Alyssa Mayer was four months pregnant the day a police officer showed up at her motel room in Kingston, New York. It was late afternoon in August 2013, the sun dragging toward the Catskills on the west side of town. Earlier that week, her boyfriend, who’d been sleeping at her place since he found out about the baby, had missed a curfew check. Both of them had recently gotten out of prison on parole, and weren’t supposed to be around anyone else with a criminal record. With the authorities looking for him, they could both get in trouble. So they’d packed some clothes and driven to a Super 8 and hoped for some idea of what to do next. Mayer was going out to pick up a pizza when she ran into the officer in the hallway.
She and her boyfriend had grown up together around Kingston. The area had been a manufacturing center for IBM until the company started laying of workers in the early 1990s, around the time Mayer was born, leaving not much more than strip malls and fast food joints, along with rising crime rates, in stretches of the Hudson Valley. After Mayer’s parents split up, when she was a toddler, her mother worked two jobs and would return home seeming distant. Mayer spent a lot of time at her grandmother’s house and, later, on the streets in the rough part of town. In high school, she moved in with a cocaine dealer she met one day at a gas station. He bought her new clothes, manicures, anything she wanted. By the time the relationship ended, she was making sales of her own.
In 2009, when Mayer was 18, she fronted six grams to a friend who had just gotten out of prison. He told her he was broke and needed to make a quick deal. As it turned out, he had already made one with the local narcotics team. Some time later, the cops kicked in the front door of her apartment, and she ended up with a three-year felony sentence.
Denne historien er fra July - August 2015-utgaven av The Atlantic.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra July - August 2015-utgaven av The Atlantic.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
JOE ROGAN IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA NOW
What happens when the outsiders seize the microphone?
MARAUDING NATION
In Trumps second term, the U.S. could become a global bully.
BOLEY RIDES AGAIN
America’s oldest Black rodeo is back.
THE GENDER WAR IS HERE
What women learned in 2024
THE END OF DEMOCRATIC DELUSIONS
The Trump Reaction and what comes next
The Longevity Revolution
We need to radically rethink what it means to be old.
Bob Dylan's Carnival Act
His identity was a performance. His writing was sleight of hand. He bamboozled his own audience.
I'm a Pizza Sicko
My quest to make the perfect pie
What Happens When You Lose Your Country?
In 1893, a U.S.-backed coup destroyed Hawai'i's sovereign government. Some Hawaiians want their nation back.
The Fraudulent Science of Success
Business schools are in the grips of a scandal that threatens to undermine their most influential research-and the credibility of an entire field.