THE OUTLAW ENTREPRENEUR
The Porsche convertible hit 110 on the Bay Bridge. The driver, likely high on ketamine, had just one hand on the wheel, the other cooly fondling the stick
shift. He seemed to plan his moves 50 yards in
advance, watching the flow of traffic as if it were a cheap arcade game. It was
7 p.m. and traffic would have put him on the advanced level.
I was in the back seat, or what passed for space in the back seat, holding,
of all things,
a six-week old Pit Bull. In front, next to the driver was the dog's owner, Raquel, on her way
home from a $1,000 shopping spree in San Francisco, $500 of it spent on shoes. She had just
gotten paid and the marijuana business is good - $15,000 cash for two weeks work. Her trip home to Oakland would
take mere minutes.
Raquel is just 24-years old but swears she has grossed $2 million in her
life, although it has gone out as quickly as it has come in. She lives in a
world of trendy clothes, parties and expendable cash, an atypical form of
nouveau wealth, not coming from being born into or the result of any formal
education.
Her story of how she
got to this point begins a decade
earlier. In her early teens, she was one of those runaway kids who flock to San Francisco's Haight
Ashbury district. She wasn't truly homeless. Her family lived in the North Bay
and she would generally only stay in the city a couple weeks at a time before
returning home. At first to get by, she and her friends made wallets out of duct tape, selling them
on the sidewalk for a couple bucks each. Then they would pool their proceeds together for alcohol
and, if they had enough left over, a
hotel room. By the mid-90s, the hippie look was long gone in the Haight and she
was part of a new element moving in. "By the time I got there, there was mostly
all rave kids. I was a brat, a little punk
rock goth kid. Started raving when I was 14 years old," she says.
It was not long before she got involved in drugs. Within a couple years, she had fallen into a good ecstasy connection,
buying single hits for 20 cents which she would sell at raves. "Basically we
would just kick down for a couple hundred pills and we would sell those in the
hallways for $20 each, and that would turn into us buying our own thousand order
of pills. The next thing you know you are 16 years old with a helluva drug habit
but with at least 40-to-50-grand cash on you at all times. There were points
throughout the night where our backpacks would be so full of money that we'd
have to leave the party because we were like, 'Fuck we're going to get jacked.'"
Too young to rent, she would couch surf at friends or stay at houses of boys she
would meet. "We were party girls, out of control party girls," she smiles.
Judging by her looks today, it's likely she had little trouble finding boys.
Though no longer a street kid, she still has a bad-ass look -- a belt made of
bullets holding together her urban guerilla clothing, her red hair in long
dreadlocks. She is busty, though otherwise petite, and a head turner walking
down the street, especially when donning tight shorts and $200 boots. She could
be considered intimidating, especially with a personality that impels everyone
around her to become involved in her dramas, except for one element - her eyes
are still that of a girl: expressful, curious and full of wonderment.
Over the years, she has had bouts with addictions, including, at one point,
falling into a bad cocaine habit. "I was totally tweaked out of
my head for like a good year, year and a half and went to the bottom of the
barrel pretty quick," she admitted. One day she woke up in a penthouse in
Las Vegas with her boyfriend, a major coke dealer, and decided she had enough.
She walked away from an impending drug deal that would have made her rich for
some time.
From a financial perspective it was not a great loss, money being relatively
expendable for her as she has always been able to make it. It is not clear what
she saves, the deals and new schemes changing several times a year, undoubtedly
tying up her profits. While there always seems to be disposable cash, at times
however, the waste can be disturbing. Around her home there is so
much cash that whenever she breaks a $20 bill, it is mere pocket change, left
for housemates or others to take care of chores. One August, in order to go to
Burning Man, she looked to buy a van just for the week. Unable to secure one,
she ran up a $1,300 truck rental bill instead.
Make no mistake about it, though. Money is a life goal for her. She might be a
Democrat by natural affiliation but she is not a granola-type hippy girl worried
about sustainable economies. She is a capitalist through and through with a
deep admiration for those who know how to get rich.
With money from investors, she and her business partner, the Porsche driver,
have grow houses in both Santa Cruz and Sonoma County and a warehouse in
Oakland. She can make several hundred thousand dollars
with just a $25,000 investment. She does not reveal details but it is no secret
that pot growers pool people with marijuana prescriptions in order to grow as
many plants as possible.
"If you do 99 plants and they are outdoor plants, you usually yield about one to
five pounds per plant," she explains. "At one pound per plant - $3,000 a pound -
that's $270,000, and that's your lowest minimum."
Ninety-nine plants is a key figure in the marijuana world. Not only is 100
plants the threshold for triggering federal mandatory minimum sentences, but it
is the figure that Northern California counties like Sonoma allow for personal
use for those with medical marijuana prescriptions. When California legalized
pot for medicinal use, it left such regulations up to individual counties. In
San Francisco, the figure allowed is six plants but in areas where marijuana
money buys influence like Sonoma and Humboldt, the figure is as high as it can
be without interfering with the feds. While the U.S. government regularly runs
helicopters over marijuana plantations in those counties, sometimes to the
disdain of local sheriffs who would rather handle the matter internally, medical
marijuana has still left prosecution difficult. A person with 99 or less plants
not only stays clear of a certain jail sentence but also can claim what they are
doing is within state and local laws making it that much more difficult for a
judge to impose any jail time at all. Sometimes it happens but sometimes people
with more than 99 plants still get off clean too.
To say Rachel lives in the fast lane would be missing that she has the rare
metabolism for it. Its in her blood, she explains, being descended from Spanish
gypsies. On most days, her schedule is comparable to a CEO if not a political
candidate. The marijuana trade can take her up and down the coast, often more than once a
day. And when she takes a break, it might be to party all night, only to hit
stride again when morning comes. Her work ethic is strong and she is a person
who hustles far more so than being a hustler, although one should not
underestimate her talent at the latter either.
There are more than a few fellow early-20-something women who admire that
energy and business acumen. To
them, she is a mover and shaker, a female role model. At times, they will join
her entourage, she employing
them to help with her affairs or organize her home, but like a lot of things in her life, they don't stay long, whether a
personality issue or they just being equally transient themselves. If there is
one constant in Raquel's life, it is that there is no constant. Her residences,
relationships, long term plans and even cell phone numbers change as often as
the seasons.
She is never short on grander plans beyond the marijuana trade but thus far
they have amounted to being mostly pipe dreams. She
wants to become a singer, her business taking her into worlds where there are no
shortage of performers she could join with. She also has had a detailed plan for
a traveling theater show and has tried to convert her warehouse space into a center for the arts.
However, even
she would admit her job and other distractions cause her long term focus to
suffer, lamenting the world doesn't sit still long enough for her to have the
time.
Luck avoiding authorities, hard work and possibly a maturity that will come
with age may eventually bring those things to pass. She does believe at least
her days of harder drugs are behind her. She says she has been told by witches
and clairvoyants that in one of her past lives she died from alcoholism and
another from a drug overdose. "I've worked out that karma this time," she says.
Copyright of Wired Gypsy Publishing Network
