A new classical music composition program has changed the lives of a number of inmates serving time at a Bay Area jail. They recently gathered to listen to performances of pieces they composed themselves, after completing their classes at the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility. KTVU's Heather Holmes speaks with retired Correctional Lieutenant Liana Whisler and Program Manager Sergeant Jennifer Aicega about how the class came about and what it aims to accomplish.
Farm training program in Norco: SoCal Spotlight
Patrick Mitchell and Chris Faucher join us to talk about EAT, an Ecological Agriculture Training Cultural Center in Norco. They host unique workshops including a “Small Farm Apprenticeship Program” that teaches participants how to grow and sell produce.
Connection, Hope, Purpose, and Empowerment Define Travis Rapp’s Lived Experience Reentering the Community
“It’s the everyday things, like being able to open a door, that bring me such joy.”
Like many people who are incarcerated, Travis Rapp struggled with anger, pain, and hopelessness during the 16 years he spent in a maximum security California prison, almost a decade in isolation.
Travis was 21 when he was charged with first-degree burglary and sentenced to 15 years at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, CA, “designed to house the worst-behaved, most problematic,” of all the state’s inmates. For nine years, he was confined to a 6.5-foot-by-11-foot room with just a bed, sink, and toilet. Meals were served through a slot. The exercise consisted of four hours a week in a gated dog-run-like cage in the outside yard.
Fast forward to today. Travis, 37, is just two years out of prison. He’s a lead supervisor for five of Five Keys’ employment and reentry crews, (about 50 employees) rising through the ranks from his first job on the CAL Crew, which works to repair, remove litter, control vegetation, repair storm damage and erosion and other highway beautification projects in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Joaquin counties. He clocks in at 6:45 a.m. and out at 3:15 overseeing worker safety, the vans, hiring, data sheets, payroll and recruiting.
“Travis is a natural leader, a standup guy who is also humble and was not afraid to start at the bottom and work his way up,” said Jalonn Harrison, Assistant Director/Transitional Work Programs for Five Keys. “He’s stepped up to every opportunity and given his best. He’s an amazing role model for all that a person can make it through anything. He’s all about the power of hard work and determination.”
In February he was released from parole.
Travis is married to Lenna, a hairstylist, who shares his passion for trekking through California highways on weekends on their motorcycles. They live in an apartment in West Los Angeles with their two cats, Brodie, and Bob Cat, and have a bucket list of travel plans from Greece to Japan, to France and around the globe.
The first place he and his wife went upon his release from prison: The Claim Jumper restaurant “for a big old juicy steak.” He’s proud to say he’s taken up cooking, “mostly steaks,” he admits.
“But it’s the everyday things, like being able to open a door, that bring me such joy.”
His new adventure is all about taking risks and creating a dream life. But he doesn’t forget the suffering and longing that defined his years in prison.
As the years rolled by in prison, Travis was visited by the prison chaplain three times, each to tell him about the death of one of his grandparents.
Travis studied and earned his General Educational Development (GED) degree, classes in Excel and Microsoft, trade school auto mechanics certificate, soaked up as much history as possible, books about Napoléon, the Saxons and jotted down motivational quotes that became his lifeline and guiding light: “You gain strength through struggle,” and “In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.”
“I was a lifelong troublemaker who knew I had to turn my life around and that moving forward, the key would be who I surround myself with, he said.
Travis says he just kept telling himself: “Push forward, you can’t let it break you. Work, just work.”
Never underestimate the power of community.
In 2022, Travis was transferred into Los Angeles’ Male Community Reentry Program (MCRP), a reentry multi-tenant apartment complex that provides programs and tools necessary to transition from custody to community. Monitored with an ankle bracelet, Travis discovered Five Keys and its innovative transitional employment program.
His break was being hired by Five Keys on the Cal Crew. Through the Five Keys Transitional Employment and Reentry programs, people like Travis receive robust support to help them find permanent employment, progress along educational pathways, or enroll in progressive job training. Job readiness workshops, reentry support, access to high school completion, and hosted resource groups are provided.
“Travis is an extraordinary leader in that he takes the initiative to do things he sees need to be done instead of waiting for someone to suggest it,” said Dave Bates, VP of Transitional Employment & Reentry. “Travis forecasts what needs to be done and he gets it done. That is what you want in a leader.”
These days Travis is also passionate about giving back, reaching out to help others “get the second chance I did.”
There is a sorrow that continues to burrow in his heart. His best buddy in prison, a forty-something guy named Christophe, is sentenced to life without parole. “We were in solitary together and could only talk between the walls,” says Travis. “These days I can call and write him, but it’s hard because I am out and there is a guilt there and sadness. He got me through so much and is my best friend. Isn’t it weird, I have a best friend I never got to even shake hands with and probably never will. It’s rough. I feel very remorseful.”
First Woman Graduates From San Mateo County's Five Keys High School
SAN MATEO COUNTY, CA — The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office honored the first woman to graduate from Five Keys High School while incarcerated. Monet Pierson will be presented with her diploma during a graduation ceremony at the Maple Street Correctional Center on April 28. San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos Bolanos will preside over the ceremony.
Five Keys Profile: Tijanna O. Eaton, Chair Board of Directors. A Life Interrupted—A New Life, Giving Back
“Three years. Twelve arrests. One shot at redemption.” That’s how Tijanna O. Eaton sums up the loss and longing she experienced during the years she spent homeless, struggling with addiction, and/or behind bars.
An honor student in high school, college attendee, and mother, she was on a trajectory for success before the world crashed around her.
But today, released and recovered from that dark period in her life, the 57-year-old Tijanna has transformed the longing and loss into determination to keep fighting for others who have lost freedoms because of addiction, poverty, racism, and other social justice inequities upheld by white supremacy that have beaten them down and thrust them onto the margins of society.
For almost a year, Tijanna has served as the Board President of Five Keys, following 16 years as a board member. She’s also recently wrapped up a successful 20-plus year career as a Senior Information Specialist in Regulatory at Genentech. In October, Tijanna finished UC Berkeley Extension's project management certificate program.
She is grateful to be drug and alcohol free for 28 years. She believes the scars she’s accumulated on the inside have made her more compassionate on the outside. As a former recidivist, Tijanna is committed to carrying out Five Keys’ mission.
“I feel electrical impulses of empathy and impatience whenever I listen to Steve Good’s (Five Keys President and CEO) report during our board meetings,” she writes. “Empathy, because every single program we have in place, every single study packet assembled, and every single interaction with students puts them one, two, or twelve steps closer to graduating. Impatience because I want everyone to get free and educated, now!”
Since she’s been at the helm of the board, Tijanna has made it her mission to witness and support the hard work and dedication of Five Keys’ staff on the front lines of the navigation centers and schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and to explore the innovative agriculture and restoration programs in Southern California.
“I’m trying to get my arms around all the amazing programs Five Keys offers to people who need a place to come for support, and to relax, breathe, and rebuild their lives,” she says. “I want to sit down, have fireside chats, and let all the people that work for Five Keys know they have the loyalty and support the need. I’ve been those people they are serving. I know how significant and life-changing their work can be.”
A Life Interrupted
Tijanna’s nightmare began in January 1990, when she shot her first fix of heroin. Three months later, she was hooked and had developed a daily habit. Less than a year after that, she had starting mixing coke with heroin, and by January 1991 she had lost her job and would lose custody of her daughter soon afterward.
Suddenly homeless, she describes descending into full-on addiction—then becoming addicted to crack—and beginning three years of constant drug use, sleeping in alleys and doorways, using sex work to support her habit, and having frighteningly regular police contact. From April 1991 to March 1994, she was arrested 12 times and made 13 trips to jail on charges including possession of drugs and paraphernalia, prostitution, theft, trespassing, and weapons.
Starting Over
Tijanna credits the SISTER Program (Sisters in Sober Treatment Empowered in Recovery) for kick-starting her transformation. SISTERs is a collaboration between Walden House and the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and was the country’s first in-jail treatment program, which helps women recover from drug and alcohol abuse. Arrested for the 11th time in November of 1993, she spotted a poster that asked: “Tired of going to jail? Want your kids back?” She remembers thinking: “YES! Yes, I did.” At the time, the program hadn’t even started, and neither the deputies nor other inmates knew what it was. But Tijanna hoped it would be the bridge back to motherhood and the life that ended abruptly after her first arrest.
She volunteered to enter the program on March 2, 1994. Two months later she was transferred to long-term in-patient treatment at Walden House, where she spent two years completing every phase of the program without relapse. Early in her recovery, Tijanna also worked for two years at SISTERs, where she provided group and individual counseling to inmates through this unique women’s recovery program.
Upon graduation from Walden House in 1996, Tijanna began a new life. Over the next few years, she regained custody of her then eight-year-old daughter, got a job, an apartment, started a relationship, and began attending—and still attends—12-step meetings.
Tijanna says it is her hope that people who hear about Five Keys, “will feel the same way I felt and will experience the same miracle I experienced when I went to jail for the last time.”
These days, Tijanna is also at work on a memoir, BOLT Cutters, and is a proud recipient of the Unicorn Authors Club's first Alumni Award, which will help her finish her book. Her memoir chronicles the story of those twelve arrests over the course of three years during her descent into heroin addiction, jail, prostitution, and homelessness and her journey back to a brighter future.
In her book she describes how “before addiction, I had been a ‘responsible member of society,’ having graduated high school with honors, attended four years of college, become an anxious but devoted mother, and was a budding hard rock musician. I drank socially, never exceeding my two-beer limit. Until one day, I did. But how did I make the jump from simple alcoholism to homeless junkie crackhead prostitute?”
Getting clean and sober “opened my eyes to the daily onslaught of discrimination faced by Black people, women, and queers.”
She adds: “My unique experience at this intersection gives hope both to people who have been handled roughly by law enforcement as well as the people who love—or hate—them.”
Today, the words that best describe her are: Advocate. Change maker. And tireless freedom fighter.
Serving up a Fresh Start, New Hope for Domestic Abuse Survivor/Thriver
For the last four years, Nilda Palacios and her mom, Lidia, have had to get creative about finding ways to be together. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, separating the geographically distant mom and daughter duo even further.
Thanks to strong internet and smartphones, FaceTime is serving up comfort and a closer familial connection. Several times a week, the San Francisco-based Nilda, 38, and her mom who lives in LA, prepare home-cooked meals together remotely. Decked out in aprons and oven mitts, Lidia is teaching her daughter how to cook culinary classics like shrimp fettuccini alfredo with basil and fresh fish.
But the cooking classes are serving up more than yummy meals; they’re reconnecting and healing the mother and daughter duo after almost two decades of estrangement.
For the first time since she was in high school, Nilda, who spent almost two decades in prison and years before that on the streets, has found a place to call home. She is one of the first group of women who are receiving transitional housing at Home Free, an apartment complex on San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Opened in 2020, this safe sanctuary is a place for domestic violence survivors who served unfair prison terms for killing their abusers to rebuild their lives. It is believed to be the first of its kind in California.
“I had given up hope,” says Nilda. “Now, my life is starting again.”
Nilda and the others are women who have “endured unspeakable violence and painfully and unjustly ended up in prison because they weren’t allowed to bring in evidence of their abuse,” said Five Keys co-founder Sunny Schwartz.
Now, Nilda and her mother, who are only allowed by the parole board to see each other in person once a year, are embracing the chance to heal their once-severed relationship. Nilda works a full-time job and is looking forward to completing her college degree. She graduated high school and earned an associates degree while behind bars.
Like many women who killed their abusers decades ago, Nilda ended up in prison with a decades-long to life sentence. Many receive life without parole. That changed in 2012 when a new California law allowed the women to go back to the parole board or court and show evidence that they were defending themselves from abuse. Now, one-by-one, in a very slow trickle, these women are queueing up — hoping for their own shot at freedom.
For 17 years, Nilda served time behind bars, ending up in prison and sentenced to 27-years-to-life for killing a man who was abusing her physically and very cruelly emotionally during the time she was homeless and spending some nights at his motor home. She wasn’t allowed to bring into court evidence of abuse. Nilda was released in 2017 from the California Institution for Women in Chino, CA. Her sentence was reduced to involuntary manslaughter and she was given credit for time served. For 16 years prior to that, she spent 16 years in Central California’s Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, the largest women’s prison in the state.
Life hiding in the shadows and suffering, of domestic violence
The road to prison for Nilda at just 17-years-old is pockmarked with years of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse and homelessness.
Born on Nov. 27, 1982, she was raised by her single mother in Los Angeles. But after being sexually abused repeatedly by her stepfather and then a high school teacher, Nilda ran away from home, dropped out of school and “abused drugs and alcohol to numb myself,” struggling to survive as a squatter in homeless shelters, the streets and eventually a motor home.
The trauma of those agonizing years has lasted for life, she says. She’s the first to admit, that without the leaders at Home Free and advocates who have fought for change, it’s hard to heal in a culture that stays silent or looks away from people who have experienced sexual violence. Sometimes, rather than acknowledge their pain, others, often the legal system, side with the perpetrator. During her trial, lawyers tried unsuccessfully to introduce Nilda’s childhood and teenage years of violence and the resulting PTSD as a defense.
When the laws changed and she was released, Nilda found temporary housing at a program for substance abusers, which didn’t fit her circumstances. After almost two and a half years, her parole officer discovered Home Free and she found “my first home,” she says. At Home Free, she lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her dog, Milo.
These days, she’s excited about her relationship with her mom and her work as a certified community health worker (lay health advocate) at Omi Family Outpatient Center in San Francisco.
“It’s hard to describe how wonderful it feels to take my dog on walks to the park,” she says. “To ride my bike is heaven. And I’m loving cooking with real pots and pans. I’ve only used plastic bags (microwave) before.”
At Home Free, Nilda is exploring all opportunities for the next phase of her life.
“I want to be accountable and to invest my finances in long-term housing,” she says. “I hope to help clients who are struggling with depression and other mental health issues. I don’t want anyone else to go through what I did.”
ABOUT HOME FREE
San Francisco’s nationally recognized restorative justice organization, Five Keys Schools and Programs, is leading Home Free, a new program that created a residential community in San Francisco and plans to open a second transitional housing site in Los Angeles offering access to life skills and survivor empowerment programs, as well as training and job placement, to criminalized survivors of domestic violence. The women of Home Free are formerly incarcerated domestic violence survivors who spent decades behind bars for simply defending their lives, or being at the scene of a crime under the coercion of their batterer. However, the unfair treatment continues as too many of these women are placed in inappropriate halfway homes, most often residential drug treatment programs, where their unique struggles and untreated trauma continue to go unaddressed.
Please support us at our Virtual Fundraiser on September 30, 2021.
https://www.fivekeyshomefree.org/new-home-for-dinner
Leading Lives Forward
“I will hold your hand the first time for new appointments. When you start to walk on your own, I will be right behind you and when you become like a rebel teen, I’m here if you ever need me.”
For Rosemary “Rosie” Dyer, it is the simple things. The sunsets. The smell of the ocean and hearing the waves. And she enthuses, “shopping.”
Last spring, Dyer, 67, was released from prison after serving 34 years of a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the fatal shooting of her abusive husband. Her sentence was commuted by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Thanks to San Francisco’s nationally recognized restorative justice organization, Five Keys Schools and Programs, she moved into new home on Treasure Island — Five Keys Home Free. “I finally had a home,” she says.
When she got out, she had a lot to catch up on — like, the digital age.
That is where Gilda Serrano stepped in. As the Program Services Coordinator for Home Free, Serrano facilitates programs for the five women who live at the Home Free transitional apartments, encouraging them on the journey from decades in prison to a new path into the 21st Century. Like Dyer, the other Home Free women were unjustly serving anywhere between 15 to 40 years in prison for either defending themselves against their abuser or were at the scene of the crime under the coercion of their abusive spouse or boyfriend. As part of the Home Free team, Serrano ensures that yoga classes, healthy eating habits and treks to Muir Woods and the beach play an important role in the physical, emotional, and spiritual rebirth for Home Free women.
Gilda provides technological resources so the Home Free women can catch up with current knowledge. Serrano spends much of her time supporting women as they navigate the system — registering for address changes, applying for social security cards, birth certificates and other needed entitlements. She also focuses on finding permanent housing, creating realistic budgets and provides support to apply for jobs online. In many cases, that means escorting women to government offices, health clinic/doctors’ appointments and ensuring needed support.
“We take for granted that everyone has these documents,” says Serrano, a single mother of three grown children and three grandchildren who was born in El Salvador, Centro America and came to the United States when she was 16 years old. Her first challenge: She got a job cleaning houses and learned to speak English so she too, could support herself. “But try finding a job when you have been in prison and are in your sixties, and are expected to upload it on an employment web site. One of the first questions the women ask me is ‘what can I do?’ One of my biggest roles is listening.”
For Serrano it is a mission. A survivor and “thrives” she is passionate that Dyer and other women at Home Free are treated with safety and respect and with great dignity.
“I joke that I have a PhD in domestic violence, meaning I can relate very personally to what they are going through,” she says. “One thing I can also relate to is what it is like not having much, then suddenly you can have things. One of our challenges here is helping women understand not to buy everything they see and stocking up on everything they like. I try to help them understand that they are free now and things are not going to go away. It is important to understand the relationship of wants and needs.”
Teaching the lesson of independence is at the core of everything Serrano does.
“I’m a strong believer that these women need to learn to do these things themselves,” she says. “I tell them, ‘I will hold your hand the first time for new appointments. When you start to walk on your own, I will be right behind you and when you become like a rebel teen, I’m here if you ever need me.”
Serrano also has tremendous respect for Dyer and other survivors. “People have weird misconceptions about what people who are leaving prison are like. But I respect them so much. Even though they were told they never would be able to be free again, they still educated themselves and kept jobs and cared for each other.”
When she’s not working long days at Home Free, Serrano runs her own foundation, the Ribbon Dream Project, which closely parallels the work of Home Free. Its mission is to offer dignity, empowerment, and hope for victims of domestic violence so they can lead healthy lives for themselves and their children. The organization provides dignity bags with basic personal necessities, community resources, and a handwritten card with a quote to bring hope to a survivor of domestic violence. These dignity bags are given to first time incarcerated survivors due to domestic violence upon release from the San Francisco county jail.
“Often when police are called to a home for domestic violence, the women are scared to speak out when the police come because their abuser is right there … so they are then the ones arrested because they’ve done something else to defend themselves,” she says. “I know desperate, scared and lonely. So when they are released, we give them a folder with community resources and other things like toiletries and a handwritten note to say we care.”
Helping others is an avocation for Serrano who joined Five Keys five years ago as a data entry specialist and became a restorative justice community services coordinator. Prior to that, she was a crisis manager for a couple of San Francisco organizations.
“I understand what it is like and I know I could have never survived if others didn’t help me,” she says. “Now, it is my passion to help them.”
Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: Officers lauded as heroes for coming to the rescue of a 68-year-old formerly incarcerated abuse survivor tasting freedom for the first time in three decades
Recently released after spending 34 years in prison on a wrongful lifetime sentence, Rosie Dyer powered up her new electric wheelchair and set off through the streets of San Francisco to meet friends in Union Square and celebrate her new freedom. That Sunday afternoon, after tooling around the city she remembered fondly from her childhood, the brand-new wheelchair broke down, leaving the 68-year-old stranded. She was just one block from the transition home on Bush Street where she has found safe shelter since Gov. Gavin Newsom granted the freedom she had only dreamed about.
“I was terrified,” says Dyer, 68, who is a cancer survivor and suffers from congestive heart failure. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
That’s when Dyer, who is just learning to navigate daily life much less modern technology, remembered her cell phone and dialed one of her advocates she had just celebrated with. She’d promised to be there as quickly as possible to push Dyer home. But Dyer warned her: “That’s not going to work. This thing weighs more than 200 pounds so there is no way you can push me up this hill.”
Fast-forward … while the advocate, Sheila Von Driska was sprinting back across the city, she saw a couple of police officers, explained the complicated situation, and asked them for help. Underscoring their motto to protect and serve, the officers sprang into action to help Dyer. Sergeant James O’Malley and Officer Chris Quiocho from the Northern Station were the first to arrive. But they also quickly realized the steep hill and heavy wheelchair called for a backup team. Officers Simon Hoang and Anthony Quimbo from the Tenderloin Station raced to their aid.
During these times when police officers are rarely told they are valued, Dyer and her advocates, along with city leadership, did not want their compassionate response to care to go unnoticed.
After hearing of the good deed by the lawmen, Damali Taylor, Vice President of the Police Commission for the City and County of San Francisco Police Department, gave the officers a shoutout at a recent commissioner’s meeting to ensure their exemplary actions did not go unnoticed.
“This woman is incredible, in a wheelchair and using it for first time, after experiencing so much time in prison, she just wanted to spend some time to see the city,” says Taylor. “It’s an incredible story and shows how we do not do enough to thank the heroes who serve us every day. I want to thank them and shout them out. I want to take my time to thank those officers who helped this woman who has experienced incredible horrible things. They dropped everything they were doing to make her feel special. Thank you.”
At the commission hearing, Taylor read a letter written by Von Driska thanking the police officers:
“I’m so happy to hear these officers will be commended. Rosie has been through enough in her life — it was poetic. But, I understand these amazing peace officers are also going through quite a bit of injustice, too, due to the ripple effect of what happened in Minneapolis. O’Malley and Quiocho were telling me about the horrible experiences and name-calling they have been enduring because of it … based on the color of the uniforms they wear … not at all who they are, as people, evidenced by yesterday.
“Well, for whatever it is worth … they are my heroes. They stepped up in the absolute most kindest way possible to help me and Rosie with the most unusual request … a broken down brand new electric wheelchair on Jones Street for a woman who had spent 34 years in prison (unjustly) and on one of the very first days she ventured out on her own with her new “wheels” to celebrate six months of freedom with me and you for lunch in Union Square … one block from home … she got stuck. And of all the people in the world … San Francisco’s finest responded with such grace and gentle care. What an escort home!
“Last week Rosie said she was looking forward to an adventure. And what an adventure it was … with superheroes in blue coming to the rescue and the happiest day and ending possible. Thank you to our heroes.”
Using her voice for change
Dyer was one of about 100 abused women serving life or life without parole for killing their abusive husbands or partners.
In 1985, Dyer shot her husband with the same gun he had used to threaten and rape her. When she testified about the abuse, prosecutors used her words as evidence that she had a motive for the killing. After decades, and new laws, Gov. Gavin Newsom commuted Dyer’s sentence. She was released in April.
In addition to binge-watching her favorite book series, Outlander, now available to her on Netflix
(she read the series seven times during her imprisonment), Dyer has been opening up about her experience and about domestic violence to lawmakers, college students and others on ZOOM meetings dedicated to helping others gain a greater understanding of the intricacies of domestic violence. She also meets regularly and pens letters and emails to dozens of victims looking for help and survivors trying to do as she is, navigate their new worlds of freedom.
In November, Dyer will be among the 12 women who will move into one of a set of two-bedroom apartments on Treasure Island, thanks to a new transitional housing program started by the Five Keys Home Free program dedicated to helping survivors of wrongful convictions transition back in the San Francisco and Los Angeles communities.
“Rosie is one of the women who has endured unspeakable violence and painfully and unjustly ended up in prison because they were not able to introduce the evidence of the horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of their husbands or partners,” said Sunny Schwartz, founder and board member of Five Keys and Home Free. “We are trying to right a terrible wrong committed against these women.” Schwartz was with Von Driska and Dyer at the Little Skillet Fried Chicken lunch celebration just before the wheelchair breakdown.
Like Dyer, these are women who killed their abusive partners decades ago and ended up with prison terms for life. That changed in 2012 when a new California law allowed the women to go back to the parole board or court and show evidence they were defending themselves from abuse.
As a result, women like Dyer are receiving commuted sentences or early parole. Many need a place to call home.
“This is righting a terrible wrong that was committed against these women,” Schwartz said.
Besides rent-free housing, subsidized in part by the City of San Francisco, Five Keys partners with other agencies to help the newly freed women navigate daily life, from using a cell phone to finding
a job.
“God has blessed me, bringing heroes like this into my life,” says Dyer. “Now it is my turn to help others understand the horrors of domestic violence and to reach back to help women who are experiencing it and tell them they can get out. They don’t deserve to live like that.”
About Five Keys Schools and Programs
Five Keys Schools and Programs is leading Five Keys Home Free, a program seeking to create residential communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles providing life skills and survivor empowerment programs, as well as training and job placement for convicted survivors of domestic violence whose prison sentences have been commuted. Learn more: https://www.fivekeyshomefree.org/
Getting to the Finish Line: A decades long marathon near mile 18 for Five Keys student
For Jennifer Clark, school this fall feels like the 19th mile in a marathon. She is so close to the 26-mile finish line, but algebra, physical science and her own fears are threatening to trip her.
“This is really, really hard,” says the Novato resident. “But I’ve got to do it, I’ve got to show my kids that I can be more than just someone who had a lot of babies.”
There is no doubt that training/studying for her high school diploma has been beyond challenging at times.
Now 45, Clark dropped out high school her freshman year when she became pregnant with her first of eight children. The next few decades were not that kind. She’s struggled with debilitating depression and fought to survive through abusive relationships with one of her two husbands, and several of her children’s fathers. Clark was sent to jail for a week for fighting back during a domestic violence dispute — an incident that cost her her job as a certified nursing assistant at a home for the elderly and marred her record, making finding employment difficult.
But on June 10, 2019 exactly, a Five Keys Schools and Programs graduate told Clark about the program and she enrolled right away. Now, just 36.75 credits from achieving her high school graduation, she is determined to “hold my head high and skip across the stage,” to receive her high school diploma.
She attributes that feat to the compassion and coaching of her teacher, Mrs. Carla, at the Vallejo Five Keys location and the school’s principal, Ms. Rachel.
“My speech is going to be about one true teacher that has held it down and helped me and never ever given up on me,” says Clark. “And believe me, I’m a pain in the butt.”
She also is grateful for the patience and flexibility Mrs. Carla gave her in the classroom.
“Many times, I was so depressed and just wanted to give up, but she stood by my side and kept saying, ‘you can do this. You can’t let your dreams die.”
During her Five Keys schooling, Jennifer was given a certificate of graduation in 2017 by the Novato police department as a peer support substance abuse counselor, a role she says falls near and dear to her heart because her sister struggled with substance abuse and she is eager to help others.
These days, Clark says she hunkers down all day long every day studying for her degree online.
Throughout it all, she says she always kept her eye on the prize, her eight children — Anna Maria, 29, Rafael, 27, Rolando, 25, Miguel, 22, Rudy, 20, Samuel, 12, Hannah, 11, Jennifer, 9, and grandson, Gordo. Two of her youngest children are special needs, so she says she is a full-time mom and student. Any time she feels like quitting, she thinks of her family.
Clark says she knows how happy she will feel when she finishes. “I’m already thinking ahead to taking some college classes,” she says. “I want to do something in law enforcement. I really like helping people, especially when they are in trouble and need help. I still can’t believe I’ll be 45 when I finish high school. But hey, I finally am going to do it.”
Teacher inspired to educate prisoners to give them — and their communities — a shot at a better future
““He shared with the class that it was the greatest accomplishment of his life.””
Pictured left to right: Gayle, Woody, Judy, and Oprah
Over the years, Judy Square has been blessed to spend time teaching in the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, Alameda County, CA. Some of her most inspiring conversations have occurred in those rooms. In her conversations with incarcerated individuals, a common thread is that access to adult education offers them a chance to process their past and envision a new future.
“Many students have told me that no one ever believed in them before, or thought they were smart,” says the San Leandro resident. But working with Five Keys, they feel someone finally believes in them and is rooting for them.”
During the last 17 years she has taught at the now-closed North County Jail in Oakland and Santa Rita jail, one of the largest jails in the United States. Square says her favorite students to teach are inmates. For 13 years she worked at the jail through the Tri-Valley Regional Occupational Program and the last four through Five Keys.
“I've had a few students who have worked 8-10 hours a day on their schoolwork in their cramped cells, no desk, with stubs of pencils, sometimes with no erasers, pushing through all the obstacles and discomforts to earn their diploma,” she says.
Of the about 200 students she has taught through Five Keys, one student, Nathan, especially stands out.
“When I informed him that he earned his High School Equivalency Diploma, he jumped out of his seat and pounded the wall in celebration,” she says. “A deputy rushed in to see what was happening and I had to explain that everything was OK, and that Nathan was simply happy. Then the deputy left, and Nathan shed some tears in full view of his classmates even though that is usually avoided at all costs in jail culture. He shared with the class that it was the greatest accomplishment of his life.”
For Square, teaching through Five Keys seems to be a natural extension of the ministry she shares with her husband Woody, who is pastor and children, youth, and family minister at San Leandro Church of Christ. The couple, who are parents of two young adults, spent six years in Papua New Guinea helping run a church leader training school.
When the pandemic hit the nation in March, Square and her teacher peers and principal were forced to rethink how they would provide service. The team quickly pivoted to salvage education for their students.
Before the summer break, Square and other teachers typed letters every week, personalizing them for each student and sending them packets of educational materials to work on. An Inmate Services Deputy acted as a courier. He would deliver the letters and packets and bring back completed ones for Square and her fellow teachers to grade and record on the student's record. They also included feedback forms with their letters so the students could write back with questions or updates.
“However, once things shut down, many students fell off the wagon and stopped completing schoolwork,” she says. “Because all of our students are high school dropouts and have struggled with their educational journey in the past, they really need the structure of classes and face-to-face interaction with teachers to keep them progressing.”
Teaching in COVID-19 has taught Square and other teachers how important the Five Keys mission is and vital to the future of inmates.
Armed with a “yes-we-can-do-this,” they are planning to be back better than ever in August. They will continue to deliver the packets of educational materials and keep the education going.
“I can't wait until I can go back and work with my students in person,” says Square.
Sidebar
A Walk in the Woods with Oprah
It’s not every day that campers at the Yosemite National Park run into talk show queen Oprah Winfrey on the trail.
But that’s what happened to Five Keys teacher, Judy Square, and her husband Woody, a minister, about 10 years ago, when they were on a visit to Yosemite.
The seasoned campers bumped into Oprah and her best friend Gayle King when the duo had hitched a pop-up camper to a Chevrolet Tahoe hybrid and hit the road to do a story about Shelton Johnson, a black park ranger who complained that few African-Americans were campers.
Not so, Oprah discovered. Oprah and Gayle ran into the Squares at their first stop in Yosemite and thought it would be fun to fly them out two weeks later to be in the audience when Oprah taped the Yosemite episode. At the end of the show, Oprah called them up on stage and surprised them with the keys to both her camper and the SUV that was used to pull it! Both vehicles were shipped from Chicago to San Leandro, and Judy and Woody still use the camper about three times a year and enjoy riding around town in their "Oprahmobile."