Guy Fieri got a huge wake-up call after being wrongly accused in a drunk driving accident when he was a teenager.
He revealed that he when he was 19 years old and in college, he was in a “fatality car accident.”
“I wasn’t driving, I was in the backseat,” he said on the “Now What? With Brooke Shields” podcast. “And unfortunately, I was with a bunch of guys, and the one guy, we were drinking,” he continued. “We were screwing off and we actually were down at the drag boat races in Las Vegas.”
Fieri, then a student at the University of Nevada, said one of the guys saw a police officer. He had been drinking and decided to drive away.
Guy Fieri revealed he was in a “fatality car accident” while he was a college student in Las Vegas, and was accused of being the one behind the wheel. (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
“We got chased, and the car flipped and the guy next to me was killed. It was horrific,” Fieri recalled.
According to “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” star, he and others involved in the crash had to be rushed to the hospital by helicopter.
“I woke up in the hospital, handcuffed to the gurney, with everybody in that car saying I was the one that was driving,” he recalled, noting the other men were in the military together.
“They came to the college and arrested me in my dorm room,” he added, and according to him, the authorities knew he had not been in the driver’s seat.
Guy Fieri says he was arrested at his college dorm after being falsely accused of being the driver in a fatal car accident. (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images for Stagecoach)
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However, for Fieri, who said he had been living “a little fast and hard and wild,” the ordeal was a wake-up call.
“My dad told me, ‘Cut the s—. You’re not invincible. This is for real now. You’re not in Ferndale, you’re not in your hometown anymore, you’re in Las Vegas. You’re big time. So you gotta focus.’”
“And it was like wham, there is the 15% that I’ve been missing,” he continued. “I was like, ok, my family didn’t have any money, I’m not the smartest kid, didn’t get the best grades, …But If I’m going to win, I’m going to win based upon on how hard I play, and how disciplined I am, and how driven and how controlled I am, and if I do that, then I have a better chance of getting through this.”
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He later found that when he became a parent, to Hunter 26, and Ryder, 17, with his wife Lori, he offered similar advice.
Guy Fieri with his son Hunter, left, and son Ryder, right. (David Becker/Getty Images)
Fieri said he tells them, “‘Don’t trust anybody to drive you. Don’t trust what anybody puts in a drink and gives to you. Don’t trust if anybody tells you that this is safe or this is smart. You have to be the master of your domain. You have to be in control of your environment.’”