Member-only story
Lived Through This
What Happens When You Have the Same Name as a Celebrity
My life as ‘the other Don Johnson’ in 1980s Miami
The sirens woke me up, but it was the flashing lights piercing the curtains and bouncing off the walls like angry red-and-blue strobe lights that got me out of bed. I pulled on some jeans, padded downstairs, and stepped into the thick, humid South Florida nighttime air.
There were half a dozen police cars with doors open parked all over the place. Most of the cops were gathered around the house across from mine. A few locals stood around, looking sleepy.
“What happened?”
“Someone sprayed that place with a machine gun.”
This was Miami in the 1980s. Pablo Escobar’s cocaine was flooding the country, and my city was a hot spot. Pablo had a house on Miami Beach facing beautiful Biscayne Bay and backing up to a golf club. I lived on the other side of the course. You could say we were almost neighbors.
However, while he was smuggling in billions of dollars of cocaine, I was living like a monk with six other guys, eating vegetarian food and meditating twice a day. We all worked for an Indian guru, managing his legal and financial affairs. I wasn’t doing cocaine, nor was I drinking or having…
