when I’d get done, and I had the right response to any question, any situation. It was amazing. And I recorded my dreams. I would wake up in the morning, I would write down what I’d dreamt about.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I wrote a letter to my parents right away, apologizing to my family and to my dad, and explaining what happened at nine years old-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh my.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … and why I did what I did. This is the first they heard of it. I’m like, “This is why this happened, so you know, and I didn’t know until now. Here’s how it came about.” I got out, and it’s just a trip how this all happened. But I got out, we had that conversation again, but it was kind of like, “Oh, it’s very uncomfortable to talk about this, but…” And I’m with my girlfriend, that one I was talking about that I feel like was the one that I got away, but now I see things differently. But I loved her then, and chose to go to war with the Hell’s Angels over staying with her because when my…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The business that I had, I’d take her to Hawaii; for four days we were supposed to be there; we were there two weeks because I’d fall in love, I’d never been there, and I was like, this is great, this is amazing, I love it here. Come back, my partner burns me for $185,000 and skips out to South Africa; my best friend is murdered… well, passed away then. My belief is that, at the time, that this is what happened. And then she leaves me, in my mind, but really I’d told her, “I don’t want you to be here,” because bullets are flying in our house.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And all of a sudden I went from, just like that… Because those two things happened, and then her, all in a two week period, was gone. And I was slamming dope and carrying drugs, and that’s why when the judge asked me, he said, “Mr. Sanfilippo, you have a business in Carlsbad, on State Street, a block away from one of the most beautiful places in the world in Carlsbad, you have a four-bedroom house on a third of an acre;” he listed all the vehicles I had legally, he listed the house, he listed the dogs, everything. He said, “What are you doing in a 16 minute high-speed chase on the 78, jeopardizing my community and my officers? This doesn’t add up. Why would you? What are you doing? You had the perfect life.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m like, “I don’t know.” It’s the only thing I could say was, “I don’t know.” But…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And it was probably the truth.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. I had no idea. But I do know now, I know that I responded and reacted to somebody betraying me, which is… I’m going to get to this point now with what happened with my step-uncle. So the partner burned me for 185 grand, I turned into the monster that I knew how to be at 16 years old; only I’m not in prison. I’m on the streets with guns, swords, knives, crazy. Stolen vehicle, right? He’s like, “In a stolen vehicle, you’re not even in one of yours. What the hell, dude? What’s wrong with you?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. You own cars.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So it checked out that I had definitely some issues going on up in my brain. So when I’d get out, I’d go to my parents’ house; they’re living in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, and I’m just smoking weed. I meet this girl at my sister’s work, who’s lost now, but I wind up in love with her. Anyways, we’re at my house, we leave my parents’ house. We leave, we go down the stairs in the back, we get in the car, we drive away, we forget my lighter. So we come back in the driveway, or in the alley; she stays in the car. I walk up the stairs to go in and get the lighter, and I see my grandmother sitting in the living room, my parents are in the living room, and this guy is walking in the hallway towards me, and he goes, “Danny, can I talk to you for a minute?”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I vaguely remember his face, and I’m like, “Okay, what’s up?” And I’m 235 pounds. I was lifting weights, I was like, you know guys were like, “This guy looks like a WWE guy,” right, F, or whatever you call it, wrestler. And I go in the room with him, and that in and of itself is a scary nostalgic feeling. I go in there and he’s showing me this AA chip, and that he’s on his ninth step, and he’s got nine years, I think, sober now, or something, and he’s doing his amends step, the ninth step; he’s explaining all this to me, and while he’s talking, I’m downloading and processing everything that happened, and I’m like, “What the hell? This is the dude. I just learned this-“

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Wait, is this the step…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    This is the step-uncle, yeah. This is my mom’s stepbrother. He’s at the house. My grandmother’s sitting right there; and this is why it’s so crazy, that after I learned it… I think probably my mom told my grandmother, now thinking about it. I don’t know what, but…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And so when you went into the room with him, did you know who it was?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    No. I had started to process it while I was there.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Once you were in the room.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh boy.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Because he starts talking about the AA, which I had no knowledge of Alcoholics Anonymous, nor did I give a (beep) about it. I could care less about a chip, or anything like that. When I realize who he is, the second it clicks, I’m like, “Hang on a second. Stay right here. Don’t say anything else. Hold on.” And I go out in the hallway and I go into the kitchen, and you know how those wooden blocks with-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, with knives.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … knives. So I pull out the biggest one. And as I’m walking back in there, he… because I hear my mom like, “Mijo, no.” That’s what she always… I was like, broken record. “Mijo, no, Mijo, no. Son, no.” And he comes out, and I put him against the wall right there, and I got the knife to his throat, at his ear, and I’m like, “You think because you come in here with some AA chip bullshit, I don’t know what the hell you think this is, you’re going to come apologize to me? After everything that you put me through? What I went through from the…” And I blamed him for it, because I left that night, and this is what-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    This was the thing.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    This is what happens to a lot of people out there. I had no control over this, and I had no idea about it until… I mean, I was just an insane maniac, by anybody’s standards, until I had that spiritual awakening with the transcendental meditation and the ability to see something that had happened.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And so I tell him, “You think after everything I went through,” because at 28 years old, I had lived many lives already, you know? And this is 18 years ago, right? And I’m not the person that I am today. It’s like… I can’t explain the mask, I can’t even do it right now. But the face-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, I can’t even imagine.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … that I was making with that, and the way I was talking to him in a tone that would just say, “You’re-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re going to die.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … you’re going to die, and you’ve done… I’m so angrily disgusted with you; your judgment is here,” that type of voice. It was scary. And I did that a lot, actually, when I felt betrayed.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    My sponsor tells me, “You’ve metaphorically put that knife to your friend’s throat, and you do that still, every time you feel like somebody betrays you, in any way, shape or form.” I had to learn from that. That was four years ago that I… I learned that behavior, and where that came from and why it still happens, but I’m aware of it now, so I can kind of…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I got that to his ear, and I look over to like… Because you know, getting ready to get-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re going to kill him in front of the whole family!

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … getting ready to pull the knife from ear to ear; I know how to do it. So I look around, and I look back and I see my grandmother sitting there… bless her heart, I loved her, we had a great relationship… and she has a little tear in her I can see going down there, and she’s looking as if she’s about to witness it; she pretty much sees that she’s about to see her son die, that’s what I see in her eyes. And I respected that. I respected that to some kind of… Way different from my mother saying, “Danny, please no,” and my dad standing there turning yellow, looking like, “I don’t know what to do in this situation, I have no idea what to do. I don’t know what to do,” but-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    To be honest, I don’t think I’d know what to do either.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    This is crazy. And my mom, she’s crying, “Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t,” because she knows I’m going to do it; she knows me. She knows her son, she knows that I’m about to do this, I’m going to do this.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I look back at my grandmother, and her just being… She was just calm as could be, just sitting there stoic. I just saw that little tear though, in her eye, which I know she was fighting to keep back, and I said… I look back at him, she was…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    We didn’t have a lot, but she would always say, “Danny, can I make an appointment?” From the time I was a kid, “Could I just make an appointment to talk with you? I’m here in town and I wanted to visit you. When would be a good time for us to sit and…” Because I was always just running, always going. I never wanted to be… But I always would come visit my grandma. I made a deal with my mother that I would visit her for lunches and I would go to school, but I was never coming home during that time that I was on the streets. And looking at her and just seeing everything, my relationship with her, and recognizing that her son was here trying to do the right thing, in her book. Maybe she forced him to do it; I don’t know what was happening, but I knew that…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I looked back at him and I said, in front of my mother and father, my parents, “I have no problem. I would cut you from ear to ear right now and go have an ice cream across the street.” And my girl, by the way, is now standing in the hallway. She’s just mortified. She has no idea what’s going on. It’s like she’s watching a horror film, and of course I had to explain it to her. She understood it, and I had explained the whole convict thing; but I said, “From ear to ear, I’d catch your throat, no problem, and have an ice cream. But because of that woman right there, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to walk as fast as you can out that front door, and you’re going to get in your car, and you’re going to drive back to Colusa,” which was up past Sacramento. We were in San Diego.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I said, “You’re not going to look back, you’re not going to say bye. You’re not going to do anything. You’re going to walk straight out the door, thankful that I didn’t just cut your throat from ear to ear. Because if you do, I’m going to cut your throat from ear to ear. This is the one chance I’m giving you to walk out of here because of that woman right there. And if you ever go to Arizona or Texas, you drive around San Diego, because if I ever see your face again, ever, I’m going to kill you. Period.” And he walked straight out the door, he left. Oh, and I said, “I’ll drive grandma home to Colusa. You’re not driving her nowhere. You stay away from her,” that kind of thing. “I’ll get her home safe and you just get the hell out of here.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And that was my awakening to dealing with that situation. Since then, my grandmother has passed away. There was another talk. I was in prison again, and I wasn’t there like I should have been when she was in the hospital, when she died. But before she died, I had a conversation with her on the phone, and I was like, what can I do for this woman? And I told her I forgave her son. I wanted her to go in peace, because she raised this dude, whoever the f. She did the best she could. And I wanted her to know that, because she loved me so much, and I wanted her to know that it was okay.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And did you get some freedom from that?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I did it for her at that point, but I knew that I was going to have to deal with forgiving this dude, too, now…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. You’re, “Now I’ve got to do this.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … at some point. But because I was always somebody that did everything in my power to keep my word; to be where I say I’m going to be, and do what I say I’m going to do, even when I was on drugs. Which is why I was able to climb so high up that ladder in there, and by any means necessary. I never came back with, “Oh, this guy got robbed.” No. I came with your stuff and then a month later told you, “Yeah, you know about that situation? Well, he got robbed. I made sure everything was cool. Got your thing.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well, I didn’t know the program yet, you know? I sent him a messenger I think, a messenger just like, “Hey, because grandma’s dying, before she’d left I said I’d forgive you, and know what? I don’t ever want to see your face again, but for whatever it’s worth, I forgive you. Go live your life.” Whatever. And then, when I got in the program, I had a different understanding of it, and I got to understand his side. But you’ve got to understand, coming from where I come from in prison, he’s a child molester, and he’s dying. I’ve put many holes in people that, I don’t know, are alive today, you know? So I don’t even want to talk about that stuff.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    How did you get to the program?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    On a whim. I was manipulating, I was trying to, “Okay, what’s my last… I need to go find out how these people do… What’s my way out of this? I can play on the drugs. The laws have changed, I can go.” Because I was used to always doing, like I said, robbery, guns, kidnapping, possession of a firearm, great bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon; not anything like drugs. Drugs was easy. You get busted with drugs, you’re not doing that much time, and they want you to do a program now. So I downloaded all that, and I was like, all right, well I’m going to go find the nearest place. I had learned who Google was and where he lives, and so I asked Google where can I go find some people to manipulate so I can use their little Core Cards and show that to my… so I can figure out what they would say if they were me, and to the PO.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Joke’s on you.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, yeah, exactly.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    They got you.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I went into the Canyon Club. I Googled it. I was like, AA was [crosstalk 01:56:38]-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And how long ago was that, because I remember when you first came in.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well, so my sobriety date is October 8th, 2012, but I had been coming in there for probably a month prior, just kind of coming to meetings and just hitting on girls. I remember them saying like, “You want a commitment?” And I was like, “With you?” I remember just being an idiot. I had no idea. This was at the speaker meeting too, this lady, this hot, older blonde, and I’m like, “A commitment? Yeah.” I was just being the clown that I always was, but I was literally, like, you know-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And for people who don’t know, I mean going in the Canyon Club, it’s right in the Canyon and Laguna Beach, and the people there tend to be very genetically blessed. They tend to be wealthy, well-educated…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Mercedes, BMW, Porsches-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. You pull in, and it… I mean it’s a…

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The most of affluent Alano Club-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’ve ever seen.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … in the world.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, it probably actually is.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It is.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It is, yeah.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’ve been around the world now, too. I’ve seen them. Nothing is as posh… as posh, as my girl would say.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, I’ve never seen anything as posh.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    She’s from England. It’s posh.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Posh. So you go to the Canyon Club and what changed? I mean I know it’s a process.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, I just came, and I was trying to get these… I had to still figure it out. I was always like, I’m just going to figure out what works here; I’ll take it and I’ll go and I’ll use it, and I’ll do my own version of this, on whatever it was. From drug dealing to talking to that… From the time I talked to that dude on that tractor, it’s like this is what you’re going to do, this is how you’re going to… And I was like, okay so there’s always a way to do something.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And if I have to go that far, nobody will go that far, because I’ll just go farther than anybody will ever go. That’s been my downfall. I will always go further than you will. Remember that. And I would. That’s what saved my life actually. Because when I went in there, I was trying to figure out how do I get a Core Card, what does it look like; okay, I can get one, a eight by 10 card, my dad has those, right? I can get an eight by 10 card, I could start… And I’m looking at them, I’m acting like I have one in there; “Oh no, this one isn’t mine, this one…” Seriously trying to just figure out how to do that, and then I was going to go pitch my parole officer on not violating me because I’m in recovery, or rehabilitation, or treatment, or whatever you want to call it, at the time; the term that I knew.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And it was the night meeting. I didn’t do a lot. I did like a weekend, morning meeting sometimes, but I did a lot of the night meetings at first. Deborah Carmen is a serious… Her and Katherine Merola, Janie Claypool’s mom, I don’t if you know her, but these are the night angels.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Say them again without their last names.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Catherine. And Deborah Carmen. Deborah Carmen always has her last name. And Sneed, and Doug, who passed away. There was people in there in the night meetings, but Deborah specifically And the speaker meetings I would go to. Well, I kind of worked my way up to that. But she was just so nice; these people were so nice to me, and the women would leave their purses on the table and go to the bathroom. Crazy. Nice cars, and I’m sitting around, and I could just… I’d wonder how much money she’s got in there, or which car is hers, was going through my head at first, because I could just go grab this car. I got an hour, there’s 45 minutes, that sort of head start; if I just got the keys nobody would know. I could be out here. I could be in San Diego, and this thing would be chopped up and sold in two hours, so then I’d have some money in my pocket. Just those kinds of things.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And Deborah would come up to me and just be like, “Look at you, look at your eyes. They’re getting so much clearer. Every time you come here, you look better.” She would say things like that. She was like, “Are you going to come back tomorrow?” She’d make me have a… We almost had a date. And she’s a older lady, a beautiful older lady, but that’s not what this was about. It was the fact that I didn’t have a mother.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I still have these issues. I had a mother, but I didn’t, right? So I have these issues with women where I look for that comfort that I didn’t have all those years. I was just around these hardcore convicts, and that is difficult to manage with my sexual needs as well. So I have a lot of women friends, put it like that, and my girl, God bless her heart, she understands; I do. The way that she just welcomed me; all eyes were on me, everybody was staring at me, or looking at me. But she was like this icon at this place, and everybody loved and respected her, and she was giving me time, and she was giving me special attention, in my eyes.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    So I felt compelled to come back again, and I did. I don’t know, I remember sitting at the book study when night, and I’m reading this book. I came in and it was a book meeting. And as soon as I sat down, of course, two people next, it’s like, “My turn to read? What? Oh, okay.” So I got to read this paragraph for this; “Constructing acts of kindness without expecting anything in return.” And I was like, “Who are these people?” You know? That’s crazy. I’m like, “Who does that?” But I thought about Deborah, and I thought all of this stuff, these people, and I was like, “Oh yeah, right. You guys are doing this stuff. Nobody does this. It’s kill or be killed. This is a fairytale in this place,” which it looked like a fairytale.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    But that downloaded. And then people are like, “Can I give you a ride?” I’m like, “No, I’ll walk,” and I’d walk to my parents’ house. I said, “I didn’t want your help, I didn’t want a ride,” you know? And people just let me do my thing. But her and a couple of other people… The men didn’t want to come up to me and talk to me. I was not approachable. And I still had dope in my pocket, always in this little pocket right here, and a little backpack that had my 12, whatever, Lokos something; I forget now, but-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Four Loko?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Four Lokos, yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    12 Lokos.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. And I would drink that, and I’d have my dope, and I had my little pipe or whatever. And I’d leave five minutes before the meeting, and she’d come out, because I’d be sweating like a snitch at a gangster party in the corner, just not wanting people to hug me or talk to me, and I had dope going through my system, and I was just like, okay, this is enough.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I don’t know why I kept coming back to put myself through that torture, but it was just to have her… And I’d be outside smoking a cigarette; after the meeting I’d be over in that little area, and she’d come talk to me and just… I don’t know. I started to want to see what this was about. I’m like, these people are too nice.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I had other experiences, but mainly I always remember her because she was like, “Well, you want to come to dinner with us?” She was very welcoming to me, and she always tried to make me feel good and like I was always welcome when I’d come here, and invited me into her house. I’m like, “But lady, you don’t know me. You don’t know who I am, what I would do. I could take everything in your house. You live in Laguna. That’s great.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I remember those thoughts going through my head, but I remember thinking… There was this block there that was like, this is an angel, you can’t do that. This is an angel and it’s not physically possible for you to hurt this lady. And it wasn’t. I got a truck; I had this rusty Dodge Dakota. It was green, and it was rusty, and the door… I had to use a C-clamp to close the driver’s side door I remember. And I was doing my DUI classes, and I had just done the third month so I could get my restricted license back, and right away as soon as I got it, and I had the truck and I could drive with my parents… I was living on their couch where all tough 40-year-olds go when they get out of prison and they’re done with their run.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m living there, and getting money from her whenever I can to pay for Four Lokos and whatever else I needed, and going in the alley and just drinking beer, or hard alcohol, and smoking cigarettes and everything. And I take my truck the second I get the license, the restricted… it wasn’t even a valid license … and I’m gone. I’m in San Diego; this is about a month after I’ve been going to meetings, maybe one or two a week. I’ve been coming and trying to pick up a girlfriend or something, just kind of come in there and back to her, and some of the other ladies there that were always interested in me, to help me, which I was attracted to because nobody wanted to help me. Nobody ever wanted to help me. I had to always get it myself. I was waiting to prove them wrong and see who was actually going to want to have sex with me, or something. There’s always some ulterior motive that I was expecting at any point in time.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And anyways, I took off to San Diego in my truck, and in a period of eight hours I went through every old… not old… but gutter, dope-dealing person that I knew, got high and drunk; I got a fifth and was whacked out of my mind, freaking out now. I’m in North Park. I parked my truck, and I don’t have money to get back. I’ve basically prostituted my mind and body alike, to men and women alike, to the devil.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The place that I lived, in Ocean Beach where I came from, had this little dark, underlying… I don’t know what you want to call it, but it was evil. The Hell’s Angels world was, to me, with the meth I guess, gave me this, like I was in a different world. There was a beast that was always there waiting to-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Energy.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    … put me in the wrong place and give me fear, or hurt. I remember thinking, “Man, I can’t get home because I don’t have the money for gas. I don’t want to get pulled over again, and I don’t want to go back to prison again.” My last case was a transportation case, and I did 18 months and I got out; and then here I was. I can talk about that, too, but it’s just it could go on for hours.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Unlocked For Life is a book that I’m in the process of trying to write, which is just telling as much of my story as I can possibly document. But I wind up at a bus stop. I walk and walk and walk, trying to figure out in my mind, process how am I going to get… I don’t want my mom to go through this again; here I am, I just got my license, not even a license, and here I am in San Diego instead of Laguna Beach… because she lives in Laguna beach. I’m back in my neighborhood, off Midway and Rosecrans, and I’m sitting at a bus stop because I’m thinking that’s the only thing I can possibly do right now, where I don’t look conspicuous, or whatever you want to call it. And the cops are driving by, and they’re not looking at me, they’re not stopping. They just keep going. It’s 3:30 in the morning.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    And I’m sitting on the bus, and I’ve just come to the confirmation, I’ve decided; I’m going to end it. There’s semis that come, 18-wheelers, they come hauling ass down Rosecrans, and I’m just going to… I can calculate it perfectly where there’s no way they’ll be able to hit the brakes that fast. I can just step right in front of it; that will end it. There’s no way I’m going to be able to take that kind of a hit and not die. So I don’t have the balls to put a gun in my mouth and pull the trig-

    PART 4 OF 5 ENDS [02:08:04]

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I don’t have the balls to put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, but this I can do. In this state of mind, I’m in to boot. Like, I’m done. I don’t want to go back to prison again, I’m not going to do this to my family anymore, I don’t want to be back in the cycle, here I am again. Like, I’m 39 years old. This is ridiculous. Life isn’t worth this. If this is what my life’s about, it’s not worth it. This isn’t a good place, this isn’t life.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I had firmly decided that’s what I was going to do, and I was. I was about to step in front of the next semi. I remember them going by.” I was like, “Oh, I got to wait for one that’s just speeding. I want one that’s going fast, and I’m just going to act like I dropped something. I’m just going to jump right in front of it.” I see one that’s coming. The lights are green. I’m like, “Okay, this is the one.” And all of a sudden, this light goes on across the street, at the top of this warehouse looking building. It’s like a bright light, but it clicked so loud in my brain, like, it echoed into my brain. It was like, click, click, and it turned off. Click, click, on and off. I just kept looking, it was getting my attention.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    As the semi comes up, it stays on. I’m like, “What the hell is that?” It reminded me of a lighthouse. I look at it when it’s on now, and I have this, my life flashes before my eyes, type moment, but I see myself from the time I was born to everything that happened, to me just doing all the bad things that I did, and the things I was a part of, and the things that happened to me and that I did to myself, and prostituted myself, my soul, my body, to evil.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I saw it all. Everything fast, not in a linear form. There was nothing coming out of my mouth, nothing coming out of this light’s mouth. I’m thinking it’s the devil. It’s an evil, they’re demons, they’re still f’ing with me. Everybody, they’ve been doing that for forever, and I had a lot of evil experiences with witches and all this kind of stuff, people reading your palm, and just crazy stuff that’s happened as I was a kid, which forms our perceptions of things.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I see that, and there comes a point where I’m about to rationalize and say, “No, but,” and explain something and say, “That’s not right.” I’m getting ready to do that, and I realize I’m not even talking to anybody. Here I am about to make an excuse for, yet again. What I always did was make an excuse for something. I conceded to, “All right, you’re right.” I wasn’t talking, but I was about to make an excuse. I wasn’t talking, but I was saying, “All right, you’re right. Yeah. That’s true, all of it. That’s why I’m going to end my life. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    As I got up with tears in my eyes, and I felt like these two hands pushing me back, warm hands pushing back on the bench, and it basically just said, “That’s not what this is about. That’s not what I want. You’re not understanding me,” because I thought it was the devil. “You’re not getting this. That’s not what this is about, and I don’t want you to do that.” Tears were coming down, I was just like, “Whoa.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I realized the type of person I was, and I just said, “Is there anything that I can do then to make this right? Can you help me make this right?” Right away, I heard a horn on a semi, one of the ones I was going to jump in front of. It’s honking, and it drives by, and right on the side of the truck it said, “Yes, we deliver.” I watched it go down, and as I looked back to my left, here’s this little old lady with a shopping cart with all kinds of bottles and trinkets. There’s no way I couldn’t have heard her come down. It’s like Harbor and Wilson in Costa Mesa, exactly where I’m sitting, but in San Diego’s version, it’s Midway and Rosecrans. There’s no way I couldn’t have heard her come down the sidewalk. There’s a long stretch of sidewalk.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    She’s like, “Can you help me?” Right away, breaks this whole thing up. I’m like, “Yeah, maybe, but probably not. Probably you can help me, but what do you need?” I’m thinking this. Like, “Sure, what can I do for you?” Because I was always respectful to older people. I just learned that in prison too, but you always respect your elders, you don’t hit women, even though a lot of people did hit women, but you’re not supposed to. That was the right thing to do.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I said, “Yeah,” and I’m being cocky. In my own mind, I’m like, “Yeah, sure. How can I help you? What can I do for you?” She’s like, “Will you walk with me over there to that Walgreens?” In my head, I swear I’m saying-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s 3:00 in the morning.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. I’m like, “Girl, you got this far. I’m sure you can get another 50 feet, or whatever it is,” but instead I’m like, “Sure, I’ll walk you over there.” She leaves her cart right there, she’s hobbling and we’re walking. She starts telling me, “Yeah, I’m very dehydrated. I haven’t drinken water since I can’t remember, and I haven’t eaten anything solid since I can’t remember. I’m just not really thinking straight right now, so I just need to get some water and anything, a granola bar, something in my stomach so I can think straight.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m like, “Well, okay.” I’m just like, “Blah, blah, blah.” I’m thinking about what happened right now, like, what was that light, and walking with her. She says, “Because then I might be able to figure out what my next steps are, where I’m going to sleep. It’s tough out here on the streets.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    We cross the street, we get to the parking lot of the Walgreens that’s open 24 hours, and she grabs my hand like this, and she goes, “Okay, that’s far enough. You’re a big boy. You can go the rest of the way on your own.” When she pulls her hand away, there’s a $5 bill in my hand. She’s like, “Go on.” I’m like, “What the hell?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    She gave you the $5 bill?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, yeah. I feel like I was in the Twilight Zone. I’m like, “Dude.” I’m looking at her, she’s like, “Go on.” Then, so I start walking towards the store. I get to the door. I look back, half expecting her to fly away, or she wasn’t there, or whatever the case. She’s just hobbling back to the bus stop seat where I was, and her grocery cart.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I go inside, and I realize then I’m famished. I’m so thirsty, I can’t even talk. I get a gallon of water, and I get one of those little green …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, granola bars.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Granola bars, with the two in there, right? I save enough money to take the bus from there back up to my car, my truck. I was always like, “Okay,” I always could manage the money for what I needed next, whether it’d be dope or a hotel room, or gas for the car or whatever. That was just a physical thing, and I put that in my pocket. I remember I started drinking. I drink this whole gallon of water down. I eat the granola bar, I down that.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m like, “Now what?” I’m like, well, all I could do is go back to the bus stop, because she interrupted my little thing. I go back to the bus stop and I sit down. I’m sitting there trying to process, which is what I always did. This is how I almost went insane with this outlaw biker gang that doesn’t kill people. They drive you mad. They drive you insane, literally. That’s how they get rid of you, because they don’t want to go back to prison for murder anymore. They’d have you go kill yourself or hurt somebody, but I would always be processing things.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I sit back down and I’m like, okay, what was that light? How did this lady … “Yes, we deliver,” the horn honks, right? Then I hear the, click, click. I look up, and then I hear another horn honking of another semi. It’s driving by, and it says on the side, “Keep your eye on the road, not the burrito.” People told me, like, “Dude, that was a Rubio’s truck,” or whatever it was. “Yes, we deliver,” was a pizza truck, and that was a Rubio’s truck. Okay, but for me, it was a moment of clarity.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It was like, this is my life. This is what I do. I’m so worried about, who’s watching me, what’s going on, how did this happen, that I’m not watching. I’m not doing what I need to be doing. This was a way for me to hear it. Human mouth couldn’t tell me anything, because I could outtalk you and manipulate and sell you. By the time you got done starting with, “You need help with drugs, alcohol,” you’re like, “Oh my God, you poor thing. Here, take this money. Go get high. You’re better off that way.” Like, “I’m sorry I interrupted your life,” and I made you feel stupid for trying to talk to me.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I’m processing this and then, “Keep your eye on the road, not the burrito,” and that was the breakthrough that came through to my brain, that was like, “Somebody understands me, and it’s not even a human. It’s this stupid light over here.” Just from that point forward, I got onto starting to not so much worry about that, like, what happened anymore. I was just like, “Okay, what’s my next step? All right, I won’t think about that right now. What do I do next?”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I had like this, I don’t know, I was sober all of a sudden. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to get on the bus, I was going to go back to my car, I was going to call my friend who I knew. I’d borrow money from him to put in the gas tank and get home. I explained it all to him, just what had happened. I didn’t tell him about that. I didn’t talk about that for a long time, actually, and I don’t talk about it a whole lot.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    When I got back that next day, that was October 7th, so October 8th, I didn’t do any drugs, I’m out, and I remember on the 9th, I’m in the alley. I’m smoking a cigarette, and I remember going like this, because I’m used to having that. I remember going like this, and there was nothing there in my hand. I realized, “Wait a second. I’m always drinking to get rid of the feeling from the meth, at least for the first three days.” I know that, I’m programmed that I’m going to have to have alcohol and sleep until I get more dope. Otherwise, I have this like gnarly feeling, which I think is a little bit of both. The nastiness that I was trying to numb, but also the effects of the meth that you’re coming off of. Even though it’s not a physical detox, I get that, but still it’s uncomfortable to have foreign toxins coming out of your body.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I realized, “Wait a second, I’m not even feeling anything.” I slept last night, I slept the night before,” here I am on day three, and I woke up to, like, “I don’t even need alcohol. I don’t feel like I’m coming off dope.” I’m like, “If I don’t need alcohol right now, and I don’t need to get high right now, I don’t need this cigarette. Last time,” and I threw it down. I crushed up the cigarette, threw it away, so October 9th, I quit smoking cigarettes. I’m like, “I don’t need that.”

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Then it was basically from that point on, it was just like, I knew where to go, where people are sober. I went back to the meetings and I just started showing up there. I had now a sobriety date that I didn’t … Obviously I had a marker for what day it was, but I got a sponsor in, like, a month.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Here’s what I want to touch on, is, in your recovery, you had to recover from prison and from drugs and alcohol. What were some of the things that have been the most useful in your recovery, that have allowed you to stay on this path, when otherwise you would have stepped off because you were so used to a different way of life?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The, “Keep your eye on the road and not the burrito,” and then what the program teaches you about being open-minded. That compiled with my routine that’s engraved in me from prison.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. You’ve talked about that. That’s a big piece of-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah. It’s a big piece of what I believe for anybody with sobriety. It just happens to be a similarity there that makes sense, but it’s staying busy, always having some kind of, my meetings involved in the routine, where I have to make the meeting. I do like jujitsu four nights a week, I do that. I have this set schedule throughout the week, like I did with my little college curriculum day, to become this covert agent that’s going to be saving the world one day.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Obviously the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous has helped me immensely. I went just the complete opposite. I was a cinch for this program because it was always like Captain Save-A-Hoe, like I said, or trying to help the underdog who has now become the addict and alcoholic. I believe firmly that the most important thing that we can do as human beings is help the person who is where we once were. That’s where I have the most experience. I don’t need to have letters behind my name. I don’t have to have a degree in it. I have a degree in it, one that nobody’s ever going to be able to teach in school.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    With the program, I was a cinch for it because now I can help that underdog. I can use the routine from prison to help me stay on a routine that keeps me on the right path.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Currently, do you work with people who are trying to get sober after longterm incarceration? Is that something that you-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Currently, my company is called Team Effort Financial, and no, it’s not. That was as of December, we started this new business because the laws changed in the rehab world. Yeah, I was on this journey to save the world in that regard. Unlocked For Life was one program that we tried to launch to help break the recidivism problem, of people going in and out. Then I realized that the sobriety world or the recovery world was, people were more open to help people that are addicts and alcoholics than they are to help people like me, who-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Interesting, yeah.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Convicts and animals that have done bad things that nobody understands unless you sit down and have this type of conversation with every single person in the world, which you can’t do. Even then, they can only barely understand it, but they might …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Try.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Try. I tried to do that. Then, Recovery Boulevard was helping people get into treatment, and doing marketing, I was trying to, like, “How can I make money and help people at the same time,” because I have to make money, I don’t care what anybody else says. I’m not some retired person that’s a do-gooder that can just say, “I’m just going to save the world, and no, it’s not about money.” No, I have to pay my bills. I have to-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. No, we all do.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Make a living, but my mind is like, “How can I do this?” My dad once told me, “Son, you need to stop selling kilos and pounds and start selling motors and transmissions, or you’re going to kill your mom.” I remember converting just-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The skills.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The skills over to sales.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    If you were going to tell someone, like someone getting out of a longterm present sentence who does struggle with addiction, and that person does want help and does want to change their life, what are four things that you would tell them to do, in order to start to transition? Obviously, the transition takes time. What are four or five things you would tell them to do? Obviously, one of them’s a routine.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It’s funny. I’m thinking about what I would tell them, when I was talking to you earlier about the kids that were coming into prison or going to prison. I’m like …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Don’t lie …

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Don’t lie. Just don’t make promises, don’t gamble and don’t do drugs.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Now what would it be?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Now it’s like, don’t do drugs. Stop drinking and using. It’s hard for me to say that there’s other programs out there besides Alcoholics Anonymous, or an AA or whatever, to help that type of a person, because I know they’re there, but I don’t have the firsthand experience, but what I can-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, you’re just coming from your experience.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    What I can say is, talking to anybody now, I would tell them, go to a meeting. Go to Alcoholics Anonymous.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What if they feel like nobody understands?

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    You don’t have to be an alcoholic, you don’t have to be a drug addict. Go fit in with a bunch of people that are all meeting every day at different hours of the day across the world, coming up with different ways and sharing with them on how to live a better way of life, a better quality of life, and who understands the cycle of you not being comfortable with reality out here on the streets. As hard as that is to hit on the ego, like, not knowing what a man of 30 years old should know in front of his wife and kids, or whatever he has, that humility has to come from understanding that, “That’s okay, man. You don’t know. You don’t know what it is.” You’re a female and you’ve done a lot of time. I know a lot of women that have done a lot of time, and they’re in the same boat. You don’t know.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Just get help. It doesn’t matter whether you go to an AA meeting or not. Find somebody else, preferably more than one person, that’s doing what you would like to be doing in life, that has been through what you’ve been through. It’s not a puzzle at that point. If somebody else has your background or your experience, and they’re doing what you wish you could be doing, you can ask them for help and they will-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, do what they do. If you want what they have, do what they do.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Some people don’t want to help other people, but I’m just an avid believer that, if you ask me, I don’t care who you are, and yeah, I want to help people, but you ask somebody, I’ve asked the quietest person that doesn’t want to talk to anybody for help on a subject that they know about, and they’re more than willing to do whatever they can to help.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, you come-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Because they understand. It’s just a feeling of, the best thing you can do is help somebody who is where you once were. They know that topic. They know it. It’s makes them feel good that they can actually know something about something, which, most people have self-esteem issues. They don’t think they know anything about anything. I know a lot about a couple of things, and nothing about a lot of stuff.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    If I had to say four things, it would be like, try a meeting. If you don’t have anything else, you can go to an Alano club, and you can find definitely, without a doubt, convicts that have done a lot of time, convicts that have done a few stints, people that were heroin addicts, that were gangsters. They’re all through Alcoholics Anonymous for sure. I know specific meetings that is only convicts. You can find them, but you can find people that will help you with the addiction of, it doesn’t have to be drugs or alcohol, whatever it was.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. It can be the criminality.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Selling drugs …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, selling.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Doing licks, whatever it takes that puts you back in prison. Going to prison was an addiction for me, obviously.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Be open to the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know. I trusted so many people in the organizations that I was around that were supposed to be blood in, and blood out, bound by honor, have my back for life and through anything, and that is just a lie. Unless I’m going to do life in prison, and even then, I’m still in a cell. I’m not experiencing anything.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    The toughest people I’ve ever met in my life, and you’ve heard everything that I’ve been through, and the different prisons I’ve been in, and the streets and all that, the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous are the toughest, by far, people I’ve ever come in contact with, because they’re facing reality today. They’ve showed me how to face reality. As much as I was just this third striker convict, just drug addict, just beast of a dog on the streets, and they’ve taken me. The way I walk, the way I talk, the way I used to squat, lean against a wall, stroll, speak, all of that has changed. It’s all due to these people who want to see me succeed, and it didn’t cost me a dime.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I saw you come in, and it makes me want to cry, because I saw you come in and you definitely stuck out. Your chances were lower than the rest of ours. In our meetings, like the ones that you and I go to, there are many of us who had every available resource, and it was like, all we had to do was just attach onto it. Everything in our life was pushing in that direction, and we were the only ones going against the stream.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You had the opposite, where your whole life was, everything behind you was going against you and pushing you back into prison. It was easier for you to go back to prison than it was to get sober and live a good life. In many ways, that was the more obvious choice. You found a way to find the similarities instead of the differences. Even when the differences might’ve been big, you found the similarities and attached to those, and then, just have continued to do the deal.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re one of those people where the transformation’s been really huge, it’s been almost physical, and changed. It’s such a testament to the work that you’ve done and the work that goes on in this secret society that other people don’t get to hear. They see you and I’m sure people who knew you before and after, but when you’re walking around, my office, this building, nobody here knows. They don’t know. The fact that you are integrated and are a positive, contributing member of society is a huge, it’s a really big deal. It was not the obvious thing, and that you can help other people who’ve been through that, and people who I think use prison as a way to escape regular life, too. It’s easy to be institutionalized.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, no, for sure. The work that you’re talking about, being the work of on myself, through-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, working with another man …

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I had no tools what to do, but the work that the program gives you, which you would maybe get in a rehab center, but really, I didn’t go to a treatment center. I went to the meetings, and I learned what the program taught me, which was these steps. I don’t want to preach to do the steps and all that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, it’s just one-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    It’s just like, be open-minded, trust that there’s another way other than the way you’re so familiar with on how to do things.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    If you’re uncomfortable, it’s working.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, yeah. Have the courage to be uncomfortable, actually. We’ve been through, from county jails to the process of going into prison, to being strung out, and being sick on heroin or speed, or whatever the case may be. You can go through that for so long, and put yourself through so much misery to try to make a dollar, because in your mind you believe you’re putting food on the table, and it’s the only way you know how. There’s another way. There is another way for sure.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I found it in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I found it in being open-minded. I listen to other people, I seek them out, and yeah, I’m still pretty isolated. I still do a lot on my own, but that’s my nature. I had to do it on my own, but I take a lot, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I listen to a lot of books. I always self-educated myself. The most important thing that has helped me in every other walk of life is being willing to ask somebody else, “Is there another way to do this? Is there another way for me to live my life? Is there another way for me to stay out of prison?” Then …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The answer’s yes.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    When you hear yes, don’t say, “Okay, well, thanks for that,” and walk away. Actually follow that through. You’ll find that, that coupled with adapting your routine to new things like-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Include the recovery life.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, to just switch the things out that you’re doing. If you don’t have a routine, like I didn’t when I got out of prison, every other time except for when I got into a structured program, program meaning, not in-patient, but program meaning the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, where I can start to incorporate a meeting here and there, reading a book, talking to a sponsor, talking to other guys, and then everything else that comes with that. The book talks about how do you remove that invisible line. There is no removing it. I’m a-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’ve crossed it.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    True addict alcoholic, true addict alcoholic. I’m in a moment, I don’t like what’s going down? Right away, I’m going to plan A, which is the only thing I’ve ever known all my life, and that’s drink, use, rob, steal, hustle, cheat, something.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Plan B has to be built so I can supplement it. The only way I did that was by going to meetings, listening to people, constructive acts of kindness, not expecting to get anything in return, and hearing that kind of thing over and over and over again, and help people, and do this. Then I’ve just formed a new routine that incorporates all these little pieces of things that I’ve learned through all these people who are all meeting on a regular basis, only to try to figure out and nurture, growing a better quality and higher quality of life every day, which I think is amazing. When I figured that math out, I’m like, hold on a second. Normies are not in a good position in this world.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, we have-

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Compared to us. We’ve got basically a bunch of people meeting that we can all work together on, and we’re all practicing and sharing with each other how we can live a better quality of life every day, with any solution to any problem that comes up. You can do anything through that. Yeah, I don’t know if I got into the four things you asked me to get to, but-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yes, no, it’s good.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    I would start with eat, drink a lot of water-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, [crosstalk 02:35:15]

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Sleep the same amount of time every night.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You keep on going to survival mechanisms.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Well, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your amazing story, and just for being a beacon of hope for a lot of people who have the same background. I’m sure that this will help somebody.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Well, thank you for having me, and I hope it does. I hope people do see that there’s another way …

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Me too.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Give a little understanding on those who were same position.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, absolutely.

    Dan Sanfellipo:

    Yeah, thanks for having me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Thanks. The Courage to Change, A Recovery Podcast, would like to thank our sponsor, Lion Rock Recovery, for their support. Lion Rock Recovery provides online substance abuse counseling, where you can get help from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com/podcast. Subscribe and join our podcast community to hear amazing stories of courage and transformation. We are so grateful to our listeners and hope that you will engage with us. Please email us comments, questions, anything you want to share with us, how this podcast has affected you. Our email address is podcast@lionrockrecovery.com. We want to hear from you.

    PART 5 OF 5 ENDS [02:36:48]