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Pinal County mom turns her work hunting bail jumpers into reality TV show
Lynh Bui
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 9, 2007 12:00 AM
Sandra Scott says she looks like "every other blond-haired, blue-eyed soccer mom out there."
And in some ways she is: Scott lays out ground rules before her teenage daughter heads out on a date, cooks family dinners and enjoys quiet nights at home with her husband.
But there is more to this 41-year-old mom than her pink, sparkly lipstick and home in the suburbs of Pinal County reveal.
Scott was once a stripper, a wrestler, an adult-film star and a producer.
Now she's a bounty hunter with her own reality television show.
Wife, Mom, Bounty Hunter, which airs on WE tv, follows Scott as she juggles her personal life with her job of hunting down "skips" - criminals who jump bail.
As a private investigator and owner of Old West Bail Bonds in Florence, Scott said, "I can go from hunting the scum of the earth to my daughter's dance recitals."
Showbiz to hunting
After Scott's first marriage ended, her ex-husband didn't pay child support, she said. So she spent years tracking him and his assets, developing her investigative skills at the same time.
"This was all before the Internet," Scott pointed out.
Then about 10 years ago, Scott, who has mostly worked in the entertainment industry, realized that her "age was creeping up there."
"I realized I would have to take my life in a different direction."
That is when a talk with her stepfather, a police officer in a family of many police officers, gave her the idea of translating the skills that she learned from tracking her ex-husband into a profession.
Scott then enrolled in classes at the Nick Harris Detectives Academy, one of the oldest investigative schools in the nation.
That is where she learned to be a private investigator and where her interest in bounty hunting was piqued.
In 2004, she found a niche in the male-dominated profession.
She was able to go undercover and get closer to the people she was tracking because she looked more unassuming than the typical bounty hunter.
Just another day
The California native moved with her family to Pinal County less than two years ago.
With a 100 percent capture rate, Scott travels all over the Valley tracking people who skip bail.
One of her most satisfying hunts took place recently in Mesa when she was tracking Robert Maxwell, a former military operations agent. It was all caught on tape and turned into the sixth episode of her show.
"He was trained to hide and survive. He was good," Scott said. "But not good enough."
After spending time at an arcade with her youngest daughter, she started tracking Maxwell. He was wanted in two counties on charges of aggravated DUI and assaulting a police officer.
After seven days of hunting, she and her team found him at a Mesa grocery store. Scott said her usual investigations take three or four days.
He skipped out on a $15,000 bond from Scott's store, and if she didn't capture him, she would have had to pay for it.
"Normally when I arrest people, I'm really calm," she said.
But when Scott's team nabbed Maxwell, she had a few choice expletives to let him know he could have cost Scott her bail-bond business.
"I took that personally," she said.
A softer side
Scott deals with bad guys and keeps a gun and bulletproof vest in her car.
But she's more than a gritty crime fighter.
When her mother calls her on the phone, she answers, "Hi, Mommy."
She adores her children - 16-year-old Sabree and 6-year-old Ever-Skye - and calls her husband, Ron, her best friend.
She's a sucker for kids. Tears well in her eyes and she gets goosebumps when she talks about what she has seen on the job.
"I see a lot of hopelessness," she said. "What kills me the most are the kids. I see so many kids in filthy, rotten, drug-infested, roach-infested homes running around (in) diapers that look like they haven't been changed in two days. It breaks my heart."
Despite the cameras and the fame, Scott said she will continue bounty hunting for as long as possible. And she has a few reasons why she thinks she'll have continued success.
"I love the thrill of the hunt," she said. "I have the goods. I'm fearless."
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I'm sure most of what's said and done on the show is far fetched and exagerated, if history is any indication then the average uninformed American public will love it and she will make money, after all making money is what people in any business are trying to do, my only concern is that she comes accross as a spokesperson for the recovery biz and she is not a true representation of what most bonds people and recovery agents are like, however, I doubt she can cause much more damage than Dog already has, much of the public now looks at bounty hunters in the same light as guests on the Jerry Springer show.