by Shorty Rossi
Every youth prison had a school, which we called the Education Department, as well as a vocational training department, a kitchen program, and religious services. DeWitt had a bunch of other offerings, including a gym, a track, and a field for football and soccer. It functioned like a self-contained city. The grounds looked like a college campus, with trees and grass. We even lived dorm-style, in halls with long rows of beds instead of cells. There were eight dorms holding three hundred kids per dorm. Nobody was separated ’cause of race or gang affiliation. It may sound like going to college, but there was still violence at DeWitt. Every year, on some specific day, the northern Mexicans and the southern Mexicans would have a bloodbath. There was still some gang activity, but for the most part, kids tried to share a mutual understanding of each other. For some reason, it worked.
Lassen was the intake dorm, where new arrivals were housed and most of the kitchen workers lived. Tahoe was the fuck-up dorm, where they stuck the kids who had behavior problems. There were two other dorms for the California Department of Forestry kids, who were training to fight fires. They had a lot less time and were in a lot less trouble than the rest of us. There was no way I could physically keep up with the demands of the fire training program and they didn’t see me doing yard work or working the kitchen detail, so I was housed inside both the Pumas and Klamath dorms during my stay. They were the “good” dorms, dorms for those focusing on their education or on vocational training. They were smaller dorms than the rest, with more privileges and rewards built in, like a TV in the dayroom.
The dorms themselves were basically wide-open wings with rows and rows of bunk beds. Each unit had a security office, an entertainment/dayroom, and then an A wing, a B wing, and a C wing of bunk beds. The floor plan was completely open. There was no restriction on movement from wing to wing, and there was absolutely no privacy. We kept our limited belongings in lockers.
If you screwed up once or twice, they’d throw you in a wet room. Every unit had a wet room, a small cell with a bed, a toilet, no windows, the lights on twenty-four hours a day, and a camera watching your every move behind a solid steel door. It was solitary confinement in the midst of a pretty social, lenient environment, which made it that much worse. To know your buddies were out there, shooting hoops or going to school, and you were stuck in the wet room was hell. If you caused real trouble, with a weapons-related altercation, a rape, a stabbing, or assaulting an officer or a teacher, they sent your ass immediately to Chad, and nobody wanted to end up at Chad, so everyone tried to avoid conflicts if at all possible.
After being in high-security lockup at County for six months, I felt lucky. At County, I was miserable. At DeWitt, I felt almost free, but it still took me six months to start acting right. I got into fights. I got into trouble. I got in an argument with a guy and he hit me in the head. I said, “Okay, I’ll be back,” and back I came with soap in a sock. I whacked him hard and knocked him out. They stuck me in the wet room for that one.
I didn’t wanna talk about my crime. I used the excuse that I was “going through the appeals process,” but really, I was being defiant and arrogant. I had anger problems and I couldn’t control my temper. They kept sending me to a psychiatrist, and he finally just laid into me, “You’re mentally competent. There’s no problem in your head. You’re not fooling anybody anymore. You can turn this around.” I realized he was right. I wasn’t a psycho. I’d made a huge mistake but I wasn’t a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Richard Ramirez. I was just stubborn as a mule. And that was a choice.
It took an inmate named Pinnock to set me straight. He pulled me aside one day and said, “Shorty, you got a lot here. Don’t fuck it up.” Here I was, being given a second chance in a place where the corrections officers and counselors and teachers were actually there to help. The corrections officers were not as violent or racist or bigoted as the guys at County, and if they were, they kept it to themselves. They didn’t treat me like shit, and they didn’t have carte blanche either. I started to get it. If I could act like a civilized human being, I’d be treated better by the guards and by all the staff. I started to understand their notion of “being a product of my environment,” and started to believe that maybe I didn’t have to act like an asshole all the time. Maybe I could do something good.
I registered to finish my high school diploma, got my GED, and got a job as a teacher’s aide in the Employability Skills class. I liked being a TA, so I did it again for the Construction class and the Vocational Program. I was well liked by the teachers in the Education Department, and I was seen as helpful. I took anger management courses and the victim awareness training program that was offered. The full weight of my actions began to register.
I thought a lot about that innocent bystander. It wasn’t right, what I’d done. I felt bad for him. I’d said as much in court. But when I said those words in court, there was the incentive that it might get me out of doing longer time. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t really realize the extreme damage I’d done to that man and his family. It hit me hard, and I was determined never to do something that terrible again. My transformation in attitude earned me the trust of the corrections officers. They started to let me do whatever I wanted. They knew I wasn’t selling drugs, and they knew I had no plans to escape.
I got a job as a law clerk in the legal library. By law, every inmate has to have access to legal information, so I’d set up meetings all day long to help inmates with their habeas corpus, their writs, their complaints, their grievances. I was working my ass off, but that’s where I wanted to be. I had my own office with a TV and a computer. I was responsible for logging every book in and out, and I created a database system for tracking them, so that each book could easily be found and used. Computers were pretty new at that time, so I seemed like a total genius. It gave me a lot of freedom. I didn’t have to stay in my dorm all the time. I could leave in the morning and not come back until late in the evening. Eventually, the guards let me have my dinner in my office and watch TV. That was a huge deal, to have access to privacy.
Janet had come to visit me a lot when I was in County, even though she was frantically scared to be there, but once she moved to Phoenix, I didn’t get to see her much. She still sent letters and packages. Mama Myrt and her family came every now and again, but those visits slowly dissipated. If Mama Myrt visited every family member or friend in prison on a regular basis, she would have gotten nothing else done. Linda came with her husband and brought my niece and nephew. Mom came once and Dad even showed up for a surprise visit on a day when visitors weren’t scheduled. He happened to be in Sacramento, I don’t know why, and he decided he was just gonna “drop by” and say hello. The officer told me my dad was waiting to see me and I didn’t believe him. I thought he was playing a trick on me. I wouldn’t even go look until another guard came down and said, “No, Shorty, really, there’s another Little Person up there. It’s gotta be your dad.”
When I finally believed them and walked out to see, there was Dad, standing there as if “dropping by” a prison unannounced, and on a day when no other visitors were allowed, was the most normal thing to do. We sat down, we talked about Mom and San Antonio and when I thought I might get out. It was civil. We didn’t talk about the fact that we weren’t really speaking; that he hadn’t come to the trials, or visited me before. As long as we were sitting face-to-face, we just small talked like nothing was wrong, in denial. Acting like everything was okay. That’s the way he chose to handle it. That was the extent of our relationship. What he said about me when he left, who knows. Behind my back, it was always blah, blah, and blah.
Being at DeWitt, I didn’t really care what was going on out in the real world. It was nice to see people, hang out with them, play games, or have lunch, but you’re in a room with everyone else that’s having a visit, so it’s loud and there’s no real way to connect. Maybe if I got to see people on a more regular basis, I’d have liked it better, but the visits were few and far between. They seemed like more of a hassle tha
n a reward.
Besides, DeWitt was my world, for now. It was too hard to hear about what was going on without me, outside. It was a distraction to get letters and phone calls and packages. I appreciated them when they came, but my focus was on doing good time and getting my sentence out of the way so I could move on and live a new and better life. I became more and more independent. After a few years, the visits dried completely up. That was okay with me. Seeing people could wait until I was out.
I found a new family at DeWitt—the feral cats that lived behind the Education Building. There were probably fifteen or twenty cats that hung out back there, though most were skittish, so I couldn’t get an accurate count. I started saving part of my lunches and dinners to feed them, and when the cooks heard what I was doing, they made sure to load me up with extra food or save the leftovers for me. I became known as the Cat Man, and dinnertime at the library became a feeding frenzy. I thought by feeding them, I was helping them out, but I made a real mess of things. Now that they were well fed, they started breeding like crazy. More cats showed up, and we went from having fifteen or twenty cats to an overpopulation explosion. There were hundreds of cats and kittens hanging around. I’d created a real problem.
The warden of DeWitt, Mike Gallegos, came out to examine the situation. He said, “Shorty, there are more cats here than we’ve got students!” He was trying to figure out how to handle the mess, and someone on his staff suggested they poison them all. I was in an uproar and I mobilized the teachers and staff and even the other wards to protest that decision. Poisoning was off the table. So Mike made me an offer. He could call in the Humane Society, or I could trap the cats, one by one, and if they were healthy, they would be spayed or neutered, then they could be released on nearby farms to help control the rodent populations in the San Joaquin Valley. I didn’t trust the Humane Society not to euthanize all the cats, so I agreed to trap them on one condition: I wanted to keep five of them as pets.
Deal.
I spent hours trying to catch the cats. I figured out they had two entryways into the yard, and I placed ten traps near those high-traffic areas. The traps were humane, small steel cages with food in the middle. The program was successful. The numbers were going steadily down. But there was one cat I called Thomas, who just wouldn’t cooperate. He was a huge, gray tomcat, muscular and smart. He was scrappy, a fighter, and the biggest cat I’d ever seen in my life. He was a bad-ass son of a bitch. I respected him for that.
He watched me set the traps, and figured out that if he just whacked the traps with a good swipe of the paw, he could knock them over and get the food without getting caught. In the mornings, if I came out and found the traps turned over and empty, I knew Thomas had been hard at work. I decided to give up trying to catch Thomas. He could be one of my five “keepers”—I’d make Thomas a pet. Of course, the next day, Thomas was trapped. Before I knew what had happened, one of the guards who’d been helping with the cat rescue shipped him off to a local farm. I was really upset. Thomas may have been a bastard but I’d really started to like him.
A week or so later, Thomas sauntered in like he’d never left. He looked like hell. A dog or raccoon had roughed him up, but he was still alive, and somehow he found his way back, over miles and miles of land. That cinched it for me. Thomas got to stay, and eventually he even let me pet and hold him.
I built my remaining cats a sanctuary behind the Education Building, since that’s where they liked to hang. I got Landscaping to fill in a dirt plot and some of the teachers in the vocational classes lent me tools and scrap wood. I built a small house for my new friends, and the vocational guys built a few birdhouses for me. I hung them so the birds could nest in nearby trees, just out of reach of the cats. I got water and food bowls and placed them around, so every cat could eat. Of course, when Thomas came to eat, they all ran away until he was finished. I even managed to get my hands on a hammock and I strung it up between two trees so I could come out, lie down, and let Zsa Zsa take a nap on my chest. Zsa Zsa was a pretty calico, and the best of them all. She was MY cat. I played favorites for sure.
That cat sanctuary was my oasis. With the birds twirping and the cats meowing, I could go out there, get away from the world, and breathe. The cats brought peace to my life. I felt like I was taking care of God’s creatures. They didn’t ask for much, except to be fed. They let me know when they were hungry. They liked a rub behind their ears and that’s all they wanted—unlike humans, who need so much and can’t be trusted. I’d get so relaxed in my oasis that a couple of times I fell asleep swinging back and forth in that hammock. The principal, a few of the corrections officers, and one teacher knew about the sanctuary. They called it Shorty’s Cave. If I missed count, they knew where to find me, snoring. For the next two years at DeWitt, I managed the law library and the cat rescue program, and happily swung in my hammock on sunny days.
DeWitt turned out to be the best place for me. I could look around and see I was helping these cats, helping other inmates, and even helping the teachers do a better job. I could use my talents to make a positive change in my community. Those last two years in the Nickerson Gardens projects had been total chaos. Now I understood that I could use my intelligence in a good way. Instead of being a negative manipulator, I could be a positive manipulator. I’d always had an authoritative type of personality, but I’d never been allowed to be in charge in a good way.
DeWitt straightened me up. I had no choice about being there, so why wouldn’t I try to make the best out of that situation? There were other inmates who were miserable, but I just saw them choosing to make their lives more difficult. They complained. They made trouble. They spent all their time in the wet room. A very small percentage killed themselves ’cause they couldn’t deal. I tried to make the best out of the circumstances I was in. What else could I do? I was gonna be there for years. I had to find a way to enjoy life.
I was at DeWitt from August 1989 to January 1993, and in those four years, I became a different person. The teachers and the guards around me were strong influences. There was a teacher named Sonya Miller, who looked beyond what’d I’d done and accepted me for who I was as a person. Jones Moore, my counselor, helped guide me through the courses, and though most of the other kids hated him, I liked him a lot. He was a big black guy who didn’t care what anyone thought about him, in sort of an arrogant way, just like me. The corrections officers, Don Reynolds and Larry Mackey, gave me the opportunity to act right and rewarded me with extra privileges. Don and I got close ’cause he was the guard at the school where my office was located. We’d watch TV together, or play video golf on the computer. He was a big influence on me. He treated me like a human. Vic Federico, the principal, believed in me, and Mike, the warden, trusted me to run the cat rescue program. They were people who believed in second chances and in helping kids out. They knew if they invested in me, I wouldn’t get back on that road. I am who I am today ’cause of their belief in me.
That’s why my transfer came as such a shock.
5
Folsom
wenty-five. That’s the magic number in the California penal system. Twenty-five and you’re an adult. Twenty-five and your ass is headed to a big house. No more Youth Authority. No more juvie treatment. Twenty-five was the end of the road. In 1993, when I turned twenty-four, I knew I had one year left before they handed me over to the California Department of Corrections. I was state property, and the state was gonna take me whether I liked it or not. They could stick me anywhere. I decided to head them off at the pass. I applied for clemency. I’d done good time at the Youth Authority. I stayed out of trouble, no fights. I showed up for my job every day. I got my GED and a degree in paralegal studies. I sat through anger management classes and victim awareness training, plus all the work I’d done on behalf of my cats. I had plenty of proof I’d gone above and beyond the definition of good time. There was no reason not to try.
I called up Carol, my trial attorney, and had her help me petition the court. I
got the backing of the warden and the assistant warden. I asked for letters of support from the director of the Youth Authority, and my application even went to the director of the California Department of Corrections. He allowed it to move forward. I even reached out to Kevin McCormick, the district attorney who prosecuted me. He had no objections. Everything was looking good. My application was going all the way to Governor Pete Wilson. For about eight months, I waited to hear. Then, about four months before my twenty-fifth birthday, Jones, my counselor, sat me down and just gave it to me straight. He said, “Shorty, I don’t know how to tell you this, but they denied your clemency based on the violent nature of your crimes.” It was like he’d just punched me in the stomach.
Pete Wilson basically gave me the finger. He didn’t care that I’d finished high school behind bars. He didn’t care that I’d been running my own version of an animal rescue operation on the grounds. There was no way he was gonna sign those clemency papers, even if I was an actual angel sent from heaven to walk the earth. He was turning down guys who should not have been there in the first place. Guys who’d been caught with minuscule amounts of drugs. Other inmates had screwed shit up. They’d let some other idiot out and he did something stupid and fucked it up for everybody else. Namely me. All that good work was just considered gone. My spirit was defeated.
With the clemency option off the table, Carol petitioned to get me transferred into the federal system. There was a federal prison called Lompoc, near Santa Barbara. Lompoc was a country club. It even had a golf course, plus there was a chance the Feds would let me out earlier if I could get transferred into their custody. No such luck. They shot that idea down, and two months before I turned twenty-five, they shackled my wrists and legs to my waist, loaded me up, and sent me to DVI, the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California. DVI was a purgatory, a reception center for newly committed prisoners or transfers, that had a long-standing reputation for being dangerous. There were so many fights they called it “Gladiator School.”
