He and his wife Marie bought that house across the street in 1997. He wanted to be close to his parents so he could help them out. What he never counted on was how much he would need his family's help.
He's talking about crack. Sitting in the back office of his pawnshop, its walls lined with power tools, coaxial cable, software, Penthouse magazines and other collateral for small 24% interest loans, Piamonte remembers the days he would wake up here on the floor after a night of smoking crack.
It's also the same room where Piamonte interrogated Hamish Robb on May 23, 2004. Robb and his then girlfriend, Chantal Bertrand, had stolen counterfeit cash from Piamonte. He pulled a sawed-off rifle from one of those shelves, handed it to two associates and told them to drive Robb to Prescott to collect payback money from Robb's parents.
That ill-fated flirtation -- with forcible confinement, extortion and counterfeit bills -- was only one part of the 12 criminal charges to which he eventually pleaded guilty.
Piamonte had already been arrested for possession of cocaine, pot and morphine for the purpose of trafficking a couple of weeks earlier after police received a tip that Piamonte and another man were in possession of firearms.
It's not the sort of behaviour anyone would have expected from a man with no prior criminal record, a man who started numerous local businesses and who worked as a civilian in the RCMP's criminal records division. Piamonte says he never dreamed one day his name would be among those files he so diligently worked on.
His morals went out the window. "I didn't care about my family. I didn't care about my business. I didn't care about living. All I did was care about where I was going to get my next piece."
Any pawnshop can be a magnet for shady dealings and characters and his was no exception. Before crack, he turned his back on the people and schemes.
"It turns you into a drug dealer as well because you need the money." The opportunity to buy fake bills and pass them was another way to support his addiction.
Even sending Michael Schmidt and Dan Choquette to try to collect money from Hamish Robb's mother was a drug-addled plan, he says. Robb's mother quickly put an end to the scheme by calling the cops, landing Piamonte, Schmidt and Choquette in the clink.
Crack was something to help him with his depression over the death of his father. And he wasn't particularly concerned about what would happen to him given his mental state at the time.
He quit drinking after his father, Agostino Piamonte, died. He felt guilty because the night before his father had been up waiting for him. He'd taken his father's computer to be fixed but bought him a new one instead. After having too much to drink that night, he decided to bring the computer over the next day. He never got the chance.
Piamonte took his first drink at 15 on a school field trip to Expo 67. He and another student finished off a bottle of cheap wine and spent the day trying to act sober.
He never thought he had a drinking problem as an adult, but now he thinks he probably did. After his dad died, he smashed a bottle of rum and vowed not to drink again.
He tried crack at a get-together with four or five guys in the basement of a friend's house. Their host brought out a crack pipe and asked if any of them had ever tried it. They had no idea their friend was into crack. He thought: What's the big deal? He had tried pot as a teenager but didn't like it and moved on.
Two of the men walked away from crack after that first night. Piamonte didn't. He had to be arrested, breach his bail and spend 80 days in jail before he found his way to rehab. He only got there because his lawyer, Michael Crystal, realized rehab was Piamonte's only hope of avoiding prison time.
His physical condition had deteriorated as much as his mental state. Emaciated and sickly, he had blood clots in his right leg that required two bypass surgeries while he stayed in B.C.
His teeth were removed while he was in rehab. Crack had made them brittle and filled his mouth with abscesses. The cocaine ate a hole in his nose between his two nostrils. He suffers arteriosclerosis (calcium deposits) and requires another bypass surgery in his left leg.
A civil litigation lawyer and former psychologist, John Piamonte says he couldn't fathom his brother's transformation. Nothing in his brother's background could have predicted this.
He always had a head for business, even as a boy. He spent 17 years at the RCMP before his friend and travel agent Dino Payer came to him with a business opportunity.
Piamonte cashed out his pension and invested in Island Getaways with Payer in 1991. The vacation charter business took off and did well until they were defrauded in 1994 by a man who convinced them to charter planes through his airline. Unfortunately, the new airline only existed in the man's imagination.
Payer and Piamonte took a few more stabs at new businesses. Two restaurants flopped but they sold a travel marketing publication after only a year operating it.
In 1996, Piamonte got a call from a friend who owned a strip mall and wanted him to start a second-hand jewelry store. But Piamonte had noticed an explosion in the pawnshop business and decided to do more than just sell second-hand jewelry.
Payer tried his hand at it too, in a store Piamonte helped set up on Walkley Rd. But Payer says the business attracted a clientele he didn't want anything to do with. After his shop was held up one night, he called it quits.
"Bob had a normal childhood," says his sister-in-law Rhonda Piamonte. She met him when she was 12, when her family moved in next door. She remembers the day she met him on the playground when she swiped his hat. He says it was the other way around.
"I think he's trying to make up for lost time," says Krystal Piamonte, 23, of her dad's efforts to reconnect with her and her younger brother. As a kid, she recalls good times with her dad, going to the mall, pet stores, she and her sisters being showered with gifts. But as a teenager, she was too busy to notice something was wrong.
Krystal is in charge of the pawnshop now and won't let anyone from the bad old days near him. He's thinking of selling the shop and starting something else. Maybe a corner store. He's not sure.
His mother, Herta, is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. He's taking care of her and trying to spend as much time as he can with his son Kory. He's continuing to get counselling for his addiction and his mental health. He would rather die than go back to drugs.
"I look at my losses, financial, my health ... I lost the love and affection of my wife ... The most important people are the ones you hurt with this drug."
But he counts himself lucky that he gets to work with Krystal and spend time with Kory. His boy is too young to understand what happened but his father understands the tremendous second chance he's been given.
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