From Child Actor to Prison Shot-caller- Peter Meyerhoff

Sometimes the kid who had everything becomes the man with nothing. And sometimes that’s exactly where the transformation begins.

Peter Meyerhoff’s story is one of the wildest I’ve heard on this podcast. At 13 years old, this kid was acting in movies, had a modeling agent, and was such a talented baseball player that he got to take batting practice off Hideo Nomo when the legendary pitcher came to America. Peter lived in a cul-de-sac full of kids his age, played sports every single day, and never touched a video game. Life was good.

Then it all fell apart overnight.

The Accusation That Destroyed Everything

At 15, Peter was one of the most popular freshmen at his high school. Upperclassmen wanted to hang out with him. His mom was a flight attendant, gone four or five nights a week, so his house became the party spot. One weekend changed everything.

Peter lost his virginity, drank Jack Daniels for two days straight with his best friend and some girls, and then got the phone call that would derail his entire life. One of the girls claimed something happened that Peter says absolutely did not happen.

“I go to school the next day and it’s like I’m not even safe here,” Peter told me. “I went from being the most popular kid in high school to just everybody staring at me. No one would talk to me. They’d put their heads down when I tried to talk to them. All in one day.”

The police escorted him off campus. He couldn’t go back to that school. At 15 years old, Peter’s whole social world evaporated in 24 hours.

The Fast Spiral Down

With nowhere to go and no friends left, Peter turned to the only people who would have him. Kids who did drugs and didn’t go to school either.

“I didn’t do it to numb the pain at first,” Peter admitted. “I just did it because that’s what they were doing. I kept doing it to numb the pain.”

The first night he tried meth, a guy told him it was “like coke times ten.” Peter didn’t stop using until he ended up in rehab. At 15 years old.

Then came the car thefts. The adrenaline rush. When Gone in 60 Seconds came out, dealers were saying certain Mercedes models were unstealable. Peter stole a brand new Mercedes-Benz from the dealership just to prove they weren’t.

But the crime that sent him to prison for 12 years? Burglarizing the house of his former best friend. The same kid who’d abandoned him when the accusations hit.

“They were the richest kids in all of Ahwatukee,” Peter explained. “Spoiled rotten. A 12 or 15,000 square foot house with a full indoor basketball court with their last name across half court.”

Peter’s plan was to take stuff they wouldn’t even notice was missing. He never made it out of the garage. His friends hit the master bedroom and grabbed $330,000 in jewelry. One pair of earrings alone was worth $64,000.

”I Think This Calls for an Aggravated Sentence”

Peter had been in trouble before. Probation violations. Jail time as a juvenile. But he thought he’d get four to six years, max.

“I remember telling my lawyer, ‘Just promise me I’m not getting six. That’s all I care about,’” Peter said. “And I remember the judge’s words. He says, ‘I think this calls for an aggravated sentence. 12 years.’”

The judge had a theory that young people’s brains weren’t fully developed until their 30s. So he locked Peter up from 18 to 30. That judge was later removed from the bench for sentences that were too harsh. They didn’t resentence Peter.

Learning to Survive Behind Bars

Peter walked into prison at 144 pounds with long blond hair. A pretty boy who looked like a nobody.

“I remember walking back from chow that first night thinking, how am I gonna do 12 years like this?” Peter told me. “Nobody notices me. Nobody gives a damn if I was here.”

So he picked a fight with his neighbor, a bitter old-timer who’d been down forever. Beat him badly enough that every OG on the yard wanted to know his name. That’s when the guy running the yard asked if Peter wanted to “start putting in work.”

“I’m like, ‘If you explain what the hell that means, I might be down,’” Peter said. “As long as you guys are gonna keep liking me and I’m gonna get some respect, I’m a thousand percent in.”

By 23 years old, Peter was running a maximum security yard. A shot caller who had relationships with the guards, got home-cooked meals brought in, and had contraband flowing like water.

“I’m not joking. My mom would come up to visit on the weekend and drop off a whole plate to this CO, and every day she would bring in whatever my mom had made for the week,” Peter recalled. “I wasn’t even eating prison food.”

Rock Bottom in the Hole

Peter’s prison record was so bad that when he applied for clemency seven years into his sentence, the board told him his case was “excessive as an understatement.” But they couldn’t release him because he kept getting in trouble.

The last incident? Peter called a shot that left a man with his throat slit and eyes stabbed out. He spent his final 10 months in solitary confinement while under investigation.

“I walk into this room and there’s 17 dudes. Only a couple wearing CO outfits. Everybody else is in suits and ties,” Peter said. “They put me on a stump in the middle of the room and ask if I want to tell them what happened. I said, ‘No comment. I’m going home in a year.’”

Ten months in a 5x7 cell. No yard time. The irony? Peter is claustrophobic.

“I get anxiety just thinking about small spaces,” he admitted. “But that’s what I talk about. We all think we can’t accomplish things. But we don’t know because we don’t try. I would have told myself there’s no way I could sit in that cell. But until you’re thrown in, you have to get through it. And then you realize your mind can do some things you didn’t think it could.”

Dying on the Outside

Peter walked out of prison shackled and escorted by three COs. His mindset was so institutionalized that when his dad handed him his release paperwork, Peter snatched it away because the guard had left a paperclip on it. In solitary, a paperclip was gold.

He spent the next months trying to live out his twenties at 30. Going to bars. Meeting women. Drinking every night. He wasn’t ready for what came next.

“I’m at a buddy’s birthday party on a Friday afternoon,” Peter said. “The last thing I remember is doing a shot of rum. Next thing I know, I wake up in an ambulance. The guy tells me I overdosed. I said, ‘I don’t even use drugs anymore.’ He said, ‘You did today.’”

Peter’s heart was beating six times a minute when they got him to the hospital. The doctor told him he was the only person he’d ever seen survive that condition.

“I’m laying in that hospital bed thinking, what a loser I am. Why didn’t I just die? And then something came over me. I told myself: I’m done making excuses. I’m actually going to try and do different.”

The Switch That Changed Everything

Peter went to 150 meetings in his first 90 days of sobriety. No job. No money. Nothing but recovery meetings.

Then someone gave him a shot selling cars. His second month? He made $10,000. A 31-year-old who’d never had a real job, making more than he ever had in his life.

“Once I saw that I could make money, I knew it was over,” Peter said. “I just switched my addiction from drugs to money.”

Within 13 months, he went from selling cars to being a finance manager at one of the biggest dealerships in Scottsdale. The guy who stole a Mercedes-Benz from the Mercedes-Benz dealership was now one of three people with keys to the safe.

“I had a felony for stealing cars, and I’m running finance at a car dealership,” Peter laughed. “Making $200,000 a year, still on parole.”

Finding Purpose

Peter’s best month in car sales, he made $41,000. But he felt empty.

“I felt selfish,” he told me. “I wasn’t doing anything to help people. I was just stacking up money.”

So he quit. Walked away from the six-figure salary to start a podcast, speak in prisons, and help people get sober. His clothing brand promotes pride in sobriety. His goal is audacious but genuine.

“I’m gonna single-handedly change the recidivism rate for the entire country,” Peter said. “I want to inspire people. Make sobriety so cool that I recruit people who aren’t even addicts. God saved my life to do this mission, and I’m not gonna stop until I do it.”

Peter’s story taught me something important. The same qualities that made him a successful shot caller, the networking, the fearlessness, the ability to read people, are the same qualities making him successful on the outside. The difference is what he’s pointing them at.

He summed it up better than I could: “The same thing in me that would make me drink myself to death is the same thing that makes me millions. As long as I learn how to flip that switch.”