Change is happening behind these concrete walls, behind the razor wire. Change can happen no matter where you are. Believe in yourself and never give up hope.
In 1997 on my first day in prison a sergeant asked me how much time I had. I told him 61 years to life. He shook his head and called me a waste of a Mexican. As I walked away, I promised myself I would prove him wrong.
Then, at my first classification committee, I asked when I would be coming off closed custody. To my surprise, the committee laughed as if I had told a joke. One counselor responded, saying I shouldn’t worry about that because my parole officer hadn’t even been born yet. At the time, my young mind couldn’t grasp what she meant.
I’m approaching my 27th year of incarceration. I entered the system at 19, and now I’m 47. I used those negative remarks from the sergeant and the classification committee to fuel my journey of change. I dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and chose a life of drugs, alcohol, and running the streets. But within my first 18 months at a level four prison, I earned my G.E.D. at 22 years old. This was the first of many accomplishments and the start of my growth and maturity.
That feeling of achieving something positive set the tone for me to continue improving my life. After earning my G.E.D., I pursued office services—a vocational trade where I learned how to type and use programs like Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Later, I learned how to cut hair and worked as the institutional barber for ten years. That job taught me how to communicate with different people, a skill that has helped me tremendously.
In 2019, I enrolled in my first class at Merced College. For years, I had been afraid of college, thinking I wasn’t smart enough after dropping out of high school. But once I pushed those beliefs aside and walked into that first class, everything changed. I’m proud to say that this December, I will be receiving my A.A.T. degree in Communication Studies. I plan to enroll in a Bachelor’s program and continue my pursuit of higher education. I am also working as a Peer Support Specialist at the prison. Peer support is one of the four pillars of the new California model that’s being implemented within the california prisons.
I have been drug and alcohol free for the past 27 years. I am a member of the first-ever Patient Advisory Council, which works side by side with Quality Management to oversee the prisons healthcare department. I’ve taken multiple self-help classes to address the character defects and root causes that led me to prison.
I’ll end with a quote from Viktor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” Change is happening behind these concrete walls, behind the razor wire. Change can happen no matter where you are. Believe in yourself and never give up hope.
