Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / Sentenced at 16, Free at Last: Cheryl Armstrong on 26 Years in Prison & Planting Purpose

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Sentenced at 16, Free at Last: Cheryl Armstrong on 26 Years in Prison & Planting Purpose · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:00
  I mean, it sounds so cliche, but it's like none of us are the
• 0:02
  worst thing that we've done in our lives.
• 0:04
  And just remembering that we get to wake up and choose the state
• 0:08
  of our mind every day. And that's going to completely
• 0:11
  potentially change the entire course of your life.
• 0:14
  To grasp the power in that and to hold on to it and cultivate
• 0:19
  it, do something with it, even if it just means you're a
• 0:23
  happier person. That in itself is a huge win in
• 0:26
  your life, you know, even if it means you stop going back to
• 0:29
  prison, you stop going back to addiction, you stop letting
• 0:33
  people abuse you in relationships, whatever it is
• 0:36
  that your demons are like, Knowing that you can choose
• 0:38
  something different and facing your fears, you have to take
• 0:42
  responsibility for who you are, the good and the bad.
• 0:45
  Sometimes more so the bad, because that's what you need to
• 0:48
  change. That's where real change
• 0:49
  happens, right? Yes, that's right.
• 0:53
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:56
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome to the Nightmare Success In and
• 0:59
  Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 1:03
  nightmares and set yourself free.
• 1:05
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 1:07
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 1:12
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad, there's some
• 1:16
  humor, but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of
• 1:19
  something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons you
• 1:21
  built up in your own mind. All right, welcome back.
• 1:26
  I have our success In-n-out listeners.
• 1:28
  This is where you come from. What happens when your worst
• 1:29
  fear becomes your reality? How do you adapt, survive,
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  overcome? Set yourself free, folks.
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  Don't forget to follow. Subscribe.
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  Like this thing out. Share it up.
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  It really helps the show. I really appreciate it.
• 1:40
  So who are we talking to today? Well, I am absolutely fascinated
• 1:45
  by my guest, Cheryl Armstrong. And I want to give a shout out
• 1:48
  to Kristen Johnson because I saw this this thing that this
• 1:52
  article about Cheryl and I, I reached out to Kristen 'cause it
• 1:57
  looked like she was connected with her at the event.
• 1:58
  She's oh, gosh, yeah, I'll connect you.
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  So Kristen, thank you so much. A little bit about Cheryl
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  Armstrong. She's a two time international
• 2:10
  best selling author, powerful keynote speaker and the founder
• 2:13
  of Plant Your Energy, which I love that name by the way.
• 2:17
  You know, plant your good choices one at a time.
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  Cheryl's nightmare is like something that you turn on the
• 2:26
  TV and and go, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe that happened.
• 2:30
  It began at a very early age, at 16 years old.
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  She was sentenced to decades in prison at that age, and that
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  moment could have permanently had defined her future.
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  Instead, she endured evolved, spending 26 years incarcerated
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  while doing the internal work that would ultimately transform
• 2:48
  her life behind the walls. Cheryl began planting the seeds
• 2:51
  of accountability, mindset, character development, and
• 2:53
  personal responsibility that would later become the
• 2:56
  foundation of her Plant Your Energy, life Skills, and
• 2:59
  Character Development program. In this episode, Cheryl shares
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  what it's truly takes to survive decades of incarceration without
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  losing hope, and how she emerged with a clear mission to help
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  others break free from mental prisons long after the physical
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  ones are gone. She explains how intentional
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  energy, daily discipline, and ownership of 1's choices can
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  turn even the darkest chapters into a source of purpose and
• 3:23
  power. I cannot wait to jump into all
• 3:26
  this because I think it's just I, I just, I want to ask her so
• 3:30
  much about everything that she's gone through before we do.
• 3:34
  I want to recognize the show sponsor, Auto Plaza Direct.
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  concierge. Tell them Brent from Nightmare
• 4:06
  Success sent you. Folks, I want to share with you
• 4:08
  a powerful and moving new book you won't want to miss.
• 4:11
  My name is Saffron Voices. Silence stifled and taken away
• 4:16
  by author Saffron Gustafson. This isn't just a story.
• 4:19
  It's a journey through resilient survival and reclaiming your
• 4:21
  voice after being silenced for far too long.
• 4:24
  Saffron's story takes you inside the hidden struggles, the pain
• 4:26
  and ultimately the triumph, refusing to be defined by
• 4:29
  circumstances. As Saffron was putting the
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  finishing touches on her book the prison, she had just been
• 4:34
  released from federal Dublin. FCI, was permanently closed
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  because of sexual abuse of the women prisoners.
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  If you've ever wondered what it takes to rise from the darkness
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• 5:00
  Cheryl Armstrong, welcome and how are you?
• 5:03
  Thank you. I'm good.
• 5:04
  How you doing? I'm.
• 5:05
  Doing great, doing great. So gosh, where should we start?
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  What do we start? Where?
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  Because there wasn't that much time before all this happened to
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  you. Growing up as a kid, before you
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  were 16, Where were you? What was life like?
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  What? Where were you living?
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  Mom, dad, siblings? What was going on?
• 5:29
  Yeah, it's kind of sad actually. I just want to note that usually
• 5:33
  when I share my story, it's like I always started when the crime
• 5:37
  happened. It's kind of sad.
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  Before that, you know, I have no excuses.
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  I had a really fantastic family. Granted my parents, my mom and
• 5:48
  my dad divorced when I was two. My mom remarried the next year,
• 5:52
  so my stepdad was in my life. With the stepdad and all that.
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  I was 2 when it happened. You were two years old.
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  I I have 3 1/2 year old twin grandsons.
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  So yeah, they probably wouldn't have had much to say at two
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  years old. Yeah, well.
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  Yeah, I grew up going to visit my dad every other weekend and
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  then when I got older it was maybe once, like twice a year
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  tops. But he they good family, three
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  brothers, two of the three were in the military.
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  But you know, I, I, they were violent guys also, as well as my
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  real dad and actually my stepdad.
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  And so that was modeled to me throughout my childhood.
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  So like, what do you say violent?
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  Like what? What do you mean violent?
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  Like they used to get a lot of fights.
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  OK, just be they were just generally getting in fights and.
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  Stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  So, you know, they were, you know, it was just like, oh, oh,
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  I'm an Armstrong. So I have to be a badass like my
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  brothers. And so I was an honor roll
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  student when I was a kid, you know, typical suburban life.
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  I had a good life. My mom is the most amazing human
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  I've ever known. She passed away a little over
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  three years ago. Thankfully she got to see me
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  walk out of prison but she supported me through this entire
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  journey. Came to see me every single week
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  in prison for 22 years until they moved.
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  There awesome. So good people in my family, but
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  I do think that I looked up to my brothers in a way that I
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  wanted to have that edge about me.
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  And so I kind of modeled their behavior as a teenager did not
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  go well for me. So and I can see that because I
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  mean, you're a girl with these, you know, bad ass brothers and
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  and what and I'm sure that they kind of tried to protect you
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  with the, you know, they're your sister, the sister, he's over
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  here. But the sisters kind of wanting
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  to roll with the brothers who are kind of known as the bad
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  asses, but like high school and stuff.
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  Like what was your click? Like where did you fall into
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  that world? So I think that one of the
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  reasons that I went down the path that I did is because we
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  moved around a lot from I was 10 to when I went to prison, it's
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  16 when I got arrested. So I never really had a sense of
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  stability at the same school. I was constantly the New Girl
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  trying to meet people. So I really started getting in
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  trouble when I was 14. I, I was born in Grand Junction,
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  Co, But I grew up in teeny tiny little towns that are barely
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  even, you know, on the map, little mountain towns, you know,
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  in the middle of nowhere. So when I was 14, we moved to a
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  suburb of Denver and that's where it all just went bad.
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  I was alone a lot of the time. My parents owned a Mailboxes
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  Etcetera store in downtown Denver.
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  I remember those. Are those still around?
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  I don't know. About this etcetera, those were
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  a big deal with the 80s and 90s, yeah.
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  So they were always gone tending to that and I ended up having a
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  lot of time to myself and I did not do the right things with
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  that time. I started smoking pot, you know,
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  I kind of didn't have, I ended up kind of having a little
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  click, but initially I didn't. In high school, I was friends
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  with a girl in the neighborhood. I was friends made a couple of
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  friends that were ditching school.
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  I started not going to classes. I had no motivation.
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  I didn't like the school. So then when I was ditching
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  school, we're smoking pot all the time.
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  You know, that eventually, a couple years later evolved into
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  me using meth. Had I not gone to prison, I most
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  surely would have become a meth addict.
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  So it saved me from that. Yeah.
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  I just, it was all bad. You know, I was getting in
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  trouble for, for stupid things. I got a third degree assault
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  charge, shoplifting. I was getting speeding tickets.
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  Like I was just getting in trouble.
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  You know, I was on probation, juvenile probation when my crime
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  happened, but there. Was stuff going on around this
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  is this cloud that that was creating that a moment could
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  happen and like you and I talked the other day, it's so they, you
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  know, they I know there's been movies where, you know, if you
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  go left, your life is this and you go right and your life is
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  that you kind of had that thing happen in that moment where if
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  you hadn't have done this, then that wouldn't have happened.
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  And, and can you, can you kind of lead us into the what
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  happened, the nightmare when it landed, how it got to where it
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  was and. So basically I had been in a
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  relationship for a little under a year with a guy.
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  During that time this guy was also seeing another girl.
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  I was being lied to about that. When the crime happened I
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  actually believed that they were no longer speaking, but they
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  were. They were.
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  He was having relationships with both of us and pulled it off for
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  a while. Long story short with the
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  details of that, I ended up getting involved with someone
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  else. We had a breakup, there were
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  threats being exchanged, messages being left on my
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  answering machine. Thing of the past, you know,
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  threatening me and my family and my friends already didn't like
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  the ex-boyfriend they had. They were rival gang members
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  would have. Like sure would have been like,
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  considered like stalking. Just.
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  You're just just irritating. Yeah, just just a lot of trash
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  talk and back and forth. I mean, and it it had that piece
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  of it happened in a very small time frame and it escalated very
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  quickly. OK.
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  And you know, back then I'm pretty transparent.
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  It would took me a lot of years to be able to speak so openly
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  about all my flaws. But I was, you know, I was a
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  jealous person when I was a teenager.
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  I was insecure and most of all, I was angry.
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  And I was the kind of person who had to have the last word all
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  the time. And my friends were kind of the
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  same way. And so it kind of just became
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  this thing like, well, if you're going to threaten me and my
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  people where, you know, I'm not going to allow you to do
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  something to me or my mom or my friends.
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  And so on the night of the crime, basically I've been
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  smoking weed all day. I didn't drink alcohol.
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  It makes me very sick. But my Co defendants were, you
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  know, drunk out of their minds. I'm 16 years old.
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  My Co defendants are 1617 and 18.
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  We're all young. We end up driving over to the
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  house. Who are these people to you
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  these. My best friend is one of them
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  who quick side notes ironically ended up doing this.
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  I have 1/2 sleeve tattoo he's now out.
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  Also he had two life without parole sentences.
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  We always maintained a positive relationship on and off contact
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  throughout all the years we were in.
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  And then when we were both out, I was able to go up to Denver
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  and he, he did my this is actually a piece that kind of
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  symbolizes my time in prison. It's a broken clock.
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  And. He did that.
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  He did that. He would have been a very sought
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  after person in prison. Because it's.
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  Oh yeah, he's yes. There was one Those guys made a
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  lot of money. Yes, as teenagers we used to, he
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  would sit there and he would just draw, draw, draw.
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  And he actually, while he was in prison, had a contract with an
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  art gallery. He used to do paintings and, and
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  sell, sell his art at an art gallery.
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  So, yeah, he's a good guy. You know, live down the street
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  from me, what, mile away or something, you know, and just,
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  we just got caught up in this bad situation.
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  Things spun out of control that fast.
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  And they had guns. I didn't really believe that
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  they were going to use them. What was the instigation of it
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  though, Cheryl, and what what made what made everybody jump in
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  the car and go? Oh, on the phone back and forth
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  that it happened like a day or two prior.
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  Some of those details are a little blurrier for me now.
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  I mean, and they're honestly there are some pieces of it that
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  I've completely just lost all together because it's just so
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  traumatizing self-imposed trauma though I, you know, I own that.
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  So we decided to drive over there that night.
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  He when we drove up to the house, they went up to the front
• 15:00
  door. The door was locked.
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  They got back in the car. I went to drive off and you
• 15:06
  know, there was a median. And then you turn left to go to
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  his house while I drove straight and he was outside.
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  And of course, come to find out later, he had called 911 and was
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  standing in the front yard waiting for the police to show
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  up, which is just really heartbreaking.
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  So I kept driving and my Co defendants were like, what are
• 15:28
  you doing? There's I'll never forget it.
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  Like they were screaming at me to turn around and I did turned
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  around, went back to the house. They jumped out of the car, ran
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  into the house. They.
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  And that's that moment, too, Yeah.
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  Where? Where?
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  Where? If you hadn't turned around.
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  That's the moment, all my life, that's been the moment for me
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  where I'm like, I should have, just should have just kept
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  going, you know, and they were going to they, you know, they
• 15:55
  talked about, oh, we're just going to shoot up this house.
• 15:58
  And, you know, but they didn't when they saw him, they got out,
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  ran in. He didn't have time to lock the
• 16:02
  door and and they shot and killed him as well as the other
• 16:06
  girl who was there. So when that happened, Cheryl
• 16:11
  and they came back in the car, did you know what all had
• 16:13
  happened? I mean, what?
• 16:15
  I'm sure that happened very quickly.
• 16:17
  It did. I drove around the block and
• 16:19
  when they jumped back in the car, they told me what had
• 16:21
  happened. And I know it sounds kind of
• 16:24
  lame, like it's Oh yeah, right. But I, I went between believing
• 16:30
  it and thinking, no way. There's no way they really did
• 16:33
  this. And for many years I used to try
• 16:36
  to explain to people like, I know it sounds like I'm lying,
• 16:39
  but I swear to God, I didn't understand how serious it was.
• 16:43
  I wasn't thinking about the seriousness of it all.
• 16:48
  And so years later when the science backed that up, I was
• 16:53
  just, I remember crying about it 'cause I was like, wow, they
• 16:56
  finally have that evidence that what I was saying is legit.
• 17:00
  You know, you when you're a teenager, your brain's not fully
• 17:03
  developed. You don't fully, completely.
• 17:04
  Like 21 or 22 where? Your brain is it. 25.
• 17:09
  Yeah, my master's thesis actually dives into a lot of
• 17:12
  that stuff. OK.
• 17:14
  Yeah, Yeah. So.
• 17:18
  Yeah, so you driving around, you get these guys back in the car,
• 17:21
  they tell you what happened, what happens.
• 17:26
  We drove back to my Co defendant's house that night and
• 17:30
  I mean, at that point, you know, we were taking acid.
• 17:33
  We were, you know, just a lot of substance abuse was going on at
• 17:36
  that point. The meth, I had acid in my car,
• 17:40
  a whole sheet of it. We're smoking weed.
• 17:42
  They're drinking. Like we just weren't in our
• 17:44
  right minds. And, you know, I kept thinking
• 17:49
  like, it's not on the news. We didn't hear anything about
• 17:54
  it. And so I was questioning, like,
• 17:55
  did they really do it? Are they lying about it?
• 17:59
  Unfortunately, they weren't. Four days later, the bodies were
• 18:03
  discovered when a cop did a welfare check.
• 18:08
  I'm a little emotional about it today.
• 18:10
  Sometimes I could talk about it and I'm good, and there's other
• 18:13
  times that it just still hits me.
• 18:16
  So yeah, they found the bodies four days later.
• 18:19
  And one of the guys that had actually been in the car with us
• 18:22
  that night, he wasn't a shooter, really didn't have any direct
• 18:25
  involvement, but he had supplied the guns, which he stole from
• 18:29
  his friend's dad to my Co defendants.
• 18:32
  And so when he got busted for that, he ratted us all out.
• 18:39
  He is like this is where the guns went.
• 18:41
  This is what these guys did with the guns.
• 18:43
  This is their names. And that was a wrap.
• 18:46
  We got arrested four days later down the street from my Co
• 18:49
  defendant's house. Wow so while while all this was
• 18:55
  going on your your mom, no one knew anything that had happened.
• 19:01
  This was you guys were just living in a bubble until you got
• 19:04
  ratted out. And there's no way to even put
• 19:06
  what was to the feeling of that. It was very strange what was
• 19:10
  going on. I.
• 19:10
  Can't imagine. Yeah, I can't imagine those four
• 19:13
  days. How did you How did they come
• 19:15
  and get you when this all happened?
• 19:19
  So I'll never forget is April 17th.
• 19:25
  I'm sorry, that's the day of the crime.
• 19:26
  April 21st when we got arrested and it was raining and me, my Co
• 19:32
  defendant and another guy who was not connected to the crime,
• 19:35
  we left in my car to go somewhere and around the corner
• 19:40
  where we couldn't see it, there was a Denver gang unit cop car.
• 19:45
  Well, we weren't in Denver County, we were in Jefferson
• 19:48
  County. So I knew right then I was like,
• 19:50
  this is it. And sure enough, they followed
• 19:53
  us to a mall which was right by the house, Southwest Plaza, and
• 19:58
  pulled us over in the parking lot, guns drawn on us.
• 20:00
  And that was it. Put me and my Co defendant in
• 20:04
  separate cop cars and took us to the county jail.
• 20:08
  What are your thoughts? It is devastating, but I'll tell
• 20:15
  you what, when it happened, I was so high from smoking so much
• 20:21
  weed all the time. I, I all I wanted to do was go
• 20:25
  to sleep. And I think about that and I'm
• 20:27
  like, it's just disgusting to me that that's who I was, that that
• 20:31
  was my state of mind, you know, that I just, I was such an
• 20:36
  uncaring person, so. It's hard.
• 20:40
  So when that when, when that because you're, you're young,
• 20:43
  you're 15 years old, right? 16.
• 20:46
  OK, 16 so so did you when when you when you got arrested?
• 20:55
  Sure. You go into the the police
• 20:58
  headquarters. Yeah.
• 21:01
  What do they do with you as a young kid?
• 21:04
  They kept me in a holding cell until my parent was present.
• 21:09
  They call my mom and it was we lived up in Conifer.
• 21:13
  So it was a good hour away from the Denver Police Department and
• 21:17
  it was snowing up there. The weather was terrible.
• 21:20
  And my mom said I'm not coming down there.
• 21:23
  And they wouldn't even tell her what was going on.
• 21:26
  She didn't even know what I was in trouble for.
• 21:28
  She just knew I was in trouble. And so they actually took, they
• 21:32
  went and picked her up all the way up in Conifer to bring her
• 21:34
  down to the station and they kept me in a holding cell until
• 21:37
  she got there. They took us in the same room
• 21:41
  and pulled their usual shenanigans, which I won't get
• 21:44
  into too much of that. But you know, saying that my Co
• 21:47
  defendant had said this and this about me, which it was all a
• 21:50
  lie. He hadn't said anything.
• 21:52
  And they can legally lie too, I mean.
• 21:54
  I and he did. And he?
• 21:56
  Did. And so I was just in sheer panic
• 21:59
  and it was just devastating. I was sobbing, my mom was
• 22:03
  sobbing and you know I'll never forget.
• 22:06
  It's hard for me to talk about it, but I'm going to try not to
• 22:08
  cry. I'll never forget her saying I
• 22:11
  wanted, you know, I don't want my little girl to go to jail.
• 22:14
  I want to take her home. And little did she know, I would
• 22:17
  not be coming home for almost 3 decades after that.
• 22:22
  Wow. Yeah.
• 22:24
  How? How long Cheryl did it take for
• 22:30
  when they took you in that day and your mom is there to when
• 22:35
  did you did you go to trial or did you do a plea bargain?
• 22:39
  They didn't offer me a plea bargain.
• 22:40
  OK. So you went to trial.
• 22:43
  How long did it take for you to get to trial?
• 22:46
  Seven months. 7 to 8 months. Seven months and then what?
• 22:50
  What kind of like legal representation did you have?
• 22:53
  Because your situation was is that you weren't the person who
• 22:56
  went into the house, you were the person that was driving
• 22:59
  around kind of like a a bank robbery where somebody's driving
• 23:03
  the getaway car, but. They look for me as like the
• 23:07
  centerpiece of the crime because of my relationship with the.
• 23:10
  Because of the relationship with the person that they Fair
• 23:12
  enough, right? If I hadn't drove over there,
• 23:15
  the crime wouldn't have happened, so I take
• 23:16
  responsibility for that. Exactly.
• 23:20
  So when you walk in and then you would be 16 years old into this
• 23:24
  courtroom to be looking at. Life without parole.
• 23:29
  Life without parole. They're trying to get me for
• 23:31
  first degree murder charges. That's what I went to trial for,
• 23:34
  yeah. How did that whole trial go?
• 23:41
  So this is the part where I've lost big chunks of my memory.
• 23:48
  Yeah. And it's weird because I used to
• 23:50
  always said that, that it was BS, but it's it's, it's real.
• 23:55
  It's a real thing. It is a big blur to me.
• 23:58
  It really is. I think that, I mean, I can't
• 24:02
  remember a lot of the details, that there are a few things here
• 24:05
  and there that stand out. I just know that it was the most
• 24:10
  intense misery I've ever felt in my life, you know, day after day
• 24:15
  after day. Yeah.
• 24:17
  Yeah, And you know, that's, it's, I know how those things
• 24:21
  you can block out 'cause like I was 14 years old.
• 24:26
  And so my dad was sentenced to go to prison and then land 35
• 24:33
  years later that we end up going to prison together.
• 24:36
  But this happened and I was there.
• 24:39
  I was in the courtroom and, and I was, I know that I, I, I
• 24:43
  remember my grandmother being there.
• 24:45
  I don't remember a lot of things.
• 24:47
  For some reason that day is so blacked out for me.
• 24:51
  And I wasn't like, it was like I was five years old.
• 24:53
  I was in 8th grade and I still can't remember that day.
• 24:57
  Now I can remember the day I got sentenced a lot better, but.
• 25:02
  I remember my sentencing day. Yeah, well, tell me about the
• 25:05
  sentencing day. Oh, well, you know, the the
• 25:09
  procedure was that the prosecution got to go first.
• 25:15
  So first of all, the courtroom was filled with the friends and
• 25:19
  the family of the victims. And I mean, filled all the juror
• 25:22
  seats. You know, there was a lot going
• 25:25
  on in there. They had all written letters.
• 25:27
  They they showed up as they should have.
• 25:29
  You know, the judge who apparently was an alcoholic and
• 25:37
  was unethical, which came out later, but.
• 25:43
  Yeah. Yeah, he wouldn't let the he
• 25:46
  wouldn't let the prosecution present what they wanted to
• 25:48
  present. And and he kept arguing the
• 25:52
  prosecutor saying, well, unless you're going to give her the
• 25:54
  maximum sentence, blah, blah, blah.
• 25:55
  I mean, he told him to sit down. So he let the defense.
• 25:59
  We got to, I got up and made my statement.
• 26:01
  My mom, my aunts, I think my brother was there.
• 26:05
  That was before he passed away. I lost two of my brother's laws
• 26:08
  in prison. Yeah, we, we set our piece, and
• 26:15
  it was fast. He was like, I'm sentencing.
• 26:17
  He sends me a 96 years, 48 years for each count.
• 26:20
  And I'll never forget that. The courtroom just erupted in
• 26:24
  applause, like it was some sick show or something, you know,
• 26:30
  like, it was really toxic. But you know what that was that
• 26:35
  was what I had created for myself.
• 26:37
  And so I can't blame him, you know?
• 26:41
  How long did it take you to get transferred to where you were
• 26:44
  going to prison? They only have they had policies
• 26:47
  with that stuff in Colorado. So it was they had to buy the
• 26:50
  10th business day, transfer me to it's called DRDC, like the
• 26:54
  DOC intake facility. So when they took me there, I
• 26:58
  was no longer segregated, you know.
• 27:00
  Was there any discussion at all, Cheryl, about the age that you
• 27:03
  were? Were you treated any
• 27:04
  differently? Were you, were you segregated
• 27:06
  any differently? In the county jail, they kept me
• 27:09
  in the whole the whole time. Oh gosh.
• 27:11
  OK. Yeah.
• 27:13
  And then once I got to DRDCI was with general population, you
• 27:18
  know, and so I sat there for about two months until they took
• 27:23
  me to the prison that I would spend the next 13 years at.
• 27:28
  I, I was in two prisons. I was in each of them for about
• 27:31
  13 years, so. Let's take a break there 'cause
• 27:35
  I want to. I want to go in when we get back
• 27:37
  and talk about what it's like for a 16 year old girl to walk
• 27:43
  into a maximum security prison and what you thought about how
• 27:48
  you were going to tackle that life.
• 27:50
  Because it's the unknown world. I walked in at 47.
• 27:53
  I can't imagine walking in at 16, so a lot of people don't
• 27:57
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• 28:02
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• 28:23
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• 28:28
  And Nightmare Success Podcast is sponsored by the White Collar
• 28:31
  Support Group, the world's first support group devoted to people
• 28:34
  navigating the white collar criminal justice system.
• 28:36
  I'm a member of the White Collar Support Group, and I can tell
• 28:39
  you this is a bunch of people who help each other through the
• 28:41
  criminal justice journey for free.
• 28:43
  Whether you're just starting your journey or you've made it
• 28:45
  through to the other side, this is great space for you.
• 28:48
  You can join us on Zoom Monday, 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
• 28:52
  To get more information, go to prisonist.org.
• 28:55
  It's prisonist.org. OK, Cheryl, so you, this young
• 29:01
  teenage girl is going to the big place that, you know, nobody
• 29:10
  plans on being there but a young person.
• 29:14
  What's going through your mind walking through those gates
• 29:19
  knowing that you're going to be there for not a week, a month,
• 29:22
  but decades? I wasn't a person.
• 29:24
  Yeah. I thought I would die in there.
• 29:26
  Honestly, when you're 16 and you have 96 years, you're like, this
• 29:29
  is it. You know, I, my mindset was I
• 29:32
  didn't want to be alive anymore. I'm not the kind of person that
• 29:36
  would ever try to take my own life.
• 29:38
  However, in my head, I was like, I cannot, I can't do this, you
• 29:44
  know? And I wasn't as strong then as I
• 29:50
  am now. Of course, after everything
• 29:53
  through, I've felt that. But you know, I I also, though,
• 29:56
  wasn't a person that had a lot of fear, which is what got me in
• 29:59
  this situation to begin with as kind of fearless and I, the
• 30:05
  whole Armstrong attitude. And so I get to prison and I
• 30:08
  just dug my heels into all of the worst character traits I had
• 30:12
  in me. I embraced them.
• 30:14
  I amplified them. I actually didn't end up having
• 30:17
  to really fight hardly ever in prison, but I think that that
• 30:21
  had to do with who I was hanging out with, who I clicked up with
• 30:26
  perception and had such an attitude and I would run my
• 30:30
  mouth and challenge people and I didn't care.
• 30:33
  And it worked for me, you know, So I, I was not the girl I'm
• 30:37
  everybody probably thinks, oh, this poor girl was so young.
• 30:40
  But like I, I did not really get bullied or have that type of
• 30:46
  experience in there. Now.
• 30:48
  People would have probably have liked to have taken advantage of
• 30:51
  me. I think there was a couple
• 30:53
  attempts at that for sure, you know, but I just had such rigid
• 30:57
  boundaries. People would come knock on my
• 30:59
  cell door and I'd be like, what do you want?
• 31:01
  You know, like I just always had an attitude the whole like, stay
• 31:06
  away from me vibe. I don't, I don't want to talk to
• 31:08
  you. I don't want to know you unless
• 31:11
  you're in my tiny little circle, but it works for me.
• 31:15
  Yeah, that was your protection, That was your shield.
• 31:18
  Yeah. So I know a lot changed for you
• 31:22
  in prison. So you go in hard and Armstrong
• 31:26
  and don't mess with me 'cause I'll mess with you.
• 31:30
  How long did that go on? For years, for years.
• 31:35
  I mean, and here's the thing, like underneath all that, I was
• 31:38
  just this broken young girl who I didn't know who I was.
• 31:43
  I had no real identity yet I, I kind of fed off the energy of
• 31:49
  the, the few friends I had around me and they were violent
• 31:53
  girls. Like they, they were fighters.
• 31:56
  And, you know, one of, they kind of took me under their wings, so
• 31:59
  to speak, even though one of them had also been a juvenile
• 32:01
  herself. And I was a couple years older
• 32:04
  than me, but, you know, I just got so lost in that new reality
• 32:11
  of prison. And in my mind, I'm like, this
• 32:14
  is it for me. This is my world for the rest of
• 32:17
  my life. And so it's hard to explain.
• 32:21
  Which is hard, you know, it's, I think it's hard for people to
• 32:24
  grasp that. I really do, Cheryl.
• 32:28
  It's like one of those things where I, I was talking on
• 32:32
  another episode not too long ago about, you know, that idea where
• 32:36
  I was looking down on this Leavenworth prison right before
• 32:39
  I was going to go in the night before I was going to go
• 32:42
  voluntarily surrender the next day.
• 32:45
  And I saw the people walking around the fence and I, and I
• 32:47
  saw the lights being turned on in the different blocks, AB and
• 32:50
  CD blocks. And all I can think about my
• 32:54
  mind was is that, wow, I'm, I'm not just going to be there for
• 32:58
  tomorrow. I'm going to be in there
• 32:59
  tomorrow. But I'm not going to just be
• 33:02
  there tomorrow or next week or a month.
• 33:04
  I'm going to be there for years and I'm not going anywhere.
• 33:08
  That's the one thing I think that's really tough to get
• 33:12
  around is like you have to create a life for yourself,
• 33:16
  'cause. You're just.
• 33:18
  Trapped. It's it.
• 33:20
  It's also confined. Nobody's going anywhere.
• 33:24
  Yeah. So at what point did 'cause
• 33:28
  you're talking about years went by, how did something happen to
• 33:32
  change your mindset? I always credit my mother with
• 33:38
  that, so she they're coming to visit me every weekend and I was
• 33:41
  such a jerk. She finally, like I was just so
• 33:46
  unkind, very cutting with my words and I took it out on
• 33:51
  everybody around me because I didn't know how to deal with
• 33:53
  what my life had become. Like you said, she's coming
• 33:56
  every week. And she finally told me she was
• 33:59
  like, listen, if you don't want me to come see you anymore, just
• 34:03
  say that, she said. But you're not going to keep
• 34:05
  talking to me like this. So I felt like a piece of crap,
• 34:12
  you know, because she was the one person that loved me
• 34:14
  unconditionally. And.
• 34:18
  I that kind of opened my eyes a little bit because I remember
• 34:20
  thinking, God, I would, I would be devastated if she didn't come
• 34:24
  to see me anymore. This is what I live for is my
• 34:26
  visits. No.
• 34:28
  And so she had encouraged me to start taking some college
• 34:32
  classes. OK, like, you know, you need to
• 34:35
  do something productive with your time.
• 34:37
  She was always nagging me. And so finally I was like, fine,
• 34:41
  you know, I took a couple college classes.
• 34:43
  I put 0 effort into them. I I wasn't into, I was like, I
• 34:47
  don't care about this. Why would I want to get an
• 34:50
  education in here? I'm going to die here.
• 34:52
  Yeah, what does it mean? Right.
• 34:53
  I had like, who cares about any of this mentality?
• 34:57
  And you know, then there was a college program they started
• 35:01
  bringing in like core curriculum classes towards an associate's
• 35:04
  degree. Well, you could take them for
• 35:05
  free if you were like a little baby short timer and you were
• 35:09
  now. But if you were someone like me,
• 35:11
  you had to pay at the time it was only like 300 something
• 35:14
  dollars. And so my mom was like, let's,
• 35:16
  let's do that, you know, take some classes.
• 35:18
  And so at that point, I'd had another good friend come on to
• 35:23
  the scene. She had just gotten a life
• 35:24
  without parole sentence. Her case is actually very
• 35:26
  famous. Like, she used to get mail from
• 35:29
  all around the world. Hunter Thompson supported her.
• 35:31
  Like, huge case. She was in the back of a cop car
• 35:36
  when some guy she knew killed a cop.
• 35:39
  They held her responsible for it.
• 35:40
  Anyways, she came on the scene. We were like sisters for many,
• 35:45
  many years. We started taking college
• 35:46
  classes together and, you know, I was getting straight A's and
• 35:51
  it meant something to me, probably more in there than it
• 35:55
  would have had I done that out here, Because it gave me a sense
• 35:58
  of purpose. And I felt like I had some value
• 36:03
  and I had a brain and that I could actually do something with
• 36:07
  my time besides just treat people bad and be miserable all
• 36:11
  the time. Yeah, sense of accomplishment.
• 36:14
  Yeah, I was proud of myself for doing something productive.
• 36:17
  And also at the same time I was sick and tired of myself.
• 36:23
  I just was like, I'm so tired of wasting all this energy on
• 36:27
  nonsense because everything in prison is so amplified.
• 36:32
  I mean, stupid as tiny as things end up with violence or
• 36:37
  something potentially dangerous or this, you know, real negative
• 36:42
  happening. And it's like I was so lost in
• 36:44
  that for so long. And then I'm like, I don't want
• 36:47
  to be that person anymore. I'm sick of like, I don't care
• 36:50
  about these other people, you know, and I hated the cops and
• 36:54
  everything was a battle. And I'm just like, no, I cannot
• 36:57
  handle this anymore. But I didn't know how to change
• 37:00
  it. You know, there was no self help
• 37:02
  groups in prison back then and nothing to help me become a
• 37:07
  better person. And so I started reading self
• 37:10
  help books, you know, like Wayne Dyer, the the Tony and that type
• 37:15
  of stuff. I was very fascinated by that
• 37:18
  stuff. And I'm like, OK, I, I believe,
• 37:21
  you know, I believe in the law of attraction.
• 37:23
  And the more that I'm putting out there that's negative.
• 37:25
  That's why these things keep happening to me.
• 37:27
  And so I started noticing my patterns and all the things that
• 37:31
  were toxic about me. And let me tell you, going
• 37:34
  through that process was almost as bad as going through my trial
• 37:37
  having to really take a look at all the ugliness inside of me.
• 37:42
  Self reflection looking in the mirror, yeah.
• 37:45
  Yeah, which years later is what became the foundation of Planter
• 37:50
  Energy and my book and my class, you know, but I had to go
• 37:54
  through all of this pretty much. I mean, that's a journey that
• 37:57
  you take by yourself. I'm not saying, yeah, you don't
• 38:00
  have your support people, but at the end of every day, you're
• 38:05
  sitting with yourself, you know, and, and it's like all these
• 38:09
  thoughts are in my head. And I'm like my friend that I
• 38:12
  just mentioned to have the life sentence.
• 38:14
  She, she had said to me at one point, and I wrote about it in
• 38:17
  my book. She's like, we were talking
• 38:20
  about respect and I was wanting to change and I was struggling
• 38:24
  so bad with it. And she and I said, you know, if
• 38:27
  people fear me or they're intimidated, they're they're
• 38:31
  going to respect me. And then she was like, but I'm
• 38:33
  kind to everybody and I feel like people respect me.
• 38:38
  And it was just that one little comment.
• 38:40
  You know, you have those paradigm shifting comments.
• 38:43
  They're just so profound. That was one of those moments
• 38:46
  for me. And I, I realized like, yeah, my
• 38:50
  friend has real respect. I don't have real respect from
• 38:55
  people. And I want that, you know, even
• 38:57
  if I have to be in prison. And, and she had said to me,
• 39:00
  even if I have to die in here, I don't, I, I want to live a good
• 39:05
  life. Like, I want to be happy, you
• 39:07
  know, And so I kind of adopted that mindset myself.
• 39:10
  And I was like, yes, I can choose the quality of my days in
• 39:16
  this place. I don't have to keep being the
• 39:19
  old me. It's not who I was raised to be
• 39:22
  in the 1st place. I get to choose how I treat
• 39:26
  people, what thoughts I'm putting in my head.
• 39:28
  And so, you know, I say it in a matter of a few minutes, but
• 39:33
  this process took, you know, over a decade.
• 39:37
  Yeah, yeah. Every day, chipping away at it,
• 39:41
  taking steps back right and then being hard on yourself.
• 39:45
  Like man, I'm still doing the same things.
• 39:48
  And so you were. Also, you know, I'm sure Cheryl,
• 39:53
  because in prison, you know, there are groups.
• 39:58
  And so I'm sure that you also, as you're making this evolution
• 40:02
  transformation that you're, you're starting to hang out and
• 40:06
  be with different people. Just like you said, the laws of
• 40:09
  attraction, you're, you're going to take classes, you're doing
• 40:12
  different things. And these are also people that
• 40:17
  are thinking different than what you were when you came in.
• 40:23
  What part of your sentence? Because I know a lot of change
• 40:26
  in 2012 that had to do with minors being prosecuted as
• 40:33
  adults. What part of your world did that
• 40:37
  come into play in when you were in prison?
• 40:41
  With the laws changing. So it would have been what years
• 40:49
  were you in prison? 1995 to 2021.
• 40:54
  OK, So I think wasn't it 2012 that the that the?
• 40:59
  There was one more like in 2012, the first one I want to say was
• 41:02
  Roper and that was in 2005, but that was banning the death
• 41:06
  penalty for juveniles. And then there was like 3 more
• 41:10
  after that which I should have these memorized.
• 41:13
  Graham is one of the big faces there.
• 41:15
  I wrote about this stuff, you know, like wife revolved around
• 41:19
  these cases, hope evolved around these cases.
• 41:22
  But yeah, that was the the, the big case that happened.
• 41:26
  There was two of them which were post 2010 I think The one was
• 41:33
  that you cannot give a juvenile A mandatory life without parole
• 41:37
  sentence. And then the big one was and was
• 41:41
  that Miller when they said this is retroactive?
• 41:44
  Yes, when they made it retroactive is when it changed
• 41:46
  their. I've had probably 5 or 6 people
• 41:49
  on where it was retroactive. So while you're in there,
• 41:53
  Cheryl, and your life's changing, you're revolving.
• 41:55
  Just because you've decided you want to be someone that lives a
• 41:58
  happy life and an impactful life while you're in prison, when do
• 42:04
  you start to feel like that you might have the opportunity not
• 42:08
  to spend the rest of your life in there?
• 42:10
  Oh, honestly, I never had real clarity on that.
• 42:19
  I'm sorry my dog's whining. I got got my associate's degree
• 42:24
  in 2007, so I had been in for 12 years at that point.
• 42:28
  So by that time I was still in that transition of my character
• 42:33
  and, and oh, this is what I want to do.
• 42:35
  I love education, and I want to be better.
• 42:38
  I got my bachelor's degree in 2011.
• 42:44
  They all had no hope, really. I mean, you know, that I'd be
• 42:48
  getting out. Yeah, there were the a couple of
• 42:50
  the previous cases, but first of all, I didn't have life without
• 42:54
  parole. And so I thought they wouldn't
• 42:56
  necessarily apply. And, and Cheryl did like, 'cause
• 42:59
  like I, I got sentenced to five years.
• 43:00
  So I can't imagine serving any more than five years.
• 43:03
  So I mean, it seems like everybody I talked to, whatever
• 43:05
  their sentences, I can't imagine serving any more time than that.
• 43:09
  When when you get into 10 years and then 15 years, I like, are
• 43:15
  you feeling like that is your world that that you're so
• 43:18
  disconnected from the other world?
• 43:19
  Are you still trying to stay connected?
• 43:21
  How's it? How is it Mind your mind?
• 43:23
  My my only connection to the outside world for all those
• 43:27
  years. Now, it did change a little bit
• 43:30
  in later years with all the networking and the advocacy of
• 43:33
  juveniles. But with my family, that was it,
• 43:36
  you know, But I did that. I'd call him on the phone.
• 43:39
  They would come see me. I mean, I had good relationships
• 43:42
  with almost everyone in my family -1 of my brothers, yeah.
• 43:47
  But outside of that, none of my friends from when I was a
• 43:51
  teenager were ever present. I did have one of them who
• 43:55
  testified against me. She later wrote me and said, you
• 43:58
  know, I've been following you all these years, and I see all
• 44:02
  the positive things you've been doing because I started dog
• 44:04
  training. And she said, you know, you've
• 44:06
  really changed. And I think that you're sentence
• 44:08
  is excessive. And so she apologized to me and
• 44:12
  we're Facebook friends now. But it is interesting.
• 44:16
  Yeah, that was powerful for me. I remember crying about it
• 44:19
  because I was just so angry that she was a piece of what went
• 44:23
  against me. And then she regretted that or
• 44:26
  changed her mind. She changed her mind down the
• 44:28
  line. And you mentioned dog training
• 44:30
  because when I was at Leavenworth, when I left it,
• 44:34
  drug training came in a year after that.
• 44:39
  How did that work and where you were?
• 44:43
  So we had single cells, which I did anyways at the prison.
• 44:48
  I, the first person I was at, most of them, I'd stay there.
• 44:51
  Basically we would train either rescue dogs, which we would get
• 44:56
  from a lot of them from Raton, New Mexico.
• 45:00
  Interestingly, two of my own dogs I trained in prison, but I
• 45:06
  trained on and off for eight years.
• 45:08
  So in my I, the first time I got on the dog program was like 2005
• 45:12
  to 2007 when I was working on my associate's degree and they were
• 45:17
  with us 24 hours a day. And we trained them from start
• 45:21
  to finish and we either adopted them out or sent them back home
• 45:24
  to their families. And it started out small.
• 45:28
  Our prison was the first one that it was at with five dogs in
• 45:31
  Colorado and expanded. And I credit the dog program
• 45:38
  with changing me a lot. It taught me so much patience,
• 45:43
  so much patience. It's such a good quality to
• 45:45
  have. I had none.
• 45:47
  And so it, it just really brightened up my world too.
• 45:50
  That became a piece of my purpose inside also, you know,
• 45:54
  and then years later in my other prison, I got to do it again
• 45:58
  when they started it there. And then I, I worked directly
• 46:01
  with the associate warden's dog for 2 1/2 years.
• 46:05
  Wow, that's, and I've heard good things about, I mean, I'm a, I'm
• 46:09
  a dog lover. So I, I can't imagine being able
• 46:13
  to have the dog. And when I had my prison job,
• 46:17
  believe it or not, we, we got to, there was a Fort Leavenworth
• 46:21
  golf course and there were five guys that they would take over
• 46:24
  to the golf course. It was like a great job to have,
• 46:27
  obviously. And, and there was a dog there,
• 46:31
  Harley, there was a black lab. And so it was like, you know,
• 46:34
  just that connection you can make.
• 46:35
  And now I have a black lab rescue dog.
• 46:38
  And so it's kind of all full circle.
• 46:40
  But all that happening, Cheryl, in there doing things to make,
• 46:47
  you know, the whole self reflection thing and taking the
• 46:49
  classes and and reading the self help books.
• 46:56
  Were you OK with the fact that you were maybe not getting out
• 47:00
  and this is just going to be your life?
• 47:02
  I wouldn't say that I was ever OK with it.
• 47:04
  What I would say is that I didn't.
• 47:06
  Seem like you ever lost hope? Not completely, no.
• 47:10
  I flipped a switch in my mind where I was like, you know, when
• 47:14
  my day comes, they're not going to have a reason to tell me no,
• 47:17
  I can't go home. I want to become the so-called
• 47:22
  model inmate who's not getting in trouble anymore, who's doing
• 47:26
  the right things, who's living with integrity, who has respect
• 47:29
  for the right reasons, who's getting an education, who's
• 47:32
  taking the initiative and having the discipline on my own to get
• 47:36
  in good shape physically, emotionally, mentally,
• 47:40
  spiritually. And so I just, I lost myself in
• 47:44
  that cause and it was beautiful. Like I just changed so
• 47:50
  drastically. Well, tell us about when it
• 47:53
  starts to get real that you could possibly leave prison.
• 47:59
  So it was a scary thing to have hope because it's not like when
• 48:04
  you have a short sentence and you get a year set back and you,
• 48:08
  you know, you, oh, I got a year and I can, I got another shot.
• 48:11
  You know, for people like me, it was the only shot you're ever
• 48:15
  going to have is clemency, you know, and that's a long shot.
• 48:20
  And if the laws change, you know, 'cause they had to come in
• 48:25
  compliance with federal law. And so that's going to look
• 48:28
  different in every state. We didn't know what Colorado's
• 48:31
  was going to look like. And, and the the defeating part
• 48:35
  emotionally with this process is that Colorado's are advocacy
• 48:41
  groups that were trying to get bills, you know, presented and
• 48:44
  passed year after year after year.
• 48:49
  They would not pass. They got shut down, shut down,
• 48:52
  shut down. And so I was just so over it.
• 48:55
  I'm just like, I'll believe it when I see it because we keep
• 49:01
  putting these efforts in and we're getting nowhere.
• 49:05
  You know, I so sometimes I would feel like, Hey, anything could
• 49:08
  happen. Other times I would feel like
• 49:09
  this. I'm I'm going to be here
• 49:11
  forever. They're never going to change
• 49:13
  anything to where we have a shot at freedom again.
• 49:16
  And so I don't sometimes I don't even know how I just kept
• 49:21
  staying positive. I think that that was my
• 49:25
  survival mode. Like, you know, I was a runner,
• 49:28
  I did yoga, I taught circuit training classes, I was a Co
• 49:33
  facilitator for Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
• 49:37
  I did all these different things as well as college and dog
• 49:40
  training. And I just was like, you know, I
• 49:45
  want to get up every day and I want to have a smile on my face.
• 49:49
  And so I'm going to figure out what that looks like for me in
• 49:52
  here because I at that point, like I've been in for 10-15
• 49:58
  years at least. And I'm like, I was just a
• 50:02
  different person at that point. You know, it became part of my
• 50:06
  life. And this is what it is.
• 50:08
  And if I get out of prison, I'm going to do everything I can to
• 50:11
  be prepared for that. But if I don't, I'm going to
• 50:15
  keep working on me. And then finally it got to the
• 50:18
  point after I got my masters degree in 2016 where it was
• 50:22
  like, I remember thinking like, well, what do I do now?
• 50:25
  You know, because I was so used to saying I'm such a high energy
• 50:29
  person. I'm like, what do I do with
• 50:31
  myself? And, and it was like the
• 50:33
  universe telling me, like, now it's time to give back.
• 50:36
  It's time for you to create something where you can help
• 50:39
  other people. And so my way of doing that, and
• 50:41
  there was, of course, through, you know, helping facilitate
• 50:44
  groups that helped people. I mentored people when I could.
• 50:48
  I was training people how to train dogs.
• 50:51
  You know, I was doing a lot of cool stuff.
• 50:52
  What an evolution though, Cheryl from The Girl that Walked In.
• 50:57
  Wow. It's a pretty, and I think
• 51:00
  because it's such a significant change of character, I think
• 51:04
  that sometimes that is why my story stands out to people
• 51:07
  because I don't know, people are like, oh, your story is
• 51:10
  intriguing. And you know, having lived it,
• 51:13
  I'm like, well, I don't know that I see it that way.
• 51:16
  So I try to step outside of it and I'm like, I could see that
• 51:19
  most people in their lives, whether you go to prison or not,
• 51:23
  people mostly stay the same. You make these small changes
• 51:26
  here and there for good or for bad, hopefully for good.
• 51:29
  But I think what happened with me was just so one end of the
• 51:32
  spectrum to the other. So dramatic.
• 51:35
  Yep. Yep.
• 51:38
  So yeah, that was when after I got my master's degree, a lot
• 51:41
  happened that year. That was 2016.
• 51:44
  So I was writing my master's thesis, the laws that these two
• 51:49
  bills were being put up and they were saying we have the votes
• 51:56
  now. They were said that before and I
• 52:00
  was just like, I'm too scared to believe it's a sure thing.
• 52:05
  And and our advocates behind the scenes kept saying we have the
• 52:08
  votes to get these bills passed. And my brother and my mom and my
• 52:13
  stepdad went to all these hearings.
• 52:15
  As a matter of fact, my mom testified about me at one of
• 52:18
  them. The poor lady, she's in her 70s
• 52:21
  and she didn't get to testify till like 2 in the morning.
• 52:23
  It was crazy. And she had told me this is kind
• 52:27
  of a Side Story, but it's an important part of my life.
• 52:30
  She had told me when I called her that night, she was like,
• 52:35
  I'm still waiting to testify. She said, so call David.
• 52:38
  That was my oldest brother and he'll tell you about it because
• 52:42
  we got to go back in. So I called my brother and he
• 52:46
  was just so pumped up. He said let me tell you, the
• 52:49
  whole vibe in there is not convince us why we should pass
• 52:54
  this bill, but convince us why we shouldn't.
• 52:57
  And I was just so like holy shit.
• 53:00
  Like this, this might actually be it.
• 53:04
  And 11 days later he died. My brother did 11 days later.
• 53:10
  That was the last time I talked to him, and he was so excited
• 53:13
  for me to get out of prison. How devastating, devastating,
• 53:17
  devastating. So I didn't even have the
• 53:21
  capacity to feel the joy because I was so lost in my grief for my
• 53:29
  brother. I couldn't be that excited about
• 53:33
  getting out or the fact that I just earned a master's degree
• 53:36
  that I worked years for. I was just like, everything was
• 53:40
  tainted by him dying. He was one of my closest best
• 53:44
  friends, you know, loved him to death.
• 53:47
  Motorcycle accident. So from there, though, that's
• 53:53
  when I learned that what Colorado was going to be doing
• 53:56
  was creating a three-year program, which they called Jacob
• 54:00
  Juveniles convicted as a false program.
• 54:03
  I was the first woman in it and the first woman to graduate it.
• 54:06
  We now have a second one that just graduated, who I grew up
• 54:09
  with. She just got out in December or
• 54:11
  November, right before Thanksgiving.
• 54:13
  She did 30 years. Anyways, I go through this
• 54:18
  program. I, I was not a fan, but I was
• 54:21
  grateful. I remained grateful every day.
• 54:24
  Like, I'm going to jump through whatever hoops I need to to get
• 54:28
  to where I'm trying to go. And that's home with my mom, you
• 54:31
  know, So at that point, my mom was down in Arizona, so I didn't
• 54:35
  really have visits very much anymore.
• 54:36
  And I was just powering through at that point.
• 54:40
  That's when I wrote the book. That's, you know, create a
• 54:43
  plant. Your energy was created in like
• 54:45
  the year after, in 2017, after the laws changed.
• 54:49
  But everything I did before that, I did it to have a sense
• 54:54
  of purpose. I did it all without knowing if
• 54:56
  I'd ever get out. That's what I think is just
• 54:59
  absolutely incredible. You were just doing it.
• 55:03
  Yeah, yeah. I was just doing it.
• 55:06
  I was just doing it. So then when I knew I was going
• 55:08
  to get out, I'm like, wow, we still didn't have complete
• 55:12
  certainty, right? So we finished this program and
• 55:14
  we have the opportunity to ask for parole.
• 55:17
  It didn't mean we were going to get it.
• 55:19
  And, and Cheryl, the program itself like is, was it just
• 55:22
  certain things that you had to accomplish so that you moved
• 55:26
  forward and then that then that there was a three-year program
• 55:29
  and if you got through it, then that that was then you were had
• 55:33
  the opportunity to to be accepted into the parole.
• 55:37
  It was a three-year program that could have been done in three
• 55:40
  months. And you know, they, they wanted
• 55:43
  to teach us how to set goals. And I try not to do cocky, but I
• 55:49
  was offended. Like really, you're trying to
• 55:51
  teach me how to set a goal with, you know, like, I'm pretty sure
• 55:55
  I taught myself that all these years when no, none of you
• 55:57
  people cared about us and we were sitting rotting in prison.
• 56:02
  You know, I chose that on my own.
• 56:04
  So I had to set my ego to the side and just do what I had to
• 56:08
  do. And I I I gained.
• 56:10
  Whatever it takes and. What I was like, whatever it
• 56:12
  takes, I'm doing it. I don't care, Just do it, you
• 56:16
  know? So yeah, yeah, we did like
• 56:20
  virtual reality stuff, which didn't really help me very much.
• 56:24
  I got to do some cooking before I got out there, so it.
• 56:27
  Was kind of like a re entry stuff.
• 56:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 56:32
  So you get to the end of that, you do.
• 56:36
  Do you automatically have a date that's prepared for you to go to
• 56:41
  the parole board? No, they finally, God, that's
• 56:46
  kind of blurry to me actually, but they finally had decided,
• 56:50
  oh, you're going to see parole on this day.
• 56:54
  And I think that what they did is they split the parole board
• 56:57
  up and they had one member of the board meet with each one of
• 56:59
  us. There was myself and there was 8
• 57:02
  men who all kind of finished the program around around the same
• 57:06
  time. So we all saw parole and then it
• 57:09
  was 4, the four longest months of my life after that until we
• 57:15
  got our answer. They called me over during count
• 57:20
  time. And we all know that when you
• 57:21
  get called somewhere during count time, it's usually not
• 57:23
  good. I could, well, I was like, oh
• 57:26
  man, what are they calling me out for?
• 57:28
  You know, and everybody looks at you like, what are you doing?
• 57:30
  Yeah, of course. Like then everybody knew me so
• 57:33
  well, it was, you know, people were like, oh, is it your
• 57:36
  answer? And I'm like, I don't think so.
• 57:38
  Like, you know, my, I thought I'd be called over to case
• 57:40
  management for him to say this is what it is.
• 57:43
  So I get over and I, they put me in the admin meeting room.
• 57:47
  It was super weird. And the warden's in there and he
• 57:51
  was not like a talkative type of dude.
• 57:53
  And he, I'm like, well, what's going on?
• 57:55
  Why he wouldn't even smoke anything.
• 57:57
  So I'm like, why am I here? I said, am I here for Jacob?
• 58:00
  Because they were supposed to have had a meeting with me and
• 58:03
  they didn't. So I thought, well, maybe they
• 58:05
  pushed it out and we're having a meeting and he, he lied to me.
• 58:08
  He's like, yeah, I think so. I think that's what So we
• 58:11
  waited, waited. Finally he said, oh, OK, here
• 58:14
  you're going to have a virtual meeting on this screen behind
• 58:17
  you. So I turn around and I face the
• 58:19
  screen and the first thing that popped up in the bottom left
• 58:23
  corner, I will never forget. It was all the guys at the men's
• 58:28
  joint that were in J Cap. And then it was like all these
• 58:32
  people, it was a huge Zoom meeting.
• 58:34
  Like it was a big deal. All these people from the parole
• 58:37
  board and headquarters staff were popping up in this meeting.
• 58:40
  And I was like, oh shit, this is it, This is it.
• 58:43
  And my first thought was this is messed up that they're going to,
• 58:47
  let's tell some of us we're getting out right now.
• 58:50
  Because I, I was like, there's no way they're letting nine
• 58:53
  people with murder charges out of prison all in time.
• 58:56
  They don't do that. And so they started off by
• 59:00
  saying, you know, we want to have a moment of silence for the
• 59:02
  victims. And it was just really intense.
• 59:06
  And the head of the parole board was like, well, I'm happy to
• 59:09
  announce that all of you are going home.
• 59:12
  And, you know, I just lost it. I could see some of the guys
• 59:15
  were crying. A few of them jumped up and
• 59:17
  hopped around. And I just sat there and
• 59:20
  shocked, just sobbing. And they even asked me, like, do
• 59:23
  you have anything to say? I was like, I'm good.
• 59:26
  I couldn't even talk. I was just so overwhelmed.
• 59:31
  I mean, after 26 years, almost to the day, I served just that
• 59:35
  relief. Like I could finally just take a
• 59:37
  real breath. Take a real breath, my.
• 59:40
  My God, it's over, you know. Yeah, it was.
• 59:43
  It was crazy. Oh, man, so sure.
• 59:46
  What happens after that? Like you like what goes on?
• 59:49
  OK, so you just walk out of the warden's office and then what?
• 59:53
  I'm yelling at people. So I walked that day and cleared
• 59:56
  count by then and I'm yelling to couple the lifers that I know.
• 1:00:00
  I'm like, I'm made pro. I'm getting out, you know, so
• 1:00:04
  everybody could start spreading the word.
• 1:00:07
  Got back into my unit and everybody was waiting.
• 1:00:10
  The dog program girls were standing in their doorways.
• 1:00:13
  The cop was like, is it? Did you make it?
• 1:00:15
  And I was like, because I wanted my mom to be the first person.
• 1:00:20
  So I wouldn't even speak to anybody.
• 1:00:22
  And I got on the phone and, and called my mom and told her and
• 1:00:26
  it was just, you know, everybody was standing listening, waiting
• 1:00:31
  to hear. I was going to say to my mom on
• 1:00:32
  the phone in the day hall. And what a powerful freaking
• 1:00:36
  moment it was. And you know, it was coded.
• 1:00:38
  So we were all segregated by unit, had to go to the chow hall
• 1:00:43
  1 unit at a time. Everything was like that and it
• 1:00:46
  was really sad because one of my best friends who's a lifer, I
• 1:00:49
  didn't really get to spend time with her, say goodbye to her,
• 1:00:51
  and I spent my last two weeks in the hole.
• 1:00:54
  I'm like, oh, this is a great way to finish out my time, but I
• 1:00:57
  didn't. Finish out.
• 1:00:58
  I went up there and slept as much as I possibly could and
• 1:01:01
  then exercised when I was awake and just like, let's let's go,
• 1:01:06
  come on time. So you get out.
• 1:01:09
  How do you get out? And so when I my nephew so
• 1:01:14
  because my mom, my mom had COPD and the dream, she was always
• 1:01:19
  said, well, I'm going to pick you up in a limo and we're going
• 1:01:21
  to have balloons and it's going to And it was so bad at all it
• 1:01:27
  we're low key and nephew and my ex sister-in-law picked me up.
• 1:01:32
  It was it was crappy weather but I refused to get on a plane.
• 1:01:37
  I said there is no way I'm stepping out of prison after
• 1:01:40
  almost 3 decades inside and going to an airport and getting
• 1:01:43
  on a plane like my my anxiety would have been there is no So I
• 1:01:48
  said we got to drive. So my nephew was like cool he's
• 1:01:51
  the greatest guy. So they rented a car and we made
• 1:01:54
  the drive. 12 hour drive from Pueblo, Co to Phoenix, my mom
• 1:02:00
  and my stepdad's house. And so we got there about, I
• 1:02:03
  don't know, after 10:00 that night by the time we got there
• 1:02:06
  because we stopped and got me a couple pairs of jeans.
• 1:02:09
  And become a person again, yeah. We stopped in Albuquerque and
• 1:02:13
  you know, they're famous for their green chili.
• 1:02:15
  So we're like, let's go get some Mexican food.
• 1:02:17
  And but it was, it was just real low key, you know, it was it.
• 1:02:21
  Had to be really like. It didn't seem real.
• 1:02:26
  I don't know. I mean, everything, you know, a
• 1:02:30
  lot of people say when they spend that amount of time in
• 1:02:33
  prison, it goes from black and white to color.
• 1:02:35
  Like, you know, you're you. You're all of a sudden hit with
• 1:02:39
  all these, like, feels. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:45
  So how so? You took that drive, which was
• 1:02:51
  probably a good idea because you could kind of get like a slow MO
• 1:02:55
  into seeing everything. I've seen your mom out of
• 1:03:00
  prison. That had to be such a big deal.
• 1:03:03
  It was a big deal. It was a big deal.
• 1:03:05
  But I can tell you that, interestingly enough, I didn't
• 1:03:07
  cry. I think that I was almost in
• 1:03:10
  shock. Yeah, total shock.
• 1:03:14
  Total shock. I mean, we walked in the house
• 1:03:17
  and it was just like this really calm vibe.
• 1:03:20
  It was so weird. I always pictured it would be
• 1:03:23
  the complete opposite, the hopping and hugging and woo,
• 1:03:26
  yeah, it wasn't any of that. It was just so laid back and I
• 1:03:31
  got to reunite with my dogs that I trained in prison.
• 1:03:34
  It was just really weird. It's.
• 1:03:36
  Just awesome. Yeah, incredibly awesome.
• 1:03:39
  So how does it go? Like, I know what you're doing
• 1:03:42
  today, so how do you, how do you evolve to where you are today?
• 1:03:49
  Same mentality I had inside. You know, my first goal was to
• 1:03:53
  get my book published. I had made a commitment to
• 1:03:55
  myself to have the first final draft of it finished by the time
• 1:03:59
  I walked out. I did that, got my book
• 1:04:02
  published six months later and then I wanted to work in re
• 1:04:07
  entry. So I ended up getting a job at a
• 1:04:10
  re entry place in Phoenix. I was a peer support specialist
• 1:04:14
  and I promoted to a clinician and I was running IOP programs.
• 1:04:18
  It was a it was a good job. I kind of got burnt out, ended
• 1:04:22
  up leaving there, but I've been in a peer support role for two
• 1:04:26
  years at the company I'm with now.
• 1:04:29
  I'm actually trying to switch to a different department.
• 1:04:31
  I'm going to have an interview in the next week, trying to
• 1:04:34
  level up, you know, eventually at this company.
• 1:04:36
  But as far as planter Energy goes, I reached out to the guy,
• 1:04:43
  the old associate warden whose dog I had worked with for 2 1/2
• 1:04:47
  years. He promoted up to about as high
• 1:04:49
  as he could go up at headquarters.
• 1:04:50
  And so I reached out to him and said, hey, you know, I got my
• 1:04:54
  book published. I'm developing A curriculum to
• 1:04:56
  go with it. So I wrote some of it, kind of
• 1:04:59
  it mimics the book, but it's a workbook that I created for the
• 1:05:03
  inmates to be able to keep because they never let you keep
• 1:05:06
  the books from their classes. And I'm like, I want them to
• 1:05:09
  have something they can, you know, like a self.
• 1:05:12
  Well, they go back to and reference and work through
• 1:05:14
  things and so develop that. It was on, it's on Amazon now
• 1:05:19
  too. And so I pitched it to this guy
• 1:05:22
  at headquarters and I thought I was going to have to jump
• 1:05:25
  through all these hoops and they green lighted me immediately to
• 1:05:28
  do a pilot program. I was just like, that was so
• 1:05:32
  like too easy. You know what don't you think,
• 1:05:36
  Cheryl, that one of the things that happens with especially
• 1:05:38
  what you've gone through, you know, when you start gaining
• 1:05:42
  that confidence and you started realizing, like when you start
• 1:05:44
  getting your grades and your master and all that, I think
• 1:05:48
  there's a part of you that is like, OK, if I did that, then I
• 1:05:51
  can do this. And you, even though it's an
• 1:05:54
  unknown thing, you have a little like edge to you that I, I'm not
• 1:05:59
  as afraid of it. I'm not as afraid as the unknown
• 1:06:01
  as maybe somebody usually is. It's like, OK, well what's the
• 1:06:05
  worst that could happen? And I, I became the kind of
• 1:06:09
  person I think I'm said this to you over the phone, where I'll
• 1:06:12
  put my own dirty laundry out there before anybody else can
• 1:06:16
  say anything about me. So I'm just going to tell you
• 1:06:19
  who I am and what it is. And you can take or leave me,
• 1:06:21
  and that's fine. Not everybody is for everybody.
• 1:06:24
  I will find my people. And I developed so much
• 1:06:27
  confidence in prison that I walked out just on fire with
• 1:06:31
  passion for planter energy. And I'm like taking over the
• 1:06:34
  world. I'm going to, you know, I want
• 1:06:36
  my program to be everywhere. And, you know, it hasn't exactly
• 1:06:40
  played out like that, but it's not over yet.
• 1:06:43
  It's not, it's not over. It's it's a process.
• 1:06:46
  It's always a process, but you know, the thing about plant your
• 1:06:49
  energy, it's, it's, it's, it's obviously great for people that
• 1:06:52
  are in prison because you have that experience that, that you
• 1:06:55
  lived in and, and evolved and trans, you know, transformed
• 1:06:58
  your life in prison. And you know what those you know
• 1:07:01
  those elements and that discipline is, But that is also
• 1:07:05
  the same of of people in prisons in their own mind on the
• 1:07:08
  outside. And and those those people can
• 1:07:11
  get just as institutionalized and just as as broken to want
• 1:07:16
  and need to find those things that make the next step happen.
• 1:07:20
  So eventually what I would like to do is I would like to take
• 1:07:24
  each chapter of my book and turn it into like a small, smaller
• 1:07:28
  version that's seven separate books that aren't necessarily
• 1:07:32
  geared towards incarceration. They're just geared towards
• 1:07:35
  people like you just said. Like, I feel like what I've
• 1:07:38
  created with my book and curriculum applies to human
• 1:07:41
  beings. We all have demons.
• 1:07:44
  We all have these issues we need to face.
• 1:07:46
  We all have things we need to work on.
• 1:07:48
  And so there's so many different directions.
• 1:07:50
  I could go with it, which is what I love about it, but it's
• 1:07:53
  just me, you know? And I have this other full time
• 1:07:56
  job and I have all these other things happening in life.
• 1:07:59
  And then my stepdad died, and then my mom died, and then the
• 1:08:02
  guy I was with died. All within an 18 month period
• 1:08:07
  after I got. Off.
• 1:08:10
  And so that broke me. Losing my mom has changed
• 1:08:14
  forever. I still have my struggles with
• 1:08:16
  it. It kind of killed my motivation.
• 1:08:20
  I just didn't know what to do without her, you know, She'd
• 1:08:22
  always been my rock, and I had to figure everything out by
• 1:08:26
  myself now. But she prepared me so well to
• 1:08:30
  live my life without her. She's such a wonderful person.
• 1:08:33
  And so like I, I learned to take care of all of her stuff after
• 1:08:37
  she died. And OK, now I'm paying bills,
• 1:08:40
  I'm building credit. This is how you do these things.
• 1:08:43
  And just, you know, navigating through the unknown and taking
• 1:08:47
  it one day at a time. That's such good advice too.
• 1:08:51
  I mean, navigating through the unknown and taking it one day at
• 1:08:54
  a time is really the best and only thing.
• 1:08:56
  And I mean, I guess it's not true.
• 1:08:58
  You can get stuck and stay in one spot and and and then that's
• 1:09:04
  a really bad situation because you.
• 1:09:07
  Doesn't make any sense. That's what I tell people.
• 1:09:09
  I'm like, why would you keep choosing that for yourself?
• 1:09:12
  That's insanity. You can think whatever you want.
• 1:09:15
  Like step up out of that. You know we don't have to.
• 1:09:19
  Cheryl, you know that what we're talking about, like whether
• 1:09:23
  you're inside or outside, whether you're in prison or out
• 1:09:26
  of prison, what happens is like you'll see people in prison that
• 1:09:30
  will do something crazy before they get out because they're
• 1:09:34
  because this ugly, awful routine that they hate has become the
• 1:09:39
  familiar thing that they know. And they're more familiar with
• 1:09:43
  that than they are being free on the outside.
• 1:09:46
  And that's what people do on the outside too.
• 1:09:48
  They they stay in that job, they stay in the marriage, they stay
• 1:09:50
  in whatever those things are. Fear based.
• 1:09:54
  It's fear based and it's only fear based because they don't
• 1:09:57
  like it. They know they don't like it.
• 1:10:00
  It's just what would it have? What would happen if I take a
• 1:10:03
  step into something that I feel more like that's me?
• 1:10:07
  It's unknown and, and what you're saying is you're stepping
• 1:10:11
  into things and each time you've stepped into things, you're
• 1:10:14
  finding out more about yourself, but you're also seeing that it
• 1:10:17
  wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it was.
• 1:10:20
  I got through it. If you don't try, you'll never
• 1:10:22
  know. And you know, I didn't want to
• 1:10:24
  just be mediocre. I don't want my legacy to be I'm
• 1:10:27
  some, you know, bad person that committed this terrible crime as
• 1:10:33
  a teenager and did all this time in prison, but I did nothing,
• 1:10:36
  nothing with it. I didn't want to be that person.
• 1:10:39
  And so I don't want other people to be that person.
• 1:10:42
  And so that's kind of what motivates me now as it's like, I
• 1:10:45
  want to reach back in and to even people that don't have,
• 1:10:49
  like we said, a criminal background and say, hey, like,
• 1:10:53
  you can choose something different.
• 1:10:56
  You're letting your fear dictate the quality of your life and it
• 1:10:59
  just doesn't make any sense. Well, and you've had things come
• 1:11:02
  full circle, you've had people that have taken your curriculum.
• 1:11:04
  And so this is the the best thing I've had.
• 1:11:07
  All the things I've had, I've had this thing and, and how good
• 1:11:10
  that has to make you feel that you have gone all the way around
• 1:11:14
  this circle and evolved to the point where you're giving back,
• 1:11:18
  paying it forward. It's got to feel good.
• 1:11:21
  And I have rules that took my class and graduated and a couple
• 1:11:24
  guys too that have gotten out reached out to me and said, hey,
• 1:11:27
  and I did, they'll friend request me and I won't accept it
• 1:11:30
  because I'm like, who are you? I don't know you.
• 1:11:32
  And then they'll send me a message on messenger and they're
• 1:11:34
  like, hey, I took your class and I just wanted to let you know
• 1:11:37
  how much it helped me. And I'm like, this right here is
• 1:11:39
  what it's all about. You know, which though, I did
• 1:11:43
  the LinkedIn post on that, which is what connected me back to the
• 1:11:46
  other woman at the college. And so it's just, it's really
• 1:11:49
  beautiful. But if I didn't face my fear and
• 1:11:52
  push through it, none of this would.
• 1:11:54
  Have none of it would have happened.
• 1:11:55
  You would have been that girl that was bullying around people
• 1:11:57
  and you'd, you know, missed all the opportunities and probably
• 1:12:01
  still be in there being mad. So it's just, it's just a it's
• 1:12:06
  just a, a it's such a wonderful story, Cheryl, that things can
• 1:12:11
  happen. Don't give up.
• 1:12:12
  That's right. Don't quit, don't lose hope.
• 1:12:15
  Change can happen in a way that you could have never have
• 1:12:18
  imagined. And then what you're doing now,
• 1:12:21
  being able to give back and help people.
• 1:12:23
  I love this. I just love the story.
• 1:12:25
  It's such good stuff. If I if I was going to ask you
• 1:12:28
  what's your biggest take away through all of this, what would
• 1:12:30
  you think? Biggest take away?
• 1:12:36
  I mean, it sounds so cliche, but it's like none of us are the
• 1:12:38
  worst thing that we've done in our lives.
• 1:12:41
  And just remembering that we get to wake up and choose the state
• 1:12:46
  of our mind every day, and that's going to completely
• 1:12:50
  potentially change the entire course of your life.
• 1:12:53
  To grasp the power in that and to hold on to it and cultivate
• 1:12:58
  it. Do something with it, even if it
• 1:13:01
  just means you're a happier person.
• 1:13:05
  That in itself is a huge win in your life, you know, even if it
• 1:13:08
  means you stop going back to prison, you stop going back to
• 1:13:12
  addiction, you stop letting people abuse you in
• 1:13:16
  relationships, whatever it is that your demons are like,
• 1:13:20
  knowing that you can choose something different and facing
• 1:13:23
  your fears. You know, and I'm pretty blunt
• 1:13:27
  with my curriculum, you know, I kind of just tell people like,
• 1:13:31
  you have to own your shit. You have to take responsibility
• 1:13:34
  for who you are, the good and the bad, sometimes more so the
• 1:13:38
  bad, because that's what you need to change.
• 1:13:40
  That's. Where real change happens,
• 1:13:41
  right? Yes.
• 1:13:42
  That's right. What a great take away, by the
• 1:13:44
  way, really powerful. I mean that everything you just
• 1:13:48
  said there. I mean, you could write a book
• 1:13:49
  about that what you have, but it's it's it is powerful and
• 1:13:53
  when and going to get your book, go to Amazon.
• 1:13:59
  Yeah, it's on Amazon. Got it And and the title of your
• 1:14:03
  book. Is plant your energy, face your
• 1:14:06
  demons, and transform your life. Love that and that's also the
• 1:14:10
  name of you're the founder of Plant Your Energy.
• 1:14:14
  So that all works. That all marketing wise works.
• 1:14:19
  I want to thank Homestead Financial Home Mortgage for
• 1:14:21
  letting me use this podcast studio and all the fancy lights
• 1:14:24
  and the cameras and stuff. If you've got home mortgage
• 1:14:26
  needs out there, Greg after you have is your guy.
• 1:14:28
  He knows all that stuff. If you're looking for my book
• 1:14:32
  when you're looking for Cheryl's book, just get them both.
• 1:14:35
  Mine's Nightmare success, low to betrayal, life behind bars,
• 1:14:38
  adapting, finally breaking free. I know it's kind of a hassle,
• 1:14:41
  but if you got time, leave me a review on Apple.
• 1:14:44
  Those are great. They really pump the show and I
• 1:14:46
  love reading those. You want to know about more of
• 1:14:49
  what I'm doing, go to brentcassidy.com.
• 1:14:51
  I spell it wrong. I spell it with ATY, not a DY.
• 1:14:54
  And I also got a new new nightmare success.com.
• 1:14:59
  So if you don't wanted to go to Spotify, Apple, all those
• 1:15:02
  different places and want to know a little bit more about the
• 1:15:05
  the episodes, go to nightmaresuccess.com.
• 1:15:09
  And as I used to say to my people when I was writing my
• 1:15:11
  emails back and forth from Leavenworth, stay strong.
• 1:15:14
  I'll do the same. Cheryl Armstrong, just love your
• 1:15:16
  story. Love what you've been able to do
• 1:15:18
  with yourself. The reentry stuff.
• 1:15:20
  You're just going to continue to be a powerhouse and don't stop,
• 1:15:23
  don't stop anything you're doing.
• 1:15:25
  All right, All right. Now I'm your success in and out.