Student Highlights: Leonardo Garcia
It's a beautiful struggle when you learn from your mistakes and apply it.
- Leonardo Garcia
Leonardo Garcia, age 34 is going home in 9 days after ten years in prison. Leonardo opened up about the lifestyle which led him here, which included criminal activity and drug use. At the age of 18, while on bail, Leonardo fled to Mexico to avoid going to prison. There he spiraled further and became involved in crimes too numerous to name. He spent five years in Mexico, and at the age of 23, he returned to California.
Leonardo shared how scared he felt as he stopped with his family at the border, "I thought when I gave them my birth certificate, I would be and taken to jail... I couldn't believe [that] they let me pass”. During the next couple of years, he would work under an assumed name and tried as well as he could to be present for his family. Until one day, he succumbed to relapse and began using again. The day after the Super Bowl in 2014, after being “on the run", Leonardo was arrested. After three years of fighting his case, he was sentenced to 15 years with two strikes for his first offense and began serving his time in prison.
While in Reception, his Father was ill and passed away. This was a difficult time of "no calls and late letters." He explained, "I knew my dad was going to die and I wrote him a letter to say goodbye, but because everything was late he never got it. I knew he had passed away when the Lt. came walking out to the yard toward me." Furthermore, he said, "You know I never processed it, I still haven't."
The first couple of years he reports, "I always had drugs...l learned to slam heroin here; I never thought of doing that before I got locked up. I got hooked." He was "battling" the lifestyle. Leonardo also describes how his family has changed during his incarceration. "I've lost so much”, he said, “a whole generation of family, my dad, my uncles and grandparents, now I have to step up."
So what changed? "I realized I could let this make me or break me." Leonardo entered prison with no education, having been kicked out of public and continuation schools. He earned his GED in 2017, at a time when inmates were not receiving time off for the education. He then started college in 2019 and was assigned to the ISUDT in 2020. Leonardo has persevered through the ups and downs of the COVID 19 pandemic, where the program went from face to face, to packets, to extended pauses, and reassignment. He pushed through in order to earn a successful completion. He has also earned three Associates Degrees from Cerro Coso College where he has been welcomed into the international honor society Phi Theta Kappa.
I asked Leonardo what he would be taking from the program. His response, "to put it in one word, Responsibility.” Leonardo describes being "nervous and honored" when asked by Program Director, Delores Figueroa, to speak at the last ISUDT graduation. "I never realized there was going to be so many people there, and Danny Trejo too, it was all I could do to read my speech and sit back down." He continues, "Everything I did in the streets and when I first caught to prison, I did for respect. Now I know what true respect is and it feels good to be a positive influence."
Danny Trejo speaks at ISUDT Gradiation
When Leonardo is released he plans to reconnect with his two children and "give my mom peace." He will continue his education with the goal of becoming a Substance Abuse Counselor and is eager to help others. I asked for one final thought, he replied "God has been by my side the whole time."