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ABOUT
Joe Loya is an essayist, playwright, and contributing editor at the Pacific News Service. His opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the Washington Post, and other national newspapers. He frequently comments on politics, religion, criminal justice issues, and other cultural events.
In 2000 he was the recipient of a Sundance Writing Fellowship and a Sun Valley Writer's Conference Fellowship.
In 2002, he wrote and performed his monologue, The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell, at San Francisco's Thick Description Playhouse.
His memoir, also titled The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell, was published in September 2004 by HarperCollins.
In 2005, he was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship to write his next memoir, The Parole of Buddha Lobo.
Confessions of the
Beirut Bandit
Joe Loya ripped off dozens of banks in the late '80s, netting $250,000. Now he has a book deal and a starring role in his own show. Who says crime doesn't pay?
BY JUSTIN BERTON
We could rob a bank today.
The sunroof is wide open, the windows are rolled down, and the car is speeding north on I-80. We're hugging the rim of the East Bay . "Oh, I know a good one to rob," Joe Loya is saying above the sound of the wind, pointing ahead. "I used to go there all the time. It's a Washington Mutual on San Pablo . I'll tell you exactly why we're going to rob it. ... You always want to pick a bank near a freeway, but more importantly, once you get back on the freeway, you want to be close to a junction, where it splits or crosses with another freeway. Again, contingency -- very important. When you run, you always want to have as many options as possible."
The man sitting in the passenger seat is an expert on the subject. In the late '80s, over a span of fourteen months, Joe Loya robbed between 32 and 40 banks. (He gave up counting at 32 and the FBI stopped at 40.) In all, it's estimated he made off with $250,000 before he was finally caught.
Click Here to Read the Complete Story by Justin Berton |
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Confessions of
a dangerous mind
It's late afternoon, the July summer sun still bright on the booths at Hunan Yuan, the favorite Chinese restaurant of former bank robber, former solitary confinement inmate, and soon-to-be-published memoirist Joe Loya. Joe and I have just slid in for an early dinner: We've ordered two Tsingtaos, along with chicken eggplant, sautied string beans and fried orange chicken, which he calls "bullets to the heart."
Bullets to the heart -- an apt metaphor for a man who had lawmakers' rifles trained on him at least three times during his life as a criminal. Loya's new memoir, "The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber" (due out in early September from HarperCollins), tells the story of how he went from being a religious and sensitive Protestant East Los Angeles schoolboy to a cynical con man and petty thief, to a bank robber with more than two dozen heists to his name, to a maximum-security convict, to a budding cellblock writer, and -- finally -- to a new man, released after a grand total of nine years in 1996 at the age of 35, and bent on living an honest life. Or, at least, the reader must hope he is redeemed: The book's last page is Loya's first day of freedom from jail.
Click Here to Read the Complete Story by Sheerly Avni
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