Cissie Cobb, your friendly neighborhood dog walker
WALKING DOGS is Cissie Cobb in Windsor Square.
If you live around the neighborhood, you might’ve seen Cissie Cobb walking a multitude of dogs and chatting with neighbors. A local resident, she started her dog walking business eight years ago and said one of her business tactics was to price herself just below what other dog walkers were charging at the time. She’s always been savvy with business, which is clear from her true-crime memoir podcast, La Gata (the cat—sorry dogs!), made with another Hancock Park local, Bill Simmons, and his production group The Ringer.
Listening to La Gata (FYI, it’s R-rated), you might be surprised how lovely, thoughtful, and kind Cobb is. La Gata reveals how, in the 1980s, Cobb was part of a world that could have been the blueprint for the much-admired film “Scarface.”
IN ANOTHER WORLD, Danilo Manrique, El Gato, and Cissie Cobb, La Gata.
Cobb grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan in a broken family and with a tragically ill brother. She sang in a local rock band, but getting out of her small town and seeing the world was a priority. Cobb said she wished for more, and for her, getting married and settling in her hometown was not an option. “I would cry myself to sleep thinking there’s more for me to do than be here—more than going bowling.”
The first episode of La Gata recounts the story of Cobb and her friend as they headed to Florida in the late ‘70s as teenagers. There they met the man, Columbian heartthrob cocaine dealer Danilo Manrique, who became Cobb’s lover.
There are love triangles, ‘80s soccer players from Miami and Los Angeles, bicoastal crime of all sorts, the first Gucci Cadillac (which was hers), 75 kilos of cocaine passing thr
ough a month, missing cash (and bodies), corrupt police in New Mexico, Feds busting other dealers in the hotel room next to hers (coincidentally), houses in Boca Raton, Florida, and the Bahamas (where cash had to regularly be smuggled to), foiled wallpaper, mirrored walls, glass tables with intentional grooves, shoulder pads, and big hair.
LA GATA, a true-crime podcast produced locally by The Ringer, recounts Cobb’s life as a drug queenpin.
Photo courtesy of The Ringer Podcasts
Cobb said, “People ask me, ‘Do you ever feel guilty?’ And I don’t. I’m law-abiding now, but it was a different time. That world was how I got out of my trapped life in Kalamazoo. Cocaine was a social drug in a time of free sex. This is what I don’t understand about the drugs today—you want return customers! Why would you cut your s**t with fentanyl and kill your clients? But it had to end. There were signs it was time to get out. Was it worth it? Yes. It was worth it. I don’t have any regrets. It was such an out-of-body life experience, going to Brazil, Columbia, Givenchy dresses, the love affair of a lifetime…”
As time went on, her music talents helped her find a new direction. She moved back to L.A. to work as a songwriter on “Days of Our Lives” and other shows. She also just released her own song, “I’ve Got a Man.”
And the pet world? Cobb said, “My grandparents were farmers. I would sing to the cows as I milked them. I love animals. Unconditional love—you can’t beat that.”
Category: People
