 |
|
Gary Dockery looked around the courtroom soaking in his last few moments of freedom.
He was out of chances and standing before a judge seconds away from a life sentence that would write the final chapter to his short, but violent, sad and hate-filled life.
His luck, if he’d ever had any, seemed to have abandoned him and over the years so had anybody who cared for him.
“They weren’t wanting to give me anything, they just wanted to send me to prison,” Dockery said. “And for some weird reason … I’m getting ready to go get sentenced and all of the sudden the judge says, ‘I’m pulling this all back, and I’m going to give you your one and only chance.’”
Dockery’s reprieve came in the small, but proven hands of Mimi Silbert. For 36 years, Silbert, co-founder of the Delancey Street Foundation, has been the last chance for thousands of violent criminals, drug abusers, gang members, prostitutes, white supremacists and other members of society that society would prefer to lock away.
“She’s a brilliant, charismatic person who has devoted her life to the rehabilitation of these people who are seen by many as being beyond help,” said former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos. “These people with drug and alcohol abuse problems and violent criminal histories, she takes them in a shows them this no-nonsense approach to getting their life together.”
Silbert had been teaching at UC Berkley and serving as a consultant to the police department before deciding there were better ways to help people. She co-founded the foundation in 1971 with her partner John Maher, a recovering heroin addict, with a $1,000 loan, an apartment for their headquarters and four drug users trying to fix their
lives the Delancey Street Foundation began to take shape. Today it has grown into it’s sprawling home on Embarcadero with dormitories that house 500 residents, an auto body shop, a coffee house, a restaurant and other businesses all managed and operated by the residents themselves.
Silbert lives and works alongside the residents of Delancey, which operate without government assistance.
Silbert’s philosophy has never wavered.
She wanted to create a place that addresses the element of society that was considered beyond rehabilitation. She sought out the felons and drug users who were willing to work everyday to make their future different from their past.
Dockery had been a member of the Aryan Nation. He stands now in a suit, but the grim reminders of his life before Delancey Street creep out from under his collar and sleeves.
The words “skin head” are emblazoned on his left hand and a tattoo of the words “war skin” surrounded by fire cannot be hidden behind his collar.
They are a stark reminder of the life he barely escaped.
“But, Mimi said, ‘I don’t see tattoos. I see a soul,” Dockery said.
Sandra Muñoz, a resident of Delancey, said the commitment Silbert makes to the residents is one of the keys to the foundation’s success.
“She is somebody who has everything to do with making the entire world a better place,” Muñoz said. “She truly believes that prison and more prison, especially in the state of California (where) there are 37, 38prisons, that it’s not the answer — that people who have had trouble in their lives can change. She works with us. She lives here with us.”
For many residents, Delancey Street may have been the first place in years, if not ever, they felt genuine care and concern.
“She also knows that most of us have been basically thrown away,” Dockery said. “Society don’t want us no more. We’ve done horrible things out there. But, she takes us in and shows us love and that there is a family that does care. By doing that it helps us push ourselves along.”
As two-year resident John Long begins to tell his story of abuse and hate that turned into anger and crime, he tilts his head just enough to catch sight of the Bay Bridge.
Just across that bridge in Oakland lies one of the violent worlds that Long left behind.
“I look at that bridge everyday,” he said, walking out of a second-floor conference room at the foundation. He doesn’t have to search hard for the symbolism.
“Immediately when I was born I was given away,” said Long, 48. “My auntie, she poured some hot water on me and scalded my body. Same auntie a couple years later, she had me jump on the bed with scissors and stab myself. So I had a lot of anger. A lot of anger.”
That anger would breed itself, as it often does, into violence.
”If I couldn’t get something from you, whether it be money or alcohol at the time, then you were no use to me,” Long said. “I was walking around the world very pissed off. Then my mother died … me and her didn’t get along because I still harbored some ill feelings for her (for abandoning me), but when she died, you know, some people miss what they don’t have. When they have it they don’t care for it. I was one of those people.”
He began abusing drugs along with alcohol. His drug of choice was the same one that had taken his mother’s life –crack cocaine. After a stint in Leavenworth prison in Kansas, Long called his sister and begged for a ticket to San Francisco and the Delancey Street Foundation he had read about.
After plenty of coaxing and promising, something Long said he did often while he was using, his sister finally bought his ticket.
“I said, ‘I’m not getting a round-trip ticket. I’m not going back.’”
Two years in Silbert’s program seems to have transformed him from the angry, violent criminal he was when he showed up at the front gate of Delancey to the soft-spoken, kindly man who now tells stories of his years before Delancey like they were from a past life.
Muñoz remembers the day when she asked her mentor and counselor what drove her to continue on? Why would she want to be here, living with these ex-cons and substance abusers when she could she could be doing anything else she wanted?
She looked back at Muñoz and said, “Why wouldn’t I want to do this? I get to be a part of watching people change and grow. What more is there?”
