Latest / Hotlines / Hotlines: June 2-6, 2025 - Doing His Time

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Hotlines: June 2-6, 2025 - Doing His Time · Hotlines

• 0:57
  Seth Ready: Hello, Colorado. Welcome to Hotlines, your go to radio show and podcast for the latest on reentry, community support, and second chances. I'm your host, Seth Reddy. I'm a previously incarcerated codirector here at Colorado Radio for Justice and your Hotlines Manager. Our aim is to bring you weekly information in and around the world of reentry. Whether you're tuning in from the Western Slope, the Front Range, or right here in Denver, we've got the information you need to navigate life after incarceration, or to help someone you care about do the same. Hotlines here on Colorado Radio for Justice is produced in collaboration with REmerge, Colorado's reentry resource organization. Once again, I'm joined in the CRJ studio by Carol Peeples. Carol, last week we spoke with Michelle Sykes and James Thomas, the founders of The Road Called Strate. What a great interview with two wonderful people.
• 1:54
  Carol Peeples: Yes. It was. It was just so fun to talk to both of them and to hear their stories.
• 1:58
  Seth Ready: Absolutely. Absolutely. Great guests. So why don't you tell us what we got to look forward to on this week's episode?
• 2:05
  Carol Peeples: I have another friend from long ago. We go back years that I asked to come in. I'm honored to have Chris Mays, who has been the executive director of Doing His Time. You've been doing it a long time. Chris, I want to welcome you to the show.
• 2:24
  Chris Mays: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
• 2:27
  Carol Peeples: I've always thought - we list you as Doing His Time Prison Ministry. You also have "72 Hour Fund" on your sleeve. Tell me a little bit about that.
• 2:35
  Chris Mays: Well, the seventy two hour fund was established in 02/2004. The whole philosophy was to help offenders as they're coming out of the federal and state system within the first seventy two hours of their release. Back in the old days when they came out, they didn't have a a card, a debit card. They had a check from the state. And many of them did not have an ID, so they would go literally to the nearest bar.
• 3:03
  The bartender would cash the check without an ID if they purchased a drink. So that was a violation of their parole right there. So we called we established the reentry aspect of doing his time as the seventy two Hour Fund, keeping in mind to catch them in that first seventy two hours.
• 3:24
  Carol Peeples: I never knew that. Wow. So do you still do seventy two hour fund? Or is it just the part of all of the work of doing his time in?
• 3:33
  Chris Mays: It's pretty much the highlight of it right now. For the past fifteen years since I've been director there, we have focused on reentry. Going into the prisons, participating in reentry fairs, meeting the men and women prior to their release, assessing their needs, what county they are going to because they're 64 counties. And then trying to connect them with resources in those counties if they're not going to the major metro centers of the state. So the goal was to assist them with transitional essentials and meeting them even before they came out. Yeah. So, we would have time to work with them.
• 4:20
  Carol Peeples: And you've been doing that for fifteen years?
• 4:22
  Chris Mays: Fifteen years this Thanksgiving.
• 4:24
  Carol Peeples: Tell me a little bit about how you got started in this and why.
• 4:28
  Chris Mays: Well, I was an electrician by trade, and I worked in the uranium mines in New Mexico back in the seventies. And then I myself got in trouble in New Mexico and Colorado. And the Santa Fe prison rioted. So the district attorney came to me and said, look, we don't have a prison to send you to, and you're nothing but a stupid punk kid, 19 years old. You have no idea what you got yourself into.
• 4:54
  So they dropped my charges in New Mexico if I would be transferred to Colorado on my charges here. And going to prison in 1979, it was the Colorado State Penitentiary then, not Colorado Department of Corrections. And I went in with a four year sentence, and because I was really a brilliant 19, 20 year old, I escaped. And I turned literally a four year sentence into fifty nine years and had to do 31 of those years. Going in in '79 and getting out in 2010.
• 5:32
  Now Jim Vogelzang, the CEO and founder of Doing His Time, he used to work for Prison Fellowship as a volunteer way back in eighties, in the eighties. Yeah. And I met him as chaplain's clerk at Limon (Correctional Facility) when Limon first opened in '91. And they dropped the state senate budget committee in its wisdom dropped the Pell Grants for the inmates. All of us were attending Regis University at that time.
• 6:02
  And they dropped the Pell Grants. So literally, I just prayed. And I said, Lord, I have no idea how I'm gonna continue my education to get my bachelor's degree, but I'm gonna just trust you. And not even ninety days later, Jim Boglezang, who's six foot eight, so he's quite a impressive presence, came walking into the office with Major Murray and with the warden for long at that time. And he introduced himself to me and put out his gigantic hand, and he said, mister Mayes, he said, I heard that you're looking for a sponsor for college.
• 6:40
  Me and my wife would be honored to pay for the rest of your college to get your bachelor's degree provided you use that education for your peers in prison. So I just said, wow. You know, I accepted that. And from there, I did get my bachelor's degree, and then him and his wife offered to put me into a master's program. And I asked to take some time off because I wanted to live out all the information I put into my head.
• 7:16
  I wanted to start living it out before I beat some more into my head. So they gave me a breather, and then I about eighteen months later, I accepted going into a master's program and graduated two years later. So that was the provision for my education. I had no idea that when I was released that it would be at the time where doing his time was either considering closing the doors and they were looking for a new operations manager. So Jim asked me if me and my wife would take a look at doing his time and see if it's something that we would even wanna do.
• 8:00
  Because Suzy, my wife, and myself, our plan was me being released, us getting married, and me finding a work with contractor to get my journeyman's electrician's license. That was our goal. So for fifteen years we've been there and it's just wonderful how it's developed. We have really connected with Department of Corrections, federal probation, federal parole, and state probation, state parole, and direct sentence inmates.
• 8:35
  Carol Peeples: That's amazing.
• 8:37
  And a shout out to Suzy. Suzy couldn't make it today to be with you today in studio. But I've always just appreciated being able to call you or Susie and just getting help for someone who is reaching out through Remerg.com. So can you tell me some nuts and bolts about doing this time right now? Where are you guys? What are people who do you help? Do you have be on parole, probation? Can you help just anybody? What are your hours? That sort of thing.
• 9:04
  Chris Mays: Okay. Well, our address is 4045 Wadsworth Boulevard, Suite 310 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. We've been there now for seventeen years, I've been there since 2010. All of our clients are justice connected.
• 9:23
  So they're on probation, parole, or direct sentence from the courthouse to community or sober living. We're really, ever since the foundation of doing his time, it's been justice connected. It's to help the men and women as they're coming out of prison to reintegrate back in society. And literally, our motto is kneeling with those who have stumbled. We wanna see them succeed.
• 9:48
  They have to do the hard work, but as long as they're willing to do the hard work, we have their back. We have employers that will hire our clients. If they need steel toed boots or skid resistant shoes, we will provide those. We help them with state IDs, birth certificates, clothing, hygiene, bus passes, medical assistance if they need that, if parole or probation certifies their prescription. We have on average about 1,700 men and women that come through our office a year.
• 10:23
  And every now and then we'll have homeless people that hear about doing his time through the parolees and probationes. And they will come to the office and we will assist them one time also and then connect them with agencies that are set up to meet their needs because we're not set up to meet their the homeless needs. Yeah.
• 10:45
  Carol Peeples: Oh my gosh. So I know you guys are faith based. Yes. But do you have to be of faith in order to get help?
• 10:51
  Chris Mays: Oh no. We want everybody to come that wants to come.
• 10:56
  Carol Peeples: You mentioned 1,700 people a year. Know you are very, very careful with your statistics.
• 11:04
  Chris Mays: We are.
• 11:04
  Carol Peeples: I think that's one of the issues in the reentry community that we need to address, is how we describe our efficacy as you know, with a return on the investment from the public or from your church or however you or, you know, foundations or however we get funded. So tell me how you track it and what's your Okay.
• 11:24
  Chris Mays: So we've been tracking our men and women can come into the office once a month for up to six months. So, basically, when they finish that six months, they have more clothing than the average citizen. They're already established working. They're pretty much solid. And now we have the Colorado Department website in our computers.
• 11:47
  We also have the federal Department of Corrections in our computers. And we can access every county jail in Colorado. And what we do is we take our numbers and we filter every one of our intake forms. And we monitor if they go back to prison or not. So that's really how we track everybody. And thirteen percent of our men return to prison, and about seven to eight percent at juggles year to year of our women will re return to prison. And some of that could be for a technical. That's that's exactly crime is just a portion of that.
• 12:30
  Seth Ready: But those are still really good numbers.
• 12:31
  Carol Peeples: Oh my God. They are amazing.
• 12:32
  Chris Mays: Well, they are because there's so many agencies, including Remerg, that are out there to help them and we all network. We all need each other because we all have blind spots, weaknesses, and gifts. So the whole idea is to get them networking.
• 12:50
  Carol Peeples: Yeah. I just wanna thank you so much, Chris, for coming in. I really appreciate your time and your years of work and helping others.
• 13:02
  Chris Mays: I thank you very much. It's an honor to be here and just share doing his time with the world and just let them know that there's hope for everybody, but they have to do the hard work. It's their life. It's their life just like yours and mine, and we're responsible for it. And we know that it's harder for some people than others.
• 13:21
  But
• 13:23
  Seth Ready: Well, thank you very much, Chris. And thank you, Suzy. Sorry you couldn't be here to join us, but shout out. Do you guys have a website?
• 13:31
  Chris Mays: We do. It's doinghistime.org, and you could put in 72 Hour Fund, and it will come up there as well.
• 13:38
  Seth Ready: Okay. Great. That's awesome. Thanks again, Chris, for joining us.
• 13:42
  Chris Mays: My pleasure. Thank you.
• 13:44
  Seth Ready: All right. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Hotlines. For more information in the reentry realm, go to Remerg.com. That's remerg.com. You can hear Hotlines at 9AM and 9PM Monday through Friday with fresh episodes airing weekly.
• 14:01
  But don't touch that dial, though. Stay and listen to one of CRJ's original features coming up next. If you haven't seen our full programming schedule, I encourage you to hop on to RadioForJustice.org and take a peek. Catch us next time y'all as we continue to shine a light on the path forward. Stay strong, Colorado. This your community signing off.