FOR ALMOST TWENTY YEARS, ROBERT DIXON made his living and sustained his methamphetamine addiction by robbing drug dealers. The dealers and the police of the San Francisco Bay Area all wanted him. He wasn’t always able to allude them—over 50 arrests, eight prison stints, and two bullets in his body all testify to how dangerous an existence he had chosen. From Prison Gates to A Gated Estate is an adventure documentary of a life that seemed out of control and destined to be pitifully short lived. As retired Roseville police officer (Street Crimes Unit and Drug Enforcement) Scott Jetter wrote, “Bobby Dixon should be dead several times over. We in law enforcement consider individuals like him as hopeless. Rather than the risks and dangers associated with his lifestyle reforming him, he continued to perfect his ‘craft’ as a criminal, raising the likelihood that he would one day come to a violent end or life in prison.” Here are Dixon’s opinions of prison and how the system works (or, doesn’t work) and his early life of crime, drugs, and run-ins with law enforcement.

Later he recounts his highly successful and unorthodox rise in business, and his most recent activism and successes through picketing unjust lawyers, banks, and businesses. Though uneducated, he possesses an uncanny sense of human nature when dealing with the street and while incarcerated, and, obviously, as an entrepreneur. A true life-story with a compelling inspirational/motivational twist for people who need to understand that much of what makes a person successful is attitude, a strong self-image, and the ability to endlessly rebound. The author’s story shows that no matter how old a person is, it’s never too late to change directions. From Prison Gates to A Gated Estate should be especially useful to families and friends of people who are caught up in a destructive lifestyle—it proves that there is hope.