While many strug­gle to make ends meet on a min­i­mum month­ly in­come of $2,000, An­tho­ny Gar­i­ca knows what it feels like to take home a salary of $20,000. The say­ing, an hon­est day's work for an hon­est day's pay nev­er ap­plied to him though. He earned $20,000 a month by steal­ing and shoplift­ing un­til he end­ed up be­hind bars. Gar­cia said he nev­er knew such a trait ex­ist­ed in him un­til he met up with the wrong com­pa­ny. Ac­cord­ing to the 54-year-old re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed ex-in­mate, now a su­per­vi­sor at a rep­utable se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, his life start­ed to head down­hill when his re­la­tion­ship end­ed some 20 years ago. He, how­ev­er, square­ly ac­cepts the blame as he ad­mits to be­ing phys­i­cal­ly vi­o­lent to­wards his wife, who he wished not to name. "There is no ex­cuse for my ac­tions. At the time when you are com­mit­ting the crime you look for a rea­son to jus­ti­fy your ac­tions when, hon­est­ly, you are the on­ly one at fault. Not be­cause my re­la­tion­ship did not work out it gave me a rea­son to rob and steal. I want­ed an ex­cuse and I paid the price be­hind bars," Gar­cia ad­mit­ted.

A heavy price to pay

Ashamed of his ac­tions, Gar­cia re­called that he be­came so fond of steal­ing that if a day had passed with­out him com­mit­ting an of­fence, he would ques­tion him­self. "When you are in a life of crime you al­ways know who your next tar­get is go­ing to be. You do not just com­mit a crime, it is of­ten pre­med­i­tat­ed. I would have walked in­to a store and steal any and every­thing and get away. Some­times I would have made more than one trip at that store and by the time I resold the items I would be tak­ing home $5,000 week­ly. Even busi­ness peo­ple would pur­chase the items be­cause they thought they were cash­ing in on good deals. When you are in­volved in crime it be­comes easy to com­mit; you feel like a hero but the price is heavy to pay," Gar­cia warned.

Death caus­es re­al­i­ty check

His wake up call came fol­low­ing the death of his wife, who suc­cumbed to med­ical com­pli­ca­tions.

Though they were not to­geth­er, Gar­cia, a fa­ther of two said when he learnt of the news, his life was shat­tered. "You do not miss peo­ple un­til they are gone. When I got the news I think it tugged at some­thing in­side of me that I just can­not ex­plain. I told my­self I have kids who no longer have a moth­er. Even though I did not ex­press it, I did not want any­one to hurt them like how I caused peo­ple pain. I de­cid­ed to turn my life around and it has been no turn­ing back." Gar­cia said while he has met re­sent­ment by both fam­i­ly and friends, he is com­mit­ted to walk­ing a new path. Not daunt­ed though, he said: "Ob­vi­ous­ly, you are not go­ing to be ac­cept­ed just like that. Even peo­ple I thought were my friends have turned on me be­cause I no longer con­done their lifestyles. If I am at a lo­ca­tion and I re­alised they are about to make trou­ble I tell them as it is. "I start­ed as a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer and was pro­mot­ed to the rank of su­per­vi­sor. I in­tend to be a manger or even the own­er of my own firm one day, and I can as­sure I am not go­ing to al­low any­one to ham­per that. In life there is on­ly one choice and that's the right way."