Imagine two New York Jewish women groomed among the stylish and well-educated on opposite shores of Long Island. They meet up in Tokyo for the first time. In a strange twist of fate, they are not sipping tea from fine bone china, as they might have back home. Instead they find themselves seated on opposite sides of a glass partition inside the Tokyo Detention Center. I'm an artist, not a pastor, so that first meeting comes as quite a shock.

On Oct. 31, 2011, Dina Isaacs, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two and Gulf War Desert Storm veteran, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for smuggling into Japan 17 kg of methamphetamines with a street value of more than $15 million — a crime she swears she did not willingly commit.

In Dina's account, her nightmare began on a quiet street in Pattaya, Thailand, a mecca for tourists and magnet for organized crime. It is also the city her father — a wealthy businessman — calls home.