3:59

fortune tellers. And while

4:02

Paulina told me about her family and their

4:04

history, she also seemed

4:06

to be painting herself as those very stereotypes.

4:09

She seemed to want to shock me to get me to pay

4:11

attention. Like, the

4:13

rule is no stealing, only scamming.

4:17

Because people give you stuff so it's not considered

4:19

stealing. Paulina

4:21

seemed to be telling me, yes, fortune-telling

4:24

is a scam. I am

4:26

a scam artist, you know, born and bred.

4:29

That's

4:29

what I'm telling you. I just looked

4:32

at her like, what? You

4:34

know, you're sitting here with a reporter. Are you

4:36

turning yourself in? I didn't know what

4:39

to think. And honestly, it didn't

4:41

seem like Paulina did either. Gypsies

4:43

have a bad rep and

4:46

they should, I think. I don't know.

4:48

Not all of them. And then, Paulina

4:50

said, she had decided to leave.

4:53

Because when I left, I had no education,

4:56

I had two kids, no

4:59

driver's license, okay, no car.

5:01

You know what I'm saying? I had nothing. Nothing,

5:03

nothing, nothing.

5:05

The franticness in Paulina's voice suddenly

5:07

made sense. The unfiltered

5:09

panic and blurting out extreme claims.

5:13

It was the sound of someone stepping

5:15

out of one world and into another,

5:17

questioning everything she's ever learned.

5:20

And this was certainly part of why Paulina

5:22

said she had come to me. But

5:24

it wasn't just to tell her life story.

5:26

The real reason Paulina reached out to me

5:29

was, she needed help.

5:31

Paulina has two

5:33

little girls. And when she left her

5:35

community, she was at risk of losing

5:37

them. To fight to keep

5:40

her daughters, Paulina did the number one thing

5:42

people in her culture were taught not to

5:44

do.

5:45

She turned to the outside world.

5:47

She took her case to the American legal system.

5:50

And her custody hearing was coming soon.

5:54

By leaving her community, going to the courts

5:56

and talking to the press, Paulina was

5:58

opening up her life to a world of

5:59

of scrutiny and doubt.

6:01

Lots of things

6:04

are sad in the heat of a fight

6:08

to protect and to not lose

6:10

your children.

6:11

It's hard to me to support you if I don't know what the

6:13

f*** you're doing. Paulina was a diamond. Now

6:16

she's just a stone.

6:18

But Paulina and I kept talking. For

6:21

years. As Paulina and I got

6:23

to know each other, we peeled back layer

6:25

after layer together. Both of us

6:27

trying to get to the actual truth beneath

6:30

the surface.

6:31

To the place beyond the resentment and the

6:33

stereotypes. You

6:36

have to be exclusionist

6:38

in order to preserve identity.

6:43

You have to close ranks to

6:46

prevent infiltration

6:48

from outside. One

6:51

time during a session, she did

6:53

a healing bowl and it put

6:55

me in a complete trance. I

6:58

opened my eyes and the whole room

7:00

was like a white cloud and I could barely

7:03

see her. What we offer

7:05

is a spiritual

7:08

practice and

7:10

a spiritual, dare

7:14

I say it, business, right? Because

7:19

it's true of any community, of any

7:21

identity, that there are stereotypes

7:24

and there are truths. And

7:26

while sometimes they can overlap in superficial

7:29

ways, the whole and deep

7:31

story is so much richer and

7:33

more complicated than we could have ever predicted.

7:36

It's weird actually how I went from

7:39

loving it to absolutely hating

7:41

it and now missing it.

7:43

I'm Faith Pinew

7:45

from the Los Angeles Times. This is

7:47

FOUR-TOLED, coming April 11th. Listen

7:50

and follow FOUR-TOLED at LATimes.com

7:53

slash FOUR-TOLED or wherever you get

7:55

your podcasts. That's LATimes.com

7:58

slash FOUR-TOLED. you