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When Jewel took the stage during her Not Alone Summit at the Wynn Las Vegas on Nov. 10, she discussed mental health, creativity and resilience. However, the audience didn’t expect to hear her unravel one of the most bizarre, dangerous and downright cinematic stories of her life. It’s a story she first told nearly two decades ago at a concert, and one she revisited last month with the clarity of hindsight and the humor of someone who survived it.
It all began in summer 1994, when 20-year-old Jewel — then a rising songwriter — and her collaborator, singer-songwriter and guitarist Steve Poltz, took a week off to write music in Mexico. She had been a barista at Java Joe’s coffee shop near San Diego. He’d been a singer playing gigs in The Rugburns with a sore throat that Jewel once made tea for late at night. They’d become friends, sang together and found themselves with synchronized downtime.
Luther Redd
Jewel didn’t want to drive because touring meant endless highways, but Poltz talked her into it. What was supposed to be a three-hour drive turned into 15 hours lost on dusty back roads until they stumbled upon a nearly abandoned patch of Rosarito in Baja, Mexico, with three plywood shacks by the Sea of Cortez. They broke in (Poltz insisted to PEOPLE it “wasn’t really breaking in”), watched the sun fall over paradise and noticed — without suspicion — that the town seemed completely deserted.
“It was dangerous, it was kind of foggy,” Poltz added. “And I remember the moon was out and we just kept going and there was nobody around. It was like really dark.”
The next afternoon, while writing songs on the sand at the beach, four armed men in uniforms appeared. Their shirts read “Federales.”
“What are you guys doing here?” the police asked. Jewel, all innocence and candor, replied, “Watching the empty town.” Then, she and Poltz asked the most unintentionally life-altering question possible: “Do you know where we can get a boat to go whale watching?”
“We have a boat,” they said. “Come with us.”
“So we’re really smart,” Jewel recalled in Las Vegas with a laugh. “So we did it. We get in the little boat. It’s nothing fancy, just a little skiff with two wooden benches. They give me some binoculars and we’re looking for whales, and I think the police are looking for whales.”
She turned to one of the officers and asked what brought them there. “‘We’re on a drug bust,’” he told her.
She stared at him, stunned. “‘Now?’”
“Sí,” he replied.
“Is it dangerous?” she asked, her voice tight with fear.
“Sí,” the officer repeated.
Luther Redd
Without hesitation, the officer lifted his shirt, revealing healed bullet-hole scars across his abdomen. Jewel realized that while she was scanning for whales, the police were scanning for smugglers to immediately arrest.
Jewel soon discovered the wooden bench she sat on doubled as a storage unit for automatic weapons on the boat.
“When I realized we were out on this boat, with these police guys, that was when I first felt scared because I was looking at their guns and I was thinking, man… they could kill us,” Holtz exclusively told PEOPLE, laughing. “That was when the police said, ‘Would you like some guns like AK-47s and bulletproof vests?’ It was like Miami Vice or something.” But Jewel wasn’t interested. “No, gracias,” she told them.
Every boat that passed had to radio in and identify itself. One didn’t, and instead of slowing down, it gunned the engine. “Pretty soon we’re in a high-speed chase on the water — on my day off,” Jewel deadpanned.
When the smugglers’ boat finally slammed into the sand, four men jumped out and bolted for the trees. The federales leapt out and tackled them. From the skiff, Jewel prayed as the officers cuffed the men, allegedly roughed one up, and eventually coerced him into revealing where the stash was.
Luther Redd
Under a large rock, thousands of pounds of marijuana wrapped in Saran Wrap were stuffed in potato sacks. Jewel didn’t want to follow — the situation was already surreal and increasingly terrifying —but Poltz insisted; she didn’t want to sit in the boat alone. They trailed the officers through the sand. The federales, who had evacuated the village because the operation was so dangerous, were ecstatic; they’d been staked out for weeks.
The officers loaded the confiscated haul with the help of the temporarily un-handcuffed smugglers and Poltz, who was way in way over his head.
“We get all the drugs loaded and the federales are stoked,” Jewel told the Vegas summit audience. “They’re high-fiving. ‘Jewel, you’re like a good-luck charm! There’s gonna be a party tonight. Do you want to come?’ they asked. ‘I was like, ‘Oh, I bet there is. Just put some in the fire and stand downwind.’ ”
Through it all, she was terrified they’d be framed. “I was really paranoid we were gonna end up in a Tijuana prison. I’d spend the rest of my life defending Steve’s honor because he was really pretty,” she giggled.
Back on shore, Poltz insisted they help unload. When they did, a federale approached him with gratitude and temptation. “Steve, you’ve been so helpful. Would you like some?” “‘Okay,’ ” Steve said, despite Jewel’s frantic pleas of “Don’t.”
The officer slit open a brick of marijuana with a hunting knife and held it out as if it were communion. Poltz later described it as “the clouds parting and angels singing.” A law enforcement officer was practically begging him to take drugs. He took some. Then more. Jewel panicked, certain this was the moment they would be thrown into jail forever. They ultimately gave the marijuana to Rosa, a 60-year-old cook who was making spaghetti on the beach for a Mormon youth group and said she needed it for her arthritis.
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Then came the moment that would later live on the internet. A suburban rolled up out of nowhere after being called in by the police, and the officers began loading it with the seized drugs. Someone snapped what would become the infamous drug-bust photo: Jewel holding an AR-15, Poltz grinning beside her with a kilo of marijuana, both of them smiling alongside the officers. The two stayed a few more days, writing music together. One song, “Food Stamp Love,” was forgettable. The other became “You Were Meant for Me,” released on her 1995 debut album Pieces of You, which she sang for the adoring crowd.
At the Summit, Jewel reframed the story for PEOPLE exclusively as not just an absurd ’90s misadventure, but as a reminder of how unprepared she once felt navigating fame, responsibility and her own wellbeing. “It was such a crazy, weird random adventure, I feel like only in the ’90s,” Jewel said, chuckling.
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“But being a musician is a really hard job for mental health,” she continued. “It’s why so many musicians were addicts and we kind of glorified them being addicts, but it’s not sustainable. And so for me, when I took a step back after my second album, mental health breaks weren’t a thing. You know, I was made fun of, told was all the things and I knew it was a powerful decision and it was a decision for my happiness.”
“And so I see so many musicians here that are all being really honest about their mental health with wanting their careers to work for them,” Jewel said. “I just am really proud of all musicians that showed up to and here even today. Music was my medicine and I love to see that it’s medicine for other people. If my song can help anyone, it’s a really beautiful thing.”
The story still sounds wild. But Jewel is now a grounded and reflective artist, committed to helping other creatives survive the very machine she once stepped back from. Maybe that is the real point: not the federales or the thousand pounds of pot or the AR-15s, but the fact that she lived through all of it — long enough to make sense of it, laugh about it and to use her experiences to help others heal.
If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
