The Montclair Pod sat down with the local author whose story of addiction, survival, and reinvention is unlike anything you’ve heard at the bake sale.
Nikki Mammano has two daughters, deep roots in the Montclair community, and a memoir that will make your jaw drop. What most of her neighbors didn’t know, until now, is that the woman they’ve seen at school events and community gatherings once ran drugs to army bases and nightclubs in Waikiki, faced 30 years in federal prison, and spent time homeless on the streets of Oahu before finding her way to Montclair and building a life that, by her own description, is nothing short of miraculous.
Her debut memoir, Breaking Good, published by Regalo Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster, is out now.
“I have a crazy past,” Mammano told co-hosts Michael Schreiber and Farnoosh Torabi on a recent episode of The Montclair Pod. “And all the things I went through that are in the book, it comes from somewhere. I was an addict and went from there into dealing and went from there into prison and ended up on the streets.”
The title is a deliberate nod to Breaking Bad, though Mammano was quick to note, “you’ve got to read it to kind of see why.”
A Fresh Start That Wasn’t
Mammano grew up in Queens and eventually moved to Rockland County, New York before heading to Hawaii for college. She arrived fresh out of rehab and genuinely hoping for a new beginning.
“I went to the University of Hawaii and I was ready to do it,” she said. “And that quickly changed because I was always on the run, and that’s a big theme in the book, how I was a runner. I was running from myself, I was running from my pain, and I ended up running all the way to Hawaii. And our pain and our trauma, it follows us until we’re ready to heal from it. And I was far from that place in my life.”
What followed was swift and dangerous. Within months, Mammano had relapsed into cocaine use, failed out of school, and fallen in with a local dealer. She describes being “plucked up” by a higher-level dealer who saw in the young, blonde, seemingly innocent 19-year-old a valuable asset.
“No one’s looking for this five-foot, blonde-haired, 19-, 20-year-old as a drug dealer,” she said. “I became this it girl. I’d go to the clubs and just kind of sell a little bit here and there, small papers in the clubs for people to just have fun. And before I knew it, I had surpassed him and I ends up dealing to the clubs and the army base and the Navy base and the prison, and all these things are just falling apart, which is very weird to say, but they were.”
The situation escalated into territory far beyond anything she had bargained for. “I ended up, guns, drugs, danger, bodyguards, living this life that I honestly didn’t ask for. And it was quite scary.”
One of the book’s most harrowing moments came when she was found herself in a confrontation involving a machete. “They had lured me into a place and one of these guys had a machete and he slammed it into a wooden table and was like, let’s go, we’re gonna go to your dealer. And I knew that if I brought this person to my dealer that they would take everything, possibly kill us. So I had to find a way to get out of it.”
She escaped, but it shook her badly. Shortly after, a bodyguard appeared at her door with a gun, urging her to arm herself. “I think in the end I was crying, and it was just a lot. And I knew, I knew at that point I was way over my head.”
The Grace of a Second Chance
Mammano was eventually arrested and faced a potential 30-year sentence. What happened next is something she credits not to strategy, but to luck.
“My dealer sends a lawyer, and the lawyer finds there’s a new law,” she said. “If you have a first offense, you could bring the sentencing down and give you more probation, parole, and some fancy footwork. And I got chance after chance. And the last chance I got, I was pregnant.”
That pregnancy, she says, was the turning point.
“I always say I’m not so sure I deserved that chance, but I’m very grateful that I got that chance. Because that was the moment where I was pregnant and I knew I had to turn my life around, or I would die.”
She is also honest, and publicly accountable, about the racial and socioeconomic dimensions of her leniency. “I went to a land, an island of people where they have been taken advantage of and people have come in and done things to the people and the land and that just hasn’t been fair,” she said. “And I come in as this young white girl and I wreak havoc and then I get away with it. And so for me, I’m very aware of that. And my mission is to pay forward, pay back and do everything I can.”
Part of that mission is her support for RYSE (Residential Youth Services & Empowerment), an Oahu-based nonprofit that provides housing, mental health services, education and employment assistance, and mobile outreach to at-risk youth ages 14 to 24. “I remember being on the streets after I got out,” she said. “We needed love, we needed care, we needed people to meet us where we were.”
From the Streets to Montclair
After her release, Mammano returned to the mainland and eventually settled in Montclair with a partner who was looking for a home here.
“One minute I’m on the streets, and a few years later I’m in a beautiful home in Montclair with community and a child and thriving and I loved it,” she said. “I was so grateful to be here. I love this town so much and I met the most amazing people.”
But she was also living a double life in the most literal sense. Having signed extradition papers and returned under a parole-type probation arrangement, she was required to submit to regular drug testing. Hawaii retained jurisdiction and had made clear that a single failed test could mean prison and losing her daughter.
“I would be class mom and going on field trips and showing up and having dinners with friends and barbecues and the kids running around outside,” she recalled. “And it was this beautiful life. And then I was running off to get tested to make sure I was clean, because Hawaii owned me.”
Most of her Montclair neighbors had no idea. “I just wanted to belong,” she said. “I was just happy to be here and I just wanted to be a part of. Eventually I would tell a best friend something here and there, but I kept it pretty close.” When she finally opened up to longtime friends, reactions ranged from warmth to stunned disbelief. “A couple of people were like, ‘Excuse me? I’ve known you for 20 years. What are you talking about?'”
Healing, and the Resources That Helped
Mammano spoke about the role Montclair’s mental health community played in her recovery. After separating from her partner, she found herself financially strained and finally ready to do the deeper therapeutic work.
“I ended up at this place in Montclair, it’s a wonderful place that provides therapy and psychiatry and all kinds of other services to low-income people,” she said. She was referring to the Mental Health Association, which has a location at 33 South Fullerton Avenue across from the main library and serves Essex County residents across income levels. “I ended up with an amazing therapist, and that is in the book, that process of how I healed and the work we did together.”
Her message to anyone quietly struggling was direct: “I always say, like, I was always a runner, and at some point you have to turn around and stare those demons down. The bravest thing I could have ever done was that. I would just say, do it, do the brave work. There’s so many people waiting on the other side. There’s so much support. It’s just so worth it. It’s life-changing. I just think there’s no other way. We gotta take the risk, we gotta take that gamble. There’s a payoff.”
The book’s reception in town, Mammano says, has exceeded her hopes. “Everyone knows now, and actually the reception has been quite wonderful.”
Breaking Good is available at Watchung Booksellers, and wherever books are sold. Signed copies are available through Mammano’s website at nikkimammano.com.
