Episode 1: Lucky Bird from The Chinatown Sting
Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister
Pushkin Industries
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After a major bust in 1988, DEA agents are in a race against time to find out who’s behind a scheme to import millions of dollars worth of heroin to the US. They stumble upon some unlikely suspects: young mothers like Tina Wong, who were paid to accept packages in the mail. These women will have to make a choice between protecting or betraying their friends. Lurking behind it all: the history of American Chinatowns, which developed to protect immigrants from a hostile society.
For more, check out:
Ellen Wu’s The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority.
Michael Luo’s Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:09.8 | Hey everyone. Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can listen to the full season of the Chinatown staying |
| 0:16.8 | ad-free right now by signing up for Pushkin Plus. |
| 0:28.3 | You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and other true crime binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. |
| 0:35.4 | Find Pushkin Plus on the Chinatownsting show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. |
| 0:43.3 | On February 9th, 1988, David Sheehan was working his usual shift. |
| 0:46.8 | He was a U.S. customs agent at JFK Airport. |
| 0:48.5 | His phone rang. |
| 0:56.5 | I was talking to a customs agent in California who says, hey, we just got three shipments of heroin and three different bail parcels. |
| 1:03.0 | Do you guys want the case? |
| 1:05.0 | So I said, absolutely, we'll take it. |
| 1:08.0 | The parcels were on their way from Hong Kong to New York. |
| 1:12.6 | Customs agents were looking inside packages more often, |
| 1:15.8 | ever since President Reagan and Congress had ramped up the war on drugs. |
| 1:21.1 | David Sheehan was part of this special task force to combat narcotics smuggling. |
| 1:26.1 | So they got calls about drugs coming into New York City |
| 1:28.5 | all the time. This call was special, though, because inside each of these packages was about |
| 1:35.6 | $7 million worth of heroin. In today's money, that's something like $18 million per package. |
| 1:46.2 | Peter Metessor was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. |
| 1:50.7 | He really wanted to know who was waiting for those boxes. |
| 1:54.7 | I knew it was going to be a big case because there was a lot of heroin, |
| 1:57.7 | and the focus was on China white heroin at the time because a lot was coming into New York. A lot of heroin was and the focus was on China-white heroin at the time, |
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