Stanley Alpert
Ep. 14 — A federal prosecutor kidnapped at gunpoint fights for his survival and discovers what’s truly important in life / Stanley Alpert, Environmental Lawyer and Author. Federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was enjoying the cold January New York air as he walked to his Greenwich Village home when he felt the gun pressing into his back and realized he was being held up for money. But what started out as an armed robbery quickly turned into a kidnapping when the thugs learned of Alpert’s significant bank balance. In an instant, the prosecutor’s plans to spend his 38th birthday the next day with his family and friends changed dramatically. So did his life priorities. Alpert’s goal: Convincing his captors to let him go and learning enough to put them behind bars if he survived the ordeal. For the next 25 hours, as he was held hostage and his captors tried to empty his bank accounts and max out his credit cards, Alpert made some strategic and tactical decisions that convinced his captors to let him go. In the process, Alpert learned some vital lessons about himself. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Hello, and welcome to When it Mattered. A podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they overcome adversity. I'm Chitra Ragavan. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is Stanley Alpert, an environmental lawyer, among other positions in his distinguished career, Alpert served for 13 years as a successful federal prosecutor handling environmental cases for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Eastern District of New York. Chitra Ragavan: On the eve of his 38th birthday, Alpert was kidnapped near his Greenwich Village home, and held captive for than 24 hours. He was lucky to released but not before his captors got his ATM password and withdrew large sums of cash from several banks. Alpert wrote a memoir about the incident and what it taught him, called The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival Chitra Ragavan: Stanley, welcome to the podcast. Stanley Alpert: Thank you for having me, Chitra. Chitra Ragavan: So this was on cold January night in 1998, and you were walking to your house in Greenwich Village and you were in a really good mood. Stanley Alpert: I sure was. I just met a young woman on the train. We'd gone and found some chocolate chip cookies. I got my box, and she got hers, and she went upstairs to go to her apartment and then I walked up the street going towards mine, and that's when my life changed. Chitra Ragavan: What happened? Stanley Alpert: As I got to the corner of 10th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, I felt a tug on my elbow. I spun around, there was an automatic machine pistol in my gut. Two men behind me with guns. They pushed me into the street into a car, and shut me in the car. They demanded my personal information, my bank information, my name, et cetera. And then they drove me to the bank where they began to withdraw my money. Chitra Ragavan: Tell me a little bit about who these guys were. What did they look like, what did they sound like, what information were you able to get in those frenetic first moments? I'm sure you were terrified? Stanley Alpert: I was absolutely terrified. It was a shock and I purposely kept my eyes down toward my knees in the car because I did not want them to think that I was looking at them, so I got only the barest glimpses of them. They were three young men, very agitated, very excited. The leader of the gang, who went by the street name of Lucky, had a very professional air about him. He spoke well. He demanded all my information, so he could take the money out of the machine. Stanley Alpert: So they drove me to the bank and they asked me how much money I had, and I told them I had $110,000 in my savings account. And even though I was a federal prosecutor who did not make the most mon...