Joshua Armstrong

Background

Joshua Armstrong was born in 1957, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States, to a working-class African-American family.

Education

Armstrong studied at high school. After the graduation, Joshua set off with a friend on a wandering journey that eventually led them to Seattle, and then to Alaska.

Career

In Alaska, Armstrong became one of the first African Americans ever to work in commercial fishing on the Bering Sea - a tough and grueling job. In the off-season, his physical and emotional strength led to offers to assist in bounty hunting, setting off a twenty-year career. Armstrong eventually realized that the traditional methods of bounty hunting were not as effective as they could be, and ran counter to his nonviolent nature.

Influenced by a New Age bookstore owner, he became interested in meditation and Asian spiritual and philosophical traditions, and when he returned to New Jersey in the 1980s, he founded the Seekers, a team of bounty hunters whose work is guided by Armstrong’s principles of combining compassion with street smarts. The Seekers have an 85 percent capture rate, higher than that of the police, other bounty hunters, or the U.S. Marshals Service.

The Seekers have found over 2,000 fugitives throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. When new members join the Seekers, in addition to grueling physical training, they must also study spiritual and philosophical traditions. The group emphasizes teamwork, intelligence gathering, patience, planning, and the importance of a cool head, as well as the use of specialized nonlethal weapons and high-tech surveillance and paramilitary equipment. Armstrong has only fired his gun once during an arrest. Funds from the Seekers’ operations are now used only to fund Earth Church, a center for physical, emotional, and spiritual growth.

Achievements

• Joshua Armstrong is known as the founder of the Seekers, a team of urban bounty hunters who combine toughness with a spiritual message. Armstrong's 12-man team, called The Seekers, has returned over 2,000 fugitives to justice and achieved an unsurpassed 85% success rate-much higher than the police, the FBI, or the U.S. Marshall Service. Armstrong's methods include treating fugitives with respect, using armed force only when necessary, and maintaining the top physical and spiritual condition of his fellow Seekers, that exactly Armstrong describes in his major work.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Maps and Territories: Global Positioning in the Contemporary French Novel

    (The rapidity of postwar globalization and the structural ...)

    2019
  • Introduction To Water Treatment: Handbook Edition

    (This book was written with the objective to help anyone w...)

    2019
  • Water Treatment Practice Exams: For Grades 2-3

    (This book was designed to help people pass their water tr...)

    2019
  • The Seekers: A Bounty Hunter's Story-Finding Felons and Guiding Men

    (The Seekers are an elite team of the most successful boun...)

    2000
  • Rozen Chronicles: Legacy of the Djinn - the Onyx Ring

    (Xellous "Zell" Rozen is a paranormal anthropologist. He s...)

    2015

Views

Armstrong believes that bounty hunters should appeal to fugitives' "better nature" in order to defuse potentially violent confrontations.

Quotations: "If you treat a man like a man, he will respond in a manly way. If you treat him like a beast, he will respond like a beast."

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Incongruous or not, Armstrong’s spiritual perspective comes across as nuanced and legitimate. But the spiritual side of this memoir does not detract from its excitement of the chase and ultimate capture."
  
  "Armstrong provides a first-person account of the life and consciousness, the heart and soul, of a bounty hunter. Although the book is full of fascinating adventures, the real core of it is Armstrong’s spiritual journey." - Vernon Ford

Connections

Friend:

Anthony Bruno

March 9, 1952 - August 28, 2014

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010