Rick Mountcastle (Assistant Attorney General, Virginia)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode.

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Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every week, I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work. I could not possibly be more excited about today's guest. His name is Rick Mountcastle, and today he serves as the Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia. But if his name sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen Rick, or at least the actor who plays Rick in Hulu's hit miniseries Dopesick, which if you had any conversation with me over the last six months, you've heard me talk about, because I cannot stop talking about this brilliant show. Essentially, it's a dramatization of true events exploring the opioid crisis in America, specifically by focusing on Purdue Pharma's massive fraud in marketing, OxyContin. And today's guest, Rick Mountcastle, was the lead federal prosecutor fighting against that injustice. So we sat down, we talked about that story, and talked how his experience with this show, Dopesick, shows that we have no idea the impact that God is going to produce through our work. We talked about how God calls his people to do uncomfortable things to advance the kingdom. And we talked about why the gospel should produce fearlessness in all believers. My friends, please enjoy this terrific episode with my new friend, Rick Malcastle. Rick Mount Castle, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Jordan. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Hey, so anytime I have a guest like you on who serves in the public sector, I always want to invite them to issue the standard disclaimer that these are your own personal opinions. So you want to take a stab at that?

Yes. Sort of the legal fine print, so to speak. So anything I say during this podcast are my personal opinions and views and are in no way related to my current position with the Virginia Attorney General's office.

Of course, the lawyer is going to make that disclaimer at the top of this episode.

Absolutely.

I love it. So, Rick, if people recognize your name these days, it's likely because of this miniseries that was released last year on Hulu called Dopesick. We didn't even talk about this when we connected before, but have you seen the series?

I have seen it. I actually worked fairly closely with the producer, director, showrunner, Danny Strong on it. And, you know, the way that came about was I had retired from the Department of Justice and U.S. attorney's office in. At the end of 2018, and all of a sudden I started getting calls from different media folks about this old case that I had completed like 13 years ago, previously or so. And so Danny wanted to meet, so I met with him and he talked about this idea for this miniseries that he had. And I told him that I'll work with you on it, but I want. The reason I'm doing that is because I want the truth to be told and the true facts to come out. So during the course when he was making it, before it was publicly screened, he sent me advanced copies, you know, advanced views of it.

Screenings?

Yeah, yeah. Screenings, yes. So that I could watch it and provide any comments.

What'd you think of the show, the final product?

I thought it was very good and very compelling. I was glad that he accurately portrayed our investigation and portrayed the personalities of myself and my partner on that case, Randy Ramseyer. And in particular, I think the takeaway from the show was the humanization of people who are addicted to opioids. To me, that is the main point, the point I hope people, when they watch it, take away from it.

I have never known somebody, I should say this. I've never been close to somebody who's really suffered with an addiction to opioids. And I can't remember what episode of the show it was, but there was one episode where what you just described happened in spades, where you just felt for these people in such a deep way. And it was so disturbing. I remember we went to bed. My wife and I watch TV before we go to bed every night. So we turn off the episode, we go lay down in bed. I got three young daughters and I just like, cried out to the Lord. I was like, lord, please protect my children from evil. Like, I don't know that a TV show has ever led me to pray so fervently for something in my life. It was wild. So I think the show definitely accomplished that. And I just gotta say, I just think it was an extraordinary piece of art. Like, I have been talking about this show non stop since I first watched it. I just thought it was terrific.

No, I agree. I think it was. And I told Danny I went to a screening in Washington D.C. you know, he invited some of us down there for that. And I told him that I thought it was a brilliant piece of work because it's a dramatization. So the way things are depicted is dramatized for tv. But the underlying facts of the investigation, what we found, what was being done by the company, those are true. They are there. And you know, I've spent a lot of time down in coal country and I found to my surprise that even the coal mining scenes and his depiction of coal mine and how they work and what they do and what they have to go through, I mean, just right. Hit the nail right on the head. So, you know, and I thought he also, you know, the other thing was I thought he displayed Christians in a very mature and thoughtful way.

So this is what I wanted to ask you about. This was the shocking thing about the show to me. Right, and a lot of this was told through your character. Right. They talked a lot about your faith. Did that surprise you that that stuff made it into the show?

Well, here's the thing, and this is how great God is. So when I was talking to him way back in the spring of 2019, it was probably about a three or four hour sit down. He recorded it, I allowed him to record it. And at some point towards the end of that discussion, I said, oh, hey, by the way, I just want you to know that Randy and I never cursed because you know how TV is and the salty language. And that opened up a conversation about, hey, why is that? And I said, well, because I'm a Christian. And I was able to kind of witness to him and tell him my story about how I became a Christian and why and how things changed for me. And afterwards, thinking about that, I said, God, you're so great to open up a door that I was not, you know, I would not expect normally, hey, I'm not going to talk to this guy that produces, from California who produces TV shows. I would not naturally enter into that kind of conversation with that person who I just met. Right. But God provided the opportunity.

I love it. So, yeah, you basically saw an opening. You were like, hey, this guy's going to try to tell the story of me, my character, and he needs to know we don't curse. And it just naturally led to the follow up question, which gave you an opportunity to share the hope that you have in Christ. That's amazing. Yeah, I want to come back to that in a minute, but first I want to lay some Groundwork from our listeners who maybe haven't seen the show. Right. So for those who haven't seen it, tell us about the work you were doing at the time that this story starts to unfold.

So the case begins in like 2001-2002. At that time, I was with the U.S. attorney's office in the western District of Virginia in a satellite office in a small town called Abingdon, which is in the far southwest corner of Virginia, a few miles from Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky. They all converge with Virginia right there. And that's coal mining country. It's in the Appalachian Mountains. And I'd been there since 1995. And so one of the problems we had down in that area for, you know, there's a long standing issue with prescription drug abuse. One of the things our little satellite office of three attorneys in that far corner was looking at. We were prosecuting cases involving prescription drug diversion, opioid diversion, and we had a project where we prosecuted several doctors, and that would have been the late 1990s. So, you know, during the course of that, those prosecutions, we saw that this drug, new drug called OxyContin, was becoming widespread. It was being prescribed very frequently. And we were receiving information from local law enforcement offices that indicated there was a huge spike in property crimes that were related to people who were addicted to oxycontin, trying to get the means to buy it off the streets. It was fairly expensive. It was a dollar per milligram, so. And there were, you know, 10, 20s, 40s, and 80 milligrams, and later 160 milligram pill that was developed. And so each pill would be anywhere from 10 to $160. And then we also heard anecdotally that pharmacists were complaining about the marketing tactics of the Purdue Pharma sales reps. And so Randy and I were sitting around after work one day talking about these things, and I know I felt a duty to our community to look into this. And so we just decided, hey, we need to open a case. Why don't we open a case and kind of look and see what's going on here with the company? And that's sort of the beginning of that.

Yeah. And you guys worked on this case for how long, Rick?

So probably it's all told from beginning to end, roughly five years.

Wow. Okay. And you guys were totally outmanned, totally outnumbered, out budgeted, I'm assuming by Purdue's team of lawyers, right?

That would be a fair statement, yes, because it was basically Randy and I, in a small office, we had other cases. So at the beginning, it was sort of something we tried to fit into our normal schedules. And one of the things we had to do was the federal law enforcement authorities down in that part of the country are very sparse, very, you know, just small satellite offices of two or three or four at a time. And so we had to try to put together a team of investigators to work on the case. And we ended up. I ended up calling a friend of mine that I worked on a case with from the Attorney General's Office of Virginia, the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, and asking for him to help staff. And he provided two full time agents. So that was kind of the beginning of it. And of course, there were Purdue. The drug company had hired a very large law firm in D.C. and they had deep pockets and they had, you know, I'm sure, fairly substantial number of attorneys working on it. So, yes, I think it would be an understatement to say we were outgunned. And looking back is. It's sort of the David and Goliath story, right?

Totally. Yeah. It's the David Goliath story of the pharmaceutical world and justice. But in the end, you guys were able to see a victory. What in the end were you guys able to prove and convict these executives at Purdue Pharma with?

So the technical conviction was for what's called the misbranding of a prescription drug. And in essence, what we actually proved was that the company set about promoting the drug by lying about its addictive and abuse qualities.

Yeah. Because the line that they kept repeating was, less than 1% get addicted to this thing. Yeah.

Yes. And they also had this language in the label that had been approved by the FDA that said delayed absorption as provided by OxyContin tablets is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug, which, if you really think about it, it's completely nonsensical. Okay. It doesn't really say anything, but they are words that would support that they used to support their promotional pitch, which was, we have a drug, a new drug. It's a pain pill. And guess what? Unlike all the other pain pills out there, all the other opioids out there, our drug, because of its delivery system, this delayed release system is, you know, it's not addictive. Less than 1% of people get addicted. They use that to support that. And people who are abusing it won't like it because it's not abusable. And those were just complete lies and fabrications. And they knew it. And that's sort of the upshot of what we were able to prove, resulting in the guilty plea by the company. And then three executives pled guilty to related misdemeanors.

What were the consequences for Purdue?

So Purdue ended up paying a total of $600 million in penalties in the form of restitution to government health care benefit programs, forfeitures and fines. And the executive, the three executives, they were put on probation. They ended up getting excluded from working in the pharmaceutical industry for 12 years each. So that was kind of the basics of it. And the thought at the time, our thought at the time was, hey, we've shed a light on this problem with the way this company is promoting this drug. We've shed a light on the fact that this drug is very abusable and very addictive, and things are going to change. And of course, things didn't change the way we would have liked them to change.

How do you deal with that spiritually? That's got to be a huge battle, right? You get this win. You have identified this injustice and somebody's paid consequences for it. But you know they're going to do it again. If not this company, another one, right? It's whack a mole, and you can never win. How do you wrestle with that in your prayers with God? How do you deal with that?

So that's sort of the dilemma, especially if you're in the business of law enforcement and prosecution. That happens all the time, right? You go out there and you prosecute somebody and then two or three others jump up and take their place. And so the way I've come to terms with it is this, that I'm not going to change the world, right? I don't have the capacity to do that. Only God can change the world and change people's hearts. But maybe what I can do is go in and make someone's life better. And if I do that for one person, that even that the tremendous amount of effort it took to do this case, if I do it for one or two people, then it's worth it, number one. Number two, I really don't have. That's why we have to rely on God, because we're just a little small piece of the universe here. And we don't really know what the wide effect of our actions are. Only God does knows that, right? We go, and even if you were wanting to witness to somebody and help them come to Jesus, you don't know what effect you have. And you plant a seed. And then God's. You have to rely on God to grow that seed. And we may never know whether the person that we were trying to reach and trying to tell the good news to, we may never know that at what point they've accepted Jesus in their hearts, in their lives. And so you have to just have faith that God is going to take care of those things, and God will let us know if he thinks we need to know about it.

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a great perspective. So in the show, your fictitious self, played by the great actor Peter Sarsgaard, said that you converted to Christianity at the age of 40. Number one, is that true? And number two, what's the story? There's.

That is true. So I look at my life as two different parts.

You know, new creation, right?

Yes, new creation. But it's not like an instantaneous boom. I woke up one day and I'm now a Christian. And, hey, everything's changed and everything's different, Right? It's the process. So my first 40 years was, you know, I grew up without God in the household. Okay? No religion, no discussion about God. People who relied on religion, went to church, who had to do all those things. They were weak and couldn't make it on their own. And that's just a crutch, and we don't need that. That's sort of the way I grew up. And the only time I remember even having exposure to any kind of a church was our next door neighbor would take me and my sisters to Sunday school. To Sunday school and church on Sundays. And that was for the three or four years we lived in Maryland. But other than that, nothing. And so, of course, I lived my life for my first 40 years for myself. That was it. It was indulge myself, be out there, do whatever I wanted to do for myself, serve my, you know, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, pride of life, all those things that Satan holds out there for you. I was all in on that. That, of course, when you do that, you. If you're just focused on yourself, you're not very nice to other people. Even people that you're close to, you don't treat them well. And at some point leading up to my 40th birthday, it hit me that this was not right. I was not living right. And, you know, I'd hurt a number of people. Someone that I heard that was fairly close to me had mentioned at one point that, hey, you know, what's missing in your life is you're missing God in your life. And that kind of stuck with me in the back of my head. And so I decided. And I'd come to a kind of a crossroads in my life. I'd had a, you know, was kind of going off on my own and had an opportunity to leave. I was in D.C. at the time, Washington, D.C. and out of the blue, an opportunity came up. A phone call from the U.S. attorney in Western Virginia, asking me if I wanted to consider coming down to Abingdon, Virginia, a place that I would never have on my own, thought about coming to. But that door opened and I thought about it and said, okay, I'll come down there. And at the same time, I was reconnecting with Stephanie, my wife, because I had met her on one of my travels to Knoxville, Tennessee, where she lived. And we started reconnecting and talking by phone, kind of redeveloped a friendship. And I said, well, you know, the other thing is Abingdon's only two hours from Knoxville, Tennessee, so, okay, I'm going to go do it. Oh, and I had started visiting churches, too, before I Left northern Virginia, D.C. area, you know, the kind of visiting them, sitting through the service and then hitting the back door before that kind of visiting. But there was an interest. There was a. God was calling, I think. And so when I got down to Abingdon, I again started saying, I'm going to go to church on Sunday and find out what this is all about. Why do I need God and does he really want me? And I remember when Stephanie and I were about to get married, and I was standing at the church in Knoxville, in the sanctuary, looking at the altar, and just a quiet voice, just a quiet voice said, do you believe? And I said, yes, I do. So that started this journey of my second. From the age 40 to now. That's the next 27, 26 years of my life of just trying to, you know, 40 years of bad habits, you don't get rid of those overnight. So I'm still a work in progress.

Aren't we all? I'm curious. So you. You were already crushing it in your career, right? If you look Rick Mount Castle up on LinkedIn, it's like promotion after promotion after promotion. How did your conversion, maybe not immediately, but over time, how did your conversion to create Christianity change how you thought about your career and your work?

When I look back, I see, you know, God was there even when I was. I turned my back on him even when I was spitting in his face, because I know that it was God who opened the door for me to go to Abingdon, okay? And God was faithful. And there Even though I didn't know him, which is something that blows my mind when I really think about it. And so one of the things that I think what he had instilled in me, I don't necessarily like the limelight, but like everybody else, I like sort of people, the accolades. Right. People saying, oh, he's just the best at this or the best at that, and he's getting awards and all that. So I secretly liked that. I didn't like to be flashy about it. And so part of. I think my motivation before I came to Jesus was, hey, I really want to get those accolades. I'm going to work real hard. I'm performing.

Yeah, you were performing. I've struggled with this throughout my whole life. It's like using what. Because I found that in this cultural moment, work and success at work is one of the most impressive things to other people.

Right.

It is the thing that enables us to win credibility with other people. And that can be positive and a negative. Right. And so, yeah, you fall into this trap of constantly performing so that you can be seen as unique and better than. And all those things that really at the root of is just pride. So that's something you and I share in our stories.

Yes, I think a lot of people share that. So your motivation means a lot. But at the same time, God allowed me to be successful, and he allowed me to develop these habits that involved, you know, hard work and being analytical and all. All these good habits that are coming from this bad motivation. I got allowed that. So when I became a Christian, it became a one of those things. Well, now I'm not necessarily performing for other people. You know, it was. Became one of those, I am doing this work because I want to help people, and I'm going to give it my best shot. Shot. Because the reason I was with the Department of justice for 32 and a half years was that. And I've told other young lawyers this. That's a job. One of the few jobs that I could see in the legal profession where you can go to work every day and have the opportunity to affect someone's life in a positive way. And so that's how I then began viewing how my motivation changed.

Yeah, I think that is the change for most people. It's really beautifully said. All throughout Scripture, God tells us that he cares deeply about our motives for work. I always think of Genesis 11 in the tower of Babel. They're using their work to make a name for themselves. Something that I've done before. Something sounds like, you've done before. And God says, nope, I'm gonna scatter you across the nations. And then in Isaiah 60, which is really, I think, the reversal of the Tower of the Babel, all of the nations are coming back into a central city. This time the new Jerusalem on the new Earth. But they're coming with their work products in hand. Right. I think part of the message here is, hey, work so good. God's going to redeem every square inch of creation, including people, including the earth, including the work of our hands, because motives matter to him, so he still appreciates the work. Right. But motives matter deep within him, and that's what he's going to redeem. I think that's, that's a great, great example. So you're working in justice before your salvation, you're working justice afterwards. As you start to learn more about the God of the Bible. I'm just curious if you're like reading all throughout Scripture, like, man, God cares a lot about justice. And whether or not that helped you just really double down on the profession and getting really good at what you did in service of others.

It did. What I'm laughing about, though, is that if you look, my wife works for the Internal Revenue Service. So if you look in the Bible, in the New Testament, right, The two most reviled people in Jesus's time were tax collectors and scribes or lawyers. Right. So, yeah, but, you know, I really found fulfillment, you know, if I didn't feel that what I was doing was helping people, even if it's one person, one victim at a time, or one person at a time, or, you know, keeping the community safe by taking someone who's dangerous off the streets. If I didn't feel that I was doing that, I wouldn't have stayed. So that really, I worked really hard. I mean, it was a minimum of 50 hours, usually 60 or 70 hours a week through my whole career as an assistant U.S. attorney. And that's what kept me going.

Yeah, totally. Now I get it. You mentioned this meeting with Danny Strong, the creator of Dopesick, this four hour session you have, and at the end you start to talk about your faith. I found it fascinating. I touched on this before, but I want to go a level deeper. I find it fascinating that so much of that made it into the show because so many times you see these stories being told by Hollywood and they strip a lot of the faith of the characters out of the stories. Right. There was this great book called Unbroken years ago, right, about this guy named Louis Zamperini. And it Talks about his faith right. In the book and he goes see the film. And none of that is in the story. And so I'm curious why you think Danny made your faith in the show such a critical component of the story. Because, I mean, it's talked about quite a bit in the show.

Yeah, that's a question I need to ask him. But in my conversations with Danny, I've. I had numerous conversations during the filming. He'd call me up and wanted, you know, make sure what they were doing was factually accurate and etc. Etc. And I've had a couple of conversations with him afterwards. But one of the things that he is very much interested in doing, because he also produced, and I haven't seen it, but he produced an acclaimed, I think it was HBO series called recount about the 2001. The lactogen and the recount.

Yeah, it was really good. I remember this. Yeah.

Yeah. So he's very much interested in historical accuracy and, you know, in terms of the underlying facts. And I think he's also very interested in what motivates people. And so I think that, you know, speculating right now, because I haven't had the chance to ask him about that. I think that that's one of the things he was interested in. Hey, what motivates these prosecutors in a small town to take on this giant company with these hordes of high priced, you know, the top legal talent in the country? I think that's part of what he likes to do, is to delve into those motivations.

That's interesting. Yeah. And that's certainly the case for you. I love that that came through. Yeah. So all throughout the show, I think it's interesting we're watching the Sackler family, this family that owns Purdue Pharma, essentially paying off people right, left and right so that they could sell more OxyContin. And there's this scene towards the end of the show. I can't remember what episode where they come to Richard Sackler, CEO of Purdue, and they pull out a picture of you. I don't know if this is factual, but they pull out a picture of you, Rick Mount Castle, and your partner Randy, and they say, hey, listen, these are the enemies. These are the guys that are trying to bring Purdue farming down. But you can't pay them off because these guys are Christians. Right. They attach that. You can't pay them off to your faith. As you watch that scene, what were you feeling? What was going through your mind as you watched that unfold?

For my part, I think that was substantially accurate, although I don't know if that scene ever happened. But I would not have been surprised if they had files on all the people that they knew of on the investigative team.

Yeah, sure.

But I thought as a statement, that was probably pretty accurate in that because I was not interested in my personal gain. It was not. I want to get a job in a big law firm. I want to get a job or working for one of the, you know, this big pharmaceutical company. So I thought that that was. From my perspective, that's a pretty accurate statement. And that's probably pretty accurate for most Christians who are true Christians, who are motivated not by monetary gain or personal gain, but are motivated by trying to do God's work.

Yeah. I was interviewing the Enron whistleblower a couple years ago who's a serious Christ follower named Sharon Watkins. She's actually here on the podcast. Great episode.

I actually asked one. I was interested in that. Yeah, I listened to that. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

And so she said something to the effect of like, you know, the reason why there aren't more Enron. One of the reasons why there aren't more Enron scandals and collapses in the world is that God has faithful believers as his eyes and ears in these places to stop injustice. Right. And as I was watching that scene with the picture of you and Richard Sackler, I just thought, oh, man, this is a really, really beautiful picture of that. Right. God placed you there for. For a purpose, many purposes. But this is one of them, right. Was to help stop this gross injustice from continuing in the world. Have you reflected on that? Like, how has that shaped your worship and, I don't know, just your prayers and conversations with the Lord.

Yeah. So, Jordan, here's the thing about all of that, because when we finished the case in 2007, you know, hey, moving on to the next case, you know, the next set of cases. And so 13 years later, to have this case come back up in the way it did and to have, you know what I call my. A 15 minute window of fame, I had to ask myself, I had to ask God, God, this is obviously you're doing 13 years later, and now I'm getting calls and people want to interview me. This is not my doing. This is God's doing. So, God, you have given me this 15 minutes of fame and I need you to tell me how you to want me. Me to use it for your benefit. So that's really. I think it may not be directly answering your question.

Yeah, no, but it is. Yeah.

But to me, that is the impact that I'm feeling now from that work I did 13, 12. And now it's 15 years ago.

Yeah.

That's the real impact. And this is obviously God's work. And so, you know, one of the things I've felt like I've had to guard against is the pride of life. It's like, hey, I'm famous and people are calling me and they want to hear from me. And. And so I have spent a lot of time reflecting and asking for God's help for me to use this in the right way. So that's one thing.

Yeah.

The other thing is, okay, so I've come to the conclusion that one of the ways I want to use this fame for whatever purpose I can discern, and hopefully it's part of God's purpose, is to reach out to the families who have been victimized by opioid abuse and to support them and to speak on their behalf to the extent that I have. So that is the purpose that I have discerned. You know, it's. Again, it's going to God and saying, God, this is you're doing. Help me not to use it for my benefit. Help me to see what you want me to do with it.

Yeah. It's just a great reminder that when we get really good at what we do, we get masterfully good at our craft. It puts us in halls of power. Right. It's Proverbs 22:29. Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings. But of course, the temptation then is. Is to use that power that accompanies vocational mastery for our own sake rather than for the common good. Right. And for service of others. It's all about pouring out whatever power we have. It's interesting that you're in the thick of that right now, now that this show is becoming a big deal and this story is kind of being resurrected. That must be a weird experience.

Yes, it's surreal. It's very weird and, you know, not something that I'm comfortable with. Yeah. But the other thing that I've learned, you know, in my walk with Christ is that if you're a Christian and you're going to do God's work, God's going to expect you to put yourself into uncomfortable positions.

Amen.

That's the definition of being a Christian. That's. That's a hard thing to grapple with sometimes.

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's spoton. I'm curious, though, when you were in the thick of this case, you know, especially that five year span, did you think you were gonna win? Because it felt pretty. Maybe this was just the dramatization of the show, but it felt pretty hopeless. It felt like there was a real chance the Sacklers would get off scot free. I don't know. Was that going through your mind? And if so, like, how did that influence. But what did your prayers look like during this time as you were fighting this uphill battle?

I never felt, and I guess this is probably because part in part because of my faith, I never felt like it was hopeless.

Yeah.

And again, God, that's. I think this is one of the things that he did or one of the gifts that he gave me. I could see the path to where we needed to get to.

Yeah.

Early on, I always thought that our biggest adversary was going to be the organization we work for, the Department of Justice. Knowing how Washington worked back then to a great extent, even works the same way now. So my prayers were more along the lines of, God, please give me time to go to church, Please give me time to spend with my family. How do I balance the amount of work I needed to do with those obligations that were important as well in my life? So that would have been, I think, really at the forefront of my mind back then.

Yeah. I'm assuming you had to make a lot of sacrifices during this.

Yes. Yes, I remember. So in 2005, at the second half of the case, as we were trying to get things completed and wrapped up in 2005, I moved out of the. Of our little strip mall office into the location where we had all the records and where the investigators were operating out of. And I was out of my office for almost two years, from beginning of 2005 to the end of 2006. And one of the things I was doing was probably working seven days a week. And so on Saturday and Sunday, I would get up at 4 o' clock in the morning, go to the office so I could get in six to eight hours and then have time to. And then, you know, on Sunday I would go home and get ready and go to church with the family. So it was a matter of adjusting my lifestyle to try to fit everything in. And that was a real challenge. That was. I know there was prayer involved there. I also, I was, I do this all the time praying for God to give me strength to do what was necessary, to go places that were uncomfortable to me. So that's kind of a constant where, you know, I was praying. I'm uncomfortable doing this.

Yeah.

And so I prayed for, about beforehand I prayed God help me through this. This is uncomfortable, but I feel like this is what you want me to do, to participate in this and just to speak about my experiences. So help me through this.

Yeah, I love it. You're currently the Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia and again I mentioned it before, but if you looked at LinkedIn, your career trajectory is crazy. It's promotion after promotion after promotion. This is called the called mastery. I believe that if we believe our work marriage to God, we should care about doing it really, really well. Clearly you're doing your work really, really well. What have you found to be the keys to really honing your craft, Rick, and getting better at what you do vocationally?

If you've got the right motivation for what you do, then you're able to focus on doing the work work and doing the right thing. And if you know you're doing what God wants you to do, you get the stamina to go the extra mile. So those are the things that I think my faith has helped me. Yeah. In my profession.

That's good. I always love asking world class performers across a bunch of different locations what their typical day looks like. So for you, moment you wake up, moment you go to bed today, what is a typical day, day in the life of Rick Mount Castle look like?

Well, first of all, Jordan, I don't know that I'm a world class performer.

I knew you were going to say that.

There are, you know, I'm not a judge, I'm not, you know, huge law firm running a government agency or any of that. And I'm also at the tail end of my career. You know, I'm at the point where I've already retired from one job and I'm probably going to retire soon from another job. But my day now looks quite a bit different from what it did when I was as working at the U.S. attorney's office.

Well, let's talk about that. That'd be fun. What did typical day look like during this period of time that we've been talking about?

Yeah, it was up at, you know, early. I usually got to work at 7:30 in the morning. So up early. And unlike a lot of your guests, especially the ones that have been Christians all their lives, you know, I rarely had time for a devotional in the morning. So I was probably like I was just a normal guy, you know, I'm just trying to make it through the day. I'm trying to get to work and I have all these things on my to do list and I bang them out now, fortunately, during my career with the U.S. attorney's office, especially with the Purdue case, I was with a number of other Christians, which is kind of unusual in law enforcement, government law enforcement field. So there were, you know, two or three people that I worked closely with that were Christians. And so part of our discussion oftentimes would be about God and hey, why do you think such and such happened? And had to be God had to be involved.

And so that's so interesting. Yeah, that's such a rare experience that doesn't happen.

Yeah, it does not happen from what I could tell. But that was. I think God knew that I needed that support. And so that kind of conversation took the place of sitting down, spending 15 minutes, a half an hour going through a devotional and yeah, so we had, I think we had basically conversational devotionals.

Yeah, that's so interesting.

On a regular basis. And my work would go till 6, 7, 8 o' clock at night. My wife, in the beginning I would call and say, hey, I'm going to be home in an hour. And after a period of time when I called, she said, okay, you're not going to be home for two or three hours. I got it. Right, right. Yeah.

She learned how to interpret.

Right, Exactly. And then, you know, it's home and hey, I'm getting up early tomorrow. I'm going to got to go to bed early. You know, that was it. No, more recently, like in the last few years, you know, I've tried to spend more time in the Word. Actually, I do a one year read the whole Bible.

Oh, yeah.

Through Bible Gateway. Yeah.

All right, Rick, three questions I love to wrap up every conversation with. Number one, in general, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?

So, Jordan, I am just an average guy whose years of work, where I go to work and read all the time.

Yeah.

I didn't find time to read outside of work. But what I do love is music. Okay. And in particular, I really love reggae music. Interesting. And once I became a Christian, I discovered a number of gospel reggae artists.

Interesting.

And one of the artists who I have given away CDs of is a lady named Avion Blackman who is the lead singer and bass player for this gospel reggae group called Christopher.

This is amazing. This is the best answer to this question ever. This is so good.

I told you at the beginning I was not. I know, I was just an average guy, you know, and like I said earlier, I want to learn as much as I can from the Bible and just Fitting that time in is about all the time. Read a lot of the other authors. So, yeah, but I do love music.

That's funny.

And I.

All right, so since you're a music guy, I gotta ask this. I was thinking about sharing the story before I decided not to, but maybe now's the time. Do you know the story about this musician named Sixto Rodriguez?

I don't.

Oh, my gosh. So I just watched this documentary film, the one best documentary at the Oscars, I don't know, about 10 years ago. The film's called Searching for Sugar Man. And stick with me, listeners. There's a poignant point, I think, at the end of the story. But Rick, you'll love this. So this guy, this Mexican American musician in Detroit in the late 60s and he records an album, big name producers, people who produce Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, like, whatever. And these producers, like, this is the guy. He is a better songwriter than Bob Dylan. He's going to be an enormous hit. So they release his record and not a soul buys it in the United States. Like they asked these guys in the interview, the producers, like, how many copies, like legitimately do you think they sold? Less than 100, like six copies. So somehow one of those few copies that was bought in the United States, somebody took on a plane with them to South Africa, okay, Way far away from Detroit, and they boot legged copies of this record. And for 30 years, this guy has become a phenomenon in South Africa, outselling the Beatles and Elvis and Bob Dylan and all these people. And all the while he had no earthly idea, he had no clue. He quit music. He went to go work as a construction worker. Loved his work, like, went to work, just did hard manual labor. And then 30 years later, somehow they track this guy down and they call him up, they call up Rodri, this artist named Rodriguez, like, hey, you're bigger than Elvis Presley in South Africa. Isn't this amazing?

Wow.

So he gets on a plane, he and his daughters, and they go to South Africa and he plays six shows, he tours, and they have footage of the show and the people are just screaming for 10 straight minutes when he comes on the stage and he plays this concert. And I was tearing up watching it, and I'm not one to tear up at movies, but here's why I think that's a beautiful picture of what we will experience in heaven, in eternity, when we are working for the things of the Lord. Most people are never going to see the work that our listeners do today. But even if there aren't 10,000 people in the audience. There's going to be an audience of one who's applauding with nail scarred hands. We make it to an eternity and have done the work of the Lord in this life. I was blown away by. You've got to go watch this, Rick. Now everybody else listening. It's an unbelievable story.

What's it called again, Jordan?

It's called Searching for Sugar Man. And you can find it. I watched on Amazon prime and maybe on Netflix, but it's great. All right, Rick, who do you most want to hear on this podcast?

Hey, you know, I'd love to hear Avione Blackman tell her story. And this is because she's the daughter of a guy named Garfield Blackman. She's from Trinidad Tobago. And Garfield Blackman, whose stage name is Lord Shorty, he invented soca music. He became very wealthy, but at the height of his career, he was searching for spiritual fulfillment and he decided he gave it all up to follow Christ. I read somewhere that he took his personal possessions, his jewelry and clothes and all that, and threw him in the sea.

Wow.

And took his family of 23 children, including Avion, to the jungle where they lived in this small house with no electricity or running water to study the Bible and to sing gospel music. Wow. Kind of where she comes from. And that's. To me, that's a fascinating story.

That's a pretty fascinating story. Yeah, of course.

What God, actually. And I can't quote the Bible, but you know the story of the guy that came to Jesus and said, what do I have to do?

Yeah.

To get to the kingdom of heaven and it's give away all your stuff.

Yeah.

And follow me. And he went away. Sad. And that's kind of. I can't imagine whether I would. I don't know that I would be able to do that. Yeah. I find it fascinating that, that her father was somebody that did that and. And now she has taken that experience growing up and is spreading the word through music. And I'd be fascinated.

Really. Good, we'll reach out to her. All right, last question real quickly. What's one thing from our conversation today, Rick, do you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?

Yeah. As a relatively new Christian, you know, at turning becoming a Christian at the age of 40, I think it's important to recognize and accept that God will want you to do uncomfortable, non conforming and unpopular things to accomplish his purpose and to show his glory.

Amen.

And we have to be prepared to do that.

Amen. So well said, Rick. I want to commend you for the exceptional redemptive work you have done and are doing in the world, for being committed to mastering your craft as a prosecutor so that the Lord can use you in such powerful ways. And thank you for being willing to share your story story with us today, my friend.

Thank you, Jordan, for having me.

Now, you have two new things to watch after this episode. Gotta watch Searching for Sugar man, and you gotta watch Dopesick. Seriously, though, watching Dopesick, I just think it's one of the most beautiful pictures of how God uses you and me in every square inch of creation, working outside the four walls of the local church to accomplish his purposes, to make this world look more like the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Thank you guys so much for tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.