A Day in the Life of Chaos

In a professional career you come across all sorts of people but none have as much impact on you as the supervisors your work for.  They can make your professional life a pleasure and they can make it hell.  This year I am marking my 28th year on the job and with all sincerity I hope to stay around just just four more years.  Aside from loved ones and a few good friends I think 32 years is enough to devote to anyone or anything. My first two supervisors were illustrations of various styles.  The first was hell.  She was a demonic memory that made me question my initial decisions in life.  The second was a motherly personality never wishing to push the envelop.  After the fourth year of the second supervisor, I was convinced I might need a complete career change and contemplated trading my mind numbing cubicle for an academic life.  It was my third supervisor who changed my life.  She gave me wings by inviting me to work for her for close to six years on the  southern side of th

Skip Garcia, JD, Ira In 1991 former president and nearly convicted criminal Richard Milhous Nixon, in response to "reefer madness," first coined the phrase "The War On Drugs." The name immediately conjures an image of a brutal land, sea and air assault against a tyrannical foe.   The battlefield was the world yet as time has progressed the often over used phrase seems to resemble the Hundred Years War as opposed to World War Two.  As part of the ongoing struggle against drugs in the late 1990's, the American Government dispatched an elite group of commandos to a remote corner of Bolivia.  Their mission was to identify and intercept elicit cargoes of chemicals essential to the clandestine production of cocaine. Two of the teams members are pictured to the right however since JD is still active I thought it best to conceal his face.  I like to think of him as the gravely voiced darkened image of an informant hidden on camera.  Unfortunately I was not pres

Patrick and Ira If ever I have had adventures in my life I must without a doubt include my friend Ira Wald as a partner in crime.  Ira and I spent four years together in Bolivia and during that time we used our investigative creativity to justify some ventures out into the far corners of the country.  There was almost no where Ira and I were not willing to go.  Both of us thirsted for new experiences and a chance to glimpse different parts of a wild land. Ira truly loved his job.  In the agency he is known as a Diversion Investigator.  Domestically this typically means they investigate corrupt doctors and pill mills yet in Bolivia his mission was different.  Ira was tasked at identifying companies that chose to use their manufacturing as a basis to buy chemicals that were later diverted into the production of cocaine.  Bolivia is a source country for cocaine production and thus obtaining needed chemicals for the conversion of coca leaves to the white powder was essential.  The i

Outpost Trinidad Part II.... Continued.... Day to day life in Trinidad meant the constant search for clean food.  This at times was a challenge as shipments form other parts of the country were irregular at best.  The decision was essentially find something and have a maid at the house cook it for you or play Russian roulette at a restaurant.  One experience that always brought a smile to my face was the hunt for chicken.  There are no supermarkets in Trinidad so when chicken was desired you had to pass by the chicken store.  In Trinidad this meant a visit to Pollos Imba.  Pollos Imba sold one thing, chicken.  The problem was that they only had chicken about 30 percent of the time.  The rest of the time the Pollos Imba girls simply hung out and responded to clients queries.  Typically it involved driving up in front of the store and rolling down the window.  Looking into the open front door you would catch the eye of the attendant. "Hay Pollo?"   You would sh