Sean C. Morgan
While serving some 15 years in prison on four different sentences, Dave Dahl finally figured out what was wrong with him.
With that knowledge in hand, he built a new life – without the drugs and crime – and a successful business when he created Dave’s Killer Bread, a popular brand carried around the state at stores like Costco and Fred Meyer.
“I was an arrogant, angry, falsely prideful person, and that sucked,” Dahl told Sweet Home High School students at an assembly on May 16. “I finally figured out that humility makes you stronger.”
His problems started while he was young, but he never asked for help.
“Our dad was a pioneer in the bread industry,” Dahl said. He started working with his family in the bakery at age 9. It was a unique thing, but unique isn’t something children want to be. He nursed resentment toward his father and took the wrong path, into drugs.
He started with LSD, hallucinogens and then cocaine. At age 21, he put a needle with meth in his arm for the first time, he said. “I thought that was the coolest thing that ever happened. That was just a phony high. It wasn’t going to last.”
He would do anything to get high, dealing drugs and committing crimes, Dahl said. That led to approximately 15 years in prisons in Oregon and Massachusetts on armed robbery, burglary and assault in Oregon and Massachusetts.
Then, after being out of prison for about a year, he was sentenced for the final time to 118 months in prison for dealing meth and assaulting police officers.
“I really thought that was the end,” Dahl said. Behind bars, he pumped iron and practiced the guitar, but he was depressed.
He was getting old. He was 37, and had spent most of his adult life in prison.
Dahl said he asked for help about 10 years ago and started taking medication to treat his depression.
The medication enabled him to focus, and his outlook started improving, he said. “I started playing guitar better. It was a real eye-opener for me.”
He took classes in computer-aided drafting, trying to improve his life.
When Dahl finished his sentence in 2004, his brother, Glenn, who ran the family business, Nature Bake, gave him another chance, despite the rifts Dahl had developed with his family. His brother and nephew, Shobi, hired him to make bread.
Asking his brother to hire him was a tough thing to do, but he found the strength to ask, Dahl said. “I already learned if I need something, I need to go get it or at least ask for it.”
His biggest worry was whether he would get along with his brother and nephew, Dahl said. They did have their difficulties, but they worked through them with a family business counselor.
“I’ve learned to ask for help,” he said, and in such humility, he started at the bottom rung and worked his way up through the company.
Dahl developed Dave’s Killer Bread, and their business expanded to about 200 employees.
“Anybody can change,” he said. “If there’s anything anybody should know from my story it’s that anybody can change. You can turn your life around at any point, but you know the best time? Don’t go down the road I went down.”
Dahl’s bakery employs some 60 ex-convicts, giving them the same chance his family gave him.
“When somebody is forgiven and they see the power of generosity, they become grateful, and they can become some of your best employees,” Dahl said.
Dahl told the students that he has two wolves inside him fighting for control. The bad wolf ruled his past. Now he makes an effort to feed the good wolf with generosity and compassion, giving to the community. Unsold bread is given to the needy.
Relapse crosses his mind, he said, “but it doesn’t have the attraction. I’ve discovered a much better way of living. The monster is there, but it’s really, really ugly,” he said.
He keeps it at bay by making his bread, doing what he can to help others and speaking to youths like his Sweet Home audience, he said.
He told them that if they have problems or depression, they should humbly ask for help.
“I went through some hard times,” Dahl said. “Drugs seemed to be the answer, but they weren’t.”
He spent his life running away from those problems, Dahl said. “The next place I ran to was worse. I was the most uncomfortable kid in the world, I think. I had really bad acne growing up. It was hard going out and taking my shirt off down at the river like everyone else. I was always fighting my circumstances.
“Peer pressure was a big deal, no doubt, because I was weak.”
He had low self-esteem, he said. He was depressed and unhappy.
“Everybody else seemed like they were better off than me,” Dahl said. “They were cooler or whatever. It was a big deal till I stopped worrying about what other people think of me.”
He finally did ask for help, and everything changed, and through humility, he found strength.
“It was great to just be who I am and work on myself because I could accept myself just as I am,” Dahl said. “No one here is worse off than I was.”
Dahl didn’t graduate from high school, but he has earned his GED and attended trade school, he said. “But I don’t recommend going that route. I’m a big believer in the power of education.”
His favorite DKB bread is “Good Seed Bread,” available at Costco, Dahl said. Instead of spreading bad seed, it symbolizes spreading good things everywhere.
“You can make up for your dark side by doing some good things,” Dahl said.
For more about Dahl and Dave’s Killer Bread, visit daveskillerbread.com.