(In part one, I described a theft of my belongings and identity in 2002. This series is a jointly written story by me and the thief, describing how that happened and what occurred between us. We hear now from the thief.)
Chuck, the criminal, takes a turn:
I first learned about identity crimes in 1995 from a prostitute I met while in the Marine Corps. We stole mail, cashed checks, and applied for credit cards with assumed identities.
Most of us have sat around a table with friends and colleagues, sharing our viewpoints about how to fix the social problems we all face.
A few years ago, I got the unexpected opportunity to not only espouse my social philosophies, but to actually test how much I really believed them. It was the equivalent of the Universe saying, “Okay, Stan. Put up or shut up.” The issue had to do with rehabilitation of ex-convicts in order to reduce the cycle of recidivism. In today’s column, and for the next few weeks following, I will share with you my experiment in hiring someone who stole from me. The story is written by myself, and by the thief.
Before you complain about false advertising, let me assure you that there are not eighty-three steps to entrepreneurial success. But if I was a relatively famous individual, and I published a book with this title, you might be tempted to read it. Because if there were indeed a definable set of steps to success, and you were an entrepreneur working eighty-three hour weeks to accomplish your goals, you’d pay good money to discover them.
In his book, “Natural Capitalism”, Paul Hawken (co-founder of Smith and Hawken, the wildly successful catalog specialty retailer of gardeners’ dreams), laid out a very compelling case for what has come to be known as the “triple bottom line”. The notion is that if a company generates profits, while doing what’s right for people and for the planet, it creates a sustainable and competitively advantageous organization.
