Life after lockup: For the formerly incarcerated, a long rebuilding process

Like Torres and Rodriguez, Russell Brown said he was in and out of juvenile detention as a teenager. At 18, he joined the military, but he said he’d “burned every bridge in the family” by the time he was medically discharged roughly three years later.

“So of course I gravitated back to the streets, back to the street life, and trying to make a name for myself in and out of prison, in and out of jail,” he said.

Brown was 28 when he was handed a 63-year sentence for murder in the shooting death of Dominic Zaste, a man Brown thought had stolen drugs from him.

Drugs were also a way of life for Floyd Henley. He said he used alcohol and drugs to self-medicate after being raised in a family with “a lot of problems.” 

“Things kept getting worse and worse and worse,” the former football player said. At age 26, he was convicted in the murders of Sheila Velon, his on-again-off-again girlfriend, and her new boyfriend, Steven Phillips. He was sentenced to 45 years to life, with eligibility for parole after 30 years.

Below: Floyd Henley picks up furniture and other items for his new apartment at the Friends Outside office in Stockton on Jan. 6, 2026.

Finding their way on the inside

The first night Brown was in prison, he landed in administrative segregation, or “the hole,” after an altercation with guards at High Desert State Prison, a maximum-security facility in Susanville.

“It was pretty vicious … up there,” said Brown, 57.

The drug problems that ultimately led to his prison sentence were still all around him. 

One night, he lent a friend a hypodermic needle to shoot up fentanyl — a decision he said cost the man his life.

Brown said he was more upset that he’d lost his needle than his friend.

“I let him use it to do that, and he died, and there goes my needle,” he said. “And I was waiting to do some of the same batch of fentanyl that he did.”

For years, Brown said he was “playing both sides of the fence,” with one foot in the drug and criminal world of prison life, and the other in trying to serve a God he was still trying to figure out.

The night his friend OD’d, Brown fashioned a makeshift syringe using the tube from a squirt bottle, the ruined needle and an eraser. He kept trying to shoot up, but the tube kept getting clogged. Eventually, the apparatus exploded and its contents dripped down his chest.

As he sat on the floor of his prison cell, Brown prayed his desire for drugs be shifted to a more godly focus. He then wiped himself off and flushed everything down the toilet. He’s now 19 years clean and sober.

Below: Russell Brown, right, and Richard Rojo get ready to fish at Discovery Bay, California, on Nov. 21, 2025. Fishing brings him solace, said Brown, who served more than two decades in prison.

Henley also sought spiritual enlightenment on the inside.

He tried a few different religions, starting with Catholicism because he understood the core beliefs. He later tried a Protestant worship service, but it had more energy than he was looking for. Eventually a “celly,” or roommate, encouraged him to try Judaism.

“The one thing that I always loved about Judaism was that you could argue with the rabbi,” he said.

Programs also helped Henley, who said he found the structure of prison life helpful but the monotony arduous.

“You hear people say prison was hard. Prison was simple to me, it was so simple,” he said. “You ever seen the movie ‘Groundhog Day’? That’s prison. It’s the same damn thing, day after day after day.”

Rodriguez also found God in prison. It was a transformation that would ultimately lead him to leave gang life and join self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. 

One day in solitary confinement, with the silence of the thick walls surrounding him and a mouse rustling through his lunch, he fell to his knees.

“I just broke down. I was just praying and praying, and finally things started being clear to me and I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” he said. “And then, I just did it.”

Working to get out

Going before the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Board of Parole Hearings is a daunting task — one that begins long before the actual event.

Henley, who’d been locked up since 1990, took note when California Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown said education was the best way out of prison. With two murder convictions, he figured he had to go beyond what the parole board expected.

He took 50 classes in subjects such as writing, humanities and biology, eventually earning political science and sociology degrees in prison. He also took life skills classes from the Department of Rehabilitation, participated in and facilitated self-help and Narcotics Anonymous meetings and was on the men’s advisory council. 

Just short of completing a psychology degree before his release, Henley recently finished his last class at Delta College.

Below: Jorge Rodriguez drives a tractor at his uncle’s farm in Tracy on April 14, 2026. After life on the inside, Rodriguez stays busy with a combination of farmwork, cutting hair, church activities and college classes.

Rodriguez, who dropped out of high school in 11th grade and later was kicked out of adult school, spent nine years in prison before deciding to work on his GED diploma. 

After that, he earned an associate degree in social science and behavior; a counseling certificate from Columbia College in California, a state-approved community college that operates inside correctional facilities; and other certificates in topics such as critical thinking. The coursework helped shave time off his sentence: one week off for every class and six months off for a degree.

Russell Brown had served 25 years when the courts contacted him to say he’d met the criteria for a sentence restructuring. He began assembling everything he’d need for his parole hearing — over 100 pages of certificates and all of the “115s,” or rule violations, he had amassed.

His attorney, Alameda County Public Defender Jenny Brandt, was impressed. Brown had been working not simply to better his odds of a release date, but to be a better person.

Still, she didn’t want him to get his hopes up. “Lifers weren’t going home back then,” Brown recalled.

A judge also saw the improvements, telling Brown: “You should be the face of this criteria.”

After being in and out of lockup over half her life, Torres was determined to pave her own way out of prison.

In 2011, a pair of California bills commonly referred to as the Public Safety Realignment Initiative were passed into law. The move shifted responsibility for lower-level offenders from the state to California’s counties, and altered both sentencing and post-prison supervision. 

Realignment authorizes some inmates to enter the Alternative Custody Program, which allows incarcerated people to serve up to the last year of their sentence in the community instead of behind bars. One day in ACP equals one day of time served. 

Through the program, Torres, now 40, was able to participate in the San Joaquin Building and Construction Trades Council’s apprenticeship readiness program, called MC3.

Below: Cheri Torres rolls a section of road in Mountain House on May 27, 2026. She worked as a heavy equipment operator during her Alternative Custody Program and said she grew antsy when work was slow.

Life on the outside

Friends Outside family liaison services specialist Joanne Rivera said she’s excited when her clients get to go home. She teaches conflict resolution and parenting classes at the Central California Women’s Facility and Valley State Prison for men, both in Chowchilla.

The work she does helps those in prison transition into life on the outside.

“To me, everybody’s the same. They’re just somebody that made a mistake, and they did their time,” she said. “Now it’s time for them to go back into society.”

But that return to society isn’t always a simple task. From finding housing and jobs to reconnecting with friends and family, formerly incarcerated people face many challenges.

Torres, who initially worked as a heavy equipment operator during her Alternative Custody Program, grew antsy last winter when the weather wasn’t suitable for paving. 

“When the work stopped, it was just really scary,” she said.

She discovered LifeSong Church’s branch of Celebrate Recovery. She also connected with Friends Outside. The group helped her with classes in financial literacy and renters’ rights. 

In May, Torres was among the first graduating cohort of the Resilient Jobsite Builders program, which trains women and nonbinary people for careers in construction.

One of Rodriguez’s first opportunities outside prison came through San Joaquin County’s Ready to Work program, which hired him to cut hair for other participants.

“If you really want to change … you don’t have to be in a gang, you don’t have to carry a gun,” he said. “I carry a Bible; that’s my weapon.”

Rodriguez, 35, reconnected with a childhood friend, Saulo Cano, after he got out. The pair lived two doors down from each other and became fast friends during a game of kickball in elementary school. They went on to share countless sleepovers together.

When Rodriguez began to drift into trouble, Cano was there — not as an accomplice, but as a friend. He helped get Rodriguez to a hospital after a stabbing when the two were teenagers.

Now, both men have pivoted to prioritizing family and God.

“Not too many people could walk away from things like that and actually have a story,” Cano said.

Friends, family and giving back

At an age when many people are starting to think about retirement, Henley was handed $200 and the odds and ends of nearly 35 years behind bars. He walked out the gates and was met by a former “lifer” he’d known in prison, along with the man’s wife, whom he had also befriended.

Chris Towler said he admired Henley’s ethics in prison and his ability to stay clean and out of gang life.

“It didn’t chew him up. He didn’t let it get him, and he’s a very extraordinary man for that,” Towler said.

Henley is continuing college courses he started in prison and recently got a promotion at the Herrick Corp., a steel manufacturing company headquartered in Stockton. Now 62, he’s looking for work that isn’t as physically taxing and is hoping to land a job with the California Department of Transportation.

Rodriguez met the requirements for early parole by securing a job and having no interactions with law enforcement.

Torres, who has been out of prison for over a year, is now renting a house in the same neighborhood where she grew up. She’s reconnected with her children and has found stability as a single mother. 

“I really didn’t expect to be here,” she said. “I always look out my window. I see my dad mowing his lawn. I see my niece getting in her car. I hear her kids in the backyard, in the background, just playing. That brings joy to me every single day that I wake up.”

She plans to continue her work in construction. When she graduates from her apprenticeship and reaches journey-level in the trade, she hopes to pay it forward by helping other women — perhaps volunteering at a women’s center or sharing her experiences with others.

“I’ll get a text message from my daughter. She’s like, ‘Mom, I just want you to know you’re doing so good. I’m just so proud of you,’ ” Torres said.

Below: Cheri Torres, center, prays during a tent revival at LifeSong Church in Stockton on May 6, 2026.

A road to redemption

While reentry support programs and the work done by formerly incarcerated people themselves can help with the transition to life outside a prison cell, it’s not always a celebrated step for victims’ families.

“To them, he killed their child, their sister, their brother,” said Bev Warnock, executive director of Parents of Murdered Children.

The Ohio-based group is the only national organization devoted solely to supporting the parents and other family members of murder victims, she says. Warnock speaks with hundreds of relatives every year, and the group’s database of supported families numbers more than 50,000. 

“If you’ve never talked to these families, you’d probably feel like they should get out,” she said of formerly incarcerated people who have served their time. The families, she said, almost never feel that way.

One service her organization provides is writing letters and collecting petitions to oppose a prisoner’s release before a parole hearing. The process can devastate relatives because “it takes them back to when the murder happened,” Warnock said.

The families suffer further when they feel their loved ones have been forgotten. “They always talk about the murder,” she said. “They never talk about the victim.” 

Dominic Zaste, who was 26 when shot and killed hiom, had three children. Attempts to contact his relatives for this story were unsuccessful.

Sheila Velon, who was 26 when she was killed, left behind a family, including at least one daughter, who was present at the murders. Like with Zaste’s relatives, efforts to reach Velon’s family were unsuccessful. 

Members of Velon’s family were present at each parole hearing in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2024; they asked that Henley, who murdered her, not be released.

While the families may generally oppose parole, that’s not always the case. 

Killed alongside Velon was Steven Phillips. His daughter Leigha was 10 years old at the time. 

After his death, “the family fell apart,” said Leigha Wickham, now 45.

Wickham said she doesn’t recall getting much help from social services or other agencies after her dad’s death, and the family struggled financially and mentally afterward. Without support, she said she turned to drinking and drugs as a teenager and once faced a felony drug charge. 

But Wickham changed course. She went on to become a paralegal and founded her own company, Mile High Legal Assist in Colorado. For a few years, she ran a nonprofit branch of the business that helped provide legal assistance to those in jail.

And she’s forgiven Henley. 

“I get it, once you’re labeled by society,” she said. “You really need to put yourself in the position of that other person.”

For her younger sister, Cody Wickham, 43, who previously worked as a victims advocate with the District Attorney’s Office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, it’s not that simple. She is currently a bar manager and consultant who went back to school to finish a degree in criminal justice with an emphasis in community corrections.

She said everything changed after the murder. Her family even stopped celebrating Christmas — the day Phillips was shot to death. “Even when I grew up and had kids of my own, it was always there,” she said of the painful past. “Christmas was never the same.”

Wickham said she believes the system can work and help people who have committed crimes. And she’d rather have them contribute to society than sitting in a cell.

But she says time served doesn’t make up for time lost.

“I’m actually happy to hear that he just recently got out, but it’s still not the same,” she said. “I still have to go the rest of my life.”

Below: Russell Brown gives his testimony at First Baptist Church of Stockton during a Celebrate Recovery meeting on Oct. 23, 2025.

When Brown first got out, he found community at First Baptist Church of Stockton. He didn’t have a car yet and biked 37 minutes from his home in south Stockton to Celebrate Recovery meetings. 

He said he spends every day making “living amends” by giving back and trying to help others. He’s counseled those who are locked up as they prepare for parole hearings. 

Brown — who once professed to believe in “white pride” — walked Chevelle Wright through every step of the parole process in twice-weekly phone calls. 

“For me to call this man ‘brother’ — regardless of race, regardless of religious interpretation and views — that lets you know how deeply this man has impacted not only my life, but the life of my family, and every life of every person that I touch,” said Wright, a Black Muslim. 

Brown’s devotion caught the attention of the Rev. Sal Azevedo. Azevedo asked him to become a volunteer ministry leader at First Baptist. In this capacity, he helps others struggling with addiction. He sometimes offers advice, other times a listening ear. 

Although he works in security, Brown recently applied for a job with Prison Fellowship, the nation’s largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, formerly incarcerated individuals and their families.

In June, he visited the California Health Care Facility to continue mentoring those who are still incarcerated. The following month, he shared his story at the Stockton prison through Mercy and Grace Ministries.

“I’m going back into prison,” he said before the speaking engagement, “but I’m going through the front door this time.”

Below: Russell Brown, left, hugs the Rev. Sal Azevedo at First Baptist Church of Stockton. Brown gave his testimony, telling his life story, how he found God and how things are going for him now that he is out of prison and in Celebrate Recovery.