by Duane "Dog" Chapman
If you believe all heroes are dead, chances are you haven't heard of Dog. Duane "Dog" Chapman is the owner of Da Kine Bail Bonds in Honolulu and at 6,000+ fugitive captures, he is living up to his legend. His TV show Dog The Bounty Hunter is number one on A&E, his book You Can Run But You Can't Hide is #1 on the hardcover non-fiction list...Not bad for a guy who was once incarcerated for first-degree murder and addicted to hard drugs. Dog says it was a few special individuals who helped him see the light, and now he spends his days doing the same for wanted criminals, and he does it in front of millions every week. Life brings struggle, Dog brings the law, and now we bring you Dog:
Going #1
We just finished a huge book tour and we're back in Honolulu now. It was great - We broke attendance records in about 11 different cities. Mrs. Clinton beat me in one by a hundred, so we went to work and won from then on. We loved it.
Our show Dog The Bounty Hunter is #1 on A&E-the book You Can Run But You Can't Hide has gone #1. That's a blessing. Thank God.
Americans are intrigued because bounty hunting is one of the oldest laws on the books, and what we do is real life. It's unplanned, unscripted and happens every day. Some game shows call themselves reality television...they're not. We are true reality, shot exactly the way the bounty goes down.
People watching our show know anything could happen at any time. People like it for excitement. People want to know what a criminal looks like. Cops like it because they learn new tricks. We reach just about every demographic.
As a kid, I identified with vigilante legends because that's what I was meant to be. It was my mission. Television was probably also an influence in my life, although my parents were Christian, so back in those days we barely watched television. I remember Cat on a Hot Tin Roof wasn't allowed in my house. (I watch it now and still can't figure out what my mom was mad about.)
A lot of people write their memoirs once they've come full circle, and I've been saving notes since I was 14 years old. I always knew there would be a book one day. Once the Mexico problem was over, it was a huge relief and freed me up to focus on the book. Also, people were always asking me, "Who are you? Why is your name Dog? How'd you become a bounty hunter? Why were you in jail?" There were all these questions that I spent hours and hours explaining the answers to, and so I realized it was better to just write it down.
You know, people always used to come up to me, saying they felt like they knew me, and I just thought, 'I wish you did brah.' There was a lot of speculation about different things, and so I thought, 'I'm just going to do all this right here so that people do know me.' It was like a confessional, and people who had read it started coming up to me saying, "We still love you Dog, even after we read your book." (laughs)
A Dog's Strength
When I was a kid, my father taught me that strength was being able to deliver and take a hit like a man. Masculinity is physical; it shows from the outside. Strength is something else; it comes from within. For example, there aren't a lot of tough gay guys. Even if you're gay, you can have a lot of strength.
You don't have to be a heterosexual, kick ass and take names kind of guy to have strength. You can be a woman and have as much strength as a man, believe it or not. I didn't always know that, but that's what I've learned through life.
I used to carry a lot of aggression, and it all went away in 1978. I was standing in line on Saturday to buy candy bars in prison, and the line was really long. I got mad and lost my temper. A guy named Skinner beat me to the ground. The guard told me, "If you ever lose your temper again, we're going to beat you again." I've never really lost my temper since that day. It sounds terrible, but my aggression was beaten out of me. Adrenalin is a different story - I like the rush.
You can trade anger for determination. I think anger and determination run hand-in-hand, like fear and respect. You can change anger for, "I'm gonna do that," instead of, "Dammit, I'm mad enough to do that." I think it's really close. There's a fine line between the two.
Faith Locked Up
In my book, I talk about re-discovering my faith in prison. I was all alone in a cell, and I either talked to God or myself. We're talking days or months of solitude, no other inmates, and barely even seeing the hand that feeds you. In those times, you discover for sure that there's a God - that there must be someone there to talk to.
Why does the Lord test us? I know for sure why, and I just found this out. The more struggles that we go through, we then go through the next struggle, and if we realized, "Okay, I got through that last struggle by using this and thinking that (and I use the faith), I can get through the new struggle." I think that every struggle in life builds faith and gets you ready for the big one, the next one.
Once you get older like I am, and you've lived through so many, you realize "I beat that last time by using faith; I know for sure that God loves me, that I love God, that I'm not a scum bag, I'm not a felonious person, I really would give my life for a woman or a child or a best friend, I really am that kind of guy deep inside when the Lord looks, and I am going to do this." Once you get to that point in your life, then everything is cool.
Why Crime Exists
I don't think we'll ever have a perfect world with no crime. Crime exists for several reasons. I used to break the law because chicks liked to see tough guys, and I liked chicks. But in my day, drugs weren't as prevalent and I didn't do it for the dope. In today's day and age, 90 per cent of the crimes we're arresting for involve substance abuse. The drug grows on that person and they develop a personality from that drug.
Crime will always be here, but crime is also the other side of good. If you robbed an elderly person while they're crossing the street because they can barely walk, the opposite of that would be helping them cross the street. Good will always be the other side. It's good versus evil, and I'm happy to be one of the good guys.
The Cigarette And The Talk
A lot of people ask me why I'm so nice to people once I've got them handcuffed in the backseat. Years ago, police officers, counselors and friends said some good words to me that brought me around. I can't remember exactly what words they said - it was a combination of people and words - but they taught me.
I hope that the words I say to people start the ball rolling. I just hope that they listen to me, and they do. I've known guys who have changed because I showed them the way, so to speak.
Bounty Hunting In Paradise
We've just left the mainland, and let me tell you, it was just like picking fish out of a barrel. We got 12 guys in nine days. Seven of the guys had firearms, and four of the girls had knives. It was unbelievable - guns everywhere!
It is so much easier catching criminals in the United States mainland, where there's no jungle, everybody's not related, you can't stay out all night, you can't live off the land. It's hard in Hawaii, believe me.
Not to sound boastful, but people always say, "How can you let 'em get away on an island?"
I tell 'em, "Listen brah, you come here, I'll give you a traffic DUI kit, a $500-bond, and you catch him."
"I'll catch him," he says. Three weeks later, he was out of gas and food. He calls me and says, "I can't find him."
I go, "We'll send you back to New York homey."
Danger On The Job
People always ask me if I fear retaliation by criminals during the arrests. We carry non-lethal weapons, but we can knock a mule or an elephant to his knees. We can do the same things a weapon-bearing criminal can do; only our bullets don't kill. And I'm even quicker on the draw than any of them.
As a matter of fact, a guy tried to out-draw me - this drunk cowboy who was acting all crazy. I shot him first with my pepper ball gun. Our guy goes down and gets back up. If anyone ever comes after us, we're taking him out right there. We'll shoot him up and take him right in to the cops, but we won't kill him.
But we don't deserve retaliation. We don't dog them; we don't spit on them and make them fight. There are ways to make people fight - you can call their mothers names and whatnot, but we don't do none of that. We don't have karma chasing us down to get even with us. The guy who comes after us for no reason will have hell to pay.
People also ask me if I worry about my wife and daughter, and the answer is, "Yes I do worry," but I'd rather know where Beth's at. I know where Baby Lyssa is. Sadly I don't have my Barbara with me. But you know, I want to teach them how not to become victims.
There are a lot of female cops, firefighters, and believe it or not I found a couple female marines out on this tour. If I was Al Qaeda, I would give up quick! I think that if they have vests on, are armed with non-lethal weapons and are ready, they can handle it. I'm a dad and a husband, and so yes, I worry, but I know they're well-trained. Baby Lyssa just got beat up in an episode, and she came out of it alright. It's the game that she picked and the life that we picked. There are far more dangerous jobs than we do. We're just on a mission.
Dog's Secret Weapon
People ask me all the time, "Dog, do you carry a gun?"
I say, "Yes I do, and her name is Beth."
I love her body, you know. I just stare at her. How do I say this without sounding like a horn dog? I'm like Tarzan and she's my Jane. Woman! You know what I mean? But I'm not nasty kind like that - I just love to stay in and touch her because she's so soft. I don't mean to sound like a freak, but I'm just like that.
She's got attributes that I love and I love her. She gets mean though, and sometimes she hurts my feelings.
But she's like me. I've never said this before, but Beth was the girl who, when she was a kid, was dancing in front of the mirror for television. She wanted to have everyone love her, her whole life. Same as I did, she had a dream that everyone would know her. There are some people that I've known, in my past marriage, that wanted to live in a little cave like. You gotta be cut out of the same cloth.
Beth gets more aggravated when people come up to her when she's eating, or you know, like right now during an interview, I had to tell her to get back a bit.
How do I say this? She just has more sophistication than I do.
Mess In Mexico
If we knew then what we know now, we wouldn't have gone into Mexico like that. We learned not to do that ever again. Things just went wrong. We had a police officer with us, but the cop was not a real good cop.
I'm very proud of Mexico though. I learned that the stories that we're hear about them are not true. Mexico is predominantly women and children and they are hard core Catholics. They see the Virgin Mary in the rock. As Americans, we don't know that. I saw Americans wanted for raping, stealing and pillaging, living in their neighborhoods, and there's nothing those people can do about it.
But another thing I learned from Mexico is that you can do the impossible, just by doing it. You can find anybody, anytime, anywhere.
Andrew Luster was the hardest person in the world to find, and no one could find him but our family.
The Loss Of A Daughter
It's been a year and a half since we lost Barbara Katie, and today Beth, Baby Lyssa and I were talking about her. She was the happiest about the TV show, she loved the most, she cried when I cried - she was like my cry partner. I cried and she was there. And I lost my little baby, so I cry alone now. (breaks down)
Reputation Is Everything
A bounty hunter's reputation is everything. When they see Dog, they know what he stands for. In order to be #1, you have to be number one. Do you know what I'm saying?
We're as unique as hell. I can't compare us to anyone because there isn't anyone like us. That's me speaking as a family, not just as Dog. We're very lucky to live as a family and work as a family. We're all nuts, and all the bad guys we're chasing are all nuts. But we're having a ball. We live in paradise. Life has brought us struggle, so we struggle in paradise.
People ask me all the time, "Dog, do you carry a gun?" I say, "Yes I do, and her name is Beth."
If you believe all heroes are dead, chances are you haven't heard of Dog. Duane "Dog" Chapman is the owner of Da Kine Bail Bonds in Honolulu and at 6,000+ fugitive captures, he is living up to his legend. His TV show Dog The Bounty Hunter is number one on A&E, his book You Can Run But You Can't Hide is #1 on the hardcover non-fiction list...Not bad for a guy who was once incarcerated for first-degree murder and addicted to hard drugs. Dog says it was a few special individuals who helped him see the light, and now he spends his days doing the same for wanted criminals, and he does it in front of millions every week. Life brings struggle, Dog brings the law, and now we bring you Dog:
 |
| Duane "Dog" and Beth Chapman (WGN) |
Going #1
We just finished a huge book tour and we're back in Honolulu now. It was great - We broke attendance records in about 11 different cities. Mrs. Clinton beat me in one by a hundred, so we went to work and won from then on. We loved it.
Our show Dog The Bounty Hunter is #1 on A&E-the book You Can Run But You Can't Hide has gone #1. That's a blessing. Thank God.
Americans are intrigued because bounty hunting is one of the oldest laws on the books, and what we do is real life. It's unplanned, unscripted and happens every day. Some game shows call themselves reality television...they're not. We are true reality, shot exactly the way the bounty goes down.
People watching our show know anything could happen at any time. People like it for excitement. People want to know what a criminal looks like. Cops like it because they learn new tricks. We reach just about every demographic.
As a kid, I identified with vigilante legends because that's what I was meant to be. It was my mission. Television was probably also an influence in my life, although my parents were Christian, so back in those days we barely watched television. I remember Cat on a Hot Tin Roof wasn't allowed in my house. (I watch it now and still can't figure out what my mom was mad about.)
A lot of people write their memoirs once they've come full circle, and I've been saving notes since I was 14 years old. I always knew there would be a book one day. Once the Mexico problem was over, it was a huge relief and freed me up to focus on the book. Also, people were always asking me, "Who are you? Why is your name Dog? How'd you become a bounty hunter? Why were you in jail?" There were all these questions that I spent hours and hours explaining the answers to, and so I realized it was better to just write it down.
You know, people always used to come up to me, saying they felt like they knew me, and I just thought, 'I wish you did brah.' There was a lot of speculation about different things, and so I thought, 'I'm just going to do all this right here so that people do know me.' It was like a confessional, and people who had read it started coming up to me saying, "We still love you Dog, even after we read your book." (laughs)
A Dog's Strength
When I was a kid, my father taught me that strength was being able to deliver and take a hit like a man. Masculinity is physical; it shows from the outside. Strength is something else; it comes from within. For example, there aren't a lot of tough gay guys. Even if you're gay, you can have a lot of strength.
You don't have to be a heterosexual, kick ass and take names kind of guy to have strength. You can be a woman and have as much strength as a man, believe it or not. I didn't always know that, but that's what I've learned through life.
I used to carry a lot of aggression, and it all went away in 1978. I was standing in line on Saturday to buy candy bars in prison, and the line was really long. I got mad and lost my temper. A guy named Skinner beat me to the ground. The guard told me, "If you ever lose your temper again, we're going to beat you again." I've never really lost my temper since that day. It sounds terrible, but my aggression was beaten out of me. Adrenalin is a different story - I like the rush.
You can trade anger for determination. I think anger and determination run hand-in-hand, like fear and respect. You can change anger for, "I'm gonna do that," instead of, "Dammit, I'm mad enough to do that." I think it's really close. There's a fine line between the two.
Faith Locked Up
In my book, I talk about re-discovering my faith in prison. I was all alone in a cell, and I either talked to God or myself. We're talking days or months of solitude, no other inmates, and barely even seeing the hand that feeds you. In those times, you discover for sure that there's a God - that there must be someone there to talk to.
Why does the Lord test us? I know for sure why, and I just found this out. The more struggles that we go through, we then go through the next struggle, and if we realized, "Okay, I got through that last struggle by using this and thinking that (and I use the faith), I can get through the new struggle." I think that every struggle in life builds faith and gets you ready for the big one, the next one.
Once you get older like I am, and you've lived through so many, you realize "I beat that last time by using faith; I know for sure that God loves me, that I love God, that I'm not a scum bag, I'm not a felonious person, I really would give my life for a woman or a child or a best friend, I really am that kind of guy deep inside when the Lord looks, and I am going to do this." Once you get to that point in your life, then everything is cool.
Why Crime Exists
I don't think we'll ever have a perfect world with no crime. Crime exists for several reasons. I used to break the law because chicks liked to see tough guys, and I liked chicks. But in my day, drugs weren't as prevalent and I didn't do it for the dope. In today's day and age, 90 per cent of the crimes we're arresting for involve substance abuse. The drug grows on that person and they develop a personality from that drug.
Crime will always be here, but crime is also the other side of good. If you robbed an elderly person while they're crossing the street because they can barely walk, the opposite of that would be helping them cross the street. Good will always be the other side. It's good versus evil, and I'm happy to be one of the good guys.
The Cigarette And The Talk
A lot of people ask me why I'm so nice to people once I've got them handcuffed in the backseat. Years ago, police officers, counselors and friends said some good words to me that brought me around. I can't remember exactly what words they said - it was a combination of people and words - but they taught me.
I hope that the words I say to people start the ball rolling. I just hope that they listen to me, and they do. I've known guys who have changed because I showed them the way, so to speak.
Bounty Hunting In Paradise
We've just left the mainland, and let me tell you, it was just like picking fish out of a barrel. We got 12 guys in nine days. Seven of the guys had firearms, and four of the girls had knives. It was unbelievable - guns everywhere!
It is so much easier catching criminals in the United States mainland, where there's no jungle, everybody's not related, you can't stay out all night, you can't live off the land. It's hard in Hawaii, believe me.
Not to sound boastful, but people always say, "How can you let 'em get away on an island?"
I tell 'em, "Listen brah, you come here, I'll give you a traffic DUI kit, a $500-bond, and you catch him."
"I'll catch him," he says. Three weeks later, he was out of gas and food. He calls me and says, "I can't find him."
I go, "We'll send you back to New York homey."
Danger On The Job
People always ask me if I fear retaliation by criminals during the arrests. We carry non-lethal weapons, but we can knock a mule or an elephant to his knees. We can do the same things a weapon-bearing criminal can do; only our bullets don't kill. And I'm even quicker on the draw than any of them.
As a matter of fact, a guy tried to out-draw me - this drunk cowboy who was acting all crazy. I shot him first with my pepper ball gun. Our guy goes down and gets back up. If anyone ever comes after us, we're taking him out right there. We'll shoot him up and take him right in to the cops, but we won't kill him.
But we don't deserve retaliation. We don't dog them; we don't spit on them and make them fight. There are ways to make people fight - you can call their mothers names and whatnot, but we don't do none of that. We don't have karma chasing us down to get even with us. The guy who comes after us for no reason will have hell to pay.
People also ask me if I worry about my wife and daughter, and the answer is, "Yes I do worry," but I'd rather know where Beth's at. I know where Baby Lyssa is. Sadly I don't have my Barbara with me. But you know, I want to teach them how not to become victims.
There are a lot of female cops, firefighters, and believe it or not I found a couple female marines out on this tour. If I was Al Qaeda, I would give up quick! I think that if they have vests on, are armed with non-lethal weapons and are ready, they can handle it. I'm a dad and a husband, and so yes, I worry, but I know they're well-trained. Baby Lyssa just got beat up in an episode, and she came out of it alright. It's the game that she picked and the life that we picked. There are far more dangerous jobs than we do. We're just on a mission.
Dog's Secret Weapon
People ask me all the time, "Dog, do you carry a gun?"
I say, "Yes I do, and her name is Beth."
I love her body, you know. I just stare at her. How do I say this without sounding like a horn dog? I'm like Tarzan and she's my Jane. Woman! You know what I mean? But I'm not nasty kind like that - I just love to stay in and touch her because she's so soft. I don't mean to sound like a freak, but I'm just like that.
She's got attributes that I love and I love her. She gets mean though, and sometimes she hurts my feelings.
But she's like me. I've never said this before, but Beth was the girl who, when she was a kid, was dancing in front of the mirror for television. She wanted to have everyone love her, her whole life. Same as I did, she had a dream that everyone would know her. There are some people that I've known, in my past marriage, that wanted to live in a little cave like. You gotta be cut out of the same cloth.
Beth gets more aggravated when people come up to her when she's eating, or you know, like right now during an interview, I had to tell her to get back a bit.
How do I say this? She just has more sophistication than I do.
Mess In Mexico
If we knew then what we know now, we wouldn't have gone into Mexico like that. We learned not to do that ever again. Things just went wrong. We had a police officer with us, but the cop was not a real good cop.
I'm very proud of Mexico though. I learned that the stories that we're hear about them are not true. Mexico is predominantly women and children and they are hard core Catholics. They see the Virgin Mary in the rock. As Americans, we don't know that. I saw Americans wanted for raping, stealing and pillaging, living in their neighborhoods, and there's nothing those people can do about it.
But another thing I learned from Mexico is that you can do the impossible, just by doing it. You can find anybody, anytime, anywhere.
Andrew Luster was the hardest person in the world to find, and no one could find him but our family.
The Loss Of A Daughter
It's been a year and a half since we lost Barbara Katie, and today Beth, Baby Lyssa and I were talking about her. She was the happiest about the TV show, she loved the most, she cried when I cried - she was like my cry partner. I cried and she was there. And I lost my little baby, so I cry alone now. (breaks down)
Reputation Is Everything
A bounty hunter's reputation is everything. When they see Dog, they know what he stands for. In order to be #1, you have to be number one. Do you know what I'm saying?
We're as unique as hell. I can't compare us to anyone because there isn't anyone like us. That's me speaking as a family, not just as Dog. We're very lucky to live as a family and work as a family. We're all nuts, and all the bad guys we're chasing are all nuts. But we're having a ball. We live in paradise. Life has brought us struggle, so we struggle in paradise.
People ask me all the time, "Dog, do you carry a gun?" I say, "Yes I do, and her name is Beth."
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