GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:
Now for the next piece on the "Contents Unknown" episode Stephanie Foo had only to ride her bicycle down the street to Berkeley, California. There she met a delightful, a very, very nice but far too trusting person of the name of Alix Wall.
ALIX WALL: The Greek theater of Berkely, California, 1989. I went to a show of the Jerry Garcia band and I think Jimmy Cliff.
(SOUNDBITE OF JERRY GARCIA BAND SONG)
WALL: And I was actually leaving for Israel the following week. I decided to go to Israel for four months and live on Kibbutz and volunteer and learn some Hebrew. And this was like my last hurrah before I left. On the way back from the show we met some guy who offered us a ride. And he was giving another ride to a guy, an Israeli guys as it turned out. He was in the car with us for an hour and a half and he knew I was Jewish, I was going to Israel, I was going to his own country. At the end of the ride he said, would you do me a favor? It's my friends birthday in a couple of days and I'm already late - will you mail this for me when you get to Israel? It'll take much less time but if I mail it from here it'll take two weeks. I didn't really think twice about it. I just thought, sure. I had such a level of trust. I was a dead-head for years and I really do feel like those people are your family whether you know them or not.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
WALL: So he gave me, like, the business size envelope. He put his own return address and name on the back and just said, mail it when you get there. And I said, OK, thanks. I had the envelope in my carry-on and when the security came up to me and said, did anyone give you anything to take to Israel I immediately said yes. And I took out the package and gave it to them. They looked at it and said, who gave this to you? The guy said, wait right here I'll be right back. And he took it behind the counter and he was gone for, like, a good 20 minutes. And they came back and the guy said OK you can take it. And I said is everything OK? And he said, yep - everything is fine, have a good trip. I arrived totally exhausted and I get off the plane, go to passport control and they don't give me my passport back. And they say go with these people. And there were three plain-clothes police men waiting for me right outside passport control. We go in the room and they sit down around a table and I'm standing up. I was just kind of like, all right - they're going to open the package and see that it's nothing and then that's it. And one of them takes the envelope, he holds it far from his body and he opens it very carefully with a pen and then I see baggy fallout. And as soon as I saw the baggy I just - oh my God I knew. I said oh my God it's drugs. And I just, I panicked. I collapsed against the wall. And they were all just staring at me and I just totally start crying. I was just so humiliated. Their English was not very good. They didn't even know what the drugs were. And it turned out they were psychedelic mushrooms. I had to explain what I knew about 'shrooms and I was, you know, explaining to them that it makes you have hallucinations and everything seems really funny and I was trying to explain this all without seeming like I knew too much about it. And they just kept, you know, OK on with the questioning. You know, so I'm telling my account and finally they take a break and say, do you want a cigarette? I'm not a smoker but I thought, well when you're being interrogated for bringing drugs into a foreign country and summary offers you a cigarette - you're supposed to take it. And so I took the cigarette and I totally started choking.
(SOUNDBITE OF COUGHING)
WALL: When I inhaled. And they just lost it. They just all cracked up. Like, here's our alleged drug dealer and she doesn't even know how to smoke a cigarette. And I kind of knew in that moment that everything was going to be OK. And then finally they said, OK you can go. And I just looked at them and said, really? You know, you've had me for five hours. I don't know where I am, you haven't let me change money, the least you can do is take me to my relatives who live in Telive. And they said OK, we'll do that. I didn't suffer because of it, I didn't have to go to jail, I didn't, you know, it did become a joke really quickly. So a couple months ago I was telling the story to some friends and one of my friends said, did you ever try looking for him to tell him how messed up that was? I went on Facebook the next morning and he was so easy to find. He was the first person with that name to pop up. One of my closest friends said, like, what do you want to get out of this? And I said, you know, I don't even know. It's not like I need an apology after all these years but of course it would be nice to hear one. And he immediately wrote back and we Skyped a few days later.
STEPHANIE FOO, BYLINE: I was happy. I was really glad to get the call. And I wanted to apologize.
WALL: He told me what had happened on his end, you know, like, he only had to spend one night in jail when he got back but it bothered him for years. He told me that he went to therapy about it and he never touched drugs again because he felt like he didn't want to be that person that drugs made him do something like this.
FOO: It was like burden or heavy on my conscience. I didn't know what really happened. And I figured that it wasn't a pleasant experience. Everything happened I was really upset with myself about being this way, not caring about other people. So I said, no more. I'm going to be responsible for my actions. No excuses.
WALL: Well you can see, like, how remorseful he is and, like, what a nice guy he is. At the end of the story on my part - it wasn't a big deal. It was just something funny that happened. And in his case it was something that he really suffered over for years. To me that - the reason I found him was to grant him forgiveness. Like he needed it much more than I did.
WASHINGTON: Big thanks to Alix Wall for sharing her story on The Snap. Alix Wall is a personal chef and writer living in Oakland, California. That piece was produced by Stephanie Foo. SNAP JUDGMENT the "Contents Unknown" episode will be right back. Stay tuned. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
