Cary Cantonwine is a carpenter. Just a tool in God’s tool belt, he’d say. Actually, Cary is a lot like the sturdy structures he’s built over the years, strong and durable, and resistant to the wear and tear of the elements. Even his heart was resistant – especially to fire. God’s fire, that is. Cary Cantonwine was a bully, a drug dealer and a convict, and even a star-crossed lover, and then a tiny ember of God’s love finally caught flame.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
to do good  works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)

Child-Hood

Cary was born in Los Angeles during wartime when his father was serving as a paratrooper and his mother was working at the children’s hospital.

He was only three when his parents divorced and Cary’s grandmother, originally from Mexico, stayed home with him while his mother worked at night to support them. For Cary, work became a part of life by the time he was 10. “Early on, economics were tough,” he says. “I worked for a meat market delivering meat in a basket. I had a street corner where I would sell newspapers. Growing up – well, it was a tough neighborhood.”

Even then getting to school in downtown LA was difficult. “You couldn’t just go to school and come home, you know?” Cary says. “If you didn’t group up, it was pretty tough. I’d have to fight to get across the street and continue on my way. My uncles were boxers in the service, so I learned how to box at an early age and became fairly handy. I ended up fighting a lot.”

Running the Border

Surviving the streets, navigating the gangs and thugs by becoming a thug himself, Cary was 15-years-old when the grand adventure began that would be his life for the next 30 years.

And it all started with his dad, “He was in with that Lawrence Ferlinghetti/Alan Ginsburg–Sausalito group of the time,” Cary says. “He’d say, “Hey, son. Come on, I’ve got a great deal. Hey, son, come on…” until ultimately I was working for him in some capacity.”

That summer Cary joined his father and 30 other people on a jaunt down to Mexico. “We were on a little caravan to seek out and contact extraterrestrials,” Cary says. “I got some perspective on just what people’s motives could be. What they seemed to say – and what their real motives were – were not necessarily the same. All of that contributed to my being a bully.”

When he finally got back to LA, Cary was a man ready to take control. “I was a big, tough kid and I wound up running things in the neighborhood. I’d learned how easy it is to exploit the weakness of others to my own financial ends.”

It wasn’t long before Cary and his cousin started dealing dope. “We were going down to Tijuana, buying marijuana and smuggling it back just for extra income. Those were exciting trips: running the border. We’d go down and buy a bunch, take it to another city, put it in a different car, and then bring it back across the border. We were 16-years-old and right on the edge.”

Later, in 1963, when the whole country was on edge, Cary joined the Navy. “I thought John Kennedy was a great guy. America for me was always the ‘40s and the ‘50s. You know: Mom’s apple pie, a white picket fence and the guys coming back from war. America as a team. We still had a little of that before the Vietnam division created the disparity between the hippies and the military guys. I was in the military, but I was kind of a hippy philosophically. I liked to smoke weed. I believed in free love. I was the 60s. I was the 70s. I was the 80s,” Cary says poking fun at himself.

Twist and Turn

Life did have a brief twist, however, when Cary was mustered out of the Navy. He got married and lived as a Jehovah’s Witness.

“I had joined the carpenters union in 1965,” Cary says, “and for about 4 or 5 years I was clean and had an exposure to the Jehovah’s Witnesses through my first wife. That just wasn’t reality for me. God was way more loving than the limiting religion that the Jehovah’s Witnesses taught. Although, I did go door-to-door, I did hustle magazines, and I did give little congregational talks. Small stuff, but it was all structured and designed by the Watchtower Society, so you really didn’t have a point of view.”

The marriage ended in 1969, and Cary relocated to Laguna Beach where he embraced his father’s eccentric lifestyle. “My dad was kind of notable in the town. He had a bead shop. He was a sculptor. He was in Life Magazine, so people knew him, and I lived on his wind for a while.”

Soon Cary was back dealing, only this time it was a different drug. “Cocaine was my downfall. Actually, from God’s perspective, it was the releasing factor of my life, although I didn’t know it at the time. I got heavily into cocaine – use and distribution – and I ran that gambit for about 10 years. In 1981 I was consummating the sale of several kilograms to what I didn’t know then was a DEA agent. In fact, I found myself lying in the gutter behind the Red Lion Hotel with a 9-millimeter Glock in my ear being arrested for the distribution of cocaine.”

No Compromise

It became an international drug case involving multiple co-defendants against whom Cary was asked to cooperate.

“I said no, so I got the full sentence: 13 years for the sale and distribution of cocaine. I didn’t cooperate because you’ve got stand up for what you believe in. Not so much dealing cocaine, but “am I a man?” Was I a man? Men weren’t informants. I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t inform and I was ready to take my medicine.”

Looking back, Cary can see that God was beginning to fan the embers in his soul. “God was working this deal,” he says. “The Lord was in the background and he was grooming me for something he had planned for later. I went through the prison system, did my time, never was compromised, and never had any of the horror stories that you hear. I ran around with some guys that people left alone. We were pretty big players in the game so we didn’t have a lot of negative energy from wannabe guys.”

Cary was incarcerated in Lompoc and El Reno, Texarkana and Pleasanton and finally was trained with the Boron Fire Department, Engine Co. 58: a division of the Riverside, California fire department. “That’s the prison system’s maneuver. We were trained with the fire department as paramedics, as first responders and a lot of different things. We made some great rescues, helicopter rescues, saved a few lives. It was very rewarding.”

Finding Love in the Wrong Place

But as unromantic as prison life was, even that changed during the final year of Cary’s sentence. “I was sent to Edwards Air Force Base where I was just going to work. That’s where I met Brenda. She was in charge of the inmate program at the golf course.”

Cary and Brenda became good friends. Talking in the mornings, sharing their life stories, Cary learned that Brenda’s husband had been abusing her and their children emotionally and physically. “The guy was just a savage.”

The connection between Cary and Brenda grew deep. “It was an unbelievable story, a romantic story,” Cary says, “but I was not about to have an affair with a married woman. Nor was a married woman about to have an affair with an inmate.”

Cary’s charm was hard to resist. “I’ve got to be honest with you – I was always kind of a player. Whatever I did, I tried to do it with style. At the camp I wasn’t some guy wearing dungarees and stripes. I had Izod clothes, and I had my own locker. I had my own little gym. I would even get champagne and caviar from the officer’s club and take her out to lunch.

“I didn’t drink, by the way,” Cary adds. “I’d given up smoking and drinking and all drugs back in 1981. I haven’t had even a beer since then.”

Finding Family

The day Cary finished serving his sentence was an emotional one: not because he was being released, but because he had fallen in love.

Brenda had fallen in love with him, too. She divorced the man who had ferociously abused her, and eventually she and Cary were able to marry. Her oldest daughter lived with them, but the younger girl stayed with her father until his true colors were revealed in court, and Cary and Brenda gained custody.

Fatherhood was new to him, but Cary embraced it completely. “A few years later both the girls came up and said, “We want to change our last name. We want to be Cantonwines because we love you and you’ve been more of a father to us in the last five years than our dad ever was,” Cary says with pride, and a tear or two. “Today the girls are 34 and 39. There are grandkids and I’m ‘Papa’.”

Jesus on the Level

One day, when the family was living in Glendale, California, Cary drove by a construction site run by a guy named Billy Piranian.

“I was a carpenter looking for work and he hired me to do a certain thing and we became like partners. We went to Fiji together on a government job, looked at some opportunities, but ultimately the work ran out. We came here in 1994. Today I have a wonderful business partner and wonderful friends in Billy Piranian, his wife Adrine and their two children.”

The early years in Highlands Ranch were a struggle, and that was when Billy, who had by then become a member of Cherry Hills, started putting on the pressure. “But it wasn’t really Billy,” Cary says. “It was God moving in Billy. I resisted, but I watched Billy change, and ultimately the Holy Spirit changed me. I accepted the Lord right here at Cherry Hills, and then we started doing these Juarez projects.”

God’s Blueprint

At last Cary was able to see what God had been planning all along. “I recognized God’s purpose for me on my first Juarez trip.

He uses me to talk to people, to be talked to, to reachout, to be genuine. I’m fluent in Spanish and they wanted me to interpret because they hadn’t really had a guy from Cherry Hills who was able to talk to the people down there within the colonias.”

It wasn’t going to be easy. Cary prayed with his roommate, Mark Burr, before they went to the Friday night service. “I got up there and I was shaking, I opened my mouth and I don’t remember anything after that other than the congregation going nuts. All the guys were smiling,” Cary says. “That’s kind of been my role since then. On the Juarez trip guys were confessing to me. I needed to confess and there were people confessing to me! All through my life I’ve had this talent of being able to talk to people and be comfortable with the situation. Flip off one hat – put on another hat. Take off one costume – put on another costume. I’m that guy and that guy was used for evil, and now he can be used for tremendous good.”

Cary Cantonwine is a carpenter who also builds with words. “What’s huge about Juarez, and the whole world, is that there is so much need and I can’t stress enough what we as a congregation can do. What I’ve learned from God is that we all have hidden talents. If we just relax, he’ll let them blossom and we can slide into whatever it is he wants us to do.”

Finishing Work

What once was just an ember of God’s fire in Cary’s heart is now a blaze. Where does he see himself headed?

“I want to be able to minister to my family as directed by the Bible. I need to be the head of my household, I need to pray with my family, be the spiritual leader. I don’t have any aspirations to be this great Christian. I just want to be one of the guys in the congregation doing his little part to grow the church, and speak to others about the Lord.”

Cary talks with his builders about God. “I tell the story of my grandmother and how she came here in 1917. I remind these guys that they are not unlike her. They’ve come here to make a better life for their families. It’s not all about buying Coronas on this side of the border. It’s about those starving, homeless people on the other side of the border. People living in boxes and eating garbage. Just the whole awesome ugly picture. But I also let them know it’s their chance to be gracious to those people. It’s absolutely about Jesus Christ our Savior. He came, he died for our sins, he paid our debt, and we are saved because of him. I’ve let them know how blessed they are that they are here working. We do a lot of talking.”

God, too, is a carpenter…building his children – building Cary. “I was just a lost soul running around. I was full of myself. Nothing could touch me. The humbling experience of recognizing that you’re simply a tool in God’s tool belt and to do what he commands you to do – all to his glory, well, that reward is beyond…I don’t even know how to express it. And it’s different for each one of us. For me it’s emotional, it’s huge because I was such a schmuck, and now I’m just a humble guy who loves God and asks for his help every day.”

From a bully, a drug dealer and convict, Cary Cantonwine has been built into a solid, durable, lasting structure for Christ. He’s a man in love – with his wife, and with God. “Never give up,” Cary says. “God has a plan for you. It may be not what you have in mind, but it is God’s will. So whatever it is, do it joyfully.”