Things Change: Student overcomes drug dealing past

Josh Moses, 32, Business, Spokane, fed his 11-month-old daughter, Cynthia Moses, a spoonful of yogurt one October morning at a breakfast restaurant.

“Uh-oh, where’s your Minnie?” He glanced around for the Minnie Mouse stuffed toy.

Moses is slated to graduate summer 2015 with a degree in business and an emphasis on communication and has held multiple leadership roles within the CDA community. But the history that made this innocent October morning is far more complex.

“I found him in a house I used to go to and when I went in there and asked, you know,” Moses said, “‘Where’s my money?’ and I pulled out a gun—and never in my life had I pulled out a gun and nobody had gotten scared—he laughed at me and said ‘You’re not gonna shoot me.’ And so I lost it and I pistol-whipped him. That’s when I put him in the basement and duct-taped him to a chair for a few hours until his family came and paid me.”

Moses was charged with Grand Theft by extortion and aggravated battery in 2010.

He had once given a man a couple of ounces of meth, Moses said, when the man ran away without paying.

During these times Moses said he only weighed 120 pounds, with sunken cheeks from drug abuse.

“From the age of seven my mother was an alcoholic, and so I had nobody to watch me. She’d pass out at night. I’d have all that time to do whatever I wanted to. Nine times out of 10 when I did go to school and I came home, she’d be passed out,” Moses said. “I had this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle skateboard, and I used to put her on that skateboard and we’d roll her to her bedroom, pick her up and put her on her bed.”

Moses said he began dealing drugs at age 12, when he found pot in his mother’s bedroom dresser and was taught to roll joints by his sister. This progressed until he was selling harder drugs and eventually got involved with the Spokane Nortenos Gang.

“When you get involved in drugs, it leaves a bad trail behind you,” Moses said. “The only way to forget about that trail behind you is to continually do more drugs. And so anything that would make me forget, anything I could do to forget the pain I had caused, I would do. It wouldn’t matter.”

Moses was arrested by a SWAT team at The Falls Club in Post Falls on July 29, 2010.

Moses said he went to the bar because police were tracking his locations on camera. He called up a friend who sent someone else to pick Moses up, a girl whose father owned a liquor license. They decided to go into the bar.

“She asked, ‘Do you want a drink or a shot?’ and I think that was her cue or whatever for them. Well, I said ‘I’ll take both’ and not three seconds later a bunch of black SUVs and SWATs surrounded the place.”

The girl was a confidential informant.

Moses spent 12 months in Kootenai County Jail before losing at trial and being sentenced to 10 to 20 years, with one chance to change. The judge offered Moses a rider.

The rider would be through a Therapeutic Community program, wherein inmates are placed within a family of accountability partners who report any negative activity or lying that takes place from fellow members, to keep them in good health. The penalties there were usually getting something taken away, particularly exclusion from commissary, Moses said.

“So I believed that all these guys were rats. And I was at the point one day where I was gonna give up and I was gonna go start my sentence. I started packing my bags and stuff, I was seriously going to start a 30 year sentence, and I was gonna use the bathroom before because I knew I was gonna be locked up for a minute and this guy said, ‘That’s too bad, you know, I really thought you could lead this family.’”

“This became crystal-clear when he said that, because I’d always influenced bad: I’d always led for the exact opposite of good, you know what I mean? When he said that, something clicked in me, and so I started putting stuff back in my locker,” Moses said.

“It gives me goose bumps because everything all started coming at me all at once, all this bad stuff that I had done. This was my only chance to get a chance at life again. Because if I went before this judge, he had no regret.”

Moses grew to appreciate his surroundings.

“I started learning about trust, about accountability, about how if you do something and you get told on it doesn’t make them a rat, it’s just them being honest with somebody,” Moses said. “I learned about my word, giving my word, caring about people, just everything.”

Later, Moses became Senior of the family. Due to a disagreement with the counselor he lost it after two weeks, Moses said.

“I’m glad I lost it though, because it showed me that everybody falls,” he said.

Moses graduated the program. Moses graduated the program. An unusual amount of time was allotted to speaking about him during the graduation, running to about 45 minutes of tearful accounts, said Moses.

“Never in my life had I done good. And not only had I done good, I’d helped lead these guys in a positive way. And so it was crazy when I went before my judge because he was speechless,” Moses said.

After being released onto probation, Moses said he had no place to stay, so he was brought to the men’s shelter at St. Vincent de Paul. Based on his experiences there, he built himself up, found a home and continued his education. He became president of American Indian Student Alliance, and led a successful homeless Thanksgiving that the club now wants to maintain as a tradition.

Though Moses has overcome a lot, he said some new issues have arisen in his life.

“I was talking to this guy at work and the next thing I know, it’s just little flashes: I’m in the freezer and I could hear the chef talking to me, and then I’m in his truck and he’s slapping me, and the next thing I know I’m waking up in the hospital and I’m hearing, “beep. Beep.” And I guess through the whole experience I was almost dead, they couldn’t get my heart rate up.”

The doctors and surgeons couldn’t get his heart rate above a 42.

“I was almost toast, man.”

Moses has been diagnosed with Gastroparesis with a Dystautonomia, an incurable genetic condition that Moses’ mother passed away from, but he said the doctors aren’t completely sure yet. Moses has another EKG scheduled currently.

Moses is incapable of eating too much food without having an episode, and he’s lost a lot of weight he cannot make up for. Moses said he had to re-learn how to eat for two weeks after this incident to stop from vomiting it all back.

Moses said he intends to go to Lewis-Clarkk State College after NIC, and is currently working on getting a car lot started with his stepfather called “L&M Automotive Sales.” He said he’s left behind the life of crime and drugs he used to celebrate and intends to raise his daughter with his wife, Lori Moses.

“She’s my life,” Moses said.

“She’s such a good mother, good friend. She’s always there for me, and I’ve told her this; she may have found me but I’ve been searching for her my whole life.’”

This is a life far away from Grand Theft by extortion and aggravated battery.

 “But that’s the guy that I was, and it’s crazy that if I go on and I search my name on Google, ‘CDA Josh Moses,’ it brings up the “Sirens & Gavels,” and the story of it: the $2,500 of it and it’s just, like, I threw my life away for $2,500 but if I had not done that I’d never be the person that I am today. When you’re in drugs and you’re addicted to drugs, it takes something really powerful to pull you out of it and had that not been that situation, I probably either would have already been dead by now from gangbangin’ or the ripping off of drug dealers, or who knows. But I think in all of this and what I’ve learned is my self-worth, because before nobody liked me unless I was selling you s—, I had no relationship with my father because I’d stolen his credit card and stolen his truck and maxed out that credit card, was on the run from the cops, and I’d been in high-speed chases, lost my license because of a high-speed chase that I was in and I’m glad to say I just came on my fifth year of sobriety and I’ve never felt better about that situation. And even though I’m now dealing with my health situation, I think if I had to pass away today, I think I could be happy. Because I’m telling you, that person that I used to be, I don’t know who would have come to the funeral. It would have been a pretty quiet deal, you know what I mean?”

Moses patted himself down with one hand while spooning some more yogurt for his daughter and glanced about.

“I don’t know where her Minnie is, man,” Moses said. He smirked a little bit, guilty. “My wife’s gonna kill me.”