During her Not Alone Summit charity event in Las Vegas, Jewel recounted her epic 1995 adventure she with singer Steve Poltz
NEED TO KNOW
- Jewel opened up about her wild experience of being caught in the middle of a drug bust in Mexico in 1994 during her Not Alone Summit in Las Vegas, held from Nov. 10 to Nov. 13
- The story inspired her hit song “You Were Meant for Me,” released the following year
- The #NotAlone Awards last month honored innovators who are transforming the global conversation around mental health
When Jewel took the stage during her Not Alone Summit at the Wynn Las Vegas on Nov. 10, she discussed mental health, creativity and resilience. However, the audience didn’t expect to hear her unravel one of the most bizarre, dangerous and downright cinematic stories of her life. It’s a story she first told nearly two decades ago at a concert, and one she revisited last month with the clarity of hindsight and the humor of someone who survived it.
It all began in summer 1994, when 20-year-old Jewel — then a rising songwriter — and her collaborator, singer-songwriter and guitarist Steve Poltz, took a week off to write music in Mexico. She had been a barista at Java Joe’s coffee shop near San Diego. He’d been a singer playing gigs in The Rugburns with a sore throat that Jewel once made tea for late at night. They’d become friends, sang together and found themselves with synchronized downtime.
Jewel didn’t want to drive because touring meant endless highways, but Poltz talked her into it. What was supposed to be a three-hour drive turned into 15 hours lost on dusty back roads until they stumbled upon a nearly abandoned patch of Rosarito in Baja, Mexico, with three plywood shacks by the Sea of Cortez. They broke in (Poltz insisted to PEOPLE it “wasn’t really breaking in”), watched the sun fall over paradise and noticed — without suspicion — that the town seemed completely deserted.
“It was dangerous, it was kind of foggy,” Poltz added. “And I remember the moon was out and we just kept going and there was nobody around. It was like really dark.”…