The One They Couldn’t Catch

"Pete's been arrested in Mexico. They know everything. Good luck..." Those words over the phone one night in December end the idyllic year of 1973 for Bobby and Monique. What follows is a dash across the country and then a flight south, first to Medellin, then on to Playa del Coco in Costa Rica, where Bobby meets many of the people he would know for the rest of his career as a smuggler...but he'd lose Monique along the way.

Bobby has a hundred grand, a beautiful girlfriend, and plans to sail the world. 1973 is a magical year for Monique and Bobby — living in the lee of Santa Barbara Island, hunting swordfish, growing close. Then, after Pete inexplicably gets arrested in Mexico, they get a phone call that changes everything and sends them running.

This episode is a little different. It's Bobby's appearance, along with Paul, on Brookings, Oregon's KCIW Curry Coast Community Radio. The show is Doc and Jacques LIVE weekly talk show and Bobby and Paul talk about how they met and wrote the book. Bobby also recounts a couple stories from the pages. Thanks to Jacques Kepner, Doctor Gigi Reed and the good folks at KCIW for having us!

Bobby and Pete have a good thing going, and they're figuring out how to improve on their smuggling operation with every flight. In this episode, we hear about the dozen flights that happened after the initial one, the dangers faced, the obstacles overcome. Along the way, Bobby starts to learn the truth about his partner...

It’s 1968, and Bobby has gotten rid of most of his worldly possessions, even throwing out the trophies his father won as a celebrated yachtsman in the ‘30s. He’s sold what was left of his formula B racecar after the crash at Riverside…and, inspired by a free spirit he encountered as a boy in the harbor in San Pedro, has moved aboard his new sloop, Serenade. Finally under his own power, Bobby goes about fashioning the life he wants to live, and meeting some of the key people who will animate…and bedevil…that life for years to come…

Bob goes off to college...but not for long. Instead, he takes his first real step as an adult and strikes out on his own when he and a couple of friends split for life in the wilds of Alaska. They don't make it. Back in southern California, Bob gets into auto racing.

Bob enlisted in the Navy at 17 and set set off to see the world, or at least the parts visible from the deck of a destroyer. 

Bob's childhood in Playa del Rey, before the marina, where he learned to hunt and not be seen...and disregard consequences!

Climb into a Cessna 210 with Bob and fly off into the Mexican night as he recounts his first flight to Mexico and just how he came to be a smuggler.