7. You got the hook-up

“My mom was born in Colombia and moved to the U.S. when she was 12. I never knew much about her family, and was told multiple variations of sugar coated stories by other family members whenever I tried to find out more about my family history.

I was already aware that the Italian side of my family (paternal) had ties to the mob in NJ and eventually moved to Miami where my parents would eventually meet. Through Google, I also found out that my grandfather was a snitch, ended up in the witness protection program after being implicated in a murder and being indicted for selling massive amounts of cocaine. Ok, I thought, I can deal with that knowledge. Crappy about the coke, but maybe my mom’s side wasn’t so bad?

Thanks to ancestry websites and Google, I soon discovered multiple newspaper articles from the 1980s that would indicate that my maternal Colombian grandparents were the leaders of a massive pot smuggling ring which, at the time, was referred to as the largest pot smuggling operations ever carried out in the U.S. Both my grandparents were sentenced to over 250 years each, but after that my trail ran cold and I do not know how or when they died.

Family rumors would have me believe that my grandfather died of a heart attack in jail soon after hearing that my grandmother was murdered in Colombia. My mom never talks about it and I don’t feel comfortable asking. Very few of my friends know about it, but I must say I find it ironic that my Italian paternal grandparents were coke dealers, while my Colombian maternal grandparents were prolific pot smugglers.”