Introducing Reed

This isn’t inspired by a true story. This is a true story.

Time With Mr Reed tells the barely believable, but entirely real tale of Reed Domingo. Here was a boarding school educated Englishman, with a charming accent and a line-backer’s physique, who moved from his home in the UK to San Diego to live the American Dream, but wound up saddled with 250,000 dollars worth of debt and a wallet full of maxed out credit cards. In his desperate desire to start a family and provide for his wife and his baby daughter, Reed turned to crime.

So how does a young dreamer from Wales go from a promising position in the family business to serving a four year sentence at the notorious Terminal Island prison? Reed’s pulsating, heart- racing story involves the girl of his dreams, a draconian father, marijuana groves, 45mm semi-automatics, the DEA, LA County Sherifs, the FBI, a wedding in Vegas, motorbike-racing, near-death experiences, religious salvation and a laminated ransom note. 

In his early 20s, Reed went to work for his dad’s biochemical company. In ’87, Reed was sent to San Diego to upgrade some computer software. As someone with his own American Dream, Reed took to the beaches, bars and gyms of his new Californian home like a duck to water.

Moving into sales, Reed spent years as a bachelor until he met Pam. Pam worked at the gym where Reed and his soon to-be best friend (an ambitious police officer) trained. She was Reed’s dream girl – drop dead gorgeous and lightning quick on a bike – so when their friendship blossomed into love, Reed asked Pam’s father, Sergeant Carl L. (of the Orange County Sheriff's Department), for her hand in marriage. 

Reed and Pam started trying for a baby, but it wasn’t to be. Unable to conceive by the usual means, they decided to fork out for IVF. Between starting their quest for a baby in 1992 and finally getting the happy news in 1998 that they were expecting, the endless fertility treatments cost Reed a quarter of a million dollars.

One day Reed was in a training session at work when he learned that employees at his bank, and others like it, were strictly forbidden from interfering with a robbery. If someone came into the bank demanding money, everyone’s job was to comply, comply, comply. Or be prosecuted, heavily. A few weeks later Reed was at home, getting turned down by every loan company in town. As he rummaged through unpaid bills, he knocked his employee training manual to the floor. When he looked down he saw it open on the page titled “How to handle a robbery”. It was then that Reed had the idea that would ultimately save him… if not for very long.

In June 2000, Reed Domingo robbed his first bank. He wore a plain disguise, carried a motorcycle helmet as a red herring, and never said a word. The note he handed to the confused teller said it all: “Stay calm. We’re not joking. Follow these instructions. Put $10,000 in the bag. Use 100s, 50s and 20s. No fake money. No dye packs. No alarms. No tricks. Stay calm. Do it now.”

Over the course of a year, from June 2000 to June 2001, Reed would rob another eleven banks, with mixed (and sometimes hilarious) results. From exploding dye packs to forgetting his gun and giving a friendly teller a two grand “tip”, Reed’s robberies veer from the slick to the slapstick. But it wasn’t all fun and games, and at his eleventh attempt, Reed was forced to flee for his life hid in a school, only escaping thanks to what he thinks was some divine intervention.

His sentence was four years when it could have been a hundred. But when you’re doing time in a place like Terminal Island, any sentence is too long. Prison was a long line of harrowing, violent near misses for Reed, and to survive he had to dodge knives, fist fights and white supremacists with swastikas tattooed on their heads. Things finally settled down for him when he became a teacher to his fellow inmates, helping them to pass their GED’s, earning the respect and name - Mr Reed.