HAYWARD — For three and a half years, narcotics consumed Phil Ribera’s life.
Heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, PCP, you name it and Ribera had a line on it.
As his craving grew, Ribera found himself becoming increasingly estranged from his wife and two young daughters. Once, on a trip to Disneyland that he’d hoped would score some familial points, Ribera found himself slinking away on a hunt for a cocaine source.
It was never the drugs he was addicted to — Ribera never touched the stuff — but rather the adrenaline rush he’d grown accustomed to while working as an narcotics agent in the 1980s.
“It’s easy to get a little carried away,” Ribera said, talking about the tales in his recently self-published memoir, “Barkers and Bones: Portrait of an Undercover Narc.”
“I was so straight-laced my whole life, I never really ventured out much as an adolescent,” said Ribera, who was in his mid-20s when he went undercover. “Once I got in narcotics, it was a runaway train — I couldn’t get enough of it.”
Ribera retired from the Hayward Police Department in 2008 after 31 years. He took up a number of hobbies since then, things he’s always been interested in but never had the time to pursue while he was working.
Those things include acting — Ribera had some screen time on the canceled NBC Bay Area-based drama “Trauma” — as well as painting and writing, with “Barkers” being his second nonfiction work based on his experiences with Hayward police.
While the first, “It’s Only a Badge,” dealt with “stories about the people you run into doing this line of work,” the new book is darker and more personal.
“As I wrote it, I’d read parts of it to my wife, Gale, and ask her what she thought,” Ribera said. “She said, ‘You’re really putting our business out on the street?’ But she also said it couldn’t be more true.”
Ribera’s busts got bigger, as did his reputation, both among his colleagues and on the street. A biker gang had a contract out on Ribera’s legs — they wanted them chopped off. A Mexican cartel had a hit team in the area, hoping to find out who was snitching to Ribera and fix the situation.
He was taking it all in stride as the once-fictional Phil Soto — his street pseudonym — increasingly took over Ribera’s real life.
“Do you realize what you’ve turned into?” asks his wife near the end of the book. “You can’t leave the house without circling the block a half-dozen times to see if you’re being followed. The Hells Angels and the Mexicans want to see you dead. “… You hate your bosses, you don’t trust the district attorneys, and you even think your own department is tapping your phone. What’s happened to you?”
Just as he was given the opportunity to take a state job with the Department of Justice and become a narc for life, Ribera decided that was it. As much as he enjoyed the ride, it was the end of his run.
“I’ve never regretted it — I honestly don’t think my marriage would have survived,” said Ribera, who credits his wife with keeping their union on the rails. “I wouldn’t have the same relationship with my kids that I do now. And I wouldn’t have enjoyed the same career as I did in Hayward. I made some great friends.”
Ribera will have a book signing June 11 at The Book Shop in downtown Hayward.
Contact Eric Kurhi at ekurhi@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/erickurhi. Read his blog at IBAbuzz.com/hayword.
Book signing
Phil Ribera will be signing copies of his book from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 11 at The Book Shop, 1007 B St., in downtown Hayward. “Barkers and Bones” is available on Amazon.com.
