Finally Free

by Michael Vick

  “Are you eating enough?” she’d ask me as I walked in the door. “You big enough? I can’t believe you made it pro.”

  When London was born one month before I went to prison, I knew she was going to be different. Her head, ears, and complexion were all different. She just had a different aura about her. As she grew older, I realized that she actually looked exactly like my grandmother.

  It hurt that I wouldn’t be there with her like Kijafa and I had raised Jada. I wouldn’t be in the house. We wouldn’t be caring for a newborn baby together. Instead, I’d be in a jail cell.

  As the news and negativity unfolded, I avoided my grandmother. She had developed Alzheimer’s, but she continued to watch the news—every night—and I figured she knew something was up.

  My last stop before I turned myself in was my grandmother’s house.

  “Where are you going?” she kept asking me.

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. It would hurt her too much.

  “Training camp,” I lied.

  Camp was in the summer—when it was hot. This was November. She knew something wasn’t right.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Training camp.”

  My mother didn’t tell me until a year ago, but my grandmother ended up calling my mom after I left.

  “You better tell me the truth,” my grandmother said. “Is he really going to training camp?”

  Mom said she couldn’t help but tell her the truth.

  Then my grandmother cried like never before.

  “I can’t believe this,” she cried. “I can’t believe he’s going to jail.”

  My grandmother’s oldest son basically spent his entire life in prison. She became used to it; she knew that was his life. But she never wanted that for any of us. And for me? After all my work to get where I was?

  She couldn’t believe it.

  Chapter Eight

  The Prison Experience

  “At that moment, my freedom was gone.”

  There was no more waiting for the worst. It had arrived.

  I woke up on November 19, 2007, to a cloudy, gloomy day, which matched the way I felt inside. It was the day I had been dreading for weeks. It was time to leave my family to go to jail and begin serving a prison term that was still three weeks from being finalized in my sentencing hearing.

  Turning myself in early was one way of putting myself at the mercy of the court. I hadn’t helped my case two months earlier when I’d failed a drug test while on supervised release.

  The day I had to leave my family behind was one of the saddest days of my life. My family and I rode from our home in Hampton, Virginia, to the courthouse in Richmond, and from there I was taken to jail in Warsaw, Virginia.

  The time leading up to that point meant a lot to me. Every day counted—every hour, every minute, every second—even at night, going to sleep.

  I woke up that morning and I told myself, This is the day.

  Jada could tell something was different about that day.

  When I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth, she asked Kijafa, “Mommy, what are we doing?” She said it with a crack in her voice, as if she sensed that something wasn’t right, as if she was wondering, Why are we getting up so early? Where are we going?

  When I walked back into the room, Kijafa was lying on the bed crying because she knew it was real. We cried on the bed and finally got ourselves together. Kijafa later told me that she was so distraught, she felt her life was almost over.

  My security guard, Paul Wilmeyer, drove us to the Richmond Courthouse. Off and on while we were in the car, I just kept crying. I’d cry and I’d cheer myself up, then cry some more and cheer myself up. Even in the car, every minute counted. We were forty-five miles away, so we had just under an hour to get composed and enjoy what little time we had left. Then we were thirty miles … twenty miles … ten miles away …

  “Babe, let’s go back,” Kijafa would say over and over. “Let’s run away.”

  When we pulled up to the courthouse, Kijafa looked me dead in the eyes. “Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t leave.”

  Then she started crying.

  Then Jada started crying—outraged—like there was a monster trying to get her.

  Then I started crying.

  The pain they felt—it was all my fault.

  I had no more fight in me. I was done. Forced to walk away from the car, I shook hands with Paul and shook hands with my close friend CJ Reamon. Then I told everyone that I loved them, and I walked up to the two officers who were waiting for me. When I walked myself in, they started cuffing my hands and legs right there on the spot.

  At that moment, my freedom was gone.

  I was led to a car for a ninety-minute drive to Warsaw, Virginia, where I would be incarcerated at Northern Neck Regional Jail for the first two months of my term. I thought I was going directly to the penitentiary camp, but when we arrived at Northern Neck, I wondered, Why am I coming here? I thought everyone had it all set up so I would go straight to the camp; I didn’t know that I had to stay at the regional jail until I was transferred.

  As I was getting checked in, they gave me a black-and-white jumpsuit. It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I thought to myself, Man, I guess I’m going to be staying here for a while.

  They took me to my cell—a one-man cell—and they closed the door. It was right in front of booking—right in front of everything. I looked around, overcome by the feeling. So this is where I’m going to be living? I thought to myself. This is where I have to stay? Two hours ago, I was with my family, free. Now I’m in prison, doors slammed.

  I was a caged bird.

  I would hear that sound many times—a prison door slamming shut. It was loud—metal on metal—and there was something harsh and final about it. Especially that first time.

  Already, I wanted out. I wanted to escape. I started feeling claustrophobic. The cell room had a metal sink, a metal toilet, a stand-up shower, and a blue metal bunk bed. The cinder-block walls were white and tan. There was a bright white light in the room that I couldn’t turn on or off. They turned it off automatically at 11:00 p.m.—“lights out” time. I had a TV and a phone.

  I immediately tried to call my mom because I was going into a state of panic. It was a completely disastrous feeling. But the phone wasn’t working. So I tried to distract myself by preparing my bunk bed. I got up in the bunk, and I’ll never forget it—I just lay in the bed, with my hands over my eyes, and tried to go to sleep. I was in disbelief. This can’t be, I told myself over and over. I tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t. Next, I stood up and put the TV on. There wasn’t a clock in the room, so I didn’t know what time it was. It just so happened, though, that through the crack of my door, I could look out through booking and see a clock so I could keep track of the time.

  It felt like an eternity.

  Eventually, it was 7:30, and the guards brought me a tray of food. The food looked awful. I was thinking, This is what I have to eat?

  From riches to rags. From the NFL to a jail cell.

  It was only day one, and I felt like I had been there for eight days. I’ll never forget watching Dancing with the Stars and just wishing, Man, if only I had my freedom. I’d do anything for my freedom right now.

  People kept coming to the door, checking on me. Every time that door opened, I was hopeful it was going to be a guard saying, “So-and-so called and said to set you free.” I was optimistic someone was coming to get me and bail me out, but it never happened.

  The first day felt like the longest day of my life, and the second day was even longer. I didn’t sleep well. I woke up continually, hoping it was all just a nightmare, but there I was, still in prison.

  The first morning you wake up, you don’t know when you’re coming home. You don’t know what your loved ones are doing. I couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel because there wasn’t an end. All I could see was darkness. I was just in prison, knowing I had a court
date, knowing I was going to get sentenced, and yet not knowing when I was going home.

  I missed my family. It was lonely not being beside Kijafa—not being with Jada, not being with my newborn baby. I missed lying down with all of them. I cried myself to sleep every night.

  I’ve never been so sad, so dismayed. The next day, my phone was working and I called home to my mom. I called every day, crying—called Kijafa crying, just worrying about what she was doing. It took me a couple of weeks to get strong, to strengthen up and say, “Okay, you know what? I have to do this, and I have to get through it.”

  When the day for my sentencing hearing finally arrived—December 10, 2007—I woke up early, around 4:00 a.m. I felt optimistic, hoping that I’d only have to spend six to eight months total in prison.

  At the time, I was still in that small one-man cell in Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw. I knelt on the side of the bed, and I prayed that everything would be okay—that the sentence would be light.

  The prison officials drove me approximately ninety minutes from Warsaw to Richmond for the hearing before Judge Henry Hudson. My family and friends met me there. We were all stunned when Judge Hudson announced a twenty-three-month sentence.

  Twenty-three months?! I thought to myself.

  It was like my whole world came crashing down. I didn’t expect a sentence that long. Everyone was in tears; everyone was distraught. We wanted explanations. We wanted to know why.

  When Judge Hudson announced my term, Kijafa kept waiting for him to clarify it. She expected him to maybe say “twenty-three months of probation” or “twenty-three months of home confinement.” But not this.

  She was sad that Jada wouldn’t see me for nearly two years—sad that London wouldn’t even know who her father was. Because Kijafa didn’t grow up with a father figure in her life, she wanted her kids to have a positive father figure in their lives. And here I was, sentenced to twenty-three months in jail.

  Once I returned to my cell in Warsaw, I fell onto my bed and cried for about an hour. That’s when I hit rock bottom. That’s when I hit the ground—when I crashed.

  All I could think was, For the next twenty-three months, I will be incarcerated. I couldn’t take care of my family; I couldn’t do anything for my family.

  I remember it vividly. I cried; then I stopped. Then I stood up and said, “Okay, I’m ready to go. Let’s do it.”

  Letters of encouragement or communication of any kind helped me early on.

  I remember the first letter from my mother. The first thing I noticed was that she had horrible handwriting! But she really opened up. It’s one thing I began to realize—that people can sometimes express more in writing than they can face-to-face. It may be easier to write things than to say them out loud.

  What she wrote about were things I wasn’t even thinking about. She was just very encouraging, very uplifting, and told me how she was looking forward to my last day.

  Over time, I received personal visits from former Atlanta teammates Alge Crumpler, Keion Carpenter, and Kynan Forney; plus Curtis Martin, one of the best running backs in NFL history. It all helped me to know people cared, especially since it wasn’t easy for them to get on the prison lists to visit me.

  When people came, we talked about everything—what was going on in the outside world and what the new music was, for example. We talked about working out and about all the experiences we had in Atlanta. We talked about relationships. We talked about moving forward and about how I could become a better man—a better person.

  I received letters once a week from someone on the Virginia Tech coaching staff. Whether it was head coach Frank Beamer, assistant coach Bryan Stinespring, the defensive coordinator, or the head of football operations, someone wrote me a letter. They stayed in touch. It helped keep my spirits high.

  Oddly, I was able to feel the family atmosphere of Tech again, and I knew they cared as much about me as I cared about them.

  Slowly, painfully, I began to adapt to life in prison.

  There was nothing like having my freedom taken away from me—being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to get up, or when I could go outside on the track. I was a twenty-seven- or twenty-eight-year-old man, and I was taking orders … from another man. It was just a miserable feeling that I had to learn to tolerate and accept.

  I was around 500 men every day, in a place I didn’t want to be. It was rough. I had to learn how to live the prison life—how to move in prison, how to talk; and I learned when to say something, when not to say something, what to say and what not to say.

  In prison you can’t show your emotions around others because, in the end, it only puts you at risk for resentment or abuse from other inmates. You just have to be strong, and you have to be able to overcome all the elements in the prison system. It can be brutal; and if you’re not strong mentally, you’ll break down. Then everyone will see you break down, and you’ll have guys taking advantage of you and stealing your commissary purchases. I saw it happen to other guys.

  One incident when I had to keep my emotions in check was during a basketball game. Another inmate, who wasn’t happy with how things were going for his team, started a fistfight with me. He said, “Because you have money, you can do certain things. I don’t care. @#$% you, @#$% you, @#$% you.” He cursed at me three times, and I felt I was being disrespected. The next thing I knew, we were in an altercation. It didn’t go as far as both of us wanted it to go, and it was probably good that it didn’t, but I was to the point that I didn’t care at the time. He ticked me off.

  You can’t be disrespected in front of your peers in prison because a lot of them will look at you like you can be taken advantage of. Experiences like that forced me to adapt quickly, whether I wanted to or not.

  The only reason I think I was able to adapt was because of the way I grew up—my upbringing, the environment I was in, the people I was around, and the way God made me. Prison helped mold and shape me as a man. I had to have that experience in order to move forward and become the type of man I’ve always wanted to be.

  I was no longer No. 7, the football player. I was inmate No. 33765-183, and I couldn’t change that, regardless of the fact that this number definitely didn’t fit me.

  I had that number on every day. I had to write it on each piece of mail that I sent out. It will forever be embedded in my brain.

  It was stressful. I wanted to break out, wanted to get out, but I couldn’t. I was in the same place with the same people every day, all day, with the same guards telling me what to do, what I could or couldn’t do, and sometimes, just for spite, conducting shakedowns. It was a constant mess.

  There were times I was down and out and just feeling like I was the scum of the earth. But there was another side telling me I could pick myself up and make this all right. Adapting to the environment didn’t just mean properly handling conflicts. It also meant trying to stay uplifted, which is probably one of the most important and yet most difficult things to do in there.

  When you’re in prison, it makes you feel like there is no hope. I was very discouraged at times. But at the same time, I held my head up high, and I knew what was most important. There was the fact that I didn’t have to spend my entire life there. One day, I was going to go home and have another chance, a chance to make amends and make things right. It was the only thing I was focused on after a while.

  I never lost hope because I had so many of my fans and so many people who wrote me every day. It was like I was talking to them. They wrote back so frequently that I was able to know what was going on in the outside world. It helped me keep my mind. I felt loved by family members, people I had never met, coaches, and others.

  I received about 27,000 letters, and only six or seven were hate mail. I read all of them. And I responded to most of them. People were thinking about me when they didn’t have to be thinking about me. I was humbled.

  Writing letters helped pass the time. I watched television, worked out, wrote letters, made a quick ph
one call, and before I knew it, I had burnt five hours. So then I’d do it again.

  Besides writing letters to family, friends, and fans, I read books like The Art of War, an ancient Chinese work considered a classic piece of military literature; The 48 Laws of Power, a book written in 1998 that has been compared to The Art of War; The Shack, a Christian novel; as well as various urban books and lots of magazines and business books. I once read a book in two days that was 480 pages. I never would have done that on the outside.

  During my incarceration, I read more books than I had ever read in my life. I did more writing than I had ever done in my life, and I did more thinking than I had ever done in my life. I tried to stay sharp while I was in prison. I had a lot of idle time, but I didn’t want to have an idle mind. So I read, and I also learned how to play chess, some card games, and dominoes.

  There’s one letter I’ll never forget. It was the first letter Kijafa ever wrote me. At the bottom, it said, “PS: Do your time. Don’t let the time do you.”

  From the moment I first heard those prison doors slam behind me, I began to turn back to God—praying, reading the Bible, and recommitting my life to Him.

  The only thing I could do was to have faith and stay strong, and to trust and believe that God would give me another chance. It was all I had. There were so many times that He was the only person I could call on. I could talk to my mom, I could talk to Kijafa, I could talk to my kids; but I couldn’t talk to them all night. You only get 300 minutes a month on the prison phones—an average of ten minutes a day—so you have to ration them out.

  When I called Kijafa, I had so much on my mind that I wanted to tell her, and I’d have to cram it into five minutes.

  I had to lie in that bunk in a cell by myself when the lights went out at 11:00—and I’m a night owl, so from 11:00 until 1:30 or until I fell asleep, I was thinking about how I could make this right. Those were lonely hours.

  Just like high school, I read the Bible every night. My Bible, once again, found its place under my pillow. Scriptures from my childhood, like Psalm 23 and Jeremiah 29:11, began to bring me comfort again. It felt like I was starting my life all over again, only in a different place.