Mother’s Little Helper | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Sandie Alger: I couldn't be a criminal now because I'm not that computer savvy. So I'm so glad. Sometimes I say to people, "Thank God I stopped before
they got all this stuff going, because boy, I don't know what I would have done."
[Music.] Phoebe Judge: This is Sandie Alger, she's 71 years old and has a very long rap sheet.
Sandie Alger: I remember the last time I ever got arrested, I was sitting in the back of the police
car and he was asking me questions. And he had that little computer sitting on his dashboard.
And I was like, "Oh my God," and my whole life was just coming up on the screen. I mean you can't...
Before that you could lie and tell them all kinds of stuff. I gave them so many different
names over the years and we'd get away with it. You can't get away with anything now, I'm glad
I'm not a criminal. That'd be way too hard. Phoebe Judge: She was in and out of prison for
most of the 1960s, '70s and '80s. And while Sandie was locked up, the world changed around her.
She's like a bad guy from a nicer time. Sandie Alger: Times really did change. People got more violent. I was never violent at all. Never carried a gun or any of that
stuff like that. I always knew I could never rob somebody at gunpoint, that they would take the gun
away from me and shoot me with it or something. Phoebe Judge: Sandie was born in Los Angeles in
1943, the oldest of eight children. She had a lot of responsibility around the house.
Not just because she was the oldest, but because her mother was in bed a lot. Sandie Alger: She had, what they called then, nervous breakdowns.
And she would have to be hospitalized every so often. And so she took lots of medications
for all different things. She took Dexedrine, which were — dexamyl and all the different
dexa- this and that — and they were amphetamines to get up. And then she would take Miltown,
which was before benzo, that was before Valium. And when Valium came along, she took Valium.
And she would take sleeping pills, barbiturates. And she had so many pills, she had two medicine cabinets in her bathroom. You know? [Laughs.] She had a lot of pills.
Phoebe Judge: But Sandie's mother didn't keep those pills to herself. And that's where this whole story begins. Sandie Alger: She was having a party.
And she was not a good housekeeper, so our house was always a mess. And she wanted me to get the house all cleaned up for her party. So she gave me a Dexedrine to
give me more energy to clean the house. And it made me feel like a queen of the world.
And I loved it. [Laughs.] Phoebe Judge: When the drugs come straight from your mother, when you're only 12 years old, you're pretty lucky to make it to your 70th birthday.
So here's the story of a smart-mouthed little girl in the 1950s, addicted to pills and
hell-bent on doing what she wanted. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music.] Sandie Alger:
I could talk, I loved people, I was friendly, I started losing weight so I wasn't chubby anymore,
because I mean, they were diet pills. Anyway, I loved them. I mean, they were the answer to my dreams. Phoebe Judge: Sandie wanted more. She stole
from her mother and asked around at school to see what other people's mothers had in their medicine
cabinets. She says it wasn't hard. These were pills that would come to be known as "mother's
little helpers." This went on for years. Then she got six weeks into the 10th grade, dropped out,
and ran away from home to reinvent herself. Sandie Alger: I went, and I got a job at this
little hamburger stand, and I got a room in a rooming house where there was just, you paid by the week. And there was me and some old men who lived
there and the bathroom was down the hall. And those old men never bothered me. Amazing.
When I look back on it now, I think, "Oh my God." But then my mother found me, though,
and tried to make me go home and I refused. So they put me in juvenile hall for a few
months. And then I got out of there and went home for a couple weeks and left again and never went back, after that. Phoebe Judge: By the time she was 17,
Sandie was pregnant. She got married and gave birth to her son, Billy. But she didn't have a lot of money. Other people did. Sandie Alger: Okay, so... In the very beginning,
I just used to go, like, to grocery stores and it was personal checks and I would
buy some groceries and get cash. Phoebe Judge: Basically, Sandie stole someone's checkbook and had a fake ID made so that she could look like the account holder.
Sandie Alger: It was before ATM cards, but you could still do the same thing with checks.
So I would do that a lot. Phoebe Judge: Were you terrified? Were you scared? What were you thinking? Sandie Alger: I was high, so I was probably
bulletproof. And I know I was excited and thrilled when I got the money, always. I was always
thrilled when I got the money. [Music.] The thing about jail is it's really scary until you go. And then it's not scary at all. Because,
I guess like jumping out of an airplane, it's really scary till you do it. Phoebe Judge: She wasn't afraid of anything. She didn't care if she got caught,
and she got caught an awful lot. In 1964, she was arrested for the first time and sent to the Los
Angeles County Jail. That year, check forgery was the most common crime committed by women. But at
20 years old, Sandie was the youngest one there. Sandie Alger: So they just kind of took me
under their wing, these old ladies, these old criminal ladies. [Laughs.] Like if I were in jail today and some young girl
came into jail that was like 20 years old, I would make sure nothing bad happened to her. And I think
that that's how these old broads were with me. Phoebe Judge: The first time, Sandie was in jail for 67 days. Sandie Alger: So, first time I got out of jail,
I was still using pills. And then by the next time, I was shooting heroin and amphetamines,
methamphetamine. Phoebe Judge: So she moved on to heroin, and the other women in jail had taught her new ways to rip people off.
Sandie Alger: Up the criminal ladder, just like the corporate ladder. I mean, that's what you do.
I got caught, I went to jail, and that's where you meet more sophisticated criminals and learn
and make connections to do more serious things. Phoebe Judge: She was now walking into banks and
presenting her fake IDs and withdrawing sums of money from other people's accounts — large sums of money, $10,000. Sandie Alger: As far as I was concerned,
I had nothing to lose, ever. And I wasn't hurting anyone but myself. Phoebe Judge: Sandie's son was being raised by her sister. So she was on her own, shooting heroin and
stealing money straight from the bank. Sandie Alger: And I felt that getting arrested and things like that were just an occupational hazard.
Phoebe Judge: In 1968, Sandie was sent to the California Institution for Women in the San Bernardino Valley. This would be her on-again, off-again home for the next 20 years.
She was in and out of there like a revolving door. The California Institution for Women was the only
women's prison in the entire state. This remained the case until 1987. And so even though Sandie
wasn't a violent criminal, she was in there with killers. She served time with some of the women
in Charles Manson's so-called family, including Patricia Krenwinkel, who's still there today.
By the early '70s, Sandie's criminal record included forgery of checks, forgery of prescriptions, possession of heroin, burglary, and fraud.
But were you a criminal, where you were doing these crimes because it was a way in which to
get the drugs, or — which is, might be a reason, we hear that a lot. One becomes a
criminal because they're desperate and they need the fix. But it sounds to me like you
loved the crime, a little bit. Sandie Alger: I did. I loved both. And I think I
was addicted to the crime as well as the drugs. Phoebe Judge: In 1976, Sandie was arrested
for possession of counterfeit money, a federal offense. Sandie Alger: First I started out, I was buying it, I was passing it. And then I started just
wholesaling it. And that was fun, that was a lot of fun, and exciting. I mean, there were
times that I would have money strung across my kitchen and I would dye it with gray rit
dye and coffee to age it and crinkle it up and stuff that I would have it hanging
up there with a blow dryer, blowing it off. Phoebe Judge: She was sent to a federal women's
prison in Alderson, West Virginia, where she found herself living alongside more
women from the Manson family, including Lynette Fromme, aka Squeaky Fromme, the woman who attempted to assassinate President Ford in 1975. And Sandra Good, who carved an X in
her forehead and sent 170 letters to corporate executives, threatening to kill them because
she believed they were polluting the earth. Sandie Alger: Yeah. They were still 'nuns for
Charlie,' they called themselves, when I was in prison with them in the late '70s.
They didn't have contact with him, but they still loved Charlie Manson. Phoebe Judge: Sandie's stint in federal prison had done nothing to slow her down.
When she was released, she landed herself right back in the California Institution for Women for
possession of heroin. By the late '80s, she'd been addicted to heroin for almost 30 years. That means
a lot of her heroin use went on in prison. Sandie Alger: You have contact visits, so you
can get it that way. And the guards smuggle it in for money and things. So yeah, it's pretty readily
available in prison. And then federal prison, it was really readily available. All those smugglers,
I guess they like to keep their hand in, stay in practice, whatever, I don't know. [Laughs.] But
yeah, it was very readily available. At one time I was in a co-ed prison, that was really nice
[laughs] for a drug-addict girl. Phoebe Judge: Why? Sandie Alger: Why was it really nice? Well, there was about
200 women and 800 men, that's why. I mean, I would just be whoever's girlfriend had the dope.
That's what girls do when they're drug addicts. A lot. Phoebe Judge: All told, Sandie was in and out of prison eight times.
Sandie Alger: I'd never been a grownup that wasn't a criminal or a convict or a drug addict.
Phoebe Judge: Sandie was released from prison for the very last time in 1988. Just a few days later, she checked herself into a rehab program called Delancey Street. She
remembers the exact date: December 8th, 1988. Sandie Alger: I knew it was the hardest
one in the whole country. I didn't know anybody there who I'd gotten high with.
And I didn't know of anybody who was actually there getting high, like we did a lot of programs. People that were in the program, they were still getting
high all the time. I mean, like, what's the point of going to a program and trying to
pretend like you're not high and being high? I mean, that just ruins your high. So, I didn't
want to go to a drug program and get high. Phoebe Judge: What was it like? You said it is the
hardest, it was the hardest, what is it like? Sandie Alger: Well, it's way harder than prison,
I'll tell you that. Because you have to follow all these little piddly-ass, petty rules, everything
is a rule. You can't talk to the men, you can't wear any makeup, you have to dress conservatively,
you have to be polite all the time to people, whether you feel it or not. All that stuff is
hard when that's not what you're used to. Phoebe Judge: She stuck with it. Sandie
did her two years, and at the end of it, she didn't trust herself to leave. So she stayed,
not for two more years, but for 12 more years. Why did you stay there for so long?
Sandie Alger: Well, at first I really didn't plan to stay two years, even though I said I would when I went there. I just was going to stay as long as I could,
and my real goal was to stay long enough to get off parole so I could be bailable
if I committed a crime. But by the time I could have gone anywhere, I was changing
and I was starting to believe in it. Phoebe Judge: All told, she was at Delancey
Street for 14 years. Sandie's been clean since 1988. But that doesn't mean she doesn't think about it anymore. Sandie Alger: There's nothing else in the whole
world like heroin, because heroin is... Nothing matters. It's no big deal, no matter what. If
the house burns down, it's like, "Oh, darn the house burned down." That's one thing about heroin that even though I haven't used any for what, almost 30 years,
some days, on really bad days, I can remember that feeling and it would just be nice to be blank.
Like if something horrible happens in your life, you would just like to blank out for about four hours or something. Phoebe Judge: So did you have a ritual? Did you
always shoot it in the same spot? Did you know that your veins... Sandie Alger: No. You can't always shoot at the same spot, because you burn out your veins. I
have a terrible time right now when I go and have to have a blood test. They hate me at the clinics,
and I have to explain to them and apologize to them, "I'm so sorry, but I was an IV drug user.
And so you're going to have to go in this little tiny vein right here on my hand or something."
So yeah, everything comes back to haunt you. Phoebe Judge: Do you ever say to them,
when they can't find a vein, "Let me take care of it?" Sandie Alger: I don't, but I'm tempted
a lot of times, you know? "Just give me that." Phoebe Judge: At 71 years old, Sandie's living in
Durham, North Carolina, and working with a program called TROSA. That stands for Triangle Residential
Options for Substance Abusers. It was founded by a former addict Sandie met at Delancey Street.
He invited her to come help him start a program for women addicts. Sandie Alger: There's nothing that a woman here can say to me
that shocks me or makes me judge her or upsets me, because I've done all the bad
things already. The most important thing for my women is that they feel safe at all times.
Many of them have never felt safe before they came here ever, ever, as children or as adults.
And so they have to feel safe. Phoebe Judge: There are 540 residents at TROSA, only about 80 of them are women. So Sandie wants them to feel physically safe and taken care of.
But she isn't some pushover. She knows she's from a different time, a time when it was easy to give
a cop a fake name or walk into a grocery store, smile, and hand over another person's check.
Being a crook, at least one who deals with money, has become much more complicated. But being a
drug addict, that hasn't changed so much Sandie Alger: As convincing as addicts are,
once when you've been, when you can see through it all, because you've done it,
you've told all those lies already. Phoebe Judge: Does someone ever try to pull something on you, say, "Well, listen." Sandie Alger: Look, they try to pull things
on me all the time, because you know, I'm 71, I look like just some cute little old grandma. So
they cannot imagine, especially when they're new here, the life that I've had. So sometimes I do
have to tell them, "Honey, I was running that game so long before you were born,
before your parents were born." [Laughs.]. [Music.] Phoebe Judge: Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me. Eric Mennel helped with sound.
Julienne Alexander does our episode art. You can see it thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter, @CriminalShow. We're doing a live show at the Bell House in
Brooklyn on July 15th. If you're around, we'd love to see you. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Check out the other shows at radiotopia.fm.
One of those is The Allusionist, which is a wonderful show about language and how
language is used. You should check it out. Radiotopia is trying to understand how you
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I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.

71-year-old Sandie Alger has been in and out of prison throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, and upped her game each time she got out. For Sandie, prison showed her how to climb up the criminal ladder, just like the corporate ladder.

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 19 originally published 4/24/2015 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-nineteen-mothers-little-helper-4-24-2015

Brief Summary

Sandie Alger recounts her life of crime, addiction, and recovery, sharing insights from her time in prison and her work with women addicts.

Key points

Sandie's Early Life. Sandie Alger, born in 1943, had a challenging childhood with a mother who struggled with mental health.
Introduction to Drugs. At just 12 years old, Sandie was introduced to pills by her mother to help clean for a party.
Life in Prison. Sandie's time in jail introduced her to more sophisticated criminals and new ways to commit crimes.
Rehabilitation Journey. After years of addiction, Sandie checked into a rigorous rehab program in 1988.
Helping Others. Now 71, Sandie works with a program for women addicts, drawing from her own experiences.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I couldn't be a criminal now because I'm not that computer savvy.

Sandie Alger reflects on her past.

WatchOct 31, 2022

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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