The Change Agent

by Damon West

  The new judge assigned to the case, Susan Hawk, immediately made the recommendation to the C.C.A. that I did, in fact, require a new sentencing hearing because my attorney at trial, Ed Sigel, was ineffective. This looked to us like the victory we had been seeking, because the C.C.A. follows the recommendation of the trial court judge at least nine out of ten times.

  On that Wednesday morning, a lump formed in my throat at seeing my case’s finality. All I needed to do was click on it to find out the verdict. I exhaled once I realized I had stopped breathing, and clicked on the link. Apparently, I was that one out of ten cases in which the C.C.A. did not go with the trial court’s ruling. Not only that, it was a unanimous decision, 9–0. Their opinion was a little confusing: “In light of the totality of Applicant’s representation in this case, we find that Applicant has carried his burden to show that trial counsel’s representation fell below prevailing professional norms during the punishment phase of the trial.” (C.C.A. Opinion, page 36, June 8, 2016; emphasis added). The next sentence, however, says in part, I did not “carry [my] burden to show…the outcome of the punishment phase would have been different.”

  What this meant is that I was stuck with the life sentence, and a lifetime on parole. Even with the disappointing news, I thanked God for all my blessings in life. The very fact I received my verdict at my desk at my job at a law firm, as opposed to being called to the mailroom for legal mail at the Stiles Unit, was all the proof I needed that I was okay. I was not going back to prison over this. A bad day out here was better than a good day in there.

  Position determines perspective.

  August of 2016 was one of the most pivotal months of my new life. I was granted a meeting with state Senator John Whitmire of Houston, the chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee. An influential person with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Senator Whitmire was receptive to what I was trying to do. He cautioned me, however, to be patient. That not everyone in TDCJ would be as receptive as he, as they were definitely not accustomed to someone getting out of prison and taking off like this.

  In the middle of August, I was given my first opportunity on the national college football stage. Kevin Barbay got me in to speak to the Florida Gators football team. Less than nine months out of prison and I was speaking in front of one of college football’s premier teams. Unbelievable.

  After the Florida trip, my name started getting out more locally, providing me more speaking opportunities. All the while, I was working full time at Provost Umphrey and attending my recovery meetings with Ray two to three nights a week. Keeping my recovery in front of everything has always been paramount. The first time I had to miss a meeting because of a speaking engagement, I called my sponsor, Ray, in a panic. He laughed it off and told me I would be okay as long as I was doing service work wherever I could. These presentations are the ultimate service work.

  In November of 2016, the prison ACTS Retreats, now known as St. Kolbe Ministries, brought me in to the prisons to minister to inmates the same way those men ministered to me when I was an inmate. Not only that, but through the help of Senator Whitmire, I was able to go back into the Mark Stiles Unit, my old unit. Documenting the return would be the nationally known anchor, Len Cannon, and his news crew from KHOU in Houston. Less than a year out of prison and I was about to walk into that living hell I fought so hard to leave. Only God could drag me back in there.

  Back at Stiles

  Upon entering the Stiles Unit, I felt a tremendous sense of gratitude over what my parents had to go through to see me over one hundred fifty times when they visited me. Entering a maximum-security prison in Texas is like going to the airport on steroids. You must remove everything out of your pockets, your shoes and belt, and place them in an X-ray machine. Then you walk through a metal detector. After that you are patted down and wanded with a metal detector. I remember thinking, “My parents were frisked like a criminal to visit their criminal son.”

  After the entry was a walk to visitation that was well over one hundred yards. This is significant because my mother had both of her knees replaced while I was in prison. God only knows the pain she endured to see me all those weekends in prison. Again, an extreme sense of gratitude is what I felt entering Stiles through the front gate.

  Going back into that place was difficult. A quick prayer and a reminder that God carried me through the first time allowed me to put one foot in front of the other. I hopped on God’s back, just like the last time I was there.

  Once I saw the inmates I served time with, all fears and anxieties evaporated. Every man I saw with whom I did time told me I brought them hope. To be able to bring hope to the hopeless is truly one of those God things.

  My message in the prison is different from my message to schools and athletes. In the prison, I encourage these men to make the changes in their lives while they are incarcerated. I encourage them to form a relationship with a Higher Power, to get into a program of recovery, to get involved in rehabilitative programs because they do work, to change their mindsets from prison being a punishment to prison being an opportunity, and to accept responsibility for the wrongs they have done so healing can truly begin. True change must begin inside prison.

  I love going back into the prisons. To be able to dip my toe into those volatile, toxic waters a few times a year is the second-best deterrent for me. The best is my program of recovery. Yet both allow me to give back to others, and that is what I live for today. That’s what keeps me sober.

  Joe Tortorice

  It was in the Kolbe Ministries that I met a man I consider to be a close friend. His name is Joe Tortorice. Joe is an old Texas Aggie who moved back to Beaumont after college and opened a sandwich shop in 1976 called Jason’s Deli. He began with one store and four employees. Today, he has 270 stores and 11,000 employees. Yet Joe doesn’t measure his success by his accumulation of wealth or his business acumen.

  An extremely humble man, Joe has taught me more about servant leadership than anyone else. He measures his days by how much he can put back into the stream of life, how much he can help others. Joe’s real passion is prison ministry. This motivator was a natural bridge for Joe and me. He has been one of the biggest champions behind my motivational speaking. He enlisted me to speak at the Jason’s Deli quarterly management meetings. He often says, “If an employee can’t be motivated by your story, then they can’t be motivated.” A stellar endorsement from an incredible man.

  By the end of 2016, I had shared my story over seventy-five times in four states. Not bad for an ex-con on parole until 2073. The title of my presentation is: Damon West: A Warning to Some; A Message of Hope to Others.

  With a bigger social presence came the necessary jump onto social media. It was one of the most uncomfortable endeavors I undertook in 2016. For a normal person, this may seem like no big deal. For an ex-con with a desire to be accepted, this was a scary step off a high ledge, as it opens you up to attack from every direction. With the help of Mike and Grayson, I signed up for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in one fell swoop. Just like that, I was out there and exposed to the world.

  In 2017 I began to take my message out on the college football circuit. Beginning with the football team of my alma mater, UNT, Coach Seth Littrell got my college football tour off to its start. After UNT came Southern Methodist University, where the director of football operations, Randy Ross, took a serious interest in the power of my story and presentation. He told me he had never heard a story like mine or ever seen a presentation which held the athletes’ interests so intensely. The question-and-answer session blew him away, as his players had never responded like that to a speaker. Randy thought every college athlete in the country should hear my story and offered to help me get it out there. Again, another God thing.

  Coach David Bailiff at Rice brought me in next, and then the calls intensified. Georgia, Pittsburgh, Clemson, Kansas, Sam Houston, Texas A&M, Michigan State, and the mothe
r of them all, Alabama. The momentum this endeavor has taken on has been mind-boggling. Remarkably, each presentation inevitably leads to the next, a total word-of-mouth campaign.

  When I finished my presentation to Clemson’s national championship football team, Dabo Swinney, college football’s 2016 Coach of the Year, approached me after the question-and-answer session. He asked, “Damon, have you been in contact with Alabama yet?”

  “Coach Swinney, I’ve had conversations with them, but they told me the soonest they could get me in to speak would be next year,” I said.

  “Well, after witnessing how my players responded to you, I texted Coach Saban. I told him, you have to get Damon West in to speak to your team. Let’s see if they get back to you.”

  He told me to pull out my phone so he could record a video testimonial for me. It was forty-six seconds that changed my world, as social media went nuts with his unequivocal endorsement. By 9:30 the next morning, Alabama called and officially set a date for me to speak to the Crimson Tide. Instead of having to wait another year, I was going to Tuscaloosa in three weeks, all because of Coach Swinney. Aside from being one of the finest human beings I’ve ever come across, I will never forget Coach Swinney for putting me into the game like he did.

  From then on, I asked for and received video testimonials from coaches at all the programs I visited. The final video testimonial I received was from Coach Nick Saban, a move I am told he has never done before. Each of the testimonials were sincere statements from these men as to the power they felt my story and presentation had on their players. I am truly grateful they believed enough in me to put their names behind me. You can view the videos on my YouTube channel.

  That Alabama trip was pretty special, too. When Joe found out I was speaking to the Crimson Tide, he mentioned that he would love to meet Coach Saban and see the facilities at Alabama. Joe is a huge college football fan. I asked if he was serious. “Damon,” he said, “you get it cleared with ’Bama and we’ll take the Jason’s Deli jet.”

  In the end, Joe, his wife, Shelley, my videographer and friend, Mike Orta, Senator Whitmire, and his friend, Don Sanders, all had a seat on the jet. Joe was nice enough to allow me to invite Senator Whitmire. I had been wanting him to see one of my presentations in the hopes he could one day help me get into more prisons in Texas to share my message with the incarcerated. It was a whirlwind of a day, in which many memories were made, and friendships developed.

  It is my understanding that I am the only NCAA athlete, of any sport or any position, to receive a life sentence and get out quickly enough to be able to tell the tale. It is my unique currency to spend with college athletes of every sport.

  * * *

  This Sertoma Club service award is for the more than one hundred fifty presentations I’ve given to local schools, churches, youth groups, recovery centers, athletic departments, prisons, juvenile facilities, businesses, civic organizations, halfway houses, parole orientations, and drug courts.

  Today, the pillars of society like judges, police chiefs, pastors, school superintendents, principals, teachers, coaches, business owners, and politicians call me to address their groups. Parents find me on social media or in public to tell me I made a difference in their kid’s life, or that I got a conversation started in their homes about drugs and alcohol. I am humbled and honored to be able to be used in this capacity.

  To be part of the solution instead of part of the problem is my goal. I will accept the Service to Mankind Award on behalf of a family and a community who contributed to helping me be the man I am today, a grateful recovering addict who has become a useful human being.

  To me, the ultimate crime-stopping tool is one that prevents the crime, as opposed to reporting the crime. I believe my story speaks to those who need to hear it. There is no doubt in my mind I’ve reached that one kid for whom I’m always looking.

  Still, I’m always thinking there is some bigger reason for my release, something God put me here for specifically. While I grow a greater footprint in this world and on social media, I will await my instructions, my call to action. As I’ve learned, it is best to stay on my line.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Good Thief

  Wednesday, September 6, 2017

  Port Arthur, Texas

  “IT TOOK TWO ACTS OF GOD to get us in this truck today,” I told Chester and his family as we fled the bowling alley in Port Arthur.

  It was during a recent crisis in which I discovered one of the reasons I was given a second chance in life. One of them came in the form of a massive hurricane that destroyed Chester’s home; the other came in the form of my parole out of prison fifty-eight years before my sentence expired. The odds that I would be the person to evacuate his family to a shelter were pretty slim.

  “The point is, anything is possible in this life. And the worst day of your life does not mean your life is over. There is purpose in even our greatest tragedies.”

  Hurricane Harvey’s flooding rains devastated my hometown of Port Arthur in the twilight hours of August 29, 2017. My parents, who repaired their home after Hurricane Rita and lost their home completely after Hurricane Ike, were up all night with me, nervously watching the water move up in our yard. As if God had pulled a giant bathtub plug, we watched the water drain from the yard repeatedly throughout the night, providing my parents brief respites from their anxieties. My father described it as “an evil shadow breathing down your back.” In the end, our home was spared.

  We were the exception.

  Watching the storm move through Southeast Texas on television and on social media was the most surreal experience. My Facebook feed looked like a 911 call center, with pleas for help from dozens of my friends and neighbors. The feeling of helplessness and impotence during those early morning hours was like a taunt from a bully too big to beat. It is in my DNA to help others, to serve others, to fight, but until the sun came up and the rain abated, there was nothing I could do.

  Around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, August 30, I found a friend on Facebook, Abigail Goss, who had been doing rescues all night with the Cajun Navy (a group of volunteers from Louisiana who drove into Texas with their boats) and other volunteers who fearlessly began rescuing their Port Arthur neighbors from their flooded homes. With no number for Abi, I wrote to her through Facebook Messenger, telling her I had a truck and I wanted to help. She messaged back, telling me to head to the bowling alley by the mall, a place I knew well from spending countless hours there during my youth. She warned me to take caution, as the water there was so deep, they were using it as a launch site for the rescue boats. She gave me the name of an elderly lady, “Maureen Willison,” who had been in water all night and was recently rescued on one of the boats. I was to get her out of the bowling alley and, if possible, take her to her relatives in Griffing Park, a neighborhood close to where I grew up.

  On the way to the bowling alley, I got in touch with Mark Fiorenza. He was at my church, St. Elizabeth, where it was posted on Facebook they were taking evacuees. He said to “bring them on,” that the church people were waiting with food, fresh clothing, water, and shelter.

  No warning could have prepared me for what I saw when I arrived at the bowling alley. The flood waters almost carried my truck away on the highway before I got there. When I made it into the parking lot, I waded into knee-deep, dirty brown water. There were helicopters scattered throughout the sky, the noise of their engines echoing in a chorus with the roar of boats moving everywhere. I started to weep for my poor city. The bowling alley where I had experienced so many good times at parties and social events was now an ark filled with people who had been rescued from their homes. With no time for emotion, I composed myself and ran into the bowling alley looking for Miss Maureen.

  My mother warned me before I left the house that the smells would be powerful. She was a nurse at the evacuation centers during Hurricanes Rita and Ike, so she would know. When the door to
the bowling alley opened, my senses registered what she described. This was a place of much suffering, a place of pain. Immediately, my lizard-brain went into overdrive and my antennae were up. The heightened sense of awareness and potential danger was something I experienced only in prison. This packed bowling alley, this refuge, had the potential to be extremely dangerous, especially for kids and the elderly.

  After surveying the entryway and shouting for Maureen, I realized this rapidly deteriorating situation needed help beyond what was currently available. In hopes of getting someone out there in cyberspace to hear my pleas, I pulled out my phone and started recording the scene in there. I had recorded and posted many times when I spoke at colleges or high schools, and I could post to multiple platforms in my sleep. Within minutes, my first flare was up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

  Abi gave me a simple description of Maureen: elderly, white, gray hair. I shouted her name from one side of the bowling alley to the other. When it became apparent she was not there, I looked for others to rescue. My focus was on finding families with small children, especially little girls. This was no place for kids.

  Each person carried one bag, all they were able to take with them before the waters took their homes, and with it, everything they owned. Damn. One bag. Your whole life’s possessions are about to be washed away and your savior on a boat tells you only one bag per person can fit on the boat. What is in your bag?

  That first family I found had six people. Two adults and four kids, three of whom were girls. I spoke to the two who looked like the mother and father.