This section is my healing zone. Each week I will add a screenshot below to what I call my "Recipe to Heal." Each new topic will be an ingredient of sorts — something said by the NFL Players Association, The Wall Street Journal, or KOMO 4 News in Seattle that I need to address, drop into the batter, and leave there. The point is to take something that hurt, say my piece, and never have to carry it through pain again. After each entry I will include an oral follow up on TikTok and Instagram.

 

Now, these next paragraphs may seem long but they are important. They are of my ex business partner, Gary Buckley Woolever and of my side of the story as it involves him. And though his nickname is Buckley, his aliases include Adam, D. Wilson, SCIOB, D. Meisner, Carma Izzabitch — yes, that is his favorite, along with at least ten rotating email addresses using my name or the names of past businesses I owned. Now on my TikTok I have called him my stalker, but I should have always just addressed him as Gary Buckley Woolever. So it is here that I will say everything I need to say about Gary Buckley Woolever and never feel the need to defend myself against him again. If I ever reference him on social media it will only be to give context to something I had to survive, and how I moved forward from it.

 

Here is my point of view on our long, messy, unfortunate history, summarized.

 

He invested $440k. Our business failed. He had far more involvement than he is willing to admit. He sued me. He used every tactic available to him, including those from the three organizations named above and I cannot actually fault him for suing me. At the time he just wanted his money back, but in repeatedly losing early on in his lawsuit, he decided he was willing to do anything win, ignoring his own accountability.  But in fairness I was exactly the same way, I was really fucking scared and too embarrassed to address any of it honestly. In the early stages I do believe, in my heart, he just wanted to work things out as peacefully as possible. But the version of me he had to deal with didn't believe that accountability starts before the consequences feel like they will hurt. I lied when I should have been honest. I was honest when I should have said nothing. And I said anything to escape the discomfort of facing him, his attorney, and the truth that I had not only failed to live up to what he had hoped for, but what I had hoped for myself.

 

I look back and realize, I had a real chance. We both thought I would be some badass hero making us both rich fast. Instead, as he has said truthfully, at some point all I had were excuses. I am not going to belittle my efforts,  I did try. And I am not going to downplay what I was capable of. I was a fucking badass. Top sales person at 22 at a brokerage. Then for five years ranked number one to five nationally as a top account executive for a major wholesale finance company. I did hundreds of millions in sales and that made me believe I knew everything. The arrogance I had was a line I crossed because it made me unstoppable before, but it also made me a dreamer who tried everything from coffee shop stands to a reading program that gave out health supplements instead of pizza. I was not a liar, or a fraud. I just was not ready for what that moment required of me.

 

What Gary Buckley Woolever deserved was this version of me. The one writing this. But in accepting my failures then, he has to find his own as well.

 

Anyway. After deciding he would no longer play fair, he and his attorney did two things effectively;  they manipulated the civil court process and coordinated with KOMO 4 News in Seattle to execute what they told me directly was a plan to ruin my reputation, remove my ability to defend myself, force me into prison, and win the lawsuit. Those are nearly their exact words. I don't know if I was too arrogant or too afraid to believe them, but I chose to ignore it — and that cost me everything. I never  never defrauded Gary Buckley Woolever and if the proof were as simple as he claims, his case would not have required the involvement of a news crew at every court appearance. What I will say honestly is that half the money can be clearly accounted for. The other half sits in a genuine disagreement about what we had agreed upon together and years later that is the reason I decided to try to work things out. Even with all the shit he had done, and everything I lost, I wanted to find a resolution, because I cannot honestly say from my side after all of this time, that I am one hundred certain that I did everything in a way that would be seen as acceptable. 

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I want to make a specific note. I have no beef with hist attorney, Bruce Danielson. I met the guy several times in the early days and I think he genuinely was trying to figure out a peaceful settlement and in some weird way had my best interests in mind, but I was just to squirrelly. I did have a huge layer of respect for him but that also made me fear him and I would essentially say anything to him to just get out of our meetings. I can honestly say I wasn't trying to lie, I just had no clue how I could follow through on any promises, but I made them anyway. He was hired to do a job and as far as that goes, he did a really fucking good one. 

 

Now if other people can do the right thing easily, I applaud them and will admit that I have had to learn how to do the right thing in spite of my need to put myself first. And maybe it is fair or not, but people need to know that this battle cost me my company, my home, my reputation, and very nearly my life. - not once, twice. And has forced me to rebuild from the ground up six times, in the last 10 years. This isn’t to make me a victim, in fact you will be hard pressed to see me purely blame anyone for everything without accepting my fault in all of it. This is to highlight that I paid my price, heavily and continuously, for the same mistakes and with each time I was forced to rock bottom, I didn’t turn to vengeance, I just got back up and figured out my life in that moment. 

 

Now how Gary Buckley Woolever got his default judgment was not on the basis of the facts, was not because he had an open and shut case, it is because they were tactful in their approach and during most of the law suit, I had no attorney, and when KOMO 4 intervened, I quickly found I had no willpower to fight being embarrassed so often. At a time when I was literally homeless on the streets, they took advantage of that time to get a default judgment awarded that had the words fraud and other language that they now use, claiming the courts came to these findings, but thats not how it works. When you sue someone in civil court, you make the accusations, if they respond, the judge decides who is right. Not a single accusation that they have in their findings is because I responded and the judge disagreed with me. They are in there because when they knew I would not be coming to court, they made those accusations and the judge awarded them the only option available, which was to agree with them though default —and when you accuse someone of something in civil court and the judge enters their agreement, even if it is in default like this, that becomes a statement of fact;  It does NOT mean it is true in real life, it just means, as it pertains to this law suit, a statement is now legally factually, even if it is not legally true. If it’s confusing to you, imagine how I felt back then.  Now in their efforts to manipulate the courts they were also awarded a bench warrant, not because law enforcement asked for it, but because Gary Buckley Woolever and his attorney knew they could ask for it and without me there to respond, would get it. The put specific language in there to make it appear to be a criminal arrest warrant and KOMO 4 news, the NFL Players Association and the WSJ all supported their lie and clearly new it was a lie because of how they would word it in their articles after they made the accusation of Fugitive or Wanted. This to me is the part that may never be acceptable but that is why I will address it in my Recipes 2Heal section below. Regardless, it is a huge failure of journalistic integrity and even an outright lie when you take something you clearly know is not an arrest warrant and spin it to seem like it.

 

Now regardless of the interference by KOMO 4 news, I could have come up with the courage to still show up but I chose not to and will hate that forever, because I would have won. And in place of my poor decision, Gary was awarded a judgment of $970k with enough interest to raise that to nearly $2M in only a handful of years. 

 

Now when I was in Chicago, trying to recover after leaving Seattle — I mean I had nothing left, no support, no opportunity to work and was fresh off of two suicide attempts — it is the only reason I left. Thinking I could have some peace, it did not last long. Gary and his attorney reached out within months of me leaving, letting me know I could not escape them and told me to start paying, and I did enter into an agreement, which is interesting because it was during this time, they told the judge I was not cooperating with them, and got the famous bench warrant. But in total over the next year I did pay them close to $200k before asking to pause. The payment plan they kept increasing was impossible for me to keep up with and I needed a breather. Gary said no, and shortly after the WSJ called me a fugitive on the run, citing the article from KOMO 4 News calling me a fugitive, which cited the bench warrant as an ARREST WARRANT, and everyone fell for it — and to this day, brands, organizations and people will not work with me because they think I am some criminal on the run —and for about 3 years after once being famous for fashion, I could not get hired by anyone. 

 

I did eventually get a job and I was trying to get back up on my feet. And because I was hoping to put this behind us,  I hired one of the best mediators in Chicago and I offered Gary $1M over ten years. He turned it down. I went to $1.5M. I offered to co-author a book about our path to healing. I offered to appear on a television show he said he had and was willing to sign over my rights to help him secure both the TV and book deal. The mediator was as surprised as I was when he turned all of it down. That was the moment I understood there was nothing left I could do for him.

 

After he forced me into a deposition once more when I moved to Des Moines, where he tried to have me arrested, I realized I had to run again,  It isn’t Gary, but he knows which buttons to push that make me start thinking of suicide,  I am a three time survivor, and during this time, I felt tremendously alone and afraid again, watching helplessly as my efforts to rebuild fell apart all over again, because Gary Buckley Woolever was sending people the news articles, as he increased his pressure on threatening me with everything he will do to me.  

 

The messages in this section are a small fraction of thousands of emails, texts, and threats sent to me and to my websites over twelve years. And though it may not make sense to everyone reading this, the frequency of those threats, the timing of them, and the way he used every legal mechanism available to show up wherever I tried to build a life and take away every ounce of safety I had found — over time, Gary Buckley Woolever broke a hole in my mind that has been one of the hardest battles of my life to come back from. I want to be honest about that because it is part of this story.

 

But here is the irony. His most recent actions — and the actions of the people around him — showed me exactly what I had been missing in my own life. And that clarity healed me nearly overnight. Gary Buckley Woolever and the people in his corner may matter deeply to someone. I am genuinely glad he has them. But he does not matter to me anymore — and that is not out of spite. That is me hoping he one day realizes he cannot heal his own life while spending all of his time focused on mine.

If he reaches out to you, or if anyone directs you to his websites — cityguruinvestor and investwithjang — take the information. Read his point of view. Each of us deserves to be heard.

 

The truth is he did not ruin my life. The NFL Players Association, The Wall Street Journal, and KOMO 4 did — along with my own choices. He was a pawn. I was the subject. They broke me. But they did not beat me. And I will find my way to heal.

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