Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister · Pushkin Industries

Episode 1: Lucky Bird from The Chinatown Sting

September 16, 2025·39 min·3 clips

Tina Wong accidentally tasted the heroin she was couriering when a brick crumbled in the bag — then spent the cash on double lobster alone in her apartment.

A Customs phone call opens the case. On February 9th, 1988, David Sheehan is at JFK Airport, working his usual shift, when a California agent calls about three heroin shipments in three different bail parcels. Sheehan takes it right away. Then the excerpt changes gears. The host sits with Shu Yu, and the action gives way to paper: complaints, names, and one last paragraph that suddenly matters. Tina keeps appearing under different names. Sometimes she is Tina Wong. Sometimes she is Tina Ause. She is tied to a complaint, and federal authorities seem to have information coming from more than one direction. Shu Yu notices the detail that makes the room tighten: an informant says packages went to DGC, and authorities mention a recording with the drugs' ultimate recipient. Tina is left in the squeeze between the person who handed her the package and the person who was meant to get it. That makes the arrest feel smaller and more pressured than it first looked. At first she seems like another low-level drug smuggler, one of about half a dozen people arrested. Then the frame shifts. The host talks about moving from Poland to the U.S. at eight, being treated like a stranger, and wanting badly to fit. The Chinatown case becomes partly about belonging, not just heroin. The narration stays careful. It does not pretend the documents answer everything. It lets them pile up. The excerpt is interrupted more than once by a missing-person promo for Jacqueline Furlan-Smith, so the cleaner thread is the JFK case and Tina's uneasy place inside it.

As heard by us

A heroin sting becomes a careful study of belonging, pressure, and who gets trapped.

A 1988 Customs call at JFK opens into a heroin sting moving from Hong Kong to the United States, but the episode keeps its focus on the people caught in the paperwork.

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Why you'd press play

You want a customs sting that starts with heroin parcels and widens into a story about someone caught in between.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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