Dwight Worker (Born September 17, 1946) is an American professor, activist, adventurer, and still a fugitive. He is known for his escape from the Mexican penitentiary Palacio de Lecumberri in 1975 along with the book and movie Escape about the story.
Throughout his life he participated in civil rights, anti-war, and environmental movements. In 1991, Dwight volunteered to serve in the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society where he fought against illegal drift netting and whaling. He was later indicted for sinking whaling ships.
Worker is a former professor at Indiana University, where he created the Information Security program for the Kelley School of Business before retiring in 2008 to farm, write, and travel.
Early Life
Worker was born in East Chicago, Indiana. He grew up in a blue-collar family. As a kid, he worked on a golf course regularly caddying for Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, and for members of the original Harlem globetrotters Basketball team.
Education
From 1964 through January, 1968, Worker attended Indiana University, in Bloomington, IN where he earned a BA in Psychology and Anthropology. Worker returned to Indiana University to complete his MBA in Management of Information Systems in 1985.
Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements
After Dwight’s brother Wayne was paralyzed while in the Navy during the Vietnam War in 1964, Worker became active in organizing anti-war resistance. On July 10th, 1966 Worker saw Martin Luther King speak in Chicago. Worker was active in the civil rights movement in the sixties doing voter registration, community organizing, and tutoring.
He was arrested at the IU business school protesting against Dow Chemical’s use of agent orange in the war and presence on campus.
Worker received his draft card in 1964 right after his eighteenth birthday. He immediately applied for conscientious objector status, but was rejected because he answered ‘No’ to the question of whether he believed in God or not.
Worker returned his draft card to the Selective Service in 1966 with a letter stating that he was ending his membership in the organization. He then sent a letter to the head of the Selective Service, General Hersey, where he classified Hershey as ‘WC-3′ (War Criminal to the third degree) and inducted Hershey into the ‘peace revolution’. Worker ordered Hershey to report to his apartment immediately to help shut down induction centers.
On January 11th, 1968 two armed service members captured Worker and brought him to the Indianapolis induction center prior to even physical examination. He refused to take the oath or sign the induction forms. Worker passed out anti-war leaflets there before fleeing the induction center and taking off toward Canada.
Due to bad weather and distractions along the way, Worker never made it to Canada. After a hitch hiker convinced him to visit Taos, New Mexico, where Worker obtained fake ID’s, worked as a mechanic, and learned Spanish. Worker hid in the mountains constantly moving between Sonora, Mexico, Arizona, and finally California.
Worker later learned that he would have been unable to pass the physical examination for the Draft.
1970 – 1973
On January 1st, 1970, Worker left for the Caribbean and South America. He trekked the Andes from Venezuela to Bolivia, climbing mountains, living in the Machu Pichu ruins, canoing down the Urubamba River, and visiting the wild Yungas wilderness. He first chewed coca leaves in the Andes and but it was just before returning to the U.S. that he first tried cocaine. When he returned to the US, he started using cocaine regularly.
He lived in Tucson in the fall/winter/springs of 1971 and 1972, taking classes at the University of Arizona. He began dealing and smuggling marijuana to support himself and his cocaine habit. As a result he eventually he dropped out of graduate school, unable to focus on classes.
He spent the summer fall of 1973 living in San Francisco before leaving for Peru to find cocaine.
Lecumberri Prison and Escape
On December 7th, 1973, customs officials at the Benito Juarez Airport arrested Worker for trying to smuggle 780 grams of cocaine. At the airport Worker signed a confession after torture by airport guards.
They sent Worker to ‘El Palacio Negro’ the Black Palace of Lecumberri. It was a medieval-looking prison, built to hold 800 prisoners, but currently holding 4000. There were a rough average of 200 murders committed each year there.
In Worker’s 2 years in Lecumberri Prison, he was hospitalized 3 times from beatings, stabbed 5 times, did a complete hunger strike for 17 days, and spent 41 days in solitary confinement.
In the summer of 1975, Barbara Chilcoate visited Dwight Worker while he was in prison. She then moved to Mexico to be with him. On December 17th, 1975, Dwight Worker and Barbara Chilcoate were married in prison. Two hours later, Dwight Worker became the second and last man to ever escape from Lecumberri Prison, second only to Pancho Villa.
1975 – 1978
Dwight and Barbara moved from Tucson to California. There they wrote the book ESCAPE and sold movie rights. Dwight learned computer programming and got his first job as a programmer. Barbara went to school at Berkeley and majored in science.
1978-1992
Barbara got a degree in microbiology while Dwight got an MBA in Information Systems. They had two children before divorcing in 1988.
Dwight’s younger brother Darrel was paralyzed in a car accident on the 4th of July, 1988. He spent the next several years working to help Darrel buy and live in a handicapped home and purchase a hand-controlled vehicles for him to drive to work.
During this time, Dwight occasionally traveled including a winter in East Africa.
Sea Shepherd
In 1991, Dwight volunteered to serve in the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He spent 9 months with them over the course of 3 years. Some of it was reconnaissance. Some of it was on boats out at sea searching for, harassing, and ramming drift-netters and whaling ships. In the 1990′s, Worker was indicted for sinking whaling ships.
Worker moved back to Bloomington Indiana in 1993. for the next several years he continued contract software engineering, while traveling around the world whenever it was possible between contracts. Much of this time was spent in South America.
Teaching
Worker taught at the Indiana University Kelly School of Business from August, 1999 thru May 2008.
Awards
Trustee Teaching Award winner 2003, 2004, 2005
Student Choice Teaching Award 2003, 2004, 2005
Panschar Award Finalist, 2003, 2004
Worker consistently scored as one of the highest rated teachers in the business school by students.
Dwight developed the Information Security Program at the School of Business. Classes were regularly filled with demonstrations, including system compromise, intrusion detection, and lock picking. Dwight steered hundreds of students into the information security industry, where many today are advancing to high levels of management.
2004 to current
Farming and Travel
Worker bought a small farm west of Bloomington in July 2004 and continues to live there.
After retirement Worker began traveling more regularly including these bicycle trips:
across parts of Cuba 3 times
across England and Ireland
across Czech Repub., Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria
around the Dominican Republic,
across S. Arizona and N. Mexico
a bit of Costa Rica
the Yucatan and Chiapas in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras
The midwest, from West Virginia to Missouri
SE Asia, across Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia
On the farm Worker grows his own organic food, produces bio-diesel for his equipment, and heats his home with firewood that he himself cuts from fallen trees.