Spud, From PIMP to Student

Spud, From PIMP to Student

Linda Price, left, daughter Rashida Price, and Carey Gainey, right relax at home.

Linda Price, Carey Gainey’s sister, denied his existence just 3 years ago, before

he became clean from drug abuse and criminal activity.

Carey Gainey, known as “Spud” to his family and friends, became intrigued by the financial possibilities of street life at the tender age of 12. Growing up a boy scout with good grades at school, he first noticed the allure of the street lifestyle while working one of his many odd jobs shining shoes. Watching the pimps and hustlers come with huge bank rolls to get their shoes shined, he said, he would “start seeing that if they can do this then I can probably do it better.”

For a young, black man in the 80s, he felt that there were limited options for him to make money due to his race and socioeconomic background. His desire for material things lead him, “to find other outlets, I always had the hustle in me.”

While today, he holds no regrets for his career as a “person in a management position”, he does, however, regret his decision to use cocaine and heroin, which were socially acceptable at that time.

He turned his life around just three years ago. With 8 criminal charges against him, he went to jail on September 3^rd, 2007 for three months. He was an ideal candidate for alternatives for incarceration due to his lengthy addictions to narcotics, and went to the Freedom House to recover for an additional 6 monthes.

“Freedom House was about getting back in touch with yourself, and that’s what I had done lost myself into the streets, but into drugs really,” Spud recollects from his time recovering.

Today, he is still being, “paid to be good” as he sees it, and is pursuing a degree at Monroe Community College. However, he still shows that the “hustle” of the game is still inherent to his being by recruiting family members to write his college papers. As Spud says, “once a pimp always a pimp.”