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A 55 year sentence for a 17yr Old - The Elizabeth Shatswell Story · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:02
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:05
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome to the Nightmare Success In and
• 0:08
  Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 0:12
  nightmares that set yourself free.
• 0:14
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:16
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:21
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad, There's some
• 0:25
  humor, but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of
• 0:28
  something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons you
• 0:30
  built up in your own mind. OK, Welcome back, nightmare
• 0:36
  success in and out. Listeners, this is where you
• 0:38
  come for. You know what happens when your
• 0:39
  worst fear becomes your reality? How do you adapt, survive,
• 0:43
  overcome such yourself free. I've got one of those guests
• 0:46
  that did all that, and she's here to talk about it.
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  And I kind of tell you I, I was, I was on LinkedIn and somebody
• 0:55
  had shared and repost on Elizabeth and I started like
• 0:59
  digging deeper and I thought, oh, wow, wow, this sounds really
• 1:03
  interesting. I want to know more about this.
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  I reached out to Elizabeth. We got on the phone, we talked.
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  I thought I'd just love to have you on the show.
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  I want to, I want to give you just a little background on
• 1:12
  Elizabeth here. She was incarcerated at the age
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  of 17. She was sentenced to life de
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  facto 55 year sentence for a non lethal first time offense.
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  After serving nearly 23 years, she was granted juvenile parole
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  in 2023 or in 2024. One too long ago while
• 1:32
  incarcerated, Elizabeth Co founded a soft health initiative
• 1:36
  called Stop, Drop and Yoga, as well as the Voice Project, which
• 1:40
  became an intensive trauma informed riding workshop and
• 1:45
  acting program. Ultimately, she founded the Hope
• 1:48
  Team, which continues to be an ever evolving partnership
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  between the DOC medical security staff and justice impacted
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  individuals that encourages community based healthcare
• 1:56
  practices and policy. Wow, wow, oh wow, that sounds
• 2:00
  like a lot. I can't wait to jump into all
• 2:02
  that before we do. Want to recognize our show
• 2:05
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  deserve. Auto Plaza Direct telling Brent
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  from nightmare Success sent you. OK, Elizabeth, how are you doing
• 2:46
  today? I'm good, Brent.
• 2:49
  Thank you for having me on. Well, we were just talking about
• 2:51
  before we got on here that you haven't 23 years in prison,
• 2:59
  probably driving cars wasn't something you were doing a lot
• 3:02
  of. I'm going to check.
• 3:02
  Out your sponsor because I can't even imagine going on a car lot
• 3:05
  it sounds like going. There's a lot of choices.
• 3:09
  Yeah, I, yeah, I've only been home around six months, so it's
• 3:13
  kind of been a tailspin about how many things have happened so
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  fast. Yeah, I it's, it's just one day
• 3:21
  at a time, right? One day at a time.
• 3:23
  And you've, you're so busy, you know, I think that probably
• 3:28
  helps through re entry because you know, re entry when you've
• 3:31
  get out of prison, it feels like just the you're jumping in a
• 3:34
  moving car and you're trying to catch up with everybody.
• 3:37
  And, but I want to go back a little bit because everything
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  happened to you, Elizabeth, at such an early age, you know, at
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  17 years old. Take us back to Elizabeth's
• 3:48
  world growing up. What was, what were you doing as
• 3:50
  a kid growing up? What was your life like?
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  So I had never been in trouble before, but I had been taken and
• 3:58
  removed out of my home multiple times.
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  You know, families are complicated.
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  They continue to be complicated. I started really young dabbling
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  with drugs, living the street life that ultimately led me to
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  trying to be make it on my own at a very young age and working
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  towards emancipation. And ultimately, at 17, I thought
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  it was going to a hotel party. Well, did you have siblings like
• 4:31
  Elizabeth? Were you?
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  Oh yeah, yeah. So I have a sister, her name is
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  Dori and I have a older brother named David.
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  OK. So you were the middle?
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  I am the middle child, but David wasn't in my life until I was
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  nine and he was about 15 at the time and he's 1/2 sibling.
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  He lives in Massachusetts and my younger sister Dori.
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  We are not in communication right now because incarceration
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  rips families apart. Also, the life prior to
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  incarceration was not healthy or functional, and sometimes people
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  deal with things in different ways, and I can't do anything
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  but respect that. You know, I totally understand
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  that. I am in communication with my
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  birth family now, and I actually live out here in Washington
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  state to get to know them. And it's been a very healing
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  process for me. But that didn't happen until the
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  latter half of my incarceration. Growing up, that wasn't an
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  option, really. Yeah.
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  So was it like, 'cause I mean, it sounds like everything moves
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  so fast for you as a kid with like school and everything.
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  Where you what was that? What was that experience like
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  for you as you I mean, because everything stopped obviously in
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  your nightmare was in 17 years old.
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  That's like a what? A junior in high school?
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  Yeah. So I went to five different
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  elementary schools, three different middle schools in two
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  years in three states. And I was kicked out of high
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  school in my 9th grade year and put into an alternative school
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  system that allows you to kind of work while you go to school.
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  When I entered the and then I ultimately dropped out in my
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  11th, 12th year. And then I was incarcerated
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  around six months later when I finally was tested to see my
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  competency level on the inside in prison in Virginia, the
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  Savannah Correctional Center for Women, I tested at a fifth grade
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  level. Wow.
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  So they passed me through all my high.
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  School. Diploma, but I could barely read
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  and write, and I did know math because I knew how to count
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  money. Yeah.
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  But I am graduating with my bachelor's now in May and I have
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  multiple associate's degrees and multiple vocational degrees, so
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  it's kind of like I don't know. You came to it later.
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  That's what I remember, right? Yeah, where it's from, but it's
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  also hard not to forget. Yeah, because it's part of you.
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  I mean, you know, and and I think that you know, the
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  formation at an early age of your experiences, you know,
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  trying to get through kick growing up as a kids hard
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  anyway, but you know, sounding like.
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  No, I'm around 20 year olds or 17 to 20 year olds that are in
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  school at the University of Sound.
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  And I was that kid. Do you know, with those
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  opportunities? But I was that kid and it's like
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  sometimes they tell me their stories about what they're doing
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  now and I'm like, stop, be. Careful, be careful.
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  What Car you choose to get into, but 'cause you just never know,
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  you know, like I, I had the opportunity to walk away from
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  that event that changed my life later that night, but I did not
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  know it was going to happen ahead of time.
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  And so there's choices you make when you're a child that are
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  much different than when you're an adult.
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  And I am glad that the justice system is starting to recognize
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  children for children and see them that way.
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  And I'm very thankful for my freedom.
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  And even if it's very much new and kind of a mind blowing
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  experience. And I think it was the law was
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  changed like in 2012, I think, or something along those lines
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  where you could a teenager that was sentenced to basically life
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  without parole. They've changed that.
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  And, and so many people I've interviewed three or four people
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  that they, they got out because of that and it changed, you
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  know, obviously the life. So that happened from the
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  federal system, the state system, didn't the state, some
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  of the state system. Right, Because it has to go
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  state by state, right? And so I was a state case, not a
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  federal case. Luckily, Virginia has reversed
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  their ideology of sentencing children to life without and
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  have a parole system now for juveniles specifically.
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  So after serving 20 years, you're then eligible in the
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  state of Virginia for parole. It's still a slim chance for
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  women who were juveniles to make parole in the state of Virginia.
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  My lawyer told me after I made parole thank God that it was a
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  .001% chance of making it. Wow.
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  Yeah, Well, lead us into what happened.
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  What that nightmare that led you to a 17 year old getting
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  sentenced the way you guys sentenced what?
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  What happened? So I was working at Michael's
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  Arts and Crafts part time as like a floor manager.
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  The bane of my existence then was having to reorganize the
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  fake flowers. We were closing out the till and
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  my Co defendant showed up and said there's a hotel party, do
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  you want to go? And I said sure.
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  I was working as a stripper. I was dancing part time at the
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  time, and I was like, sure, we ended up getting in the car of
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  my boss at the time, and I'm not going to say her name here to
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  protect her privacy, but she drove us to the back of the
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  hotel. And at that point in time, it
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  became a carjacking. And so her car was taken
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  forcefully. And yeah, the end of that night
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  we were in a cop car. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  I can't change what happened then.
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  Do I wish that I had made different choices then?
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  Yes, Ultimately I do, and I live with a very in depth
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  recollection of that night every single day.
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  But I also think it's my responsibility now to then give
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  back to the community because what we do ultimately choose to
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  do does affect others. Yeah, it affects me and it
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  affects my family and life. But at the same time, like, her
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  life was drastically altered and then the communities is
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  drastically altered as well by a choice that I made.
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  And I think it's like very tempting to say, oh, my life was
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  horrible and I didn't have the skills to not say no.
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  Even if that's true, there was still a choice made.
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  I don't agree that I should have received the sentence that I
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  received, but I do agree that I should have been incarcerated,
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  which might be a different point of view for some people, 'cause
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  there should be accountability, you know?
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  Well, sure. I mean, you know, a the, I guess
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  it's the, the punishment to fit the crime.
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  And there's a lot of different things to fall into, you know,
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  deep discussion about a 17 year old kid and where they are in
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  their life at that point and what that means.
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  And choices that you would make at 17 might not be the same
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  choices you make at 25 or 45 or 75, but to take their whole
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  life, you know, So, so that night that when it happened,
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  what all happened after that, like as you got put into the
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  back of that police car, what happened?
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  So I was interrogated for about 12 hours without representation.
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  I was coming down off the drugs that I was on, so I was sick.
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  After that, I was taken to a juvenile detention center.
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  We're going to condense a few months into a sentence, a couple
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  of sentences. I met with my public defender
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  one time prior to court. I pled guilty to what I thought
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  was juvenile life, which for people who don't know in the
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  state of Virginia, means that you're incarcerated until the
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  age of 21 in a juvenile facility and then you're reviewed for
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  release and they can hold you till you're 23 at the Max.
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  So that's what you thought, That's what you thought you were
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  doing. Yeah, Yeah, that was your, was
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  that told you to you by your attorney or what?
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  What was the IT? Was told to me by my attorney I
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  would have pled guilty regardless if that deal was on
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  the table or not because the victim in this case was my
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  friend and I was guilty and at that point in time I I just I
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  just knew that that was the right thing to do.
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  I don't know how to explain that I just knew that I was guilty
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  and that I needed to plead guilty because I was guilty for
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  being there, for not walking away and for not getting help
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  the my court appointed lawyer. This is where you like socio
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  economical class comes into play here.
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  My court appointed lawyer spent a total of 5 minutes with me
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  before we were in court and 5 minutes with me outside inside
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  of court itself that. Was it?
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  I uh huh. That was it when I pled guilty.
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  The judge himself is deceased now.
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  His name was Henry Hudson and they used to call him Hen Hengum
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  High Hudson, and he has passed away.
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  It was I was his last case before he moved up the circuit.
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  I'm not saying that that influenced his decision.
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  It would have influenced mine, just being honest.
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  But he took the time to explain to me what every charge was
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  because my lawyer had not. So he asked me, when you plead
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  guilty, they asked you, do you know what this charge can carry?
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  And then they say, and if you say yes, they say, well, what
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  does it carry? And I guessed right.
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  So I didn't know. So I had like robbery and
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  carjacking and malicious wounding and robbery.
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  And I said, I don't know five years, I don't know, 10 years.
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  And he said, no, someone should have explained this to you
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  before you sign that paper. But since they didn't, I'm going
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  to explain it now. So it's on record.
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  And he proceeded to explain to me that every single charge I
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  had could be sentenced to some number.
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  To Max number, yeah. To life or to 20 or to what not.
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  And then I was like, oh, OK. And then he said, in light of
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  this, I'm going to refuse your plea deal and I'm going to give
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  you 55 years. At that point I didn't hear
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  anything else. I can't imagine.
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  I can't imagine, Elizabeth. What what what was going on?
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  I mean, was it a blur that that just said, I can't even imagine
• 15:43
  it your age hearing that because you're not even, you know, 1718
• 15:48
  years old to, to, to say 55 is like that, that's
• 15:52
  incomprehensible. I mean, if I'm, I'm 57 years
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  old, so somebody tells me 55 years, I, I know that basically
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  that's my lifetime plus two years.
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  You're you were exactly opposite reverse of that.
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  Yeah, yeah. And I, I didn't even comprehend
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  what was happening actually to I just, I kind of just spaced out.
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  And the, when I came back to like what was happening in the
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  present moment, the judge had left the courtroom and he was
• 16:20
  called back in because they didn't know where to put me.
• 16:23
  They didn't know if I should go into back to juvie.
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  They didn't know if I was going to the adult jail or if I was
• 16:28
  going to go to isolation. Because at my age, if you're in
• 16:31
  the adult jail, they hold you in isolation.
• 16:33
  They did then that's not the practice now, I don't think, I'm
• 16:36
  not 100% sure. But then if you weren't in, if
• 16:39
  you were a juvenile and they were putting you into adult
• 16:43
  detention center, they would put you in isolation until you
• 16:46
  became an adult. So the judge came back in and
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  said, no, she's going to, she's going to prison and she's going
• 16:53
  to the adult center, take her there.
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  So they put me in isolation. I proceeded to stay in isolation
• 16:58
  for about 18 months. Oh my gosh.
• 17:01
  Yeah, some of that was due to my own behavior, because I didn't
• 17:05
  want to leave after that, you know?
• 17:07
  You say you were in isolation, were you?
• 17:09
  You were literally in a cell by yourself.
• 17:12
  Yeah. And so this is before the new
• 17:14
  jail was built in Virginia. So it's the old, old jail is
• 17:18
  what they call it now. And I don't actually think they
• 17:20
  house women there at all anymore.
• 17:22
  So the jail part is a 6 by 5 cell with a cot and no mattress.
• 17:32
  It's like a closet A. Mat.
• 17:34
  Yeah, you were in there for 18 months.
• 17:36
  Like like the size of a closet. Yeah, well, I was there for
• 17:40
  about eight months and then they moved me to the prison itself,
• 17:45
  which was a little bit bigger room.
• 17:47
  Same, same idea. Yeah.
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  And then I was put into receiving shortly after that.
• 17:54
  Yeah. Which is just with everybody and
• 17:56
  receiving chaotic. It's probably the most chaotic
• 17:58
  place you'll be in your entire incarceration because
• 18:00
  everybody's new and. So do you have any contact with
• 18:04
  the outside world while this is all transparent in your young
• 18:07
  life? So you're allowed to use the
• 18:10
  phone different places. It's different amount of times
• 18:14
  during the week and that fluctuates depending on who the
• 18:18
  officer is and what the role is at the time.
• 18:19
  It on average it's usually once a day or three times a week
• 18:23
  depending on where you are. You get a shower every three
• 18:28
  days and then they give you the option of going to recreation.
• 18:34
  In Virginia, I think it's three hours a week is the is the law.
• 18:38
  Sometimes you get a little bit more, sometimes a little bit
• 18:40
  less, depending on the staff available.
• 18:41
  Is it recreation inside or outside?
• 18:44
  So in segregation, it's outside and it's in what they call the
• 18:47
  dog cage. So if you've ever been to a
• 18:51
  pound like where you go pick up animals, it is those exact same
• 18:55
  pages except for they're a little bit bigger and they're in
• 18:58
  a concrete enclosed area as well.
• 19:00
  So you do get some fresh air, but there's no other than if he
• 19:05
  looks. Nothing to look at, all right?
• 19:07
  No greenery, Nothing. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:11
  So the the 1st 15 months, I mean the 1st 18 months were, were
• 19:16
  doozy. I think part of me, it was like
• 19:21
  the first time I could relax though in my own life.
• 19:23
  So part of me, it was a relief to be there, which is horrible
• 19:27
  to say. A relief in what way, Elizabeth?
• 19:30
  Like relief that you weren't fighting the fight on the
• 19:34
  outside, that you weren't in the drugs and the that kind of
• 19:37
  relief. Yeah, So, you know, I got sober.
• 19:40
  I I always knew that I had a meal, regardless if it wasn't
• 19:46
  the best meal. You know, for me, I was a
• 19:48
  vegetarian. So it was beans three times a
• 19:50
  week. And then the in the jail, it was
• 19:53
  something called the veggie loaf.
• 19:56
  So they took all the leftover vegetables and they put them
• 19:59
  together in a blender and then they baked it.
• 20:02
  So you got this thing that looked like a turd and that's
• 20:06
  what you ate. That was the veggie loaf.
• 20:09
  The veggie loaf. Yeah.
• 20:11
  And once you told them you were a vegetarian, you couldn't come
• 20:13
  off so you could get commissary. I did not have funds at the
• 20:21
  time, so I did not get very much commissary.
• 20:24
  And if I did get any funds, it was more towards personal
• 20:28
  hygiene items. Yeah, the beginning was rough.
• 20:34
  That sounds really rough. I mean your, your entry as a
• 20:37
  young kid into an adult world sounds horrible, horrific.
• 20:43
  And yeah, and my Co defendant is also a female and so she was in
• 20:47
  these same spaces with me and she was treated differently
• 20:50
  because she was older. So she was in population.
• 20:54
  Yeah. So you finally get notified that
• 20:58
  you're moving and you. So where do they move you to?
• 21:06
  So the Slovana Correctional Center for Women was the first
• 21:09
  move that I made from the adult detention center in Fairfax
• 21:11
  County to there. And then there they come one
• 21:15
  morning and they say bang, bang, bang, pack up as if you have
• 21:19
  anything to pack up and, and they take you.
• 21:23
  And I went across the campus to receiving and I was there for
• 21:28
  three months. And then they put you into
• 21:30
  general population wherever you're going to go.
• 21:34
  So yeah, that's the beginning process of it.
• 21:37
  Later on, you can earn the ability to like live in like an
• 21:42
  honor unit. You can learn the ability to
• 21:44
  live in like a long termers unit.
• 21:47
  And then at one point in time, they also had a school unit
• 21:50
  because people who were in school were being targeted
• 21:53
  because not everybody had school.
• 21:55
  So it was like a safe unit for. There's also a reentry building
• 21:59
  now. So, Elizabeth, when you finally
• 22:00
  got to where you were going to be and this woman's prison,
• 22:07
  women's prison, how old would you have been?
• 22:11
  18. So how were you received going
• 22:18
  in being probably one of the youngest people in the prison?
• 22:22
  So the officers, I'm not going to say his name, but there was
• 22:26
  one in particular who's like, oh, you think you're grown?
• 22:29
  We're going to treat you like you're grown.
• 22:31
  And so the mentality inside then was, oh, you think you're grown?
• 22:35
  OK, then you can take harassment, you can take verbal
• 22:40
  altercations. This is pre Priya era, so the
• 22:46
  sexual innuendo and or harassment or whatnot was still
• 22:51
  a very active thing. The person I was in actually had
• 22:55
  people who had been released testify for Priya to be enacted
• 23:00
  in Congress. So that was an interesting
• 23:03
  experience. But mostly it was one of the two
• 23:09
  things. So staff wise it was either
• 23:12
  people who wanted to take care of me because I was a child and
• 23:14
  so young and so they wanted to be.
• 23:17
  Kind of mother you. Mother or father and then or it
• 23:22
  was people who were like, oh, you're so young, you need, you
• 23:25
  know, spare the rod mentality, You know, you need to be treated
• 23:29
  like you're a child and you're no good.
• 23:31
  And this is how we'll help you. And that old mentality that that
• 23:35
  you can never change was very prevalent at the time that I was
• 23:39
  incarcerated. I think we've moved more to a
• 23:41
  growth model that people can change over their lifetime.
• 23:44
  Yeah, but at that time it was not that way.
• 23:47
  It was you messed up and you messed up once, you're going to
• 23:49
  be a mess up forever. And so you had these like
• 23:52
  dueling ideologies of who you are as a person.
• 23:54
  And then I was angry, right? I was a well.
• 23:56
  Yeah, no, I'm, that's the thing. I, I, I'm listening to you talk
• 23:59
  about this. And you know, the reason why
• 24:03
  you're sitting here now is you didn't lose hope, but did you
• 24:06
  walk in that way? Because, you know, that to me
• 24:11
  seems like it would have been so difficult to get out of your
• 24:16
  dark funk of, Oh my God, I've just been sentenced to life,
• 24:21
  basically. Like how did you work your way
• 24:25
  through that? Well, it's a grieving process,
• 24:28
  you know, And I think grief never really leaves us.
• 24:31
  There's still things that I'm mourn for now that I wish that I
• 24:34
  had as a child. And it's very surprising when
• 24:38
  grief comes up. You would almost don't expect it
• 24:40
  even now, 20, almost 23 years later, you know, I don't know.
• 24:49
  I had to do a lot of things to survive inside because I did not
• 24:54
  have finances. I did not have support at the
• 24:57
  beginning and that perpetuated me getting in a lot of trouble.
• 25:02
  I also felt like I had a lot to prove.
• 25:03
  So just keep safe. Then there's there's that
• 25:07
  ultimate as well that you to keep safe, you have to.
• 25:10
  Protect yourself. Protect.
• 25:12
  Yourself, right? And that doesn't always look
• 25:14
  like protection on paper, right? There was a point, though, that
• 25:21
  I met two women. What?
• 25:22
  What? Security level would this have
• 25:24
  been? Oh, maximum so so they put me
• 25:26
  directly into the maximum. So in Virginia there's no super
• 25:29
  Max for women. There's only a maximum multi
• 25:32
  level and it's considered the like medical unit.
• 25:35
  But I was in the the Max part. You were in the Max part.
• 25:39
  In my age, so they use both as indicators if you are a threat
• 25:43
  to the system and they they classify you as such.
• 25:47
  So I wouldn't have been able to move until medium or minimum
• 25:51
  security until had done 20 years.
• 25:54
  That you've done 20 years. So I wasn't moved to a lower
• 25:59
  custody until. 'Cause you did 23 years, right?
• 26:03
  Uh huh. Yeah.
• 26:07
  Yeah. So it was, it was right before I
• 26:09
  was, it was in 19. And they didn't override to move
• 26:13
  me to a lower custody. And that was only because I was
• 26:16
  trying to transfer from that prison to Washington State to be
• 26:19
  near my biological family. Yeah, OK.
• 26:22
  So. So.
• 26:24
  Did you, it's, it's so fascinating because the how did
• 26:32
  this biological family that you started communicating with, did
• 26:36
  that start happening as you like?
• 26:40
  How, how far were you into your your sentence that you started
• 26:44
  getting a connection with your biological family?
• 26:49
  No, my father was in my life. My mother wasn't really in my
• 26:53
  life at that time. My father and my Nana started
• 27:00
  visiting first, and that was pretty early on.
• 27:04
  It was about 2000 and 3:00-ish when I was transferred to the
• 27:09
  adult prison. My mom and me started
• 27:12
  reconnecting on a more in depth level when I was in my early
• 27:15
  20s. And we actually are planning on
• 27:19
  going to Seattle this weekend, seeing a light show.
• 27:22
  And you know, we're actually having a really good time
• 27:24
  reconnecting in person here. I'm not going to say that it's
• 27:28
  always easiest. Family is complicated.
• 27:29
  It needs to be complicated. But yeah, it started slow and it
• 27:34
  was rocky. And there was a couple years
• 27:36
  there that we didn't speak. And then towards the end there
• 27:39
  when both my grandparents and my grandmothers passed away one
• 27:44
  after the other. And I think that kind of makes
• 27:47
  you re evaluate who's in your life and not in your life when
• 27:50
  you experience loss. That that that's not so that
• 27:53
  life's finite, right? We don't have unlimited time to
• 27:56
  do everything and make amends. And so why don't, why don't we
• 27:59
  try to do that now? Yeah.
• 28:01
  So it's been an interesting, interesting ride.
• 28:03
  Well, and so would because you, I mean, obviously when you're in
• 28:09
  that type of situation where you're in a Max, you know,
• 28:12
  you're doing a lot of time, you know, you have to have
• 28:15
  strategies to live like what was your, what was your world like
• 28:21
  in a given day? I'm sure it probably evolved
• 28:25
  because I know that you did different things as as things
• 28:27
  went on and it started your own programs.
• 28:31
  So at first I would wake up and you're automatically put into a
• 28:34
  job, either housekeeping or the kitchen.
• 28:36
  And so I worked in the kitchen and I was a cook slash Baker for
• 28:39
  a very, very long time. And I still love to cook and
• 28:42
  bake my own kitchen for myself, but I still don't know portion
• 28:46
  control. No, not when you're you were
• 28:49
  cooking for how many people? 1800.
• 28:53
  People. That's a lot of people, yeah.
• 28:55
  So, but so I'd get up and I'd go to work, usually on the midnight
• 29:01
  shift and then I would come home and I got put into school a
• 29:05
  couple years in and it was a how to use business.
• 29:09
  It's business software, but it was how to use Word.
• 29:12
  So for those of you who are young listening to this, I was
• 29:15
  incarcerated in 2002. Facebook wasn't a thing until
• 29:19
  2004 or 2006. OK, these things didn't exist.
• 29:25
  I didn't pager. That's 2007 I think when the
• 29:28
  iPhone came out. Yeah.
• 29:30
  So the first couple of years it was like, OK, well, Word is
• 29:34
  starting to be a really big thing and everybody needs to
• 29:36
  know it in the community, so we should teach this.
• 29:39
  So it was it was just basic skills of Word and PowerPoint
• 29:42
  and that. But what that allowed me to do
• 29:45
  was that it allowed me to then be on the radar for the special
• 29:52
  education program that came in and a woman named Gary Hayden,
• 29:57
  who was my special Ed teacher and had me retested for learning
• 30:02
  disabilities at that time and then assigned under an IEP.
• 30:05
  So and then proceeded to work with me for a year and a half to
• 30:09
  finish the first college class I ever did.
• 30:11
  And it was algebra which is the worst thing to start.
• 30:13
  No, I don't like algebra. But yeah, so it was like a year
• 30:21
  and a half to do that. And then I worked for her as a
• 30:24
  tutor. OK, on again, off again for the
• 30:26
  next 10 years. So that was a good connection
• 30:30
  for you. It's almost like even more like
• 30:33
  a mentorship maybe. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:35
  And so actually I was just granted permission to talk to,
• 30:38
  I'm going to call her Miss Hayden, even though she tells me
• 30:40
  I can call her Jerry now. She, I, I was just granted
• 30:44
  permission to talk to Miss Hayden.
• 30:46
  And I'm currently setting up a webinar series for Ithaca SNR,
• 30:50
  which is well, actually it's for J Store, which is a division of
• 30:54
  Ithaca SNR. And she's going to be on one of
• 30:58
  the panels talking about education and technology
• 31:00
  stressors with incarceral situations.
• 31:04
  And the woman who was a tutor of hers and also my instructor is
• 31:10
  also going to be on it. And there is they, sorry, they
• 31:13
  are currently out as well and in a PhD program to be a teacher.
• 31:18
  So it's like they taught together on the inside.
• 31:20
  And now they're going to be on this webinar and they're both,
• 31:23
  well, Miss Hayden's always been out, but now Steph is also out.
• 31:26
  And so they're going to talk on this board that I get to put
• 31:30
  together about that experience, just about how it is to like
• 31:35
  teach on the inside and the the frustrations that are there when
• 31:39
  you don't have access to technology or you do either way,
• 31:42
  and the different implications of what that is.
• 31:45
  So it's just like a full circle moment for me.
• 31:47
  I actually just got off the phone with my sponsor, Stacey
• 31:53
  Burnett. She's the senior manager of at
• 31:56
  Ithaca SNR. She used to work for J Store
• 31:58
  only, but now she's with Ithaca and it's just kind of it's just
• 32:04
  kind of amazing to be able to be in a place where like at 5th
• 32:08
  grade education and I go into this classroom as an angry
• 32:12
  honoree woman child, actually an angry honoree child.
• 32:16
  And then she gave me her all and she believed in me, and she was
• 32:20
  the first person to believe in me.
• 32:22
  Yeah, no, I think I well, you telling this story, I I didn't
• 32:25
  know any of this in the research and and looking at your story, I
• 32:28
  had no idea that the you had. So that really was a big
• 32:31
  connection for you to almost give you hope.
• 32:37
  Yeah, school. So you don't know what you don't
• 32:41
  know. I think I've told you this
• 32:42
  before. Yeah.
• 32:43
  So I didn't know that there was a world beyond the streets or
• 32:48
  the dysfunction I was living in that.
• 32:50
  That was all you knew. Referral and I didn't even know
• 32:54
  that other people lived any other way than the way I was
• 32:56
  living so when I started going to school it was like we were
• 33:01
  reading these little mini short stories remember at 5th grade
• 33:05
  education right. So these little mini short
• 33:06
  stories to get like bump up and there were stories about other
• 33:15
  countries. So I was like, Oh, well, wait a
• 33:18
  minute, what is this? And so I got curious.
• 33:20
  I've always been a curious person, but this is the first
• 33:23
  time my curiosity was kind of encouraged.
• 33:25
  And so I would find something out about like Mulan, and then
• 33:29
  Jerry would take it upon himself to go find more information
• 33:32
  about that. And so it was like, that's how
• 33:34
  we engage. And then also just identifying
• 33:38
  like what I needed to do to like be able to learn and feel
• 33:42
  empowered in that is just such a thing.
• 33:45
  And for me, it's being able to help somebody else learn.
• 33:48
  If I can talk to somebody else about what I'm learning, then it
• 33:51
  stays and then it also helps them.
• 33:54
  And so it was really interesting that I find that out.
• 33:57
  But as I got more education, more doors opened and so I am in
• 34:03
  a very privileged position because most people do not have
• 34:07
  access to education on the inside.
• 34:09
  At one point in time, there was only 36 people in an associate
• 34:13
  program out of 1800 women. So I'm not the norm.
• 34:19
  There's. Small percentage, yeah.
• 34:20
  Very small percentage has access to education and that was thanks
• 34:24
  to the Sunshine Foundation. I don't know if you guys know
• 34:27
  Sunshine ladies but Warren Buffett's sister started a non
• 34:31
  profit and they donated money to Puget Sound community.
• 34:37
  I'm not Puget Sound. Deedmont Community College.
• 34:40
  They were one in Virginia. For the associate degrees.
• 34:43
  Mm hmm. And so my first associate degree
• 34:45
  took me 10 years. Ten years so.
• 34:48
  Ten years because of accessibility, because of
• 34:51
  funding, because of. But she stayed with it.
• 34:55
  My own choices, yeah. So education, also in Virginia,
• 34:59
  is tied to behavior. So if you get an infraction, no
• 35:03
  matter how small that infraction is, you lose your place in an
• 35:05
  education program. I don't know if that's changed
• 35:08
  now, but that was the policy when I was there.
• 35:11
  You also often lose your job. So one infraction for, let's
• 35:15
  say, not standing up during count could cost you everything.
• 35:19
  And that's also a way that people are targeted in some
• 35:22
  ways. If someone doesn't want you in
• 35:24
  school, Right? Or what's the spot that you have
• 35:27
  which perpetuated a school unit being built?
• 35:31
  So it's it's it's complicated process inside.
• 35:34
  But for me, the two teachers that were the most instrumental
• 35:39
  in me and my behavior change were Gary Hayden, who was a
• 35:43
  special education teacher, high school GED, and Miss Nancy
• 35:47
  Archie, who was a print technologies and graphic design
• 35:52
  design teacher. So Jerry was the first person
• 35:55
  who ever taught me that I could learn and I could be smart and I
• 35:58
  could be helpful and I was worth that time.
• 36:01
  And Miss Archie is the first person who taught me how to
• 36:04
  listen and to realize that every choice I make has an implication
• 36:12
  that even if, even if I'm changing my behavior, that one
• 36:17
  slip up doesn't mean that all the good times like validate
• 36:21
  that you have. To does it define you?
• 36:25
  You just can't, you know, And so, yeah, and so I've, I've,
• 36:30
  I've been in contact with both of them through Facebook, which
• 36:32
  is interesting. And some are a lot more
• 36:36
  privilege of accessing others, you know, because of rules that
• 36:40
  are in place but. How did you get Elizabeth into
• 36:45
  talking about the, the, the, what they call it stop drop in
• 36:49
  yoga. And then you got into teaching
• 36:51
  the class about the trauma and the voice project.
• 36:57
  How did that evolve in there for you?
• 36:58
  Because you know, I, I think, you know, there's a couple of
• 37:01
  different things that are kind of, you know, it's a primitive
• 37:04
  environment in prison, but their respect is a is a real thing in
• 37:09
  prison. And, and if you can give, if you
• 37:12
  get respect in prison because of the way you carry yourself or
• 37:16
  what you could do for people, you can move easier in prison.
• 37:21
  And I'm thinking that when you did what you were doing, you're
• 37:24
  really helping a lot of people and they probably appreciated
• 37:26
  that. But how did that evolve for you
• 37:28
  to get into that type where you were actually putting programs
• 37:31
  together? So I actually grew up there,
• 37:36
  right? Yeah, you literally did grow up
• 37:38
  there. Yeah.
• 37:39
  You have the time in where people have also grown up with
• 37:43
  you, right? So there was when I was
• 37:45
  incarcerated, there was a large group of females who were
• 37:49
  incarcerated as juveniles all at the same time, and we all kind
• 37:54
  of grew up together. Stay close together as you're
• 37:57
  growing up, yeah. Yeah, and we're still in contact
• 38:00
  and friends to this day. And it's been years, you know?
• 38:04
  You know, females do time a little bit different than males.
• 38:07
  We form family units. Maybe you don't want it.
• 38:10
  Maybe you feel uncomfortable with the family unit thing.
• 38:12
  We form connections. It's just a little different
• 38:16
  than male time. Yeah.
• 38:20
  So like, we break bread together.
• 38:21
  We celebrate each other's birthdays.
• 38:23
  Holidays are a huge thing. So it's the Super Bowl normally.
• 38:28
  It's your own, your own family unit.
• 38:29
  I get it. Yeah.
• 38:31
  And you know, so there's a process of developing that and
• 38:36
  how large that is, that gives you clout in a place, right.
• 38:41
  Also there's the fact that I was not the best behaved individual
• 38:45
  for years and years and years. And so that also gives you clout
• 38:50
  when someone knows that you will defend yourself or when someone
• 38:54
  knows that you might have access to things at some point in time
• 38:58
  that you shouldn't have access to, even if you've changed your
• 39:01
  life. And I'll say it that.
• 39:02
  Way did you have anything violent happen to you in a
• 39:04
  maximum security prison for yourself?
• 39:09
  A couple things, but I'd rather not talk about that.
• 39:12
  They were always behind closed doors and they were never known.
• 39:16
  That's another thing is that there were a few times that I
• 39:19
  was put in segregation, under investigation and I never did
• 39:22
  say anything. Yeah, which is a big deal.
• 39:25
  Also in prison. I think, yeah, I think the
• 39:27
  outside world's like, well, why didn't you tell?
• 39:30
  And it's like on the inside. Snitching's a big deal.
• 39:34
  Yeah. And also it's it's your life,
• 39:37
  right? So that's a full system.
• 39:39
  And I'm not leaving there. I have to live with these people
• 39:41
  for the rest of my life and the replications of what I do or
• 39:45
  don't do. And I just, I didn't feel like
• 39:50
  it was my place to speak on something that I wasn't 100%
• 39:54
  involved with. Also, the implications of your
• 39:58
  own safety are a serious thing, right?
• 40:01
  So, but all of those things end up giving your voice a little
• 40:06
  bit more clarity. I also have an innate ability of
• 40:10
  being able to navigate between different groups of people.
• 40:16
  So if you. Blended well.
• 40:19
  Ying didn't get along with this gang.
• 40:20
  I still had friends with both gangs and and so it wasn't like
• 40:24
  I ever had to take sides or like affiliate with anybody.
• 40:27
  And so that gave me a unique ability to to like move between
• 40:31
  groups of people. We call them cliques.
• 40:33
  We didn't really call them anything else on the inside.
• 40:36
  I think females some. People call them cars.
• 40:39
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was that, but I think
• 40:45
  that, gosh, so the voice project actually came first, and there
• 40:49
  was a volunteer named Bree Luck that came in and she actually
• 40:54
  started this. She came in and she had us do a
• 40:58
  poetry writing thing. And it was kind of like just
• 41:02
  space to get out of your head what's in your head, and then
• 41:06
  you could rip it up, OK. And it was safe because your
• 41:10
  property is also subject to search at any point in time.
• 41:13
  And then anything that you write can be used against you, and
• 41:17
  anything that you have can be used against you on the inside.
• 41:19
  There's no privacy. Mail's not private.
• 41:22
  Your correspondence is not private.
• 41:23
  Anything you write is. Telephone everything, yeah.
• 41:26
  Everything is recorded and can be used against you.
• 41:28
  So some people have these traumatic incidents like the
• 41:32
  ones I don't want to talk about, but need outlet to have safe
• 41:36
  space to talk about them. And so that's what the voice
• 41:39
  project was. At first it was just a poetry
• 41:42
  writing group that became in the second or third ideation of it,
• 41:49
  a show. So we did slam spoken poetry and
• 41:53
  there was a group of about 15 of us and we decided to put it on
• 41:56
  as a show that was monologues of our poetry all together.
• 42:00
  And then there was a like a a movement component of it.
• 42:04
  So the group itself would like you got to be the director of
• 42:08
  your own piece. And so you stood up and spoke
• 42:10
  and they would enact whatever you wanted behind you.
• 42:14
  And that's kind of how it started to become like a more
• 42:17
  trauma informed program. And then it was showcased in
• 42:21
  like a volunteer, like all the volunteers get honored once a
• 42:25
  year at that prison. And so it was like people from
• 42:30
  the department as well as volunteers got to see that show.
• 42:35
  And so that's kind of how it started.
• 42:37
  And then the next one they like redid our town, which is a it's
• 42:42
  a famous play. We wrote it in the prison town.
• 42:46
  And then another one they did was the Wiz.
• 42:49
  So I played the wicked witch in that one.
• 42:52
  No bad news, horribly off key and we didn't have any costumes
• 42:59
  appropriate, right. We took, you know, she's she's
• 43:01
  wearing like bondage stuff in the Wiz, right.
• 43:04
  So black trash bags and blew them up.
• 43:08
  Yeah. And they were like my skirt.
• 43:10
  Yeah, so this is the witch the bag, the trash bag witch the.
• 43:15
  Trash bag witch. Yeah.
• 43:16
  And then I'd die on stage and like, roll off backwards and I
• 43:18
  did it. I'm such a klutz and I like
• 43:21
  jerked off the stage and then fell with real.
• 43:24
  Oh God. But it was fun, yeah.
• 43:28
  Well, you know that that type of stuff is kind of like an escape.
• 43:31
  You know that that is an escape of the mind.
• 43:33
  I know like when like sports is kind of like that.
• 43:38
  I was thinking for the guys stuff like, you know, we play
• 43:40
  different sports and stuff and feel like you're something just
• 43:44
  normal that you would do on the outside.
• 43:46
  You didn't feel like you were. And that's something like you're
• 43:48
  talking about. Elizabeth is freeing of the mind
• 43:51
  that you're kind of having fun with doing something that it
• 43:54
  doesn't matter where you're at. You feel it makes you feel
• 43:56
  normal. Yeah, and I think you don't
• 43:59
  really like I never, people always like, will you wake up
• 44:01
  and you're in prison? And I said, well, I'd never woke
• 44:02
  up like that. I woke up and was like, oh, this
• 44:04
  is the next day of my life. What do I have to do today?
• 44:06
  Where am I going? What am I doing?
• 44:09
  So it's it's it's kind of scary how normal that environment
• 44:14
  becomes. And it kind of reminds me of my
• 44:16
  childhood a little bit that like, you don't know what you
• 44:18
  don't know. And so now in my freedom, it's
• 44:21
  things like I forget I can open a window.
• 44:24
  Yeah. And so like, it's hot in here.
• 44:26
  Why don't you open a window and say, oh I forgot I could do
• 44:28
  that? Well, as you know, getting the
• 44:32
  number of years that you had, what did it feel like as you
• 44:38
  were getting closer to the end? Because how did you know that
• 44:44
  the parole was going to become a possibility?
• 44:48
  Like how did that, how did that information get to you and how
• 44:51
  did you know about it? So I got transferred from the
• 44:56
  Virginia Correctional Center to Washington Correctional Center
• 44:59
  on a hardship move, OK, which my my biological mother and my
• 45:03
  biological grandmother had cancer, OK, And so they
• 45:06
  requested that I be moved. I did not get moved for about 4
• 45:10
  1/2 years after that request was made.
• 45:12
  My grandmother. About four and a half months, 4
• 45:14
  1/2 years, yeah. When you're like a
• 45:20
  administrative move, it means you're in trouble or you've
• 45:22
  you've told on somebody. When you're that they do it
• 45:24
  automatically. But when you request, they take
• 45:28
  their time. Yeah.
• 45:30
  So it was 4 1/2 years and my grandmother passed away into the
• 45:34
  second year of that way. While you were waiting, yeah.
• 45:39
  Yeah, so I did not get to reconnect with her fully out
• 45:42
  here. We did write letters and she
• 45:46
  left me a suitcase of stuff. So when I came home, yeah, it
• 45:50
  was it was kind of monumental, actually.
• 45:52
  Both my grandmothers are sitting next to my dresser, Their urns
• 45:55
  are next to my dresser and I still talk to them.
• 45:58
  They. Were they were my my my rocks.
• 46:01
  Yeah. When I was younger, so like
• 46:03
  whenever everything was crazy, I could call.
• 46:05
  That that was your touch tone. Mm Hmm.
• 46:09
  So, but four years out right and I got transferred here.
• 46:14
  So I got transferred to Washington Correctional Center
• 46:16
  for Women, and it was actually I want to.
• 46:18
  Stay. What did that feel like to
• 46:19
  Elizabeth? Because I mean, you basically
• 46:20
  grown up, you know, in this prison, and getting moved as a
• 46:26
  prisoner is never good. But what did that feel like
• 46:30
  moving from some place you've been with so long and had
• 46:33
  friends and established, you know, this kinship of kind of
• 46:37
  like a family that you were leaving?
• 46:40
  Well it was such a loss, right? So my my friend had cancer at
• 46:43
  the time and I had literally just shaved my head in support
• 46:46
  of her having cancer. So I had like a bald head and
• 46:50
  they put me on a plane the next day and I was like, should have
• 46:53
  waited a day. Yeah, here we are.
• 46:55
  Solidarity for her, but still. And so I flew out here actually
• 47:00
  on a commercial flight with in regular plain clothes.
• 47:03
  They gave me a fake bag, carry on bag and a hoodie and my hands
• 47:07
  were cuffed, but they were inside the pocket.
• 47:09
  Yeah. So it was a full commercial
• 47:11
  flight, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
• 47:14
  Oh yeah, no, that's no con air in the federal system.
• 47:16
  No. No, and I had two plainclothes
• 47:20
  Marshalls with me. OK.
• 47:23
  So, you know, I get here and in Virginia the lights never go
• 47:30
  out. So they'll dim when it's
• 47:35
  bedtime, but they never go out. So for first, I want to say 1718
• 47:41
  years of my time, I had not been in the dark other than during
• 47:44
  Katrina when the lights went out.
• 47:49
  So I got here and I was exhausted.
• 47:51
  And they said we're going to give you a run by yourself for
• 47:52
  24 hours in receiving here in Washington state.
• 47:55
  And I said thank you, what do you want to eat?
• 47:57
  They gave me like a cheese sandwich.
• 47:59
  And I fell asleep 'cause I had worked for, I'd been up for like
• 48:03
  90 days. I was pulling two jobs at the
• 48:05
  correctional center. But what I had left and I
• 48:10
  crashed and I woke up and had a full-fledged panic attack.
• 48:14
  It was dark and it was happening.
• 48:17
  I freaked out so bad. I got up.
• 48:19
  It was banging on the walls. I fell over the toilet.
• 48:23
  It was horrible. And then I realized where I was.
• 48:26
  They all came like rushing in and like opened the door, you
• 48:28
  know, and we're like, are you OK?
• 48:29
  I don't think, you know, I had very out of body experience when
• 48:32
  I first got there because it was dark for the first time and it
• 48:36
  was I was probably sleep deprived and it was just a
• 48:41
  totally new experience. Also going from like I think I
• 48:46
  had mentioned before, I had been moved to a minimum security camp
• 48:49
  before I got transferred here. And so it's going from like all
• 48:54
  this freedom to then complete lockdown again.
• 48:56
  Was probably freaked you out. Yeah, that too.
• 49:00
  Well, I want to get. Out of here, yeah, stay here,
• 49:03
  right. It did get better though, and.
• 49:07
  Well, I want to, I want to get into that on how that that
• 49:09
  Second World came to you. Because before we do, I just
• 49:13
  want to recognize our other show sponsor Night Nightmare Success
• 49:18
  Podcast is sponsored by the White Collar Support group.
• 49:21
  It's the world's first support group devoted to people
• 49:23
  navigating the white collar criminal justice system.
• 49:26
  I'm a member of the white collar support group.
• 49:28
  I'm going to tell you, this is a bunch of people who help each
• 49:31
  other through the criminal justice journey for free.
• 49:33
  Whether you're just starting your journey or you made it
• 49:36
  through to the other side, this is great space for you.
• 49:38
  You can join us on Zoom Monday, 7:00 PM.
• 49:40
  Eastern Time, 4:00 PM. Specific for information, go to
• 49:43
  prisoners.org. That's prisoners.org.
• 49:46
  Start here. So you get there.
• 49:49
  Finally, you get there, you have a panic attack.
• 49:51
  It's all crazy. How is it entering this new
• 49:55
  prison? Culture shock, That's the only
• 49:58
  thing I can say. So the Pacific Northwest is
• 50:01
  primarily Caucasian, where Virginia S is primarily African
• 50:08
  American. So it was very culture shock for
• 50:13
  me. It's, it's funny how innately
• 50:25
  that changes the dynamics in the atmosphere of who's present and
• 50:29
  the culture that's that's around.
• 50:30
  I don't think I was fully aware until that moment of how
• 50:37
  different it was in different areas of this country.
• 50:40
  Even if I had been on the the streets for years and gone
• 50:44
  around the country, it was in a different dynamic of just that
• 50:47
  life. But to come here and see this
• 50:51
  kind of environment, there's goods and bads.
• 50:55
  So the goods in Washington state are that there is more education
• 50:59
  opportunity, the housing is astronomically better than
• 51:07
  Virginia is access to your basic needs.
• 51:11
  They have a a debtable system. So even if you don't have money,
• 51:14
  you can at A at a smaller cost, get the things that you need
• 51:18
  like hygiene like that. They also have better gym
• 51:24
  equipment. They have flowers, huge open
• 51:29
  spaces. They have greenhouses even in
• 51:31
  the maximum security. That's a big deal.
• 51:35
  Yeah, the they have fundraisers here where they like you pay a
• 51:40
  little bit more on some outside ordered food and that extra goes
• 51:44
  to some nonprofit organization. So it's like a fundraiser, but
• 51:49
  then you get to have extra food. So I hadn't had pizza in like 18
• 51:53
  years. Wow.
• 51:54
  And the first time they gave me is a big Costco pizza
• 51:58
  fundraiser. I cried.
• 52:01
  Costco's got good pizza too. Thank you.
• 52:04
  Shout out to Costco. It's very greasy, but it's good.
• 52:08
  I think that's what you want from pizza, greasy.
• 52:13
  They also have like Christmas decorations.
• 52:16
  So we did have some in Virginia, but it was like paper and
• 52:19
  pencils and what you could create for the first couple of
• 52:22
  years and they took it away out here.
• 52:24
  It was trees, it was lights, it was ornaments.
• 52:27
  It was like, it looks like Christmas threw up on the unit.
• 52:31
  Yeah. And it was also like games.
• 52:35
  Yeah. And it was like all these
• 52:37
  activities that people did together.
• 52:38
  And so I had to be reminded that like, just because it's better
• 52:42
  doesn't mean it's right. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:45
  But it was astronomically different in lots of ways.
• 52:50
  And out here I also didn't have any cloud actually, because
• 52:53
  nobody knew who I was. Brand new and you weren't an 18
• 52:57
  year old kid anymore. No, no, no, no, no, I was not.
• 53:01
  I don't know how old I was, but yeah, it was in 2019.
• 53:05
  I was. I got locked up in 2002 and I
• 53:07
  was transferred out here in 2019.
• 53:10
  OK. So in 2019 going back because I
• 53:14
  can't remember what you were saying about this, so did was it
• 53:17
  already in discussions that you could qualify and be up for a
• 53:22
  parole hearing? No, no.
• 53:25
  So I didn't know I was eligible for parole.
• 53:28
  So it the the law passed in Virginia in 2020, I want to say
• 53:32
  it might have been 21. OK, I didn't know I was eligible
• 53:36
  for parole until two weeks, but first my before my first
• 53:39
  hearing. So there's a rule when you're on
• 53:42
  the Interstate compact that the state that you go to is only
• 53:45
  required to give you the policies and procedures about
• 53:48
  their state, even though you're under the rules of another
• 53:52
  state, another state at least while you're on the inside,
• 53:54
  right. So I didn't know that the and I
• 53:56
  didn't speak to anybody because when you're on Interstate
• 53:59
  compact, you also like they just mark you as Interstate compact
• 54:03
  and don't let people know where you are in the system because
• 54:06
  most people it's administrative, right?
• 54:08
  It's not hardship. Even if I was different, it's
• 54:10
  still those same things happen. Yeah.
• 54:15
  So I didn't know that the law had changed in the 1st place and
• 54:18
  then I didn't know that I was eligible.
• 54:21
  So two weeks out, they call my counselor from Virginia and say,
• 54:25
  hey, she's got a hearing in two weeks, make sure she's ready.
• 54:30
  And I'm like a hearing for what? And she's like, I don't.
• 54:32
  I mean, my counselor didn't even.
• 54:34
  Know I. Don't we're going to go and just
• 54:36
  bring whatever you can bring. And I was like, OK.
• 54:39
  That is crazy, Elizabeth. That is crazy nuts.
• 54:44
  They just call up, say they got a hearing.
• 54:46
  The counselor doesn't know anything about it and you
• 54:48
  definitely don't know 'cause that's the last thing they do is
• 54:51
  talk, tell you anything. Yeah, yeah.
• 54:54
  And so then I went and tried to like find out, 'cause at this
• 54:56
  point in time, I have family and I have friends.
• 54:58
  Yeah, you know, and nobody knows what I'm talking about.
• 55:03
  So I'm like, OK, so I go and my first parole hearing is the
• 55:07
  parole interviewer. They do like they have a parole
• 55:10
  examiner that does like an interview with.
• 55:11
  Yeah, it's kind of like a PCR. Yeah.
• 55:14
  PSR PSI Yeah. My whole.
• 55:17
  Pre sentencing report. That's why I shouldn't talk in
• 55:20
  acronyms. Yeah.
• 55:22
  Oh, it's a pre sentencing report.
• 55:23
  Yeah, that's what it's like. But my whole first parole
• 55:29
  interview was him explaining the parole process to me.
• 55:33
  So he's like, well, this is what happens.
• 55:35
  And if you don't know, and I'm really thankful that he took the
• 55:37
  time to do that. Also he I also have like inside
• 55:42
  I had this like fear that I would get out at like 60 and
• 55:45
  have no retirement, never paid it.
• 55:48
  And so for some reason, that came up in this conversation and
• 55:51
  he explained like, the whole, like, retirement benefit thing
• 55:55
  to me for the second-half of our parole hearing, which I truly
• 55:59
  appreciate. Wait, how does?
• 56:00
  But how does that work, Elizabeth?
• 56:01
  Do you? Do you?
• 56:02
  Do you actually? Yeah, so you have to have
• 56:05
  worked. I, you know, I never either.
• 56:06
  I never even contemplated that whole idea.
• 56:09
  If somebody's locked up for that amount of time, what does that
• 56:12
  mean? Yeah.
• 56:14
  So when you're a juvenile, the presumption is you haven't
• 56:17
  worked and paid taxes, right, Right.
• 56:19
  Which I haven't. I had worked, but always under
• 56:22
  the table. Sure, legal.
• 56:23
  Job. Or under the table and so you
• 56:27
  have to pay into Social Security X amount of time and I believe
• 56:31
  it's 24 units. I can't exactly remember right
• 56:34
  now, but if you are incarcerated as a child and then when I was
• 56:40
  supposed to get out would have been older, I wouldn't have had
• 56:44
  that time in. So then.
• 56:46
  Even at peace, I, if I was released, I wouldn't have
• 56:50
  necessarily had access to benefits.
• 56:52
  So then what do I do? Right?
• 56:55
  No experience freshly released from prison, facing ageism in
• 57:01
  the age of retirement. Like there's, there's a whole
• 57:04
  problem that people who are juveniles that are coming out at
• 57:07
  these older ages experience. You know, I'm 40 and I paid
• 57:10
  taxes for the first time this year.
• 57:13
  You know, it was a, it was a very interesting experience, not
• 57:16
  one that I completely liked, but it's something that people don't
• 57:20
  consider, right. So the parole here investigator,
• 57:24
  he explained the parole system to me and why it was and how it
• 57:27
  came about and what the steps are.
• 57:29
  And then he explained retirement to me.
• 57:31
  And of course, I did not make parole.
• 57:35
  And then my, I call her my aunt. She's my cousin.
• 57:40
  Her name is Sue. But my I called my aunt.
• 57:42
  So my Aunt Sue was highly disappointed about this.
• 57:46
  And she contacted a former lawyer that had actually helped
• 57:51
  me in my original case, who is now a sitting judge.
• 57:56
  And he, of course, could not help because he is a sitting
• 57:59
  judge but his former partner. Was able to help.
• 58:03
  Was able to help he so Mount Sue did that and she he called me
• 58:09
  and we had a conversation and he was going to so parole hearings
• 58:14
  normally cost 20 to $50,000 I do not have that kind of money at
• 58:19
  all I don't think many people do whether you're in the system or
• 58:23
  not just to just. Just throw down 20 to 50,000 for
• 58:26
  a hearing. For a parole for a maybe.
• 58:28
  And remember, it's .001%. Maybe he was gonna do my case
• 58:36
  for a sliding scale of like $3000.
• 58:40
  OK. As one of his like, you know,
• 58:43
  help cases and he believed in me.
• 58:44
  Almost like pro SE, I mean, not pro SE, but of pro bono.
• 58:49
  Yeah, pro bono. Yeah, it's OK.
• 58:51
  And then so he was like, but you know, your case fits with
• 58:54
  somebody I know better. OK.
• 58:57
  Because I was a juvenile, because I got so much time,
• 59:01
  because I had trauma growing up and because I continued to have
• 59:04
  trauma on the inside as a child, right?
• 59:07
  So he contacted Julie McConnell with the University of Richmond
• 59:12
  Law School, and they have a children's defense clinic.
• 59:17
  Defense, Yeah. OK.
• 59:18
  Clinic. Yep.
• 59:20
  So the Children's Defense Clinic and what it is, is that people
• 59:23
  who are in law school partner with Julie and different
• 59:26
  systems. I love that it's kind of like an
• 59:28
  Innocence Project type deal. OK, Yep.
• 59:30
  It sure is. So the real life experience
• 59:32
  while they're in law school, usually they're seniors in
• 59:37
  juvenile cases. They also started taking adult
• 59:41
  parole cases who were juveniles at the time of their son.
• 59:45
  OK. They took my case pro bono after
• 59:48
  I had a call with Julie McConnell and a student lawyer
• 59:52
  named Elliot DuMont and Julie McConnell are the reason I am
• 59:56
  sitting here in front of you right now.
• 59:58
  Because they took my case and they took my very complicated
• 1:00:01
  life and made it linear and understandable paper and then
• 1:00:06
  presented it in a PowerPoint that I was not allowed to go to
• 1:00:12
  and then. I had two interviews with the
• 1:00:16
  actual parole board because one of the members wanted to ask me
• 1:00:19
  additional questions and I still maintain to this day that if the
• 1:00:25
  victim in my crime wanted me to be inside, I would wanted to
• 1:00:29
  stay inside. You'd still be inside.
• 1:00:31
  Yeah, because she went through something, you know, and I've
• 1:00:34
  been on that side of the board. And so I know how it feels to
• 1:00:39
  feel like your life is ripped out from underneath you because
• 1:00:41
  of somebody else's actions. And I can't it's, it's almost,
• 1:00:47
  it's a little sadistic that my life has turned around so much
• 1:00:51
  so, and I'm in this place of privilege and being on the show
• 1:00:54
  and a head researcher in the product that I research and all
• 1:00:57
  these things that I do now. And that was at the cost of the
• 1:01:02
  worst day of her life. And I can't make up for that.
• 1:01:06
  So in anything that happens to me going forward, I want her to
• 1:01:09
  be considered legally because she should have been considered
• 1:01:12
  in the 1st place. I can't change that, right?
• 1:01:17
  But I can say that she needs to be considered.
• 1:01:18
  And that's exactly what I told them that regardless of how you
• 1:01:21
  feel about me or how you like me, that and what I've done or
• 1:01:25
  not done with my life, I didn't, I wasn't eligible for parole
• 1:01:28
  until two years before I made it.
• 1:01:31
  I didn't do all those things to be eligible for parole.
• 1:01:33
  I did them because that was my life.
• 1:01:36
  That's how I wanted to live my. Life.
• 1:01:37
  That's how you changed your life, to live the way you wanted
• 1:01:40
  to live your life. Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  Yeah, I think we talked about before that like how you live on
• 1:01:45
  the inside is how reflection of how you live on the outside.
• 1:01:49
  And so I think it was a benefit to me that I just started living
• 1:01:53
  my life as if I wasn't on the inside and then how that
• 1:01:57
  manifests, right. But they did ultimately grant me
• 1:02:02
  parole. Judge Dotson was the head of the
• 1:02:05
  parole board at the time. And he called me and told my we
• 1:02:09
  called my counselor and told my counselor.
• 1:02:11
  I have a few more questions for Miss Schatzville.
• 1:02:13
  Can you arrange a meeting? And so he asked me about re
• 1:02:17
  entry plan and whatnot. I think he spoke for 45 minutes
• 1:02:20
  and then ultimately he was like, I think we're going to give you
• 1:02:22
  an option. What was your thought?
• 1:02:24
  I mean what I mean. I can't imagine Elizabeth that
• 1:02:28
  for that month. And started crying.
• 1:02:30
  I can't imagine. I think what he told me was this
• 1:02:34
  is the first time I've seen you at a loss of words.
• 1:02:35
  So I was just like and my counselor also started crying.
• 1:02:43
  I bet. Yeah.
• 1:02:46
  Then how fast were you released? So I made parole in March of
• 1:02:50
  2003. I was released in July.
• 1:02:52
  So there is a requirement that you undergo some re entry
• 1:02:56
  training before you release. Judge Dotson is now the head of
• 1:03:01
  DOC in Virginia, so he's, you know, I will forever appreciate
• 1:03:05
  that man for. What was it like though,
• 1:03:07
  Elizabeth? Like just packing up and walking
• 1:03:10
  out after 23 years, what did it feel like?
• 1:03:16
  Surreal, right? So there's these places and
• 1:03:18
  prisons that you're not allowed to go into and they're all the
• 1:03:20
  ones next to the doors, right? So there's, there's, it says all
• 1:03:23
  these do not just enter signs. You're out of bound signs.
• 1:03:26
  There's all this barbed wire. And Kim Alness is the social
• 1:03:32
  worker who works at the prison. And we had become close.
• 1:03:35
  And so she walked me out the the gate that morning and got to hug
• 1:03:39
  me for the first time and say goodbye and take some pictures.
• 1:03:43
  For me, it was a mixed bag of emotions.
• 1:03:45
  It was like so, so excited, so, so happy, but also like really,
• 1:03:51
  really sad because my family's there, you know, regardless of
• 1:03:58
  it was the same as when I left Virginia, my family's there.
• 1:04:01
  And so here in Washington state, I worked a lot with the
• 1:04:05
  geriatric population who have life without and who are in
• 1:04:10
  early set ages of dementia and Parkinson's.
• 1:04:13
  And I've had a few people die and.
• 1:04:16
  I was working, but that became a passion of yours.
• 1:04:19
  Yes, yes, we'll talk about the Hope team in a minute.
• 1:04:22
  But when you leave, you know you're not going to be able to
• 1:04:27
  come back in. And so it's like these people
• 1:04:30
  who are my grandmas or my sisters.
• 1:04:34
  It's like you're leaving them on the battlefield.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah. And so there's definitely a
• 1:04:39
  survivor's guilt that kind of goes with you.
• 1:04:41
  And I'm, I'm still working out how to deal with that and not
• 1:04:47
  and feel like I have the right to do something else in my life
• 1:04:51
  that's not connected to me. In some ways that's a good thing
• 1:04:54
  because it, it facilitates the research and work that I do now.
• 1:04:59
  In some ways it's a bad thing because I hold on to that.
• 1:05:02
  And that's. Hard to want to, so it's a
• 1:05:04
  mixed. Bag so when you got out I mean,
• 1:05:06
  you know obviously so many things changed in 23 years and I
• 1:05:09
  can't imagine all the different things you see and the you
• 1:05:13
  talked about getting motion sickness and the whole thing of,
• 1:05:15
  you know all the choices and things that go on.
• 1:05:18
  But I think what's interesting about you, Elizabeth, is that
• 1:05:21
  you you were experiencing all that, but you really pushed
• 1:05:25
  yourself right into your passion of what you were doing of.
• 1:05:31
  And can you talk a little bit about that as how you've kind of
• 1:05:34
  transitioned but are are really into, I would call it a passion
• 1:05:38
  project of what you love? Yeah.
• 1:05:43
  So when I was on the inside, I started, I had a woman who was
• 1:05:48
  my roommate and she had early onset dementia and as she
• 1:05:58
  relived memories from when she was a child over and over every
• 1:06:02
  day, it caused her to have incontinence issues.
• 1:06:06
  And their response to that was take her into isolation.
• 1:06:12
  I think I said this exactly the same way to you before.
• 1:06:14
  But I went on a rampage. I'm not supposed to say
• 1:06:17
  romampage in flight company. I'm supposed to say I went on a
• 1:06:20
  campaign. But it was a rampage.
• 1:06:24
  And the rampage was not with my fist as it might have been at
• 1:06:27
  one point in time. It was with pen and paper and
• 1:06:29
  policy and my mouth talking, and out of that inhumane moment and
• 1:06:41
  choice, lots of good things have happened.
• 1:06:44
  So the Hope team was started by myself and a woman named Jackie
• 1:06:52
  Ray and a nurse in having a conversation about how can we
• 1:06:57
  better treat each other in community.
• 1:07:04
  Yeah. And I want to see it intersects
• 1:07:07
  with a program called FEPPS, which is the Freedom Education
• 1:07:09
  Puget Sound project. Because we were having this
• 1:07:12
  conversation first in that classroom about borders and how
• 1:07:18
  Women's Health is treated at borders, specifically the
• 1:07:23
  Mexican American border and how there's a whole string of women
• 1:07:28
  called Maria that are their bodies are found at the border
• 1:07:33
  be usually due to like healthcare inaccuracies, you
• 1:07:37
  know, childbirth issues or whatnot.
• 1:07:39
  So we were having that conversation in the classroom
• 1:07:41
  and I was like, this sounds a lot like here, how do we deal
• 1:07:46
  with better care in liminal spaces?
• 1:07:49
  So liminal spaces is this like transition where laws don't
• 1:07:52
  necessarily cover, where policies don't necessarily
• 1:07:54
  cover? It happens to Indigenous folks,
• 1:07:56
  It happens to borders, people at borders, it happens to people
• 1:08:01
  who are incarcerated, it happens to be who are in elder care
• 1:08:04
  situations, geriatric care centers.
• 1:08:06
  It happens to people who are in mental health centers.
• 1:08:08
  So liminal spaces has become kind of like my passion about
• 1:08:12
  how do we give better care in these spaces that.
• 1:08:15
  Help the people that fall into the gaps.
• 1:08:19
  So these cracks right in the Washington Correctional Center
• 1:08:23
  for women, how that manifested was the Hope team.
• 1:08:25
  So the Hope team is a joint partnership that started out of
• 1:08:33
  the peer support program and first it was just women going
• 1:08:36
  down and being present and visiting with the women who were
• 1:08:39
  in the long term medical unit. It became the facilitation of
• 1:08:47
  activities. So they have like game nights
• 1:08:51
  and movie nights and I think they just had an Elvis Luo
• 1:08:56
  because some of the their these women are obsessed with Elvis.
• 1:09:01
  Don't care if they don't remember their name, they
• 1:09:02
  remember. They remember Elvis.
• 1:09:05
  And they know like he is their best friend.
• 1:09:07
  One even told me that they served him a year one time.
• 1:09:10
  I don't know if it's true or not.
• 1:09:12
  The fantastic story. And so we would start doing
• 1:09:19
  stuff like that. And so and that became like a
• 1:09:22
  horticulture program. And so it's like, it's like
• 1:09:24
  looking at these policies two ways, like how can we look at
• 1:09:26
  the policy itself and how it's used for people who are
• 1:09:30
  experiencing illness? So it they changed the
• 1:09:34
  reconstruction surgery policy. For example, if you were a
• 1:09:37
  female that was going through cancer and had a myasectomy at
• 1:09:39
  one point in time, you were not eligible for reconstructing
• 1:09:42
  surgery. So if they cut anything off of
• 1:09:45
  you, they now have to give you the option to have that.
• 1:09:48
  To have an option. Or to have a prosthetic right at
• 1:09:51
  the cost of the medical system. Some people may not agree with
• 1:09:55
  that, but it is when you're sentenced to time, you're not
• 1:09:58
  sentenced to how you do time. You're sentenced to time itself.
• 1:10:01
  And no one, I don't care what situation you're in, deserves to
• 1:10:06
  be treated less than human in medical situations.
• 1:10:08
  Exactly. I don't care where.
• 1:10:10
  You are. I don't care what you've done.
• 1:10:12
  No. Everyone deserves equal medical
• 1:10:15
  care, and that's kind of my stick now.
• 1:10:18
  Access to education, access to healthcare in equal way, in
• 1:10:21
  equal measure. The laws in most states state
• 1:10:25
  that you are not. If you are in a carceral
• 1:10:29
  situation, you are not under the jurisdiction of the Department
• 1:10:32
  of Health. And so the internal medical
• 1:10:36
  situation situation is a situation and there's no real
• 1:10:41
  oversight and so. No, there isn't, Elizabeth.
• 1:10:43
  And and I think you and I were talking about this, but you
• 1:10:45
  know, my dad was sentenced to 10 years in prison and, and midway
• 1:10:49
  through his sentence, he, he had a colonoscopy.
• 1:10:52
  He got it was his colon was perforated.
• 1:10:55
  They'd sent him back and they just refused to accept that
• 1:11:00
  there was anything wrong with him.
• 1:11:01
  They said he had the flu and his body started to shut down.
• 1:11:04
  He had septic shock and eventually the guys carried him
• 1:11:09
  up to, to the officer's station and said, I think he's dying.
• 1:11:13
  And they finally took him to the hospital and they could, it was
• 1:11:17
  so bad that they airlifted him to Saint Louis, from Marion, IL
• 1:11:21
  to Saint Louis. And he was in a coma for, I
• 1:11:24
  don't know, two weeks or whatever.
• 1:11:25
  But because of because of the situation that wouldn't have
• 1:11:28
  happened on the outside, There would have been some other type
• 1:11:34
  of thing that happened before. Somebody gets just drug up to
• 1:11:37
  somebody and like thrown on them like a dog and, and, and they
• 1:11:41
  say, oh, well, I guess we should do something.
• 1:11:43
  But that's why I think what you're doing is so it's not
• 1:11:48
  something that people talk about a lot.
• 1:11:50
  They don't think about it like healthcare inside the prison or
• 1:11:54
  for an inmate or somebody at the border or those things you're
• 1:11:57
  talking about. And I think that's so unique and
• 1:12:01
  special of what you're doing because we need a voice in those
• 1:12:05
  areas where people fall through the cracks because if you're not
• 1:12:08
  advocating for them, how do we advocate for them?
• 1:12:11
  And I think, you know, the fact that you've experienced all the
• 1:12:15
  things that you've experienced also gives you a very strong
• 1:12:17
  voice to be the person who goes and talks about this too, really
• 1:12:21
  does. I'm I'm you had told me about
• 1:12:26
  your dad prior to this, but just every time I hear the story, I
• 1:12:29
  just my heart goes out to you and it's just like once I see
• 1:12:33
  I'm such a sad. It's such a hard thing to
• 1:12:37
  experience that and just that helplessness and lack of care
• 1:12:44
  just for to be able to breathe, to be able to move, think on.
• 1:12:49
  Taking your freedom was one thing, not taking your health.
• 1:12:52
  Yeah, I had one lady who was my roommate at, it's the same one
• 1:12:57
  that perpetuated me starting the Hope team.
• 1:12:59
  And she woke up in the middle of the night one night and she like
• 1:13:03
  tapped on the top bulk because I was on the top bulk.
• 1:13:05
  And she was like, will you remind me what my name is when I
• 1:13:09
  forget like. That's deep.
• 1:13:13
  And that's such a fear, you know, it's like falling down a
• 1:13:15
  hole, knowing that you're falling down the hole and it's
• 1:13:19
  darker and dark and all of a sudden you realize you're not
• 1:13:20
  going to remember your name. I can't imagine.
• 1:13:24
  So you asked me earlier what it felt like when I left, and all I
• 1:13:27
  could was, who's going to tell her her name?
• 1:13:30
  That was what it was saying, right?
• 1:13:33
  Because you were looking out for her and she was part of your
• 1:13:35
  your she was part of your family and you were looking for out for
• 1:13:39
  her. It's it's.
• 1:13:43
  It's a lot, you know. It's a lot and it's, it's and I
• 1:13:46
  and I think it's, I think it's important to Elizabeth and I
• 1:13:48
  think people feel it when you talk about it.
• 1:13:51
  Prison is a horrible thing, but you do make relationships in
• 1:13:54
  prison. And when you leave prison, you
• 1:13:57
  know, you go in as one person by yourself, but when you leave,
• 1:14:02
  it's different. You know, it's just slapping to
• 1:14:03
  the high fives, the hugs and people feel good for you, but
• 1:14:07
  they also you're leaving them behind.
• 1:14:09
  And so there's that, there is that dynamic of those two
• 1:14:11
  different things that happen all at once when you're leaving.
• 1:14:14
  And it's a, it's a very strange dynamic.
• 1:14:17
  It's a very strange dynamic that you can only experience if you
• 1:14:21
  go through that wall and through the door and get released.
• 1:14:25
  And it's a. It's a weird thing.
• 1:14:28
  There's nothing comparable out here, like, even like, I think
• 1:14:31
  the closest thing would be maybe military life.
• 1:14:33
  Yeah, but there's nothing comparable.
• 1:14:35
  To that, that's why I was saying leaving somebody on the
• 1:14:37
  battlefield and you get to go home.
• 1:14:39
  You know, there's something I don't know what that world is
• 1:14:42
  because I wasn't in the military, but I've I've seen the
• 1:14:44
  movies and it feels like that, you know, I, I remember that,
• 1:14:47
  you know, the guy that I was the closest to, you know, we hugged
• 1:14:50
  in the hallway and he couldn't walk me out because he, you
• 1:14:52
  know, he broke down to cry. So I was, I was leaving him and
• 1:14:58
  walking out to my family and you know, those two different
• 1:15:01
  things. I knew he had two more years and
• 1:15:02
  he it was going to change his whole life.
• 1:15:05
  Because you know what you do as a routine in prison and that
• 1:15:08
  person leaves like they, they vanish and they're not coming
• 1:15:12
  back and I'm leaving and I'm going to freedom.
• 1:15:15
  So it's just, it's a weird thing.
• 1:15:17
  Everybody wants to be released, but you do leave something of
• 1:15:20
  yourself behind, which is fascinating.
• 1:15:22
  You do. And then it's like there's still
• 1:15:25
  moments now where it's like you get the I get two things.
• 1:15:28
  I either get you need to slow down, which is the bane of my
• 1:15:32
  existence. I.
• 1:15:35
  I don't need to slow down. I, I take care of myself.
• 1:15:39
  But I also have thought about this for 23 years.
• 1:15:42
  So maybe I think when people tell you to slow down, it's one
• 1:15:46
  thing. It's one, it's one thing we tell
• 1:15:47
  women all the time, right? You're doing too much.
• 1:15:50
  You're, you're, you're out of your lane.
• 1:15:52
  You need to slow down. It's one thing we tell women,
• 1:15:55
  but then also I think with me specifically, it's like people
• 1:16:00
  who care about me tell me this because of their their own
• 1:16:03
  fears. Sure, you know.
• 1:16:05
  Yeah, no. A lot of times when people are
• 1:16:07
  telling you something, it is their own fears that they're
• 1:16:09
  they're laying on top of you. I'm curious, Elizabeth, you know
• 1:16:15
  all the things that you've gone through and you've grown up
• 1:16:19
  through the prison system and now you're doing something that
• 1:16:22
  you're passionate about and you're getting that back.
• 1:16:25
  What do you think's your biggest take away through all this that
• 1:16:28
  you've experienced? So what I would tell other
• 1:16:34
  people, and I have told other people this is that say yes.
• 1:16:38
  So do you know how many people told me no about like visiting
• 1:16:42
  my grandma's down there before? One person told me yes.
• 1:16:46
  That person that told me yes is now been promoted.
• 1:16:51
  And also the HOPE team exists. And we're in a partnership with
• 1:16:55
  Washington State University and University of Puget Sound to do
• 1:16:58
  an ongoing research study doing well, I can't talk about all of
• 1:17:03
  it because we're an IRP, but what I can say is that we've
• 1:17:05
  presented our preliminary scoping review of data that has
• 1:17:10
  been collected. So we know where to go for now.
• 1:17:12
  And we're in hopes that IRB goes smoothly.
• 1:17:15
  So that way we can do actual focus groups and surveys on the
• 1:17:21
  inside to see what needs are actually needed by women in real
• 1:17:24
  time and then how to implicate that.
• 1:17:26
  Or I can say that our goal eventually is to be able to have
• 1:17:31
  geriatric training programs, yeah, on the inside, so that
• 1:17:34
  women can take care of women on the inside and be trained
• 1:17:38
  correctly and also have. Zero.
• 1:17:39
  Is there a way, Elizabeth, for the people that are listening,
• 1:17:42
  that they could reach out to the Hope team?
• 1:17:44
  Is there a way for people to contribute or do anything with
• 1:17:47
  help? Yeah.
• 1:17:48
  Yeah, I can actually give you the information for a link in
• 1:17:51
  the future. I don't.
• 1:17:51
  Have I can put the link in the show notes?
• 1:17:53
  Yeah. Yeah, I will definitely get that
• 1:17:55
  to you. So we did just get the ability
• 1:18:00
  for the Hope team to have their own financial fund.
• 1:18:02
  So everything that is done is currently voluntary, right?
• 1:18:06
  And it's all incarcerated individuals and a few staff
• 1:18:09
  members on the inside that facilitate this work.
• 1:18:13
  And so, and then there's an outside group that is comprised
• 1:18:17
  of myself, Tasha Big Eagle, Corey Bulkham and Raven Weaver
• 1:18:24
  and Tonya Ernst. And so those people, three of
• 1:18:29
  those people are professors and heads of departments at UPS, at
• 1:18:34
  University of Sound and the Washington University, the State
• 1:18:38
  University. And then Tasha is another
• 1:18:41
  justice impacted individual who is currently in her Master slash
• 1:18:45
  PhD program. And so she is my research
• 1:18:47
  partner. That is awesome.
• 1:18:49
  Yeah, she also did time in the same prison prior to all of
• 1:18:53
  these programs. That's incredible.
• 1:18:55
  Right. And she's Indigenous as well.
• 1:18:57
  So she comes at it with the Indigenous ideology of talking
• 1:19:00
  circles and models of care that are intergenerational, which
• 1:19:04
  really fits well with how. No, you've got it.
• 1:19:06
  I didn't realize you had all that.
• 1:19:08
  You've got some great people doing good stuff.
• 1:19:12
  I had it from the geriatric and. I love it.
• 1:19:16
  Dementia aspect. And then we have Kelly
• 1:19:18
  O'Sullivan that is also a undergrad and she's part of this
• 1:19:23
  project and she does mostly dementia care and family unit
• 1:19:26
  models. So it's really a great team
• 1:19:28
  going forward. And we hope to expand that to
• 1:19:32
  include additional people at the University of Puget Sound over
• 1:19:34
  the summer, wherein I will be working as a research assistant
• 1:19:37
  there. But so it's come a long way.
• 1:19:40
  No, it's, it's, I'm so proud of you, Elizabeth.
• 1:19:43
  You, you have it's total transformation.
• 1:19:47
  You've you've found a passion, you're doing great work, you've
• 1:19:50
  put your A-Team together that's doing great work.
• 1:19:53
  And I just, you know, it's, it's a great.
• 1:19:55
  There is a fund, there is a fund that is directly it's it's
• 1:20:00
  controlled by Washington DOC and it's at prison.
• 1:20:04
  And the how you do that is you would send a money order or a
• 1:20:07
  check to the care of the Hope team and we can put the notes
• 1:20:12
  and the address. We'll.
• 1:20:15
  Do it. Yeah, there's also, and I'm
• 1:20:18
  going to do a shameless plug here, almost plug that, if you
• 1:20:22
  want to know more about not only the HOPE team, but just what
• 1:20:25
  people are doing around the country to impact justice and
• 1:20:29
  impacted individuals, especially in regards to education,
• 1:20:33
  technology and healthcare. We were, I've just finished
• 1:20:37
  organizing a webinar series that's coming out in April.
• 1:20:41
  It is sponsored by Ithaca SNR and J Store and it's called
• 1:20:45
  Second Chance Mentality, First Chance Reality.
• 1:20:48
  Wow. And it'll be all four panels,
• 1:20:52
  it'll be every Thursday in April, will be moderated by
• 1:20:55
  Stacy Burnett, who is the senior manager of Ithaca SNR.
• 1:20:58
  And I will get you that information as well.
• 1:21:00
  That is awesome. That's good stuff.
• 1:21:02
  I didn't know you had the webinar thing coming out.
• 1:21:06
  Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for today.
• 1:21:08
  I mean, I, I love your story. I'm so glad I reached out to you
• 1:21:11
  and we connected. I want to give it a shout out
• 1:21:14
  while we're giving shout outs to Homestead financial list.
• 1:21:17
  May use this podcast room. If anybody needs home mortgage,
• 1:21:21
  they're in a need of a home. A home mortgage guy, it's Greg
• 1:21:23
  Aftiev. He will take care of you.
• 1:21:25
  He knows his stuff. Don't forget, I've got a book
• 1:21:29
  out there. It's on Amazon.
• 1:21:30
  It's called nightmare success, likes on and shares and follows
• 1:21:35
  and subscriptions. Please do it.
• 1:21:36
  Leave a review on Apple. For some reason it puts the show
• 1:21:38
  on steroids and I love it when you guys take the time to do it.
• 1:21:41
  I know it's kind of a hassle but it's a big deal.
• 1:21:43
  brentcassidy.com is the website. It's with a Ty not a DY Spell it
• 1:21:47
  wrong as I used to say when I was writing my emails back and
• 1:21:51
  forth from Leavenworth to my people.
• 1:21:53
  Stay strong I'll do the same. Elizabeth, thanks so much for
• 1:21:57
  today. You are great just keep it
• 1:21:59
  going. You're I'm just I know I'm going
• 1:22:01
  to be seeing great even more things out of you.
• 1:22:05
  Nightmare success in and out.