BAKERSFIELD, Calif.—Most convicted criminals don't make a point of publicly apologizing for their crimes in the local newspaper. But Barry Bowser, who was convicted in 2015, is no ordinary criminal.

“For shining a laser at a helicopter for three seconds, I lost my entire life,” Bowser wrote in a recent letter to the editor of The Bakersfield Californian. “I am now 54 years old and I have no one and nothing but the clothes I was given when I was released from prison.”

Weighing at least 250 pounds with a wide chest and a handlebar mustache, Bowser has quite a presence. He agreed to meet me near a local supermarket and arrived in dark sunglasses, black sneakers, black-striped shorts with skulls on the edges, and a t-shirt advertising a local orthodontics practice. John Goodman would be a shoo-in for the lead role if there’s ever a Bowser movie.

Bowser had previously done time, serving multiple stints in California state prison on drug and identity theft charges. But this go-round was different—no drugs, no theft, no violence.

Instead, in a fleeting moment that he still calls an accident, Barry Bowser violated 18 US Code § 39A of the Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012:

Whoever knowingly aims the beam of a laser pointer at an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, or at the flight path of such an aircraft, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

That led to a 21-month prison sentence, though Bowser was released after 11. Prison cost him more than time; Bowser also lost several teeth.

As we drove the few miles to the scene of his crime, Bowser told me that he had just come from a denture-fitting appointment at an orthodontist’s office, needed after a race riot at the county jail where he had been held at the request of federal authorities.

“I got busted in the mouth with a lock in a sock, knocked my teeth out,” he said. “That was my first day in Fresno County jail.”

And all for making a poor decision with a laser pointer.

Waiting on enchiladas

Back in September 2014, Barry Bowser was trying to get his life back on track. After having been a functioning methamphetamine addict for 25 years, he said he had been clean for four consecutive years at that point. He had worked various oil and industrial jobs, as a derrick hand, an operator, a tool pusher, and as a natural gas compressor mechanic in Elk Hills (the “best job of my life,” Bowser noted). Now, he was fixing people’s cars in their driveways throughout the Bakersfield area.

“I had a business going, I had a mobile mechanic business going, buying my own house,” he said. “I hadn't been that clean in years, feeling good on life.”

Around this time, a friend, Danny Gibson, loaned Bowser a motorhome and invited him to park it on a large, commercial property on N. Sillect Ave., on the edge of town. In exchange, Bowser would do some maintenance and act as a sort of night watchman. Other properties nearby include a local union office, an animal hospital, and a strip club, Exotic Kitty’s. The property also used to be a Home Depot, so it had a large storage area and a large parking area as well. Bowser soon found out through a friend that the area had some recent reports of burglaries.

Late in the evening on September 11, 2014, Bowser received a call from his friend Todd. Todd was making enchiladas, would Bowser like some? Bowser said he would.

While waiting, he began rummaging through drawers in the motorhome as a way to pass the time and found a laser pointer that Gibson had given him as a dog toy (for Bowser’s pitbull, also named Bowser). A few moments later, Bowser found batteries for the pointer. In they went, and lo, it worked.

Bowser stepped outside with his dog and began shining the laser along a fence, trying to get his dog to chase the beam. The pit quickly lost interest, and Bowser instead began testing the range of the laser to see what else it could hit. He managed to hit a billboard several hundred yards away. Then he aimed for a radio tower with a blinking red light on the top. Each target proved too easy. So Bowser aimed for a second radio tower that was a quarter or a half mile away.

Then came the three seconds that would change the man’s next two years.

Bowser's laser seemed to hit something in the sky, but he wasn’t sure what, if anything, it was. He started to bring the laser down just in case, and that’s when a helicopter began pivoting to face him. The laser beam then caught the windshield, and the glass “lit up like a Christmas bulb.” Bowser watched as the helicopter started to swerve and dip.

Up in the helicopter, the pilot, Deputy Kevin Austin, saw the laser beam shoot past his head and through the open helicopter door. (It’s common practice to remove helicopter doors during hot weather.) The Tactical Flight Officer (TFO), a sort of police spotter who also was aboard the helicopter at the time, didn’t notice the laser. But then the light hit the windshield directly.

Austin later described the moment in an e-mail to prosecutors:

The laser struck the helicopter twice. The first was less than a second, followed by the second strike, which lasted between two and three seconds. The second strike was held long enough for me to visually spot the exact location of the source, and the suspect was standing in an open area where I could see the silhouette of his person. I immediately executed a left, diving turn toward the source to gain airspeed while closing the distance. I also flipped my [night-vision] goggles down which made it easier to keep a visual on the suspect while he was still out in the open area. Once we arrived over the location of the suspect, he was still in an open area. We kept him illuminated with the helicopter's spotlight and observed him until we lost sight of him when he walked under a large, metal awning. My TFO, Deputy Jeremy Storar, used binoculars to obtain a good description of him as well.

Bowser didn’t know the world of legal trouble he would soon face, but clearly he had annoyed somebody. His girlfriend Wendy and his buddy Todd arrived with the promised enchiladas as the helicopter hovered nearby. Bowser went to the locked gate and rolled the laser out to her.

“Get that thing out of here,” Bowser said.

“What’d you do?” Wendy asked him.

“Baby, just take this, give me the food, and I’ll call you,” he said.

Bowser took his dinner, went inside the motorhome, changed clothes, and ate.

But up in the sky, the helicopter crew had him under surveillance. Austin described what happened next in that same e-mail:

My TFO, Deputy Storar, and I watched him reach under a closed, locked chain-link gate to the driver of the SUV. Deputy Storar observed the suspect and driver at the gate using a pair of binoculars. The driver gave the suspect what appeared to be a bowl with possible food in it. The exchange was made under the gate. I told Deputy Storar to watch closely because I felt the suspect would hand the laser to the driver of the SUV. The driver left moments later, but we were not certain whether the laser had been given to the driver. While Deputy Storar was observing with binoculars, I had control of the helicopter’s spotlight and used it to keep the driver and suspect illuminated.

It was only a matter of time until the cops arrived.