INMATES GO TO SCHOOL TO WARN STUDENTS ABOUT DRINKING, DRUGS

WEBSTER -- Joey comes from a large, loving family. Church was his second
home. In high school, The Young Republicans club was proud to have him as a
member.

This day, dressed in prison whites and black boots, the 27-year-old pleads
with an audience of youthful faces at Webster Intermediate School to reject
him as a proper role model.

"I hope and pray that if you are ever in a situation where drugs or alcohol
are involved, you'll think about me doing these years in prison and make the
right choice," Joey told students, recalling a need to impress school peers
that led to alcohol and then a prison cell.

"I have to live with what I did every day of my life."

Joey, serving a 10-year-sentence for involuntary manslaughter, is one of
three inmates who recently visited Webster Intermediate as part of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice's community education program, Operation
Kick-It. The program, beginning its 29th year, warns students about the
perils of drugs, gangs and alcohol.

Webster students listened intently as Joey, Rodney and Rene, all inmates at
Huntsville's Wynne Unit, told their stories.

Joey said a series of drinking infractions, "wake-up calls" he chose to
ignore, landed him drunk behind the wheel of a car seven years ago.

"Because I was driving and drinking, I took this lady's life. She was a
mother, a grandmother and a wife," he said. "Because of my stupidity and the
choices I made, this lady no longer is with her family."

George Lively, Operation Kick-It administrator, said Joey's story is not
unusual in a prison system that is home to more than 143,000 inmates. Of
those inmates, 85 percent used drugs and alcohol to some degree.

"These inmates' stories are powerful. They have great impact. In an audience
of hundreds of students, you can hear a pin drop," Lively said.

In an average year, inmates in the program speak before 300,000 Texas
students. They do not receive special considerations for their
participation. When traveling, they spend their nights in city or county
jails. An armed officer accompanies them at all times.

Inmates under 30 years of age are chosen for the program after a rigorous
selection process that screens for the best participants. Most are
first-time offenders serving time for drug-related offenses or crimes
committed to maintain their addictions. The inmates are not coached in what
to say, but do receive training in the techniques of public speaking, skills
that will benefit them in the outside world.

Lively said many former Operation Kick-It participants credit the program
with giving them skills to lead successful, reformed lives after prison. A
doctor, lawyer and high school English teacher are among former
participants, Lively said.

The fact that Joey, Rodney and Rene look like the boy next door holds
students' attention.

"We try to recruit people who do not fit the stereotype," Lively said. "If
students are going to listen to convicts from the state prison who are all
tattooed up, stereotyped-looking and everything else, it would be difficult
to relate to them. These guys, with a change of clothes, look like they
should be on a college campus."

Rodney, 22, had his heart set on college. A model student, the Dallas
Independent School District selected him as "Student of the Year" when he
was in seventh grade. He also was chosen for a program that helps minority
students go to college. He was strongly influenced by his grandmother, who
taught him self-respect and family values.

He had a tumultuous home life that challenged his resolve to "do the right
thing," he told students. When his mother became addicted to drugs and his
childhood buddy committed suicide, Rodney's priorities became warped. His
dreams fizzled when he joined a gang and began selling drugs.

"I had all the potential and every opportunity in the world to make my
dreams come true," Rodney told students. He is now serving a 20-year
sentence for possession of cocaine.

"For a long time, I used my background as a excuse," he said. "But it
doesn't matter what color you are or what type of family you come from. All
it takes is one bad choice and you end up in this place."

Rene, serving a 13-year sentence for possession of a controlled substance,
fell into the same trap. Now 24, he is scheduled to be paroled next
September after going through a drug treatment facility.

Peer pressure and an escalating involvement in drugs sparked his free-fall
into prison. Ironically, a decade ago he sat in a middle school auditorium
listening to inmates from Operation Kick-It appeal to students to stay away
from the very influences that landed him in prison.

"Maybe if I'd listened to them then, I wouldn't be here today," said Rene,
who also had less than an ideal home life.

As a young child, he lived with his aunt's family in an area that was ripe
with drugs and gangs. His mother died when he was 5. His father was in
federal prison on a drug charge.

"But I don't blame having no parents growing up for my problems," said Rene,
who described himself as a lazy student who got involved with drugs and
barely squeaked by in high school.

After graduating, he continued to sell drugs. But he wanted a better future.
"I started making real-life choices. I wanted to be somebody and I knew that
drugs weren't going to take me there," Rene said.

Instead of getting a job and earning money for college, he conducted one
last drug deal. That deal led to his September 1993 arrest for transporting
cocaine from Dallas to Amarillo by airplane.

"As you can see, now I'm wearing the same white clothes and black boots that
came to my school all those years ago. It can happen to you. You have to
make the right choices," Rene told students. "Don't let my story be your
story."

At the program's conclusion, the inmates held an informal
question-and-answer session with some students about prison life.

"What are the cells like?" asked a student.

"Five-feet by 9-feet, the size of a regulation ping-pong table," answered
Joey.

Asked what he would do with his life if given a second chance, Rodney
responded, "First, I would continue to stick with the values my grandmother
instilled in me. I grew up in church. I would get my education."

Program administrator Lively implored students to take the inmates' advice
to heart.

"Usually some young man or young woman who has heard this program will leave
the auditorium just like our speaker, Rene, did and they'll think `This
doesn't apply to me. I may do a few things I shouldn't, but I'll never go to
prison,' " Lively said. "We have 143,000 inmates in prison who used to be in
sixth, seventh or eighth grade who would not listen and do what they were
supposed to do."

Seventh-grader Lyle Hufstetler said the inmates' stories made a bold
impression on him. "I think it's amazing how some of them went from being
perfectly good to being in prison. It makes me not want to be like that," he
said.

Fellow seventh-grader Kory Keimig agreed. "I'm not going to do drugs or
drink," he said. "If those guys who talked to us were walking down the
street, you wouldn't know they were in that kind of trouble. They look so
normal."

Checked-by: Don Beck