Behind the Badge
Lucas Hudson remembers waking up that day three years ago looking for his next fix. Needed it, no matter what it took.
“I woke up dope sick in a motel in Costa Mesa,” he recalls.
Before he had a chance to hit the streets in his search for a hook-up, there was a call from the front desk saying he needed to settle up on his bill.
“I came down in just shorts and a T-shirt,” Hudson recalls. “I was greeted by officers with guns drawn.”
The last thing he wanted that day was to be arrested. Like any junkie, he knew the day would come. But not now. Not feeling the way he did, sick and aching for that shot of dope.
On that day, the string ran out.
It turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.
On a recent Thursday morning, Hudson, 39, was reunited with several of those officers. This time it was under much better circumstances. Hudson sought them out to shake hands and thank them face-to-face for initiating the day that changed his life.
Three years ago, Lucas Hudson was a wanted man for theft and a number of warrants. Today, he is clean and sober and thankful for his arrest and subsequent recovery. Photo courtesy Santa Ana Police Department
Clean and sober
Today, Hudson is three years into recovery. The poison out of his system. He has a solid job working on pipelines for the Laborers Local 1309. He is a veteran advocate and motivational speaker. He found love, has been married for just over a year. He has been able to gain custody of his children and is rebuilding family. It’s a life he couldn’t have imagined that morning three years ago. It’s a life his addiction made impossible. It took one of the worst of things to undergo to help the best of things to emerge.
“What you did is you saved my life,” Hudson told the officers and several representatives from the Orange County District Attorney’s office assigned to the Santa Ana Police Department.
Hudson said his companion and part-time dealer at the time, who had a lesser crime sheet wasn’t so lucky.
“My partner (Tito) was kicked (from custody), a week out and was dead a week later (from a fentanyl overdose),” Hudson said.
The reunion with police was set up after Hudson approached a couple of Santa Ana police officers, including Commander Julian Rodriguez, at a car wash.
Rodriguez, who has 27 years in law enforcement, said although he has been briefly thanked by former arrestees passing by on the street, this was different.
“The unique thing was that he was reaching out. He wanted to tell us his story,” Rodriguez said.
Eric Burciaga, an investigator with the Orange County DA, was part of the arresting team and said this is the first time in his 25 years that he’s had an arrestee reach out to him in this way.
“Usually we just see that revolving door,” he said.“I am humbled that he reached out,” said Leo Gonzalez, a detective with Santa Ana’s gang unit.
Debby Rodriguez, a deputy probation officer out of SAPD, who worked with Hudson after his arrest, found the meeting rejuvenating.
“It’s very rewarding to see (the arrest) have such a positive effect,” she said, adding it “only” took 24 years for someone to reach out and thank her.
“It’s great to see a success story,” she said. “They’re few and far between, but it’s definitely fulfilling.”
“Your story is how it’s supposed to work,” Rodriguez told Hudson. “We have all these resources to help people. Although they’re supposed to get you on the right track, it doesn’t always work that way.”
But, he added to Hudson, “you did the heavy lifting.”
Lucas Hudson and his wife Amy Hudson with Orange County Probation Officer Debby Rodriguez, left, and SAPD Commander Julian Rodriguez, right, during a get together to thank Santa Ana police officers for their help in getting his life back in order after his arrest.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge
Journey to redemption
Although public safety is one goal of incarceration, there are other elemental and often more elusive objectives.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice analysis of recidivism rates, in 24 states, 82 percent of those released from state prisons were rearrested at least once during the 10 years following release, and 43 percent within a year.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance writes, “Incarceration is not achieving the justice goals of broader social equity, enhanced public safety, lower recidivism rates, stronger and more resilient communities, and reduced criminal justice and correctional costs.”
For this reason restorative justice through diversion, educational, and mental health programs become all the more important. Just being busted isn’t enough.
Upon his arrest, Hudson, a former Marine, was linked up with a veterans group and went through rehab in Fresno.
Amy Hudson listens to her husband, Lucas Hudson, talk about his life and the trouble he got himself into before being arrested by Santa Ana PD and then later turning his life around.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge
Of course, none of that would have meant much unless Hudson wanted to change and was willing to do whatever it took.
Hudson wasn’t thinking about any of that at the time of his last bust. He was wanted on several warrants and had made Santa Ana’s Most Wanted List. He had been arrested six to eight times before but dodged serious punishment thanks, in part, to the havoc wreaked on courts by COVID.
However, this time he knew he was going down for an extended period. The arrest was the wakeup call he needed to turn it all around.
Not that he saw it at the time.
“My first thought was these (expletives),” Hudson said. “I hadn’t even had my fix. How dare they?”
That’s the life and perspective of an addict, Hudson said. Rather than looking inward, he saw others as responsible for his bad choices and dilemmas.
Hudson said the arrest led him to see “things I didn’t even know I wanted.”
Until then, Hudson saw jail as just part of life.
“I’d get locked up. I’d get released and not show up (for court),” he said.
It was not the life Hudson envisioned as he was growing up in Oklahoma. His dreams then were to be a state trooper. As a step toward that, he enlisted in the Marine Corps.
“My path went in a much different direction,” he said with a rueful laugh.
Hudson was deployed to Iraq where he saw combat action in a brigade that lost 14 troops, including his commanding officer.
After mustering out, Hudson began having trouble sleeping. He didn’t really understand post-traumatic stress disorder, just that he had “stuff I had to deal with.”
Hudson tried to self-medicate, starting with drinking for the first time in his life and graduating to harder substances, including methamphetamines and intravenous heroin injections.
For more than a decade, Hudson spiraled.
“I overdosed twice,” Hudson said. “One time I woke up in an ambulance. The other time my girlfriend (at the time) administered NARCAN.”
In addiction and recovery programs it is said everyone has a “bottom” – that place at which they can sink no lower. For some it’s death.
Hudson found his while facedown being cuffed by police in a lobby in a Costa Mesa motel.
Lucas Hudson, left, and his wife Amy Hudson talk to Santa Ana Police Commander Julian Rodriguez during a gathering where Lucas came back to thank SAPD officers for helping to get his life back in order after his arrest.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge
Bible study
“I knew I’d be locked up for a while. I knew this was it,” Hudson said.
While in jail, he started reading the Bible.
“I thought that would be cool if it was true,” he said.
Hudson admits at first, even as he read, in the back of his mind he was still thinking about getting high. How he’d score his first fix.
Eventually, the Bible’s teachings broke through.
“Once I got the drugs out of my system, I could see the larger picture,” he said. “That’s when God came into my life.”
One day while reading, Hudson recalls, “I said, ‘Take my addiction.’ That was the actual moment of surrender.”
And it was then that the real work began, the heavy lifting. Although to Hudson it was faith that lifted the burden.
Released from incarceration and clean, Hudson continued to rebuild his life.
It was at a tamale party that he met his wife-to-be, Amy.
“I didn’t want to date him,” she said. “He’s so pretty and he has those muscles.”
Amy was also in recovery and had to be convinced that Hudson would be committed – to recovery, to a relationship, to a Christian life. The couple spent six months becoming good friends before pursuing a relationship.
“He has been a good support for me,” Amy said.
A year ago the couple married and have settled down to raising a family. Hudson has three daughters and Amy has one. The couple are solid members of their Santa Ana neighborhood and the Calvary Chapel community.
“In our community he has really showed up,” Amy said. “There are a lot of people who look up to Luke.”
But there was one more piece of unfinished business. And that was the recent meeting with the police.
“I think it was something God put on my heart,” Hudson said of connecting with the cops who threw him in jail.
“I wanted to put a face to them,” he said, “to look them in the eye and say ‘Thank you.’”
