I'll happily tell my story, because it's actually a funny story and in all honesty wasn't my fault.PSTL*PAKR wrote:Anybody out there BOLD enough to tell us your story about still being able to get your CHL even though your record wasnt "perfect"????
My charge was a class B misdemeanor from april 2001 for "theft by check > $20 <$500"
so in essence, a hot check charge.The story is my wife and I were newly married and were barely scraping by. I was a corrections officer at the Juvenile detention center at the time. This was before we paid all of our bills online and I kept an actual check book and ledger to pay bills. Well one friday (pay day) we were slightly behind on a few things so when I picked up my check, I sent my wife out to run some errands and to deposit the check while I stayed home and paid bills/balanced the check book.
I probably paid 8-9 bills. Fast forward a few weeks and our church had some kind of couples halloween dance thing that we were basically forced to go to.
We had nothing to wear to this costume party so we went down the road to the costume shop and wrote a $40 dollar check for a cheap pair of rental costumes. We were both pretty mad about it because we didn't want to go and didn't really want to spend the money, but it was last minute and we had to do something. Remember this part as it is part of the irony.
A few days later I started getting NSF fee notices in the mail so I called to check my balance (no online yet) and found out that my account was NEGATIVE $1,800! I couldn't figure out what happened as I was always very careful. I went back over the ledger and check stubs with the bank to make sure I didn't miss something, when the bank representative noticed that I was missing a pay check.
I went out to the truck, and sure enough the paycheck that I had my wife deposit was laying in the floorboard under the passenger seat. She got so busy running errands that she forgot to deposit it.So by this time all of my bills bounced which put us negative, plus each one had a fee, plus everything else we paid for with a check (groceries, movie tickets, gasoline, etc) also bounced and had a fee for each. Then there were more fees for the account sitting at negative for more than a few days and everything was just racking up fees on top of fees faster than I could take care of them. The bank was absolutely no help and like I said, we were barely making it as it is. I deposited the paycheck which didn't even cover all the fees and we were still negative by about $1,000. I called everyone that I had a check bounce to and worked out a schedule. It literally took MONTHS to sort everything out. Everyone was willing to work with me since I was honestly trying to get everyone their money....except one. The jerk that owned the costume rental shop. No matter what I did, he would not talk to me. I asked him what he wanted me to do to take care of the $40 and he said to "take it up with his bank" but wouldn't give me any information. It was a very strange situation. I even tried going up there to give him cash and once he figured out who I was, he yelled at me to get out of his store. I was blown away at how odd he was acting over $40 that I was TRYING to give back to him. I didn't know what to do so I dropped it.
Fast forward 8 months. We have moved to a different apartment in another part of town, and one day I check the mail to see a warrant for my arrest!
I have never been in trouble for anything in my life so of course I'm freaking out. Not only that, but as a corrections officer, I cannot have ANY kind of a record or I will be immediately terminated. I talk with a co-worker who also worked in criminal justice and he suggested that I turn myself in on personal recognizance and try to get it dismissed in order to keep my job. So I did. They booked me, fingerprinted me, mug shots, body search, the whole nine yards. Then the processing officer asked my occupation and I just laughed and shook my head and said, "I'm a corrections officer right next door." He looked at me with a puzzled grin and said, "what are you doing in here?" I told him it was my wife's fault and he laughed, said, "hold on a sec" and went to talk to another officer who I saw look over at me and laugh as well. He came back and said, "just stay right here at the front desk and we'll process you first so you can get out of here. You're not allowed to be in general population if you're a peace officer."
So I didn't have to sit my time or anything, just got a nice photograph of myself posted on the city's criminal records page which sits there to this day.
I went before the judge and told him the issue about my job and he basically just asked me if I learned my lesson to which I replied, "I don't know about me but I'm pretty sure my wife has learned something." And he dismissed it.
It's nothing more than an embarrassing story to tell for friends, and I'm glad it didn't affect my eligibility for a CHL, but man was I ever mad at my wife for a while.