You are familiar with his work: the lovable face of Home Improvement, the voice of “Pure Michigan” and Buzz Lightyear … as well as the (sometimes) wise father on Last Man Standing, and The Santa Claus himself. He’s raised millions of dollars for numerous charities … all of which was possible because he got a second chance instead of the Life-Without-Parole sentences he could have received for his crimes as a young man before he changed his path and made good on his potential.
After I made the biggest mistake of my life and began life as a prisoner in Michigan, I heard rumors about how the actor Tim Allen had once been in trouble. Learning more about the man, he became an inspiration to me in how, with effort, a person can change.
What defines the criminal mindset? Do people truly change? Somewhere at the crossroads between opportunity and heart, work and chance, lies the answer to the question of whether our past must always define our future.
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-THE CRIMINAL YOU KNOW and THE STORY YOU DON’T KNOW-
Cocaine was the drug to sell if you wanted to make money in the 1970s, and I assume that Tim Allen (birth name: Timothy Dick) wanted to make a lot of it. As a 25 year old living in Kalamazoo, he wasn’t exactly Tony Montana in Scarface, but he was moving more than small amounts of cocaine. Pounds regularly went through his possession [*], though his network was no cartel. It was essentially a bunch of suburban guys who knew each other, hustling the coke they had access to and could afford.
Tim and his roommate, Gerald Mead, sourced their cocaine from a man named Thomas Warner [*]. Warner was a step higher in the ranks of dealers, a provider who could obtain more drugs and who had very pure cocaine that Tim and Gerald would then cut. One of the men they regularly sold to was another dealer named Dennis McCarthy. What none of them knew was that a new friend of McCarthy was actually an undercover Michigan State Police officer.
Apart from his dealings with Tim, Dennis had also been involved in moving coke across Michigan with someone named Charles Willette, a tertiary character in this story, using chartered private airplanes. Suspicious of the movement of these planes, the airplane charter company reported them to the Michigan State Police. Willette became aware of the police watching his home, panicked, and immediately drove to the nearest FBI office where he confessed to dealing cocaine and offered to help indict fellow cocaine dealers. Taking him up on this offer, the state police had Willette introduce an undercover officer to Dennis McCarthy, who introduced the officer to our future award-winning actor.
Having already bought coke off of McCarthy, the officer sought to corral as many dealers as possible, and asked to buy some off of Tim. The budding comedian contacted Warner to get about 3/4 of a pound of cocaine, which Tim cut to make a full pound before breaking off a couple ounces to sell to McCarthy’s “friend.” The next week, this “friend” bought an additional quarter-pound of coke from Tim.
Having established trust, the undercover cop claimed to have a friend of his own who wanted to buy a pound and a half of cocaine… which happened to be the amount leading to an automatic life-without-parole sentence in Michigan. Tim agreed. Obtaining it from Warner, Tim and his roommate transported the cocaine to the Kalamazoo airport, where he sold it to the undercover officer… and was arrested.
-ROCK BOTTOM, AND A CHANCE TO GET BACK UP-
Timothy Dick -Tim Allen- got lucky. The future A-list actor was a B-level character in this investigation by the FBI and Michigan State Police. Facing a future of dying in prison, he escaped this fate given to others due to grace and opportunity. He received a second-chance at having a life, sentenced to serve a little under three years in federal prison. In return, he had to corroborate information already given by others, including Willette, against Warner and others dealers.
-RISING FROM ASHES, FROM SECOND CHANCES-
Within a handful of years after his release from 32 months in prison back in the early 1980s, Tim was married, and a few years after that began a comedy career that eventually transformed him one of the highest-paid television actors of the 1990s. While he has focused more on his personal life and smaller roles lately, I remember the career that skyrocketed during the years I grew up, watching him in seemingly EVERYTHING. At one point in the mid-’90s, he simultaneously starred in the highest-grossing film, was the main character in the highest-rated television show, and was at the top of the New York Times’ best-seller list.
The one-time cocaine dealer had remade himself into someone who brought joy to others and who reaped the benefits of legal success.
-A CHANCE AT REDEMPTION
Crime can be an action someone does, or a part of the pattern of who they are. The direction of rising back up is one full of differing levels of pitfalls for different people, and twisting pathways of opportunities. Not everyone deserves a second chance, and not everyone who gets one will understand and internalize the gift implicit within it.
The actor I grew up watching and looking up to navigated his way down these winding, criss-crossing roads to create a better life for himself and others. Having learned the full story, I now admire him even more for these things today. I look at how he turned his own life around, and see it as an inspiration for how to live better and to seize the chances that come our way.
Not everyone has the combination of intelligence, skill, and the opportunity for a second chance that Tim Allen had. He used the good will extended to him, but he was also a smart man who attended a top-notch high school, had already graduated from a good college, and had a natural skill at communication (in fact, this is what he earned his degree in). I respect him because he chose to change his ways, worked hard, and captured those opportunities.
-EPILOGUE-
Courts struck down the over 650-gram mandatory life-without-parole law… in the early 2010s. Without his second chance, Tim Allen’s career would never have taken place. Instead, had he been sentenced in Michigan, he would have gone into prison in his twenties and been released (if his behavior had been good) only about ten years ago, when he was in his 60s. He is the face of what could have been… and in this way, he could be looked at as the face of the convoluted nature of the War on Drugs.
[*] All information presented here is taken from the Court’s accepted and uncontested statement of facts in Thomas Warner’s [aka Tim Allen] failed appeal of his conviction and sentence, “United States v Warner, 690 F.2d 545”.
