Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (23 page)

“Well, honey, you got pretty banged up, but we are going to get you some help and the doctor will be here in just a few minutes,” the nurse gave him a smile and walked off.

Power laid there in the gurney and wondered what had happened and how he ended up in this mess.

Back at the base, the buses were pulling up and dropping people off near the dining hall. Elsa got off the Vista bus and spotted one of Power’s roommates.

“Hey, did Power come home?”

“Yeah, he left to meet up with you this morning! We haven’t seen him since and he was not on our bus.”

“When did you last see him?” Elsa asked, worried.

“He left around 9:30
 a.m.
,” Power’s roommate said as he walked off toward the dining hall.

Elsa knew what had happened. He had blown. He never showed up at her place and he was not on the bus. It was not like him not to show up and he would have had no means of transportation to the base if he missed the bus. Elsa had to let someone in HCO know right away. She found Gerald Duncan, the Director of Inspections & Reports. She told him about the whole break up talk and Power not showing up for their meeting. Gerald could not take any chances. A text message was sent out on the pagers and phones to initiate the Blow Drill.

It was about 12:15
 p.m.
by this time and most people were inside the dining hall getting some lunch. Then, as sure as the sweat dripping down our foreheads, it happened – the power went out. You could immediately see who was on the first string of the power drill; they popped out of their seats in the dining hall tables and dashed out through the exits. They were going to turn off the power in their buildings.

The rest of us finished lunch and got ready for lunch muster. Muster was held right outside the dining hall. All the staff would line up and hopefully the muster would be quick with the heat being what it was. It was not unusual for musters to go on for 30 minutes. In the heat of summer, a 30 minute muster would mean that people would get heat stroke. Just in the past few weeks there had been several faintings during lunch muster. People would literally pass out from the heat. It was a combination of the intense heat, lack of food, sleep and overall exhaustion. Either way, most of us were hoping for a very short muster.

After everyone was noted as present or accounted for, the Commanding Officer Gold, Lisa Schroer (Allen) made an announcement.

“Okay, anyone involved in the Power Drill, stay behind.”

Now, on any other day, this would have been a clear statement. It had probably even been said before on different days and had not been misunderstood. Today, this statement was confusing.

After the crew were dismissed to go back to post, it was like muster was still happening. A few people left, but most of the staff remained there.

“Let’s go people, back to post,” the Commanding Officer barked.

“But we are here for the Power drill, Sir,” a girl from the qualifications division answered back.

“You guys can still work with or without the power coming back on,” the Commanding Officer told her.

Gerald Duncan leaned over and whispered into the Commanding Officer’s ear. Apparently Lisa was not aware that two drills had been called.

Yes, there were people waiting to be told which bus station they would be driving out to and people who were wondering if the electricity was going to be coming back on in the next hour or so.

“Okay, if you are here for the electricity outage go over there. If you are here for the Power Drill come over to this side,” the Commanding Officer said while motioning to the two groups to move into different spots. If people were confused before they were certainly VERY confused now. After a few minutes of people still standing with the wrong group of people, eventually everyone made it into their respective mob.

Back at the hospital, the doctor had arrived to deal with Power and was asking him a few questions.

“So, what is your name?” the doctor asked, knowing that there had been some discrepancy with the nurses on this subject already.

“Power”

“That’s it. Just Power?”

“Well, Power Coleman.”

“But, your first name really is Power?”

“Well, it is actually my middle name, but that’s what people call me. I go by Power.”

“What is your actual first name?”

“My first name is actually Pure.”

The doctor let out a small chuckle. “Your full name is Pure Power Coleman?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, Pure Power, where do you live?”

“Kirby.”

“You live on Kirby Street?”

“Well, no I live at an apartment on Kirby.”

“Do you know the address of your apartment on Kirby?”

“No.”

“You don’t know your own address?”

“No.”

“Okay, what about a phone number? Do you have a phone number?”

“Um, oh, yeah, I have a phone number! It is 1-800-I WANT HELP.” Power was excited; finally, he had an answer to a question that he knew.

This was the phone number that Gold staff were told to use if they were ever in a situation where they were out in the world and needed to call someone. The 1-800 I WANT HELP number rang directly into the main security booth.

“You don’t have any ID, no driver’s license, you don’t know where you live, but your phone number is 1-800-I WANT HELP and your name is Pure Power Coleman?”

“Yeah,” Power answered matter-of-factly.

The doctor got up and walked over to the nurse. “Let’s get a tox screen done on Peter over here and find out what he is on.”

Back at the base, teams had been sent out to check the bus stations and to drive around town. Power had no known identification or credit cards so he was not going to get far if he was on his way anywhere. His mom worked at the base. His younger sister worked in the Sea organization in Florida and other than that he did not have anywhere to go to. He might have had a grandfather somewhere. The only reason we even knew that was from a story that went around about how, when Power was little and was just about to get on an airplane, his grandfather took him to the little boys’ room. Both he and his grandfather used the urinals in the airport bathroom. After being seated on the plane with his mom and grandfather, at the exact moment when everyone is quietly waiting for the plane to take off, Power yelled out in the little kid voice that reaches any and all ears on the entire plane at once:

“Hey, mom, when I get older, is my wee-wee going to be as huge as granddad’s?”

While Power’s mom was thoroughly embarrassed and said nothing, the whole plane burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter.

And just as the laughter started to die down, and Power’s mom had still failed to answer the question, Power asked, “Well is it? I want to know!”

So maybe Power was on his way to his well endowed granddad’s place, nobody knew.

As if the day had not started out odd enough, in the middle of the power drill and looking for Power, the receptionist received a strange call. Someone was calling from the hospital in Hemet; supposedly Peter Cook had been admitted to the Emergency Room. Gerald Duncan was notified and immediately the marketing secretary was questioned as to why she reported Peter as present at lunch muster if the hospital had just reported he was injured. Someone was sent up to marketing to check into it further.

When the Hubbard Communications Office staff got up to marketing, there was Peter Cook sitting at his desk, clearly not at the hospital.

Just then the electricity came back on.

Two people already driving around town looking for Power were told to head over to the hospital and check out the Peter Cook imposter. When the guys from Gold showed up, and saw that it was Power, they claimed him and talked to the doctor to find out what had happened. The doctor said that it looked like he had either gotten into a fight or fallen off a bike, and was high on something they had yet to determine. The doctor referenced the unfamiliarity with his surroundings and the strange names and phone numbers he had told them about. The doctor was told that all of these things were actually true and that Power’s real name was in fact Pure and his phone number really was 1-800-I WANT HELP and that he lived on Kirby street in Hemet.

After Power got some sleep, they let him leave the hospital. Subsequently, Power was required to get an ID card with his full name listed. He was made to learn his address and the local phone number to the base. Elsa was so impressed by his devotion, that she decided not to break up with him and they got married a few months later. Too bad that he eventually cheated on her with another married girl at the base and both Power and his mistress ended up on the Rehabilitation Project Force for having sex.

Years later, Power Coleman was spotted in Clearwater, Florida on the Rehabilitation Project Force. Not sure if he knows his new address or telephone number.

It was 1992. We had been running the Gauss high speed tapes copy line for a few years now. We had produced so much overstock that it was becoming a huge situation. We were producing hundreds of thousands of cassettes per month and only a small percentage of these were being sold. Most of the staff that were in Tapes had been transferred to new positions or had been removed from their post. Agnese went crazy and tried to blow but was somehow caught. Rosi got pregnant and refused to have an abortion. Unfortunately, I was still there.

It was around this time that I met a girl at the base that I really liked. She was a cute girl who was a supervisor where people studied. She was about five foot five, very slender and had long red hair. I was always a sucker for redheads and she had the longest red hair I had ever seen. Her name was Claire. Her parents were Scientologists and lived in Los Angeles.

The thing about the base is that there is no “drive it before you buy it” clause. If you get caught in anyway whatsoever messing around before you get married, you will go to the Rehabilitation Project Force. It had happened with this one guy who sat at my dining room table. He and his girlfriend had sex once and he went to the Rehabilitation Project Force in Los Angeles. Another girl that I knew had sex with someone and she met the same fate.

So Claire and I were careful not to have any romantic interludes that would wind us up on the RPF. After a few months of being together, we decided that we would get married in August of that year.

Because Claire was under 18 years of age, I had to get her parents to sign a waiver and my dad flew out to LA and drove us up to Las Vegas to get married in the state of Nevada.

In California, if you want to get married and you are under 18, you have to be interviewed by a psychologist and as that was strictly forbidden by the Scientology organization it was off to Vegas where they had no such requirement.

We had a total of three days off for the wedding. We went down to LA and met up with my dad, he took us to the jewelry district in downtown LA to get some rings. Claire and I were broke as a joke so my dad got us some really inexpensive rings which was his wedding present to us. My dad was not loaded with cash, but without him I would have had no rings. Afterwards, it was off to Vegas. We drove up in the afternoon, got the license in the all-night courthouse then went to a chapel where they did the ceremony and we drove right back to LA that night/morning to prepare for the ceremony that would take place the next day.

Since most of my wife’s family and friends lived in LA, we had the wedding at the Celebrity Centre / Manor Hotel in Los Angeles. My mom and Claire’s mom took care of whatever arrangements were needed. Neither Claire nor I had anything to do with the invitations, flowers, cake, etc. We just showed up.

It was clear that Claire’s mom had done more on the wedding invitations than my mom, because I only knew about ten people who attended the wedding and that included my family!

We stayed at the Manor hotel that night. The next morning we got a call from the base. We were informed that we would not be getting a room together back at the base because no more couples’ rooms were available! As if that was not bad enough, Claire’s seniors were canceling her honeymoon day and said that she had to come back to work right away.

We went back to the base and while Claire went back to work, I went out to the apartments in Hemet and scoped out our chances of getting a room. Claire lived with several girls in a dorm. It was strictly forbidden for girls and guys to live in the same apartments. I did not care. Claire lived in an apartment with seven other girls. One of the girls had just blown the week before, which cut the number down to six. This was a small number of girls living in a two-bedroom apartment. Most two-bedroom apartments had four girls in each bedroom and maybe three to five in the living room as well.

I decided that this was our best chance at getting a room together.

I moved all of the belongings of the two girls that were sharing a room with Claire into the small living room and moved all my belongings into the room that Claire was already in.

In a few hours we had a room. And I was living in an all girls apartment! When the girls came home that night, they were none too happy. After a few weeks, all the girls were moved out and a couple moved into the other bedroom. Corinne Smith and Henning Bendorf moved in. Corinne was Maureen Bolstad’s twin sister. Maureen Bolstad had tried to leave the base and was not allowed to. There were a lot of rumors going around about Maureen and that she was crazy because she tried to leave. I think it took her at least two or three years to finally escape from the Int Base.

Besides getting married, not much was happening on the base. The only noteworthy event was that Dave Miscavige had been playing basketball with some other guys and broke his leg. He was PTS! Now there were different rumors about what happened. Some said Dave broke his leg playing basketball with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Must have been a short man’s league on a seven-foot basket. Throw in a few flying monkeys as mascots and you could have had the Lollipop league from The Wizard of Oz. That one went over real good. The girl in Religious Technology Center who was responsible for Dave’s handlings promptly disappeared. She went to a doctor’s appointment in town and never came back. Smart girl if that is really what happened.