Full Transcript
Hey, Scamander listeners. It's Charlie Webster here. Thank you so much for all your incredible support. You truly inspired me on this journey for my new show, and I wanted to share it with you personally. I'm so excited to bring you Unicorn Girl. This one is a wild ride, even explaining it feels impossible, but here goes. Candice is a woman who seemed to have it all. Multi-million dollar businesses, a global non-profit changing lives, and a magical presence. A real life unicorn. But one manic summer, things start to fall apart. It's a story full of moral complexities, fantastical illusions, and an intimate tale of friendships, purpose, and the deep human desire to feel wanted and needed. Nothing is quite as it seems. It will bend your mind like nothing else, and from where it starts, you won't quite. I might believe where it ends up. Like Scamander. Like Scamander, I found myself pulled inside this world, walking alongside the people whose lives would change forever questioning everything, questioning everything, even the truth itself. Even the truth itself. Episode one is here and a link to the show is in the notes. New episodes are available on Mondays and Apple TV plus subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple podcasts. You open your phone, scroll through socials, and there she is again. The woman who makes life look effortless. Perfect job, perfect kids, perfect hair. You can't look away, even though you know no one's life is this perfect. 4.40am, drop off eldest at airport, soccer tournament. 6.55am, snuggles with youngest before school. If you open the stories of an Instagram account called One Fierce Mama, you'd think it was true. Women can have it all. 9.30am, girls are on mine, med spa training. Careful with the Botox needle. 12.45, school pickup for youngest. This is Candice Rivera, also known as One Fierce Mama, updating her Instagram followers with everything that happens in just one day of her life. 1.56, check safe house, take stock of donations. 3.51, phone rings, it's a survivor. She's six months sober. So proud of her. Candice is a mother of two boys, a nurse, owner of several multi-million dollar businesses, CEO and founder of an anti-human trafficking organization. Hashtag girl boss. 4.28, another survivor call. Don't give up. We'll get you help tonight. 6.15pm, check mail, letter with fancy seal. It's Congressman Owens. Thank you, Candice, for all you do. She's also on a United Nations task force. 7.18, working on UN Global Compact. A mother of two boys, a nurse, owner of several multi-million dollar businesses. A mom of two dogs. 8.06, take dogs for a walk. World changer, history maker, hell shaker. 11.15pm, 40 emails and 100 texts to reply to. 12.08am, finally, sleep. And good person. The kind of person who can have it all. Like many of us, Candice was told she couldn't. And she was determined to prove everyone wrong. As I've been told this year, a single mom can't do all that and still be a good mom. You're not qualified. There's no way that could be real. You're fake. This is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast. Produced by Seven Hills. Hosted and executive produced by me, Charlie Webster. This is a story about a woman named Candice. Who is a CEO, founder and global advocate. But I'll let her tell you about herself. My name is Candice Rivera and I am an anti-trafficking abolitionist. I have a medical career and worked in trauma and emergency med, which is predominantly male. This is actually my 11th. Next year will be my 12th. So I'm almost in my 12th year of working in the anti-trafficking field. I'm trying to run multiple companies, save the world and be a killer rockstar mom in really high heels. I'm proud of being able to raise kids and house companies. My goal was to have seven companies that were seven. I had seven figures running before 40. We're two away. Damn! I knew I liked you. And I'm proud of that. That's Candice, chatting on a couple of podcasts and even giving a keynote speech at a university. Not bad for someone who was a stay-at-home mom only a few years ago. In fact, it's almost entirely unbelievable. That's a bit of a theme when it comes to Candice Rivera. But before you start to pass judgment, let me tell you right up front. There's a lot more truth to this story than you might think. Investigating Candice has been a lot. And you are going to meet many people along the way. So we can give you the full picture of who Candice really is. As you listen and start to shake your head, wondering how everything fits together. Know that that's exactly what we've been doing this whole time. If you're up at 2 a.m. with more questions than answers, you're in good company. Give me a call. I'll be awake. We're on this journey together. But I promise you, by the end of the series, this puzzle comes together. First, here's something that is 100% true. Candice grew up in Colorado Springs, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. She moved to the suburbs of Utah at 19, when she married a guy called Patrick Laird. Over the next 15 years, Candice made quite a name for herself. Our story starts in 2015. When Candice was approaching 30. At that time, Candice went by her married name, Candice Laird. That's where all this begins. And in a book group. But not one where you get together in person on the weekends. This one was on Facebook. My name's Jen Hatmaker. I live just outside Austin, Texas. I've lived here for 25 years. And I've got five grown kids. And I'm an author and a podcaster and a friend and a sister. New York Times bestseller. Jen Hatmaker put the group together to help her promote her new book. The book was written for women, calling them to live an authentic life full of love. It was called For the Love. And so that's what the book group was called too. We're gearing up to release it. There's all these essentially volunteers kind of in your social media followers. We put out just on socials. We're going to have a volunteer launch team. We've got five people. We've got 500 spots. We created a private Facebook group. That was our hub. They gave us an advanced release copy before they were going to hit the shelves. That's Brandy, a family therapist living in California, who was one of the 500 selected. And we had to just read them and then just start pulling our favorite parts, like comments, quotes, you know, and just start posting about it and telling friends. And then Jen's publishers, they took... All of us who wrote about the book, like reviews, and then they picked like the top 20 or whatever. So we're all published in the books as like our, you know, our reviews. And so I have it and I'm in the first one. And it was just like so much excitement. And then at one point it kind of started getting real and people would say, hey, can you just pray for my kid who got suspended yesterday and here's what happened. And then people would just share life. And so we really got to know the hard stuff because it's a closed group and it's a private group. So nobody in the real world. Nobody in the real world would see them posting this stuff. But it was like, help, my marriage is failing. Help, my son just got diagnosed with this heart condition. You know, like it was just real life. And it felt, I mean, we were all doing life with each other. And it sounds so, I'm sure to anyone listening who's like, oh, they were internet friends. But it was like more than that. This like quasi-exclusive closed Facebook group sort of took on a life of its own. This is Kimberly, a marketing professional. From Tennessee. It was like a really, really unique experience. We bought a car for a girl who was in the foster system who was aging out. Like we did a lot of really good altruistic things for one another and for the greater good. It was a really wonderful community. Not even Jen Hatmaker could believe how closed the women in the group became. It was nonstop activity on the Facebook page. Like, unless it was your full-time job, nobody could keep up with it all. There was so much on the daily. We called ourselves the 500 because 5,000 people applied. 500 were accepted. So those 500 felt really special. That's speech therapist Annalise. Even though these 500 people lived all over the country, there was quickly just like a closeness about us. So that's where I first met Candice kind of virtually before we met in person. Candice was a prolific. She was a prolific poster in the For the Love group. Everyone knew what each person's thing was. Candice's was these funny, embarrassing stories. A lot of it was almost like stream of consciousness explaining her thoughts and feelings as she's going through this experience. And then there's always some funny little one-liner in there and some sense of drama. Dear Safe Place, Well, I have this boob, the one on the left. It has been abnormally sweaty and now has a dimpling. Like a second. I powder it, deodorize it, bleach it, oxyclean it. It is still there. So jokingly, Hubs and I nicknamed it Stinky Boob. That's one of Candice's many posts in the For the Love book group. She often refers to them as her sisters or tribe. Throughout this series, you will hear Candice's social posts. They are her actual posts taken directly from her social media and are read by Emmy Drury. She describes Candice as a woman. She describes what's happening so that you feel like you truly are there or can see what she's doing and why she's doing it. A lot of Candice's things were self-deprecating and fairly funny scenarios about like being in a strange place, spending the night. And she had some anxiety about pooping in public. But they were hilarious stories. I'm staying at my sister-in-law's house for five days. Five days, y'all. And their bathroom is right in the middle of the hallway next to the kitchen, living, and dining rooms. Where all 35 of my husband's family members stay, eat, play cards. I am dying. I have poop fright. The sun goes down on day number three. Thin-walled bathroom. You have won today. We will meet again. Dear friends, pray for day four. I may be on the verge of death. Love, you're oversharing. For the love of God. For the love of sister. Hashtag, for the love of number two. The For the Love Women came from all corners of the United States, from California to the Carolinas. But distance didn't matter. The group got close almost instantly. It became a support and sounding board for all its members, getting people out of bad relationships, crowdsourcing resources, or just being a safe place for those who needed it. They even made their own. For the love merch. Every Saturday morning, you could be guaranteed that you would be laughing because everybody shares the memes that they have been collecting for the last week. So it has been like a really cool oasis, but also like a little land of crazy town too. Despite only knowing each other through posts and comments, the For the Love tribe became extremely close. And the book that brought them together. Hadn't even been released yet. It was time to take things to the next level. An in-person meetup. We all went to Texas to Jen Hatmaker's house and we had a huge party to launch these books. For the first time, they would get to be with each other and see the real person behind the profile picture. Jen Hatmaker offered up her farmhouse in Austin, Texas for a celebration of the book's release. It was such a... An extraordinary experience communally that I got the harebrained idea to invite them all to my house. All 500 of them. Like, would anybody want to come to my house and have a party together? And it was pandemonium, as you might imagine. Like 350 of them came. They flew in from all over the United States. And we had a party in my backyard. And... It was just a really special... Like, that'll be a real special season for me, probably forever. That was the first time I'd ever traveled by myself. For Erin, a midwife from Minnesota, further love ignited something in her that she'd never felt before. I went and stayed in a hotel with people I'd never met before. And my husband's like, this is a little bit crazy. I'm okay with it, but this is definitely not you at all. So I'm sharing a bed. I'm sharing a bed. I'm sharing a bed with somebody I've never met before. It was kind of wild. It was like seeing family that you hadn't seen in a really long time, even though we'd never met. Like, we felt like we knew each other. Because we'd spent the last nine months talking almost every day. Amongst the hugging and screaming, the free desserts and taco trucks, there was one person everyone was drawn to. The unicorn of the group, Candice. I met Candice there. She's very personal. She's very personable, hilarious. Just kind of like a people magnet. She was like the sun. Everybody just was drawn to her. She brought this unicorn head that she would wear. So that became the joke. And then it was, she's a one of a kind. She's a unicorn type thing. It started with the mask that she wore. Because it was so ridiculous. Like, it came out of nowhere. Candice was a unicorn. She was a unicorn in more ways than one. She turned up to the party wearing a unicorn mask. And not the kind of cardboard one you'd make at school. It was a full rubber head. You know, that covers your entire face and neck that you might wear to a Halloween party. It had big blue eyes, huge teeth, and a gigantic horn on top. The other night I told you that I bought something in the middle of the night that was really ridiculous. And it came in. And I love it. It is the unicorn head. Those of you who did not believe me, the proof is in the horn. This is Candice unpacking her newly arrived unicorn mask in a video she posted on Facebook. Go get yourself a unicorn head. Brandy remembers the unicorn head too. There was a Starbucks drink that came out called the unicorn. And Candice, she filmed herself. Dressed as a unicorn going through the Starbucks drive-thru and ordering a unicorn drink. And it was like a hidden camera. And the barista was like cracking up laughing. And it like blew up. It was shared a gajillion times. And I could not stop laughing. It was so funny. This girl is so funny. I love her. She was this kind of bright, shiny person that everyone knew these funny little things about her. So she just was a unicorn, Candice. That's who she was. After a weekend of giggles, heartfelt conversations, and sightseeing around Austin, For the Love hit the shelves and successfully made the New York Times bestsellers list. But that was not the end of the For the Love group. It had become something so much more than a book group. The regular posting continued, and Candice was front and center. She was almost an oversharer. There were times she talked about, like, her intimate things with her husband. She just would say, like, make sure you keep things spicy in your marriage and stuff. I remember she posted a picture of, like, a bow outfit to buy so that you could be unwrapped for Christmas. She's like, here, here's the link to buy this bow. Your husband will love it. We all thought it was kind of funny. There was a whipped cream chocolate. An encounter with her husband that we heard all about. I felt like I knew her itinerary for the night sometimes with her husband. Because we would know beforehand that she had gone to the store and gotten the whipped cream and the chocolate. And then afterward, hear that there was a stain on something. Or she had these kind of wild misadventures that she told us a lot of details about. Candice was known as the fun-loving unicorn of the group. But late in 2016, Candice was a fan of the group. In 2016, there was an unexpected turn in Candice's life. The tone of her posts shifted. She turned to the group for advice about something she discovered on her husband Patrick's phone. She was having some trouble with her husband. Okay, ladies, I know this is a safe place, and I'm going to bare my soul a little bit. The last two days, I have literally been sick to my stomach and lightheaded. I was going through his work phone. I never do that. Haven't we all done something like that? Something like that. At some point, the temptation of seeing your partner's phone calling you to look at it, and you just can't help yourself. You hope you won't find something, but deep down, you're pretty sure you will. What is it that people say? If you go looking for something, you will find it. I sent him a dirty picture and told him to hurry home so we could have crazy sex. And I wanted to make sure that picture was deleted so that no one else saw that. But then I found this random text log. There's no name attached to it, and it suspiciously just started the day before. This is what Candice was posting to the For the Love group. Alongside, it was a picture of a phone with the messages coming from a number with a Salt Lake City area code. But that wasn't saved in the contacts. It said, The response? Love you too. Annalise was watching it all unfold. I just got the feeling that he was just kind of slimy, kind of skeezy, that he had this affair. She was the mom who was working so hard taking care of the kids, and he was, you know, just taking care of himself. We've been married for 11 years. Maybe if I didn't feel so fragile, I wouldn't be so insecure about this text, but I just don't know what to think. Can I please have a sounding board here and some advice and a whole lot of prayer? The For the Love women rallied around. The For the Love women rallied around Candice with hundreds of comments. Here's the thing. It's not you. You can't blame yourself. You don't need to convince us you were a good wife or person. You shouldn't have to do that with him either. I am sick for you. Breathe in. Breathe out. One minute at a time. You are so loved. You have a tribe here to help you. We aren't going anywhere. It became apparent that things weren't as they first seemed for Candice at home. Life was getting harder. Especially when she took a job as a nurse practitioner working nights. And then there was another big blow to the marriage. But this time, it was Candice's fault. She got into a really big fight with Patrick. She used his investments to pay off her nurse practitioner school. Candice told the group that she took money out of her husband Patrick's 401k, which is a private investment account in the U.S. for retirement, like a private pension. I wish I could have that. I withdrew a large sum of money from his 401k. I did it to pay for a large school bill that I know will eat us up monthly. So I just wanted to get rid of it. This isn't the first time I've made a dumb money mistake by not paying attention to something. Candice handled the family's finances, and she was far from perfect at it. But this was much bigger than any of the mistakes she'd made before. I realized I basically took all of his money that could have been earning a large interest. She kept posting in the For the Love group, reaching out for support and reassurance from her friends, as her marriage was starting to break down over this 401k money mistake. He was saying that I took his money without his permission, and that is stealing. I think he just feels like he's out a ton of money, when really it paid our, my school debt. It made sense. Like, yes, you're going to make more money if you pay this off now. That was not how Patrick saw it. The marriage was falling apart. Les and I was hard. We slept in separate bedrooms, no words all evening. She talked a lot about how Patrick was this terrible person. My impression of him was that he was kind of emotionally abusive. And she told me about how she was afraid to leave her kids with Patrick. Candice felt like she couldn't stay in the house any longer. She turned to the For the Love group for help. Erin answered the call, providing a safe space 18 hours' drive away in Minnesota. She came up here because she was running from Patrick. So she wanted a safe place to stay. And he didn't know she knew anybody in Minnesota, so she came here. I'm so thankful for a place to drive to and take the kids for fun. They will never know we were fleeing their dad. But Candice couldn't stay with Erin forever. Eventually, she had to return home to Utah. When she got there, Patrick was waiting. He said he wanted a divorce because he felt betrayed and like I stole something from him. I don't even know what to say, Tribe. I'm just at a loss for words. I'm so hurt and broken, and I love him and don't want a divorce. I never met Patrick in person, but I just knew what she told us of him. The For the Love book group. Only knew Candice's husband, Patrick, from what she told them about him. They all had a strong picture of what he was like, even though they'd never met him. The ladies in the book group were a safe place for her online. But Candice needed a community a little closer to home, especially with two boys under 10. Her youngest was only three. She found out about a group called Mops. Mops is a non-denominational Christian program for mothers of preschoolers. It's a group of women who come together who have children five and younger. And it's primarily meant to help women who have babies. Because everybody knows that those first couple years of babies is really tough. The storyline about her husband Patrick made its way to Mops, too. Patrick was the jerk that was Candice's husband. I know nothing about Patrick because he was the jerk. This is Lacey. Lacey joined Mops after she gave birth to her first child, and she met Candice there. I met Candice at Mops. You drop off your kids and get to visit and meet with other moms in the same life as you. And you could talk all things breastfeeding or formula or, you know, who's your doctor, and just kind of get a reprieve from being a mom. It was everything I needed. I really struggled with postpartum my first kid. I had my first when I was 29, which is old for Utah. Old for Utah. I really needed something. I had worked up until I had my first baby. And so getting me out of the house was really important at the time. When Lacey got to Mops, Candice had already worked her way up to the leadership team. She had it all, you know. People liked her. The church loved her. She always had her hand in everything. So, like, why wouldn't you want to be that? Especially as a new mom, it was everything I wanted to be. Yeah. Glamorous, I guess, is what you could say. She has two boys. That was the whole basis of Mops, was you're there with your children. And Candice was known for this devastating story that she had her oldest son and then had a pregnancy. And October is Infancy Loss Awareness Month. And so every October, our Mops groups would do a meeting specifically for that to help the other moms in the group grieve for their miscarried babies. And so she would talk about herself. And she would bring in the picture that she had made with her angel twin girls in the picture with her family picture. So her life in Mops was, I had twin baby girls, but that's why I have boys now, because my girls are in heaven. Candice had a tattoo on her fingers, two dots and two arrows. She said her boys were the arrows pointed to the dots that represent her girls in heaven. Candice was very open. She spoke about it every October for Infancy Loss Awareness Month. I just remember the shine that she had on stage, just confidence, just more confidence than I'd ever seen anybody in my life have, but not in a way that was scary or I just was like, I want to know her. Like, who's that? I want to get to know who she is. She was on the PTA at the time, the parent teacher. She had an association with her school. She was very much involved in her kids' lives. She would always tell me she was doing soccer, carpool. She was always at the soccer field. She didn't work at the time because we were all stay-at-home moms, and that's why we were at Mops. She said she worked as a nurse at a hospital. This is Danielle. She had joined Mops to find community after moving to Utah for her husband's job. As far as Danielle knew, Candice wasn't a stay-at-home mom. She was actually a nurse. We were having a bunco night. Candice said that she couldn't come to it because she'd be working, because she worked a night shift at the hospital as a nurse, and she showed up to the event towards the end of it. She'd missed most of it, but we're about wrapping it up, and she shows up in scrubs and talks about, like, oh, I'm so glad we got, you know, you guys could all get together. And we do this for community. And then goes into talking about how she saved somebody's life. You know, like, this person came into the ER, and I was there to, like, you know, just basically just, like, holding their chest to stop the bleeding or, like, doing the contractions while we're bringing them back to it. Whatever it was, like, just on and on about, like, I saved a life and showed up in the scrubs to do it. When Danielle joined Mops, she didn't know anyone in town, but she quickly made friends with Lacey and Candice. We all really clicked from the start. Like, we all just... Really got along and had fun together. So Candice would always host me at her house. We'd have our leadership nights at her house, and we'd do sleepovers. So, you know, you've got, like, 12 adult women having sleepovers at Candice's house, and we'd rent, like, a big old projector in Candice's backyard and watch movies in the backyard. Danielle, Candice, and Lacey would soon become a foursome. Another woman, Patricia, joined Mops after she also moved for her husband's job. I had no one when I moved to Salt Lake City. So I was starting at Ground Zero. And the process that I learned by this being my third, and we usually moved every two years, was that I tended to find community with neighbors, and I tended to find community by going to a Mops program. Candice was very proactive about inviting everyone over to her house, and having mimosas, and inviting somebody there to do our nails, and creating fun. She'd also crack jokes, and sometimes they would kind of... push the boundary or whatever, but that was also refreshing in an environment like that. One night, we went to this piano bar, and, I mean, I don't think much of the time I wasn't laughing. I mean, we were... My face hurt. My sides hurt. We laughed so much. She's the life of a party. It didn't occur to me until we were driving home that no one else talked. There was six or so of us women. And generally... Generally speaking, if you get a group of women together, it's not one person talking with the rest of them captivated by the one. It's generally tons of talking by tons of different people. But this stood out to me the whole time Candice talked. The whole time. She told this elaborate story about somebody had stolen all of her pictures and created this dating profile, and was catfishing this very attractive fireman who decided that he was dating her. And she had to prove to the dating company that those were actually her pictures. And she had gotten the login, and she just kept making jokes and comments about how slutty this other version of herself was. And I remember thinking, part of the reason why this is such a one-sided experience is nobody else has a story that's this, for lack of better word, crazy and out there. And, I mean, there was no Me Too moment there. No one could go, "Oh, yeah. That happened to me the other day, too." As their friendship became stronger, Patricia, Danielle, and Lacey joined Candice on the Mops leadership team. Lacey planned all sorts of events with Candice for the Mops women. I would say the thing with Candice is, if she had an idea, we made it happen. One year, she wanted to do a circus-themed kickoff for Mops. We had, like, big events to help women get excited. She would go all out. It was always huge. Everything she planned was huge. Every meeting was huge. She just was very -- she was very driven. I mean, she'd show up for Mops meetings, and you have to say, like, our meetings were in the morning, so -- and it's with new moms. So all of us were in sweats and no makeup, right? Like, that was kind of the thing is, like, come as you are kind of thing. But she would show up in heels and jeans and rings and bracelets. And her hair was always down. And she was always flipping it. And just she always looked like she was ready to go downtown, which was kind of, like, for me, was hopeful. Like, oh, once I get my crap together, once I get out of this fog, I can be like that. But behind the glamorous exterior, Candice was also struggling with her own problems. She opened up to Patricia and the rest of her Mops foursome about her in-house life. And she told them about her impending divorce. She was in the process of getting a divorce from her husband. She was very preoccupied by what her next sexual relationship would look like. I just kept saying, I think if you find the right person, like, that stuff falls into place. And it was the event of her marriage falling apart that really inserted her into my life. And, you know, I offered to just sort of hear her story. And see if there was anything that I could point out to her that she wasn't seeing about the situation. And that's when she told me that he was really upset because she had stolen his 401k money to pay off her student debt. I kept asking. I don't understand. I don't understand the language within a marriage relationship about saying you stole. I thought it was your collected money. And what she had told me is that the financial advisor that they had had advised her to liquidate this and pay off the student debt that she had acquired getting her physician's assistant degree. Which all made sense when she posed it like that. However much Candice tried to explain taking her husband's 401k, it didn't matter. Her husband was firm. The divorce was officially going through. She confided in the For the Love group. A reminder, these are Candice's actual posts, read by Emmy Jury. Tribe, my heart is heavy. I'm getting divorced. Struggling. So many emotions. I love you all. I hate to be such a mess lately. I feel like I keep saying, "How could it get any worse?" And God's like, "Hold my beer." Lol. I love him, but he is getting a little cray. And we may need to have a chit chat. Candice was heartbroken. After living her life one way for over 12 years, suddenly she'd have to adjust to being a single mom and sharing custody of her kids. I found out I would not get the kids for Thanksgiving. My heart hurt. And I was worried how hard it would be to not have the boys the entire Thanksgiving break. But she now had some time and space to focus on herself and the things she loved to do. Candice had trained and worked as a nurse. And just as her life was getting flipped around by the divorce, an opportunity came up to give back in a huge way. A dear friend's brother asked if any medical professionals would be available to help with their international adoption. They are adopting two boys with severe medical deficits from Ukraine and Russia. For Lacey, it was confusing. She'd never heard that Candice was a nurse. I remember there was one moment where I'd overheard she was a nurse. And I thought it was strange. I overheard her talking about being a nurse and needing to go to the Ukraine to help children. And I thought it was weird because I thought, "I've known you for five years and you've never said you're a nurse." But then I thought, "But that makes sense. She's so helpful. She would make a good nurse." Because, you know, like, you know when you meet somebody who is a nurse, like, they kind of give off, like, that aura of nurse. So I didn't question it because I thought, "Well, that's weird she didn't say anything about being a nurse." But that makes sense. Candice was going to use her medical expertise and experience as a nurse to go over to Ukraine and escort two medically needy orphans on a plane to America where they're adoptive parents. Candice would oversee and administer any medical needs the boys had. It gave purpose to her first Thanksgiving without her own two boys. Danielle encouraged her to go. It was over Thanksgiving. And she didn't have the boys that holiday. So it was, like, her first Thanksgiving without her boys. And she's like, "They asked me to go. Maybe I should." And I was real, like, supportive. I was like, "You don't have your kids? Like, why not?" She was a nurse. I'm like, "Who better to go? Like, yeah, you should totally go help them." Danielle had her own experience with adopting three children. Candice FaceTimed her from Ukraine. One of the boys... Just wouldn't stop crying. And, you know... Because I'm an adoptive mom, I was like, "Of course he's gonna keep crying." Like, you have this idea of, like, "I've given this child a bath and warm clothes and a comfortable bed. That doesn't matter. That child just wants what they know." You know, and so I would explain that to her. I was like, "He just, like, everything is uncomfortable to him." And so I was... I'd stay on the phone with her for hours, like, just listening and telling her, like, "It's very normal. It's okay." Both boys were very unwell. And it was a struggle to get clearance for them to travel. I know they had to work really hard to get both those boys' clearance to come. And they were delayed, delayed, delayed. The Ukrainian government and officials who give you the clearance to go didn't want to clear these boys for going. And she fought for them. She's, like, not gonna back down. And she's going to push her way to get the answer she wants. They only got that clearance because Candice was there and wouldn't back down. Candice was fighting to get two boys out of Ukraine. But back home in Utah, there was a hearing to decide the custody arrangements for her own two boys. Candice thought she'd be back in time. But she was so delayed in Ukraine that she missed the court date. So she lost everything. She lost custody of her two boys and was ordered to leave the marital home she'd been living in since her husband filed for divorce. So she was awarded the house at the beginning of the divorce. Because Patrick had chosen to move out. And the judge said during court, "I am not going to award you a house that you chose to move out of." And that's very common here in Utah. So she had the house, but then she missed court. And he got everything. He took full custody and possession of the home. The order isn't signed yet. And of course, we have immediately put in a motion to set aside due to the whole "was in Ukraine and couldn't get home." Once she was back from Ukraine, Candice posted a long update to the For the Love group with a play-by-play of all that had happened since she left. Annalise from the book group was conflicted about the whole thing. I admired her for the work that she was doing. And it was really cool to know someone who was engaging in such meaningful work. But it was also confusing that it contradicted some of the other things she said were happening in her life. Why is she flying across the world to take care of these other children? When her own children are at risk of being with their dad at all times? And he's not a good person. I have a smaller group that I text with daily. We started texting about how we had just kind of questions or concerns or some skepticism. Well, what does she do in the medical field anyway? We didn't actually know. Maybe she alluded she was a nurse. Did we know she was actually a nurse? No, she was actually a nurse. And there was just some questions about what she was doing, how she was related to this. I don't know. It seemed fantastical. It seemed almost, I think at one point we said it seemed like a soap opera. Candice might have been ordered to leave her marital home, but she wasn't going to go quietly. She stayed in the house while she tried to fight the court's decision. Any leftover energy she had was spent on helping out with mops, especially on the leadership team with Lacey. We had a leadership meeting one evening and I couldn't make it. And so I went over to her house the next day and said, hey, just let me know like what I need to get caught up on, what I need to do for this week to get ready for our next meeting and all these things. And she said, well, our next meeting, we're going to talk about how powerful us leaders are. Like how powerful women are and how strong we are. And so she said last night we took pictures of like portrait pictures of all the leadership team. And I was like, OK, that sounds kind of cool. She's like, you should just come get them. And I'm like, OK, that sounds good. So, like, it was weird because we went up to her bedroom, which I thought this is kind of weird. We're going to your bedroom. And she took me into her room and said, let's take some pictures. And I said, OK, let's take some pictures. So we like took a couple pictures of headshots or whatever. And she said, well, you know what, we should take boudoir photos. Your husband would really like to have boudoir photos. I thought, why not? You know, whatever. And so I was expecting like I had a tank top on. And so I was just like, OK, I'll just like wear what I'm wearing and just kind of make it work. It got strange when she went to her closet that was there that had a line of clothing that was hanging up, which I didn't think anything of because I thought, oh, it's Candace. Of course, Candace has clothes and jewelry like hanging up next to her bed like she's glamorous. That's what she is. So it was positioned near her bed. It wasn't it wasn't necessarily like you'd walk in her bedroom. Oh, and she's got stuff in the closet. It was positioned like next, like in the corner of the room. Yeah. On display. Yeah, kind of. She had like a big wall of like all the jewelry and then like a little like almost like a clothesline. Of just like clothes hanging up. As if you were doing a fashion shoot and the clothes have been pulled out. Totally. And so she said, well, here, why don't you wear this? And she like pulls an outfit out and it was just like a one like little dress thing. And I remember thinking, like, we're not the same size, but OK. Like you're tall. You're about my height. Like 5'10 tall and slim. Yeah. And she's shorter. A little bit shorter. Yeah. More curvy woman. Yeah. I just thought like I trusted her. I didn't think anything of it. So I went into the other room. I put on the outfit and did like necklaces and things. And so we took a couple of shots of just like positioned around her bed and on the couch. And then it was, well, you should get naked. You should take a picture of this naked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's what's coming up this season on Unicorn Girl. I walked in and I saw like these big AK-47s just chilling outside their case. I helped take tally of all of the ammunition. It was, we have an armory now. I see Candice's door open and she has a ton of cash, 300 grand as far as my eyes could see. She hands me the phone really quick and she's like, pretend you're the US consulate. I pull out a tourniquet and I go, oh my gosh. I remember her showing me scars on her body from where she was in a Turkish prison. She kept going. Like we can sell your used underwear to make money. They were told to leave their home and run from the Taliban. They were risking their lives to run. Candice was on the phone with someone. She heard gunshots and was like, they're getting closer. They're getting closer. And the phone hung up. She will ravel in this. There's always an undertone about her having a documentary made about her. She always wanted to like some kind of documentary made. Patrick, people have mentioned you, what they thought about you and what they were told about you. There's two sides to every story, right? And if you only listen to one side and only get one perspective, that's all you'll ever know. This has been Unicorn Girl. An Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills and hosted and executive produced by me, Charlie Webster. Unicorn Girl is produced by me, Charlie Webster and Jackson McLennan. Original score and theme music by Ryan Sorensen. Editing and sound design by Nico Pallella. Assistant producer and fact check-in by Emmy Jory. Candice's social media posts are also read by Emmy Jory. Mixed by Little Big Room. Additional production support by Fundmetre. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.