FINDING THEMSELVES, FINDING EACH OTHER

Michael Santos lived in the biggest house, on the broadest street in Lake
Forest Park, an affluent town north of Seattle.

After graduating from Shorecrest High School in 1982, Santos went to work
for his father, a Cuban immigrant who owned a highway construction company.
There was just one problem. Santos hated to work.

By age 21, Santos became vice president. The position gave him access to
company bank accounts, but it also required long hours of drudgery. "What I
really enjoyed was acting the big shot at the Vogue, Cutters, the Regrade,
or some other hot spots in Seattle," he recalled. "I never looked forward
to work the following day."

Santos soon found an easier way to earn a living.

Selling cocaine.

A high school friend introduced him to the business, and Santos started to
think big. One day, he stole $30,000 from his father's company account,
saying he was going to buy a dump truck. That day he bought cocaine, sold
it for $60,000, and put $30,000 back in his father's account. He told his
dad the truck deal had fallen through. That left Santos with $30,000 cash -
not bad for a day's work.

Within a year, Santos was living in a million-dollar penthouse condominium
on the oceanfront in Key Biscayne, Fla. His family didn't know how he could
afford to live such an extravagant life, but didn't want to know either. He
married a Peruvian beauty he'd met at Miami's swankest club, Regine's, in
Coconut Grove. He drove a Porsche.

Santos hired buddies from high school to drive the cocaine to Seattle and
sell it there. All Santos had to do was make the deal. And finding large
quantities of cocaine in Miami in the mid-'80s, he said, "was about as
complicated as finding salmon in a Seattle fish market."

In a good month, he was sending 10 kilos to Seattle, making six figures.

Then Michael Santos got arrested. He was 23.

Three men in suits were waiting for him in front of his condo. He was
wearing Versace linen slacks, a Ted Lapidus silk shirt, and cream- colored
python-skin shoes with a matching belt. He remembers this because the first
night in jail, a guard stole the belt.

Santos pleaded not guilty, sure he would beat the charge. In jail, he
ordered his minions on the outside to sell two last kilos of cocaine stored
in a Seattle warehouse. The feds knew this because Santos' buddies had
turned against him to save themselves. "I went down there the morning of
jury selection to tell the judge that we needed to arraign him on new
charges," recalled Francis J. "Jerry" Diskin, the former U.S. attorney in
Seattle.

Michael Santos got 45 years.

No parole for 27 years.

"I imagine you'll be an old man," U.S. District Court Judge Jack Tanner
told him at sentencing. "But you've earned it, sir."

Carole Goodwin had known Michael Santos since fifth grade. They also went
to middle and high school together.

But whereas he was larger than life in those days, she was on the
periphery, shy. He was, to use a high school term, out of her league.

Goodwin didn't follow Santos' trial in the papers. She was dealing with her
own troubles. She had gone to community college but dropped out. Moved to
France but didn't like it. She came back and got a job at a restaurant, the
Keg, where she met a University of Washington engineering student working
his way through college. He was handsome and looked like a good prospect.
She married him because she was 21 and thought that was what she was
supposed to do. They had two children. But Goodwin soon became convinced
that her husband had drug, alcohol and gambling addictions. What followed
were years of an ugly divorce, financial ruin, and fear for the safety of
her children.

Soon after she divorced, exhausted, broke and alone, she grew friendly with
a man coming out of his own nightmarish marriage. They decided to marry.
Goodwin quickly realized this was another mistake. They coexisted, but did
not love. Soon, they slept in separate bedrooms.

Goodwin's life was a disappointment. Two failed marriages. Her father was a
dentist, her brother a judge, her sister works in Hollywood, but she never
finished college, never developed a career. She never had savings of even
$10,000. "My life was a perpetual tempest," she said. "Always out of control."

Michael Santos has spent 17 years - 6,012 nights - in federal prison, the
last seven years at the Federal Correctional Institute at Fort Dix, in
Burlington County, N.J. At first, Santos was sent to a maximum-security
prison in Atlanta. His view of himself, he said, "dissolved like an ice
cube on the Miami asphalt in August."

He had humiliated his family. Twenty-seven years felt like eternity -
longer than he'd been alive. Though his crime had been nonviolent, now he
was surrounded by rapists and murderers, terrified of sexual assault, and
strip-searched daily. Nightly he contemplated suicide. Could he do it with
paper clips? Pencils?

Santos had never read a book on his own. In the prison library, he found an
anthology of essays by philosophers. Though far more familiar with the
works of J.R. Ewing, the Carringtons, Tony Montana from Scarface, he began
reading Plato, Aristotle, Dostoyevsky and Sartre. He read the essays over
and over with a dictionary, "sometimes," he recalled, "passing entire
afternoons dissecting single paragraphs."

"Those writings helped me realize I'm not the first person who has come to
a crossroad in his life. I had a choice in how I could respond, and my
choice, I realized, would be an indication of my character."

In time, Santos set out to redeem himself, he said, to educate himself, to
make something of himself. He wanted to prove to the world, and to himself,
that he had something to contribute. He wanted to earn his freedom.

Santos escaped gang rape in Atlanta for two reasons. He came in with
credibility - he was, after all, a big-time drug dealer. That earned him
respect. And fate put him in a cell next to two major mobsters from St.
Louis, and they became fast friends. To mess with Santos meant to mess with
the mobsters, and nobody wanted to do that.

He set a goal for himself, to learn 100 vocabulary words a week, and
punished himself with push-ups when he failed. He tried to read 100 books a
year - literature, biography, history.

"I was especially moved by Plato's allegory of the cave, by Nietzsche's
insistence that the only obstacle to man's success was the limitation of
his mind."

He set out to earn his bachelor of arts degree from Mercer University in
Atlanta. His monastic existence permitted him to try to reinvent himself.

With no freedom, no privacy, no control, he was also getting another kind
of education - learning about the world of American prisons and jails,
population now 2.1 million.

Santos earned his undergraduate degree in 1992, cum laude, and just as
hungrily pursued a master's degree, which he earned in prison from Hofstra
University in 1995. His field of study was the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

He read every book on prison culture and literature he could get, and often
wrote the authors - challenging them, arguing with them, asking them to
critique his papers.

He impressed and befriended many prominent academics.

"I've taught from seventh grade to the doctoral level," said Bruce
McPherson, a retired University of Illinois professor, who died last month.
"Michael's the best single student I've ever had."

Reading about Eastern religions and philosophy, Santos came to believe that
a person lives many lifetimes, that he had chosen this particular life
because he needed to overcome his addiction to greed. Santos was testing
himself in this life, so he could ascend to a higher plane in the next.

He also needed an invention, a philosophical crutch, to help him endure his
loneliness.

His Peruvian beauty, with whom he had zoomed across Biscayne Bay on his
cigarette boat, was long gone. "I couldn't stand the dreadful possibility
of living without romance," he wrote. "When I waited in that cell and
thought about passing 27 years in celibacy, or even without a woman to
love, everything else seemed to lose all value."

Santos convinced himself he had a soul mate, one woman whom he had made a
"primordial promise" to find in this life.

"I was a romantic," he explained. "Perhaps prison had made me so. Since I
was separated from women, from female companionship, I had to invent a
relationship in my mind. Rather than think of all the women whom I would
meet upon my release, or fantasize of women in pictures, my relief came
through the highly romantic - and perhaps, unrealistic - notion that there
was one perfect woman for me.

"It became my mission, not to find her, but to prepare myself so that when
the patterns of our lives crossed, she would not reject me as a hedonistic
fool."

Carole Goodwin had just emerged from her first marriage at her 10-year high
school reunion. Seeing so many old friends had been a great tonic.

She needed another lift. So she organized the 20-year reunion. She set up a
Web site, started contacting classmates.

She wasn't thinking about Michael Santos. But a stranger found her Web site
and e-mailed her. He had read about Santos on Prisonerlife.com. He wanted
to know if the prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institute at Fort Dix
was her classmate.

Goodwin couldn't help herself. She wrote Santos an angry letter. Drugs had
ruined her marriage. Santos was where he belonged. Throw away the key.

In 1993, Santos asked President Bill Clinton to commute his sentence, to
set him free, but Clinton rejected the appeal in 1995. No explanation.

Santos was devastated. What more did he have to do? He had worked so hard
to prove and improve himself.

So he changed. He consumed himself with the idea of preparing for his
release in 2013. He'd be 50. He'd have no assets, no career, no means of
supporting himself. He needed to do something.

Along came the dot-com craze.

Santos had never seen the Internet - he still hasn't. Computers aren't
allowed in prison. But he read about it, and about the boom in Internet
companies. A fellow prisoner paid Santos $2,000 - or, rather, had a check
sent to Santos' sister - in exchange for help with legal papers.

Santos had his sister invest the money in Yahoo and AOL. He asked his unit
captain for permission to do day trading. The captain told him to open a
joint account with his sister, and then it would be OK.

Santos had daily telephone privileges, and every day he would call his
sister in Seattle and tell her what to buy and sell. In 1999, according to
his 1040 tax return, he earned a capital gain of $152,217, and paid federal
taxes of $31,997.

But then the bubble burst. When the dust settled, he had just $16,000 left.

He was broke, and his spirit nearly broken.

In the late 1990s, George Cole, a University of Connecticut professor and
author of the best-selling college text on criminal justice, encouraged
Santos to write books.

So in 2000, Santos began writing.

First, he wrote About Prison, his own story of how he landed in prison and
his experiences to date. This book was published by Wadsworth, a leading
academic publisher.

His second book, Profiles From Prison, was published by another academic
publishing house, Greenwood/Praeger. His third book, What If I Go to
Prison?, was published last fall by a Mount Holly publisher.

Santos began working on a fourth book, about his philosophy of love, his
odyssey of preparing himself in prison for the right woman.

When Santos received the scolding letter from Goodwin, in February 2002, he
immediately wrote back: "Don't judge me for who I was. Judge me for who
I've become."

"I am ashamed of my involvement with the distribution of cocaine, and you
are correct in recognizing that it was greed and a lack of character that
drove my actions," he wrote. "I was wrong and I don't say that in an
attempt to soften your views. I have grown in significant ways since my
early 20s."

Santos was grateful to her for writing. "My life is one constant effort to
connect with the world," he wrote. "You ask me what I need. I need
friendship. I need the privilege of sharing my innermost thoughts with
people who are close to me. I need intimacy and honesty. When one has lived
without it for so long, one learns to treasure it, to know how valuable it
is to human existence."

Goodwin felt safe. Santos was 3,000 miles away, behind bars. So she was
honest and unsparing, about his life and her own.

"Perhaps if I had not experienced such difficult circumstances, my response
to your incarceration would have been more tempered. I've received an
education in human nature that I never planned on... ."

In early April of 2002, less than two months after beginning their exchange
of letters, Santos sent Goodwin a draft of his fourth book, his theory of
life and love.

He wanted her editing.

He got much more.

Goodwin was blown away.

"She felt she was destined for a sad life," said Goodwin's best friend,
Allison Kaufman, who also knew Santos in school. "And then she's reading
that book, and she believes he's writing about her."

Goodwin wrote on April 9, 2002:

"I want you to know how deeply I was affected. There were parts where I
felt as if you had climbed into the most secret parts of my mind and
verbalized feelings I have never shared with anyone."

He responded: "You've given me a connection for which I longed, perhaps I
willed into being... . I pray that your journey, your pursuit of love, is
not so lonely as I have known."

She responded: "If distance and physical barriers weren't between us, I
believe I would crawl into your embrace and just rest there for awhile. You
have touched my heart and I feel inexplicably close to you... . I feel like
you're inside my mind, writing my thoughts... . "Perhaps we're kindred
spirits," she continued. "I remember you as the boy you were, but I'm
coming to know the man you have become and I am drawn to you. What you have
accomplished, the way you have disciplined yourself, the strength I know
you had to look deep inside yourself - you inspire me to do the same... .

Fast-forward six months and thousands of pages of letters. In October 2002,
Goodwin visited Santos in prison.

He wrote of the first meeting, of her beauty and how he felt:

"... I reached Carole and felt her arms wrap around me... . For a fleeting
second I felt as if I were a human being rather than an object to be
watched and counted, a man rather than a prisoner."

Dozens more letters.

In April 2003, Goodwin moved to New Jersey, finding an apartment in Mount
Holly. She brought her 12-year-old daughter with her. Her son, who would be
starting high school in the fall, remained in Washington with his father.

In June, Santos and Goodwin wed in the prison visiting room, the only place
they were ever allowed to meet. He and Goodwin are permitted one kiss when
they meet, and another when they part.

On Aug. 9, 2003, Anthony M. Kennedy, associate justice of the United States
Supreme Court, gave a speech to the American Bar Association. The speech
surprised many people. Kennedy is a Reagan appointee, hardly soft on crime.

But America's prison population has swelled in 20 years from 400,000 to 2.1
million.

In his speech, Kennedy said:

"Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too
long... . We should take special care to ensure that we are not
incarcerating too many prisoners for too long... . A decent and free
society, founded in respect for the individual, ought not to run a system
with the sign at the entrance for inmates saying 'Abandon Hope, All Ye Who
Enter Here.'... A people confident in its laws and institutions should not
be ashamed of mercy."

Santos and Goodwin decided to try again for clemency.

In October, Goodwin published a paperback filled with letters of
recommendation, excerpts from Santos' books, copies of his diplomas. On the
book cover is an American flag. She titled the appeal "Earning Freedom."

"I am not optimistic that the President will grant me relief," Santos wrote
in the fall, "as I recognize that our nation has moved into a more punitive
phase. But if I can somehow reconcile with society, that will do a lot to
assuage some of the humiliation and guilt I feel for living behind these
fences. I've been a prisoner for my entire adult life, but it hasn't been a
wasted life, as I hope my record will reflect."

Goodwin settled in Moorestown, renting a house with a woman who is also in
love with a prisoner at Fort Dix.

Goodwin loves the convenience and beauty of Moorestown, and especially
enjoys spending time in Starbucks; it reminds her of home. Her daughter,
Goodwin says, is thriving at Moorestown Middle School. If anyone asks about
her stepfather, she says he's a writer.

Goodwin is permitted to visit her husband 30 hours a month, about three
afternoons a week. Santos is allowed 10 minutes a day of telephone time. He
usually breaks it up into one-or two-minute bursts, calling Goodwin six or
seven times a day.

Her voice and face change when he's on the phone, breathless, adoring,
nurturing.

"Hi!!!... I love you... . Bye."

Goodwin said she will wait 10 years for Santos.

"Michael came into my life offering something I had never experienced from
anyone else. He offered me a safe, loving sanctuary to explore every part
of me. There was no fear of being judged, no fear of an answer that was
right or wrong. I was free to be completely honest in sharing who I am. And
it has been a revelation for me as I have explored all my layers."

Santos' great gift to Goodwin - in addition to his love - is the order he
has brought to her life. He persuaded her to read Stephen R. Covey's The 7
Habits of Highly Effective People and other self-help books. In long,
emotional letters, constantly reminding her that he loved her, he urged her
to stop living life with a victim's mentality and to set goals for herself.
This fall, with his support, she took a class to earn her real estate
license, and passed the state exam in early November.

Goodwin has given Santos intimacy, purpose. As he wrote her recently:

"Darling, I really enjoyed spending my evening responding to your letter.
It brought you so close to me, and I need that closeness with you. These
are the most intimate aspects of our life, this exchange of communication.
I love it when you open up with me, when you tell me what obviously is for
us only. I am in love with you, Carole, for so many reasons, but this
ability you have to make yourself one with me, to complete and inspire me,
gives me a freedom that I know is impossible without you. I love you... .
You will never know a love as strong as my love. One does not exist."

Santos no longer feels that Goodwin was his destiny. That was a fantasy he
constructed. She was his great good fortune. He is revising his book about
love. He believes now that any relationship will fail without work,
communication and growth. That is what he relishes, building a future together.

"I'm at peace," Santos said in an interview recently. "I have a rich life
in here. A wonderful wife who is supportive. I have new publishing
opportunities. My life is richer than many people outside. I wake up every
day at dawn, eager to attack the day, reach my goals.

"I put myself here. And I know it. All I can do is try and better myself.
I'm extraordinarily happy. I'm optimistic. I'm not complaining. The onus is
on me to make the most of it."

Only 3,422 days to go.

Postscript: On Tuesday, Nov. 18, Michael Santos was without warning
transferred to Colorado, to a minimum-security "camp," the least
restrictive federal setting. His prison has no razor wire. When Goodwin
visits, they walk around the grounds, holding hands.

He and Goodwin are euphoric.

Though she had intended to stay in Moorestown through the end of the school
year, Goodwin couldn't stand to be apart from Santos. She and her daughter
were to move last week to Colorado, where Goodwin will pursue her dream of
opening her own title company. Her daughter, she said, is excited about
learning to ski.

Santos has plans for 10 books. Maybe Random House will publish his next one.