St. Pete Beach drug smuggler was legend for misdeeds. In new film, he’s more.

ST. PETE BEACH — Growing up in St. Pete Beach, Steve Lamb wanted to be a famous surfer. Unable to afford a board, he tried to use a wooden door from home and nearly drowned.

“It’s this beautiful but really sad first wound for Steve that basically motivated his entire life,” filmmaker Ethan Payne said. “He decided he needed to make money.”

Lamb instead found infamy on the water by smuggling drugs, primarily marijuana.

He earned and spent millions, was a fugitive, served stints in federal and state prisons and became an anti-hero in Pinellas County throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He sought to extend his celebrity through a self-published memoir.

At the end, Lamb, who died on Feb. 28 at 71, took part in a documentary about his life. It’s called “The Green Flash,” named for the flash that can sometimes be seen just before the sun sets and will be shown at the Sunscreen Film Festival on April 26.

“We would be trying to interview him by the beach and asking some other question, and he’d just start telling us about what happens when the sun dips below the horizon,” said Jodi Cash, who directed the documentary with Payne. “It occurred to us that that was also a beautiful metaphor just for the brevity of life, for how quickly money comes and goes. It was this loaded image that felt perfect for capturing Steve at the sunset portion of his life.”

Lamb wasn’t the only Pinellas County boater smuggling pot in the 1970s, the documentary explains. Other locals, who grew up in fishing industry families, were involved too. They were all determined to live better than their blue-collar fathers.

“It spanned the entire Gulf Coast,” said Payne, who initially set out to tell that broader story. “We were interviewing a lot of different people and pretty soon we realized we should pivot to our favorite, which is Steve.”

After dipping his toes into the drug dealing through smaller deals, Lamb began running marijuana on a shrimp boat from the Caribbean islands back to the Gulf Coast. Young and wealthy and without a 9-to-5 job, according to the documentary, Lamb spent most of his free time surfing and partying.

“It was sex, drugs and rock n’ roll man,” Lamb’s friend Troy Polk says during the documentary.

In 1973, Lamb was arrested in what was then the largest marijuana bust in U.S. history. He and six others were caught bringing nine tons of marijuana into the small town of Steinhatchee in Dixie County.

He served 20 months in prison, but a few years later was arrested for possession of cocaine. Lamb fled to South America and continued smuggling drugs. He returned to St. Pete Beach on occasion to give money to his mother and others in need.

“Back when he had a plenty of money, he helped everybody he could,” Polk said. “He was a downright good man.”

He partied in the open like he was not a wanted man.

“One of St. Pete Beach’s most infamous sons, Lamb sees himself as an outlaw and a benefactor, a criminal and a hero,” the Tampa Bay Times once wrote about him.

Lamb was arrested in 1989 in San Diego while negotiating the sale of 1,000 pounds of marijuana to undercover agents. He served a brief prison term and returned to St. Pete Beach, where he raised three children. But Lamb was arrested two more times in St. Pete Beach for selling marijuana. He also battled drug addiction, according to the documentary.

Lamb never shied from his past, even after he cleaned up his life.

“Everything changes when you change,” Lamb once told the Times. “A lot of people are just scared of their past. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not going to hide from it.”

In 2009, broke and sleeping on a friend’s couch, he published “The Smuggler’s Ghost” and sold copies through a barnstorming tour of area bookstores and bars.

“He saw his past as an adventure less than unlawful activities,” Payne said. “He is honest that his drug addictions got in the way of him being a father, a husband and a grandfather. At the same time, he was always just wrapped up in the adventure.”

Lamb made amends with family and sought to become a model grandfather, which the filmmakers say was part of the allure of his story.

“We realized that Steve isn’t just this crazy character that runs around St. Pete selling his book and who has this incredible former life as an adventurous smuggler,” Payne said. “Steve is grandpa.”

Among Lamb’s on-camera grandfatherly boasts is that his granddaughter is a talented surfer.

“She represents a more hopeful version of Steve,” Cash said. “Steve passed to her that love for the ocean and surfing.”

If you go

“The Green Flash” will show as part of the Sunscreen Film Festival on at 6 p.m. on April 26 at AMC Sundial 12 in St. Petersburg. For ticket information and a schedule of all movies at the festival, visit sunscreenfilmfestival.com.