The Smuggler's Daughter

By John Buzzanca

Two lives, two battles, one unforgettable journey.

In this gripping true story, a former drug trafficker leaves behind a world of crime to face an even more complex legal and emotional battlefield—America's first landmark surrogacy case with these extenuating circumstances. From the dark underbelly of narcotics to the dizzying heights of modern science and technology, complete with courtroom drama, this book reveals the raw truth of redemption, identity, and the definition of family. Above all, it's a story of not giving up.

With startling honesty and deeply personal insight, author John Buzzanca chronicles the journey from a past buried in secrets to a future shaped by resilience, love, and legal warfare. Blending high-stakes suspense with heartrending humanity, this is a tale that challenges every assumption about justice, parenthood, and the power of second chances.

Sometimes the path to new life begins in the most unexpected places.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Buzzanca
• Release date: Aug 5, 2025
• ISBN: 9798231455317

Book preview

Introduction

B

ad choices make great stories. This is my story, and it is kind of hard to process. It’s a story of mistakes, lessons not learned, and lessons learned the hard way. One mistake was of epic proportion.

Although I grew up in a normal household with two law-abiding parents, I still found a path that led me from drug dealing to drug smuggling. This was major mistake number one. After getting busted in 1991 with a planeload of weed, I was given a second chance to get it right. A friend offered me a job as a legal assistant in his law firm.

This seemed like a possible new lease on life. One I desperately needed. The trouble was, I was married, at the time, to someone who had more problems than I did. This was major mistake number two. A union between two troubled people had little, if any, chance of working out. My lifestyle was not conducive to anything resembling normalcy.

I was part of a group of guys who were smuggling tons of weed from Mexico into California. We were good at what we did. This group was a mixture of ex-Vietnam vets, some very talented pilots, and some guys from the O.C. who liked living on the edge. But the thing we all had in common was we all got off on the potential danger and the adrenaline rush of smuggling. We were cowboys. That was in 1987.

Fast forward to 1994, and I was headed for divorce. Once again, I found myself back in court. Only this time, it was family law court, and my divorce became a landmark surrogacy case. Major mistake number three became the mistake on steroids. Here is the story in detail, which will likely leave you with more questions than answers.

Chapter 1

The Beginning

C

huck M. and I pulled into the Las Cruces Airport in New Mexico and drove directly to the tarmac, where our plane had been tied down for four days. Chuck was the pilot, and I was the baggage handler who loaded the suitcases.

We had driven up from El Paso on the I-10, which was a forty-minute drive. There wasn’t an air traffic control tower at Las Cruces Airport, which meant we didn’t have to file a flight plan before taking off and heading back to California. The airport had a single-story business office that kept normal business hours from 8:00 to 5:00, next to the tarmac. This was why we chose this airport. Unlike in the twenty-first century, there also weren’t security cameras on buildings or on every other interstate highway light pole.

It was a typical October fall morning in the Southwest. The sun was out, but the air was brisk with a very slight wind coming out of the northeast. Ideal weather for flying in a single-engine Cessna 210.

I was driving, and when I pulled into the airport parking lot, we saw there were no cars. I headed toward the tarmac where our plane was tied down. I pulled up to the right side of the plane, next to the passenger doors. The trunk of the car was stuffed with suitcases, as was the back seat of the car, stacked almost to the roof. Our timing seemed perfect. At least there was no one in sight.

Chuck went into the terminal to use the bathroom and grab a cup of coffee while I started unloading the suitcases into the plane. I was almost done when Chuck came up behind me and, speaking in a low voice, said, Don’t make any sudden moves. The tone was so serious, it could have been mistaken for fear.

As I spun around to Chuck to ask him what the fuck he was talking about, I immediately saw, and there was no explanation needed. Coming directly toward us were eight to ten heavily armed law enforcement officers. I instantly saw the AR-15s and shotguns coming closer as the group walked directly toward us. Most of them had their badges dangling around their necks or pinned on their bulletproof vests. I thought to myself, You’ve got to be shitting me. This isn’t happening.

In 1957, my dad got a job offer in California, and he accepted it. Although it was hard for him and my mom to leave behind our close-knit family, they decided it would be best for the family in the long run.

It took a lot for my dad to pick up the family and make this move. Our family roots were in Pennsylvania: a blue-collar Italian family and a working-class German background. Neither side of the family approved of this relocation to California, especially the Italian side. To them, it was like we were moving to another continent.

We headed west in the middle of the summer to get settled and give my parents time to enroll me and my sister for the new school year. The city my parents settled in was Pomona, a small, quiet suburb about thirty miles east of Los Angeles.

Pomona was in the San Gabriel Valley, an area where people were moving for the booming employment opportunities and the thriving California economy. Contracts for government projects had become a big draw on the West Coast, because a lot of U.S. defense bases were popping up around the Southland. Top architectural and engineering firms, such as Ralph M. Parsons Company and Fluor, had offices in the greater Los Angeles area. My dad was a mechanical design engineer, so this was a perfect location for him.

It didn’t take long for our family, especially my sister and me, to start enjoying the California lifestyle. It was home now. Once school started, Suzi and I began elementary school in Pomona.

Everything seemed normal from a kid’s point of view. Until August 1965, that is, when things took a sudden and drastic turn. Civil unrest escalated to violence in a nearby Los Angeles neighborhood. Called the Watts Riots, this violence soon spread to outlying areas like Pomona. There were several predominantly Black communities in Pomona, and we lived very close to one of them, known as The Islands. It wasn’t technical segregation like in the South, but it was still a form of separation and rarely equal.

Property values in our neighborhood plummeted even worse than during the 1987 stock market crash, twenty-two years later. After the Watts Riots, the lack of trust between races was as clear as the view of Mt. Baldy on a smog less day. The entire experience was unsettling enough to prompt my parents to move a few miles to the northwest, to Claremont, toward the San Gabriel Mountains. My parents believed the local racial tensions were not going away anytime soon.

Due to my dad’s line of work, he had to make a lot of sacrifices for the family. If frequent flyer miles were available at the time, he would have accumulated enough points for some great family vacations. Working on government projects at the height of the Cold War and nuclear arms race against Russia and China sometimes kept him out of town for months at a time. His job took him from Boston to Lompoc, California and everywhere in between. He eventually took jobs working in foreign countries, including Canada, Germany, England, and Saudi Arabia.

Being away so much was tough on him. I know it hurt him to miss seeing his children grow up. And naturally, he missed my mother. During the jobs when he was out of town for several months, he and my mom had a prearranged time for him to call home and talk to all of us. So, every Saturday night, regardless of what state he was in, my mom, my sister, and I waited close to the phone, ready for the much-anticipated weekly call from my dad.

While my dad was less involved when I was younger, during my teen years, he reminded me constantly how I had to finish school and get a college degree. He was like a broken record when it came to college. As a teenager, I didn’t like hearing about this repeatedly. But, in addition to being your typical teenager, I also didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.

After I graduated high school, I began attending college at Mt. San Antonio Junior College located in Walnut, California. I changed potential career paths every other semester, which, not surprisingly, made my relationship with my dad a bit contentious. When you’re in your late teens and early twenties, it’s easy to mistake advice that’s intended for your own good as getting in your business.

I’m sure, once I chose the particular path I did, as an adult, he silently blamed himself. But nothing could be further from the truth. My illicit lifestyle was not a reflection on my parents in any way. There were plenty of times when I felt guilty about what I was doing. But, keeping it real, I didn’t feel guilty enough to stop. The bad choices I made were just that. Choices I made. For me, I fell prey to the same things a lot of young people did during the seventies and eighties around drugs. Easy money, lots of women, nice restaurants, and becoming friends with people whom I otherwise would not have met.

Growing up, I was more of a sports kid, always staying active and being outdoors. I loved all sports, but for me, I was always drawn to water and water sports. I especially became hooked on surfing, once I tried it. It was more than a water sport; it was a lifestyle and a way of living that resonated with me like nothing else. The freedom and excitement of being in the water was intoxicating.

This started when I reached my early teens. I became one of those kids regularly piling into somebody’s station wagon or van and heading to the beach for a day of body surfing. Toward the end of high school, I started surfing. I surfed places like Laguna Beach, Encinitas, San Clemente, and Newport Beach. Every opportunity I had to go to the beach, I went. I just naturally migrated toward the beach more and more.

After graduation, I started to spread my wings a little and become more independent. I began doing the things I wanted to do but couldn’t, when I was in high school. I had some good friends whom I’d mainly met through sports or my part-time jobs. Guys like Kurt M., whom I had known since Little League.

During summers in the early seventies, a group of us also spent some time going to the Colorado River and Lake Havasu to water ski and camp. I bought my first ski boat with money from my part-time job. A group of us, some who also had boats, often headed down to the river or Havasu Landing together for the weekend. We camped, waterskied, and drank beer the whole weekend. We always had a good time, hanging out on the river or going to a bar nearby to listen to the live music of a group, the Answer, a cover band from Pomona who played at some of the clubs along the river on the weekends.

In those days, there was no scenery on the drive out to the river other than endless miles of barren desert. The route to get the river or Lake Havasu from Pomona and Claremont was the same as it is the today: the I-10 and to the Desert Center exit, then seventy miles to Vidal Junction. That drive was a long stretch of nothing, with only a dot on the map called Rice so small, it wasn’t even on most maps. I wouldn’t call it a town. Rice consisted of only an antiquated gas station and a few mobile homes, but there was something about being out there that was appealing to me. The vast emptiness made you curious and excited at the same time.

Driving past Rice in the 1970s did nothing more than make me appreciate the lack of traffic on the road. Years later, I realized there was much more potential to Rice than I had ever imagined. All the times I’d driven through this shit-stain in the sand, it did not occur to me that Rice was an ideal location for someone seeking to conduct covert operations. I came to see it as a perfect site for staying off the grid. But that part of this story comes much later.

The late 1960s and 1970s were a perfect time for me to find myself and to rebel. I didn’t pay too much attention to the historical and social significance of what was going on outside of my own little bubble. Occasionally, the real world intruded, and during my formative years, many profound events shaped the lives of all Americans. Everything from the Kennedy assassinations to the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War. I only mention these events because, to this day, I did not realize the full impact they had on our government, the future of our country, and their historical significance.

Kennedy’s death opened the eyes of the younger generation and changed America’s public consciousness. The tragedy of that day was brought further into focus with the assassinations of two other significant U.S. figures: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. These were good men and true leaders who were gunned down for their beliefs. They were intelligent people who wanted to make the world a better place. Yes, these times they were a-changin’.

When I was a freshman in college, my parents decided it was time for them to travel and be together, after spending many years apart. So, while they went off to numerous places for my dad’s job, I stayed home in Claremont, with my sister and her family, in my parents’ house. It was during this time when an opportunity came for me to move to Newport Beach, and I jumped at the chance.

Chapter 2

The O.C. and Newport Beach

M

y friend Kurt was transferring to Cal State Fullerton in fall 1974. He and a friend of his, Tom B., had already secured a three-bedroom house on Cedar Street in a West Newport Beach area called Newport Shores. One of the other houses on our block was occupied by four friendly, attractive females from Glendora, a town just a few miles down Foothill Boulevard from Claremont. My roommates and I quickly became friends with the girls who lived there. Occasionally, someone would whip out a joint, which kicked up the socializing a notch. But it wasn’t a druggie group.

Newport Beach was an ideal place to live for someone easy-going, who loved surfing and was always up for a good time. That worked for me. I had limited goals at the time. Mine were simply to pass my general education courses and surf every day. By and large, I met both my goals. I was far more interested in going surfing than I was in going to class.

I worked a couple of part-time jobs while finishing up my classes at Orange Coast. But I quickly lost interest in academics altogether, and my focus shifted completely to enjoying the beach life. I knew my parents, especially my dad, would be disappointed if I quit school, so I enrolled in several classes the next semester.

I eventually transferred to Cal State Fullerton, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew my dad was right about finishing school, and I remained conflicted about giving up so easily. I felt guilty about letting my parents down. Still, I knew it was only a matter of time before I dropped out of college.

After the 1975 spring semester, Kurt decided to move out and room with a friend of his from Fullerton. My other roommate, Tom, had plans to take a summer session in Guadalajara, Mexico. He wanted to travel and experience different cultures, so he took the opportunity to spend the summer there, living with a Mexican family while going to summer school. Suddenly, I was without a place to live or any roommates.

That summer, I moved from Newport Shores to the Balboa Peninsula. Luckily for me, I was able to get a job at a liquor store owned by one of my parents’ old neighbors from Pomona. He owned three liquor stores in the Newport area, and the one in Newport Beach, Bal-Port Liquor, was on the corner of the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and Balboa Boulevard. The other, Sportsman Liquor, was on Newport Boulevard and 28th Street. I was able to score a job at Bal-Port just before we moved out of our Newport Shores house.

Welcome aboard, Buzz, my new boss said.

I nodded, smiling inside. I’d been called Buzz practically my whole life. In fourth grade, a classmate started calling me Buzz. When I got older, some of the girls called me Buzzy, but my family still called me Johnny. To everyone else, though, I was always Buzz, since John felt too mature.

Once I started working my part-time shifts at the liquor store, I naturally became friends with some coworkers, and I enjoyed working there. There was a constant stream of customers, including no end of hot, beautiful women wearing practically-nothing bikinis. Eventually, I got used to the scenery, but at first, it was hard not to be distracted.

I quickly began to recognize some of the regulars who came in on a daily basis. One summer afternoon, the door ringer went off and in strolled a guy who looked like your average surfer.

Hey, man.

I looked up at him from the register, where I was alone in the store. He was my first customer in a while and I was happy to have one.

This guy was about my age and tall, wearing faded OP corduroy shorts, a holy T-shirt, and flip-flops. His white-on-yellow hair hung straight past his ears like straw, and his tanned face contrasted sharply with his brilliantly white teeth and smile, which almost needed a dimmer switch. One look at him and you could tell he spent a lot of time in the water.

How’s it going? I responded.

I’ve seen you in here before. I’m Kimo. I live on 47th Street, he replied.

Good to meet you, Kimo.

So, Buzz, are you new here? he asked.

Yeah. I just started here a couple weeks ago.

Cool. He flashed another smile. Then, he went down the aisle and came back with a twelve-pack of Bud. You ever want to party, let me know, he said as he paid for his beer.

I nodded. Sure, okay.

I’ll see you around, Kimo said, then left.

A few days later, I saw Kimo at 52nd Street, getting ready to head out for a morning session. I was just arriving and grabbed my board.

Hey! Kimo! I called out.

He looked up and raised a hand in greeting as I walked over. Buzz, right?

Good memory, I said.

Let’s go get some waves.

My main reason for moving to Newport Beach

He picked up his board, and we trotted down the beach. We surfed for about two hours and shot the shit between sets. Before too long, it wasn’t only surfing we were doing together. Soon after this chance encounter, I learned Kimo was dealing.

A little while after meeting Kimo, I met a guy at a party on 28th Street, and he asked me if I could get him an ounce of Thai sticks. I wasn’t sure why he asked me, but he had been drinking, so maybe he mistook me for someone else. He was a friend of the person throwing the party, Kay, who was my high school girlfriend.

Thai weed was quite popular in the 1970s. It was an extremely potent weed from Southeast Asia. Thai sticks had pot wrapped around a little, light bamboo stick, usually about six inches long. It was ingenious marketing on someone’s part.

Since I had discovered Kimo was someone I could get weed from, I told this guy at the party it wouldn’t be a problem. I scored the weed from Kimo and made a little money. It was easy and fast. Too easy. Before I knew it, one ounce gradually turned into multiple ounces. So, I contacted Kimo again. Getting weed from Kimo was convenient. He’d deliver it by riding his bike on the boardwalk to my house, give the weed to me with no money up front, and, a few days later, I’d pay him.

On one of his deliveries, he asked me if I wanted to try some coke. I was a little nervous about saying yes. I thought, if I did, I would immediately turn to heroin. That’s how naïve I was. Reluctantly, I agreed. Unfortunately, I liked it. I liked it very much. I had no idea, at the time, how much cocaine would change my life. It was fun, but, in the end, it wasn’t.

Not surprisingly, I started to see Kimo more regularly. The main reason was to score more drugs. And not just weed. I developed a market for small amounts of coke. The sales grew without much effort on my part. People were snorting anything they could get their hands on. There were times when I had real shitty coke, but people didn’t care. Up the nose it went.

A handful of people started to come to get something from me on a regular basis. It wasn’t large quantities of anything, but it was consistent. As the dealing became a second job, that thought of letting my parents down was always in the back of my mind. But the guilty feeling was dwindling, as time went on.

Shortly after I began to work at Bal-Port, I was introduced to some friends of a coworker. They offered to let me crash on their couch for the summer. At the end of summer 1975, after spending three months sleeping on some friend’s couch on 36th Street, I decided to meet up with my former roommate, Tom, on his way back from Mexico. It seemed like a good time to get away, before the start of the fall semester.

I got a ride down to Calexico, crossed the border, and then took a train from Mexicali to Mazatlán, where I planned to meet Tom. The train ride was interesting. The train made several stops along the eastern coast of the Sea of Cortez, on mainland Mexico. One of those stops was in Hermosillo.

Mexican trains didn’t have quite the same regulations as trains in the United States. My train was so full that, at times, there were no seats, so people would stand for a couple hours or just sit wherever they could find a spot. There were also chickens and roosters walking the aisles in some cars, which seemed quite normal to most of the passengers.

The train passed through Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, an area that later came under control of the Sinaloa Cartel. I had no idea at the time that, some years later, I would be traveling to Mexico and introduced to a cartel boss who ran one of the biggest plazas (territories) for the Juarez Cartel.

When Tom and I returned from Mexico, it was September, time for us to move into our apartment with our other roommate. At this point, I was surfing pretty much every chance I got. I had a routine that was easy to get used to.

Aside from sleeping, I’d get up early and head straight to the beach to check out the surf. With a cup of coffee in hand, I walked down to the boardwalk, which happened to be five houses down the street, and checked out the waves. I also got to check out the incredible scenery, gorgeous ladies who were always out for a morning walk on the boardwalk. After they went by, I turned my attention to the waves again.

Then, I’d head back to the apartment, grab my board, and try to catch some waves. There was nothing better than feeling the chill of the water as I paddled away from the shore, watching the sun shortly after it came up over the mountains to the east. For a long time, I thought, if I had the chance, I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. But as I got older and more deeply involved in the drug business, that lifestyle was the furthest thing from my mind.

Our other roommate worked at one of the new hot restaurant/bars in Newport, Bobby McGees. There seemed to be an afterhours party at our house every night. One reason why our house became the place to meet was because they knew they could score coke after a hard night of work.

Many a night, or whenever there was a party at our house with the Bobby McGee crowd, I never left my room. I was stuck there the whole time, weighing up party favors the partygoers. For three to four hours. I did not go out except to grab a cold beer. And, of course, being the gracious host that I was, I did at least one line with each customer. It wasn’t all hard work. I was lucky enough to meet some beautiful women, too.

One night, I walked down to a party at neighbor’s oceanfront house. What began as a casual get-together around sunset quickly grew, with locals popping in nonstop. The living room was packed and stifling, so I grabbed a beer and headed outside.

There, sitting in a vinyl beach chair on the patio, I found Kimo drinking a cold one.

Hey! he called out, recognizing me at the same time. I know you.