When I scanned the names of the people who received President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning, one stood up as if it was written in bright red type.
Not Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist. Not Lil Wayne, the famous rapper.
This person has no bond with Trump and has never recorded a hip-hop album.
His name is Gary Hendler. He’s my uncle.
Uncle Gary, 67, who pleaded guilty in 1984 to drug conspiracy charges but did not serve a prison sentence, never expected to receive a pardon from Trump.
For good reason: he never actually asked for one of the 45th president.
However, in 2016, he sent a nearly 90-page waiver application to the Obama Department of Justice. But it seems like it was all for free.
Obama gave some form of grace to 1,927 people by the end of his second term, but Gary was not one of them.
“I thought it was the end of it for me,” said Gary, a radio program host and former Pennsylvania addict who has spent more than thirty years helping people recover from addiction.
He has had no contact with the Trump administration for the past four years. No one even reached out to him to say that a pardon was on the way.
“I could not believe it,” he says, using an explicit emphasis on his response to the news.
He said he checked the list merely out of curiosity after waking up Wednesday morning.
“It was his last night in the White House. I know he’s going to forgive people, ‘said Gary, who voted for Joe Biden. “Did I think I would be on the list? It was so remote that it was not even funny.”
Gary’s story began in 1973 when he became addicted to quaaludes, a popular recreational drug in the ’70s, while attending Temple University in Philadelphia.
He was not your average college student. He already got a taste of the fast-paced life while working in high school at Universal record label Universal in Philadelphia.
“I was 19 years old and had a Bentley,” he said. “And I met the most famous entertainers in the world: the Temptations, the Four Tops, Barry Manilow.”
His roommate at the university introduced him to quaaludes, which caused an almost decadent battle with addiction.
He and three co-addicts opened a “stress clinic” in the Philadelphia area and hired a psychiatrist to prescribe qualifications to anyone who asked. The clinic, Health Centers Inc., opened its doors in January 1981.
Gary’s partners severed ties with him the following month before one of them made a profit from the business, he said. He wandered the streets the following year before entering rehabilitation in 1982.
“The only good thing that came out of being pushed out of the clinic was that it forced me to confront the life I was living,” he wrote in 2016’s apology application.
“About a year later, in May 1982, I began my investigation into the drug treatment program at Pennsylvania Hospital that saved my life.”
The clinic remained open until 1984, when federal agents raided the business and arrested its former partners, as well as the doctors and pharmacists working for it.
Gary, whose name was still on the corporate papers, was brought in for questioning. He was sober and was about to get married.
“I turned my life around and saw the clinic involvement as just a bad chapter of my ‘old life,'” he wrote in his apology to the Obama White House.
He agreed to plead guilty and work with the government. He was sentenced to three years under supervision and fined $ 300.
“I’m happy,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “If it had not been for me, I would have gone to jail with the rest.”
He then became the father of two daughters and started a successful real estate business in the Philadelphia area.
In 1985, he started AA meetings in a synagogue outside of Philadelphia that continues to this day. He also presents a radio program “Clean and Sober Radio”, which features musicians, athletes and political figures discussing their battles with drug abuse. And in 2015, Gov. Tom Wolf appointed him to serve on the Pennsylvania Drug and Alcohol Abuse Advisory Board.
He “mentored many people on their journey to sobriety with his radio broadcasts”, reads the description of Gary issued by the Trump administration.
“His former probation officer noted that Mr. Hendler has become ‘integral’ in the lives of many members of the community who are dealing with drug abuse.”
Gary, who lives with his wife in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, said FBI agents visited him and interviewed his neighbors and family members in 2016. He still does not know how his name ends up among those who have reached Trump’s desk.
According to his lawyer, Margaret Love, the language in Gary’s description – that the pardon was supported by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the office of the pardon lawyer – is that it was supported by the normal process of the department of justice has gone. to the president’s desk.
“It was completely regular,” said Love, who ran the Pardon Attorney’s office during the George HW Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. ‘No special plea or influence on hawker. Of the 149 grants, only 18 have undergone the process of justice. He’s a happy camper. ‘
Gary said he broke down in tears when he saw his name on the waiver list Wednesday morning. He still remembers the exact date he last used drugs or alcohol: May 3, 1982.
“This is the last chapter, the end of my life in addiction and all the terrible things that go along with it,” he said.