EXCLUSIVE: Truth Behind the $43K Drug Bust Transformed Tim Allen Into a Star – With 'Home Improvement' Star Turning Around His Life By Snitching on Dealers
Tim Allen’s $43K drug bust and cooperation helped launch his career and turn his life around for good.
May 20 2025, Published 6:30 a.m. ET
A $43,000 drug deal was going down at the airport – with Tim Allen at its center, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
He was then a scruffy-looking 25-year-old who liked to tell jokes, who was there with his partner to sell a pound and a half of cocaine they had stashed in a luggage locker.
The young guy stood guard outside to make sure nothing went wrong. His partner went inside with the buyer and handed over the key to the locker. After the buyer got the cocaine, he was supposed to give the pair the $43,000 he was carrying.
Instead, he pulled out a badge – and arrested them.
The young drug dealer was Tim Allen, today the star of Home Improvement, which turned into one of the hottest sitcoms on TV.
But his arrest, on October 2, 1978, in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, airport, didn’t ruin his life – in fact, it saved it.
'Home Improvement" star Tim Allen was arrested in a $43,000 airport drug sting.
Lt. Michael Pifer of the Michigan State Police – the undercover cop who made the bust – has revealed how Allen could have gone to jail for life with no chance of parole.
But Allen agreed to help the cops catch other drug dealers in exchange for a much lighter sentence.
"It would have been a very different story had he not decided to cooperate," explained Pifer.
"At that time, the state laws had just changed, making dealing in that quantity punishable by life in prison, with no parole.
"But we wanted to try to find everyone involved in the drug ring. Since we needed some of their testimony, a deal was struck. He clearly decided that it was in his best interests to deal with the prosecution. Otherwise, he'd have gone away for big time.''
Police say Allen faced life in prison before choosing to cooperate with investigators.
Pifer remembered Allen as a "good sort" – and is glad he found fame on TV after his brush with the law.
"When I bought drugs from him, I remember that this guy was always funny," he added.
"He wasn't like some of the dope dealers who'd shoot you the minute you'd turn your back.
"I think Tim is a guy who realized that he made a big mistake. He paid the price, and now he's getting on with his life. I remember him telling me before the arrest how he wanted to become a comedian. I'm pleased to see that he turned his life around, despite spending quite a big chunk of it in prison.”
Allen – who admitted his criminal past shortly before Home Improvement went on the air last fall – ended up as one of 21 defendants in the drug case.
Prosecutors called Allen's drug case testimony key to unraveling a larger cocaine operation.
He wound up serving 28 months in a federal prison. His testimony against other drug dealers was characterized as "invaluable" by William Ewald, the chief prosecutor in the case.
"In my heart I knew he was capable of doing well for himself," Ewald said.
"He wrote to me a couple of times from prison to let me know how he was getting on.
"Then I read in the newspaper that he was going to have his own show, and I felt happy for him. It would have clearly been a miscarriage of justice had he gone to jail for life."
Allen said: "In a hideous way, aside from the pain it put my family and friends through, getting caught probably saved my life, because it had no direction."
The badboy-turned sitcom king had the support of his girlfriend, Laura Deibel, who is now his wife, and her parents throughout his nightmare.
Allen credited his arrest with saving his life and giving him direction.
In a letter to Allen's probation officer, Laura’s father, Gilbert, said about Allen: "A young man whom we have come to know quite well. Tim has been a guest in our home a number of times, and never have we observed him to be other than clear-eyed and in complete control of his faculties.
"He is not kidding himself about the wrongness and immaturity of what he has done. He has already suffered months of reflecting on his stupidity."
Records show Allen testified in court: "The cocaine was brought to my house. I was to deliver it."
He also told how the cocaine had been stashed in a "baggie" inside a Thermos bottle, placed in a satchel and carried into the airport.
"I left it at a locker," Allen explained. “We gave the key to Michael Pifer and Michael Pifer unlocked the locker and took the package out."
Allen, who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham, started dealing drugs after he entered Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.
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The past drug deal still haunts Allen.
"I was just a college dealer," he went on. "Neither my partner nor I originally had any idea where we could get any more of the small amount of drugs we were getting."
All that changed after he graduated in April, 1976. Once out of college, Allen began dealing in larger quantities of cocaine—until his arrest.
That’s all behind him now – but sometimes the comedy star is still reminded of his past.
Thomas Richard Warner, who served four years in jail after being turned in by Allen in the ’70s, today runs a bar in Florida.
He recalled: "Not knowing who he was, Tim Allen's agent once booked him into my bar and showed me his photo. I took one look at it and said, 'That guy’s not performing here.'"
