Give me Guts, Hold the Glory

Ten years ago I survived a Federal SWAT raid at home alone with my baby daughters. This is a tale of that day and how I used the ten minutes before they arrived to hide what compromised our safety.

I’m sitting here at one of my favorite local taprooms, watching happy mid-afternoon people and dogs living their best lives, sipping a non-alcoholic beer post my first-real-vacay to Sayulita MX, getting ready to write about the gnarliest day of my life (to date). Are you prepared to read it? Cause yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the day I was raided at home in Montana by an ATF SWAT team, which put me on a trajectory to where I am right now in Sacramento, CA. Although I have shared shortened versions of this story before, this retelling will include some undisclosed details that need a dose of sunshine because I’m not saving them for my deathbed confessions. Buckle up buttercups.

I have to set the scene first for context. 24-year-old me was a stay-at-home Mother to two little girls born 18 months apart. I was the ultimate good girl who had never gotten drunk, thought weed was a sin, dressed for purity culture, and had saved my body for one person (Grandfather abuse aside). I was married to a man I’d met six times before saying, “I do promise to honor and obey and support as a helpmeet for the rest of my life,” and boy did that little vow bite me in the ass later. My husband and I were a virgin-matched, homeschooled, conservative, raised, and lined up on paper to the T couple… and did I mention our Mothers arranged it? Longer story short, my Mom maintained a homeschooling blog platform writing against the evils of feminism and liberalism and managed to accrue a large readership base, including my ex’s Mom. A few emails between parental authorities later and a long-distance communication between us was approved. I still have the dozens of handwritten letters we exchanged somewhere in a box. I was living in a tiny Sierra Nevada Mountain community with my family of 12, surrounded by like-minded folk and Confederate flags (we proudly rocked one on our large country flagpole, too), and he lived a thousand miles further north in the reaches of Montana.

I heard his phone ring on the morning of March 13th, 2014, lying in bed beside his sleeping form. Shaking him awake, I hoped it wasn’t an emergency because who else calls at goddamnit 6:30 in the morning before even the TODDLERS are awake?? He groggily answered it and then sat bolt upright. My entire body tingled with the severe energy that flooded the room, automatically firing off a prayer in my brain to the deity I still worshipped. “Yes, I’ll get dressed and come down,” he responded to the voice I strained to hear on the other end. THE ACTUAL FUCK WAS HAPPENING?

“Who was that? What’s happening? Where are you going?” I asked my husband breathlessly as I had already hopped out of bed, throwing on a bathrobe. He tossed the comforter aside, donning jeans, a T-shirt, and his Carhartt jacket at record speed. I watched, astonished—he rarely got out of bed before Noon. Something was severely wrong.

“The police called and asked me to come down to the local station.”

Not a death in the family. But potentially just as scary and the death of us. I shook my hands and stared at him, holding my breath to receive the rest of the information.

“They said they must ask me a few questions; it shouldn’t take long. But if I call you, you know what to do.”

Yes, yes I did. We had only talked about it multiple times before. Planning out our hypothetical escape routes into the mountains and hiding places for his enthusiast's collection as we discussed the history of the 90s, which included terrifying scenarios that had played out in towns called Ruby Ridge and Waco. Homeschool products of the 90s ourselves, we maintained a healthy disdain (and trepidation) for Government authority figures ranging from CPS to public education systems, mainstream medical care, and now, thanks to my husband’s career of choice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and most specifically in our tiny slice of Montana, Firearms. My heart about stopped.

“Okay,” I choked out. “I’m going to try to keep the girls asleep.” He nodded and left. Watching the silver F-150 I’d purchased from my Dad back in California before marriage and kids back down the still icy driveway; tryning not to cry, all the breath inside me had zipped up to the top of my lungs and was lodged there, pricking in my throat.

Pacing in the kitchen, I started coffee and threw another couple of split logs into our wood stove, our primary heat source, cellphone in my hand. My ears perked at the sound of my oldest daughter stirring in her room, and I shushed her and snuck us out of the dark room she shared with her little ten-month-old sister.  My eyes were glued on the clock above our piano, hoisting her into her seat on the kitchen bench and scattering down a handful of cheerios while wrapping her ‘blankie’ tighter around her shoulders like a cape.

I don’t remember even getting my second sip of coffee in before my hand buzzed. Answering it, I stared at my daughter, who was oblivious to Daddy's absence. I’d always made sure to keep the girls quiet and occupied until lunchtime; even though the walls of our '70s rental on a 10-acre lot were thin, he slept soundly as we all played on the burn orange pile carpet, our cat Chloe perched on the couch arm, observing.

“Anna, a SWAT team is arriving at the house in 10 minutes, so you and the girls know.”

If you hypnotized me and tried to pry it from my murky brain matter, I wouldn't remember what I said in response. But I have every movement of the next ten minutes blistered into my hippocampus.

Entering the office my husband used - which was opposite the girl’s bedroom - I opened the closet door, stepping over the Military Ammo Can stacked high with a wide variety of boxes of bullets and clips we’d loaded together. Was I too young to have a heart attack from the pounding in my chest and ringing in my ears? No time to think. 10 minutes already reduced to 9. Grabbing one, two, three, or four objects, my brain spun its wheels. Where would I hide these? Lord help me, please!!!!! Howling internally, still holding the flood of fear back. 8 minutes.

Click. I visualized it all, including them outsmarting me as to where I was picking a  hiding spot in this tiny house.

My feet ran past the toddler parked still on the kitchen table bench into the laundry room, kicking the pack-n-play napping crib out of the way and pulling the handle up on the yellow linoleum to open the yawning mouth of our crawlspace. Flipping the light on, I tumbled down the short steps, barely able to stand under the ceiling of our floors above, and hopped to the far back of the space. Right.Under.Neath.His.Office. I dropped them onto the foundation ledge and whooshed back and up past a now crying toddler into the room, grabbing one, two, three, four, FIVE more. The clock ticked 5 minutes left. I could have hurled. But I hurtled breathlessly back down below, packing them onto the ledge. Looking around this cold house's barely lit crawl space, I grabbed some spare insulation. The pink or yellow kind that would get prickles into your fingertips and dig themselves in deeper. I covered the pile of guns as best I could and returned upstairs. 2 minutes. I grabbed an oversized ratty comforter inside the laundry room, spread it out over the apparent door in the floor, and yanked the portable pack’n’play back on top.

Still standing in the laundry room, I watched out the back door as men in camouflage suits and gloves, vests with bold ATF printed across chests and arms, AR-15 rifles held in front, and their handguns holstered, approach. My toddler ran to my legs and clung. Hoisting her up, I opened the back door and remembered what my Dad had always said when a cop interacts with you. Be polite above ALL else. Opening the door before they could knock, balancing my daughter on my hip, I greeted the first man at the door. The only man I can recall *exactly* what he looks like. The rest were just play figurines behind him, but with guns. Men and women, all somber and dressed for the snowy ground they stood on, all staring at me.

Looking straight into his enormous eyes, his bald head and goatee stared back at me, expression rigid. Gloved hands gripped what I supposed was the Search and Seizure warrant.

“You may enter my house, officers.” I was calm and slow, pleading that they couldn’t hear my ragged breath.

“Thank you, Mrs. Wick. Is there anyone else in the house?”

“My youngest daughter is asleep in the back bedroom. Can I please get her up?”

Yes.

I was guided by a female officer back to the bedroom and scooped a wide-eyed, chubby baby onto my other hip. Please don’t touch my children I energized throughout the whole house that was filling up with federal agents. The faceless woman guided me back to the living room, where I sat on the couch, both girls in my lap.

Every room. Every cupboard. Every couch cushion. Behind the piano. Our bed and closet. One hundred million percent through every square inch of HIS office, they continued bringing out the legally registered firearms and ammo we owned, as well as the plenteous de-activated firearm kits he was waiting to build. My Glock 26 handgun was added to the pile, and an AR-15, another Glock handgun—a hunting rifle—more old Russian rifles. And I can’t remember what else. I only memorized the ones quietly reaching up to me through the floorboards like demons.

“Ma’am, can you unlock this computer, please?” They wanted to access my iMac monitor. Yes, I can. Carrying the girls with me, I gave her access. Men carried out my husband’s monitor and laptop. “Do you know how to unlock these?” No, I don’t. We three girls resumed our position on the floor. I couldn’t see beyond the L of the kitchen into the laundry room. My imagination pictured it all for me. I visualized when they would arrest me, tell me my ex was in handcuffs, and take a screaming daughter 1 and 2 into CPS custody. The ‘stone-faced’ expression couldn’t shake a stick at what I’m sure was on my face. I saw agents walking around the house through the windows on both sides. Surrounded. Not able to move or leave. Waiting. Eternity.

They started carrying items out of the house and filtering themselves out of the house. The girls whimpered, hungry, diapers needing changing, blankie, bear-bear, and Mommy offering little relief.

Officer Original Bald Head Big Eyes Goatee walked up to me. “Mrs. Wick, we have concluded our search. We confiscated several items; we will give your husband a complete list soon. You are not under arrest. You may resume your day.” I don’t know if he said that last part, but we are leaving… good luck resuming ANYTHING after this jarring experience you just had sentiment was there. Multiple vehicles exited down our narrow driveway. The clock told me an hour had gone by, but time had stopped the minute I answered the phone - aside from those ten crucial moments I had used to incriminate myself potentially. We were waiting, waiting, waiting. They could come back. I looked over to a napping crib that seemed unmoved. But the back door to the storage unit our out-of-state landlady kept locked at all times was busted wide open. I put both girls in the crib and moved it to the side, descending for the final time. Their iron presence still filled the crawl space as I peeked under the insulation. I left them and fled back upstairs.

The husband came home. We cried. I listened to him recount being questioned by a head honcho federal agent who asked him all the hard questions about the gun business he’d been operating for years and quit his prior jobs to maintain. Did he have an FFL license? OK. How many parts kits have you sold? What kind of gun builds? So on and so forth. They had informed him that they were waiting for the school bus to drive by before raiding the house, not knowing our children were two years and younger. He asked if he could call me and let me know so our children wouldn’t be scared. I had bought some precious time to keep them from finding the REAL items they sought in this raid. I had just saved his skin from getting arrested in that police station on the spot. And it wouldn’t be the only time I prevented him from going to prison.

Down below the house, I’d laid out the firearm builds he’d spent countless evening hours welding together. All unregistered. All “semi-automatics,” but not quite legally speaking, with a tiny welded bar welded inside their receivers that one could knock out in a matter of minutes to turn them into FULLY automatic, functioning machine guns. He had test-fired every one of them as far out as he could drive our silver F-150 into the woods so no one would hear the bursts of rapid-fire, fully automatic rounds.

AK-47. AK-74. Full-size UZI. Micro-UZI. Mini-UZI. WWII German and Russian firearms he was obsessed with — an MP-40 and an MP-44. A PPS and PPSh-41 (he loved the round drums that housed the ammo for that one, although they were known to jam). These were all a prison sentence for him. For me. For our family. And they stayed hid, praise the lord. They took the kits he’d been selling online all across the states on GUNBROKER.COM and eBay to fellow enthusiasts to test. I’m sure more raids than one occurred that day, and not just in this sleepy Montana town. Feds had surely concurred that someone like my husband couldn’t contain his desire to perhaps… build a non-legal version of these kits, or the people he had sold them to. They also didn’t like how easy he had made it for people to re-weld the receivers, the part of the firearm that CLASSIFIED what a gun was. They didn’t care about the barrel, the clips, the grips, the sights, or the trigger—just the receiver. My ex had a booming business helping people rebuild those easily, and he sunk every last dollar I brought into our marriage and my family’s wedding present savings dollars, credit card dollars, and checking account dollars into his collection. “It was as good as gold and easy to re-sell,” he promised me.

Parents were dialed on our respective phones. Girls were changed out of dirty diapers. We loaded the truck with them and drove to his parent’s house 10 minutes away.

My Dad paid for me and the girls to board an airplane the next day, and I was situated in a one-bedroom studio, waiting for the next blow to hit. My husband stayed behind to deal with our rental and possessions as I vowed not to come home to Montana. It was safer in California. But it wouldn’t be the last time I moved back and forth. I’ll save that story for the next installment.

This is information I was coerced into keeping silent for a very long time for fear of my own incrimination and sealing my ex’s fate with a prison sentence. The story of his trial, our custody tussle between states, and the final move back to CA has yet to be penned.