What if tomorrow, you had to leave your family, your home, and everything you’ve ever known to become a fugitive in a country where you couldn’t even speak the language?
Do you think you’d survive?
Dan “Tito” Davis did. In his real-life memoir, Gringo: My Life on the Edge as an International Fugitive, written while serving a 10-year prison sentence, he details his shocking story of the 13 years he spent on the run from the United States federal government.
Davis was released in 2015 and now lives in Key West, Florida where he is part of the local writer’s guild and enjoys fishing, playing pickleball and bicycling around town. Media Connect, a division of Finn Partners, caught up with Davis to ask him about his time in Key West and his time spent on the run.
Media Connect: How long have you been in Key West? What drew you here?
Tito Davis: I’ve been living in Key west for a year and a half. I love it here.
When I was kidnapped out of Venezuela I’d been living in the tropics for many years. I wanted to be in a warm tropical environment with an artistic community. I was working on a book about my life as an international fugitive and wanted to be around fellow writers to learn from, but I didn’t want to live in a major city. There probably isn’t a better place in the entire United States than Key West that can provide the warm, tropical, artistic town criteria.
MC: What have you found most challenging about adjusting to life in Key West?
TD: The technology war is my biggest problem but the people in Key West have been very helpful and kind to me.
When I arrived in Key West I had not been on the streets of America for 22 years! I had missed a generation. I had just been released from the Bureau of Prisons and was now in another world. It was total shock- like coming out of a time warp. When I left the country gas stations still had attendants and people still used fax machines. People rarely used the internet as there were no smart phones. People still used maps. No one knew what GPS was. When I went to buy a phone, the person assisting me asked me if I had been living in a cave. I hold him no- federal prison. I was lost I had no idea of where to start. I didn’t know what a text message was or how to send one. That gentleman at the phone store became extremely helpful. I found my way to the store almost every day with questions. People were ordering pizzas with their phones, taking pictures, texting, using Facebook. It was difficult to comprehend.
MC: What is it like to be on the run? In the book, you have a casual, collected voice most of the time—how often were you worried and paranoid about the situation?
TD: Being on the run is not like it is on a TV show. Everything is stacked against you; if you do a million things correctly and one thing wrong, you could go down. It took years of homework before I was somewhat comfortable, but I was always looking, thinking, or feeling danger.
I spent hundreds of hours, if not more, reading and studying how fugitives were caught; most (over 90% per my resources) were caught via traffic stops or someone reporting them to the authorities. Those were domestic (USA) numbers. I figured that if I left the country, my chances of remaining free would be better. If I didn’t contact people I knew from my prior life, never did anything illegal or broke any local laws so that I would never be arrested or finger printed, and never returned to the USA, my chances of having a new life would be improved substantially.
This wasn’t a vacation but a job. I researched opportunities while attending a number of universities under aliases, not to obtain a degree in these foreign institutions, but to acquire the knowledge to be successful in a land of strange languages, different customs, and serious challenges.
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