It was time to take stock. I felt as disposable as the 670,000 dogs put down in the United States every year so I started a prison dog program called Safe Harbor.
Through Safe Harbor, I helped hardened inmates develop compassion and responsibility. I offered well-adjusted dogs to local families.
Tall, confident and cool, John Manard, a convicted murderer, noticed me. Regulations couldn’t smother the innocent smoldering between us. Safeguards designed to prevent such indiscretions fanned the flames. All fun and games until, under the nose of authority, I smuggled him out of Lansing Prison… in a dog crate.
A police helicopter spotlight illuminated our fugitive run. Driven like dogs, we raced down a dark Tennessee highway into the inevitable. Heavily armed officers pushed us into a tree at 100 miles per hour.
Just the beginning, I went to prison where death, desertion and divorce were my visitors. Stripped bare and stripped of duty, within my story of ruin, I discovered who I wanted to be. I found freedom in the most unexpected place… behind bars.
Expect my memoir, Unleashed, soon on bookshelves everywhere.
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the year I became a number and a face everyone recognized but no one knew not even me who knew less than nothing of the woman buried inside a turning point that year that was really more than a year the year I lived on peanut butter, mail call, visiting day the year I sank into the deep muck of depression, fears and fate the year when I felt I wasn’t entitled to smile or dream the year when the darkness settled and waters became clear and deep the year I learned that hope is blue like a springtime sky and prayer is purple bold and royal and everywhere the year I was just a number 86519 the year I became me who was always hidden inside...