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Criminal

Episode 47: Brownie Lady

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.738.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2016

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Shortly after Meridy Volz moved from Milwaukee to San Francisco, she received a phone call from a friend asking her to take over a small bakery business. Meridy agreed to run the bakery, but she only wanted to sell one thing: pot brownies. Her brownies were a massive success, and soon she was making enough money to support three families. Meridy tells her story alongside her daughter, Alia Volz, who describes what it's like when San Francisco's "original brownie lady" is your mom. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It was 1969 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I was a flower child, the real deal.

0:14.2

And my cousin's wife and their six months old baby were staying with me.

0:22.4

And he sent her a package in the mail that contained pot for her to sell and get a plane

0:32.1

to get her bus ticket back.

0:34.9

This is Mayor DeVoltz.

0:36.6

In 1969 she was 21 years old and like she said, a big hippie, really into pot.

0:43.2

Her cousin was also a big hippie living in Berkeley and he'd mailed four pounds of pot to his

0:49.2

wife Patricia.

0:50.9

But he didn't address the package to her.

0:53.3

That was too risky.

0:54.8

So he addressed the package to his own baby.

0:58.2

Mary D. drove Patricia and the baby to the post office to pick it up.

1:03.1

My cousin's wife went in, got the package from the post office.

1:09.4

And when she came out to the car where I was waiting, she offered me either the baby

1:14.6

or the package and I took the package.

1:17.8

And we were surrounded by vice squad with guns drawn.

1:24.9

And I also had three joints, four roaches and two seeds in my purse.

1:33.4

They were taken into custody and strip searched.

1:36.0

A police officer placed the package in front of Mary D and told her to open it.

1:40.4

She looked down at the package and then back up at the officer and said, I can't open

1:45.2

that.

1:46.2

It's not addressed to me.

...

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