A shining light in San Francisco
Alex Byrd was shooting meth in his wife’s bathroom while looking up a rehab center to check into. Before his most recent stint in prison, he’d been a major player in the drug trade, controlling distribution at every strip club on San Francisco’s Broadway Street and dealing all over the Bay Area from Oakland to San Jose. But while he was locked up, a leader in Nuestra Familia, his prison gang, offered Alex the chance to retire. When he got out, Alex promised his wife he’d never go back to prison again. But he was still an addict — and now it was a lot harder than it had been before, since he no longer had a constant supply of drugs. Now he had to work for his drug money, which is to say to engage in petty crimes like robbing Amazon stores. “It was a burden,” Alex says.
