Women Reach Out After Doing Time

In the realm of Christmas parties, there are the old standards: the potluck office party; the cocktail-hour reunion of high school friends; the neighbor’s open house.

And then, there was this one -- a holiday tradition like no other. The women who gathered over the weekend in Joyce Ride’s living room have one thing in common. All served time at the California Institution for Women in Chino -- most for terms that ranged from 20 years to life.

That time, said Gloria Killian, the party’s host, forged a special kind of kinship. In prison, they were among 2,400 women forced together by circumstance. In their freedom, they have found that they enjoy a bond closer to sisterhood. On the “outside,” as they call it, they have helped each other with things like battling to find employment, visiting amusement parks and adapting to a world with cordless telephones and DVD players.

So when they celebrate, it is as much about their own perseverance and their regained liberties as it is about the spirit of the season.

“We’re all like family now,” said Cheryl Minichilli. A San Diego resident, she served 20 years for robbery before she was freed, three years and four months ago.

Christmas cards lined the mantel of the Pasadena home, and a nearby table seemed to groan under the weight of so many snacks and treats. Near a small but cheery tree, an army of nutcrackers watched over 10 women gossiping like schoolgirls.

“Little Cindy goes the 28th,” said Judy Stroup, 61, referring to one of their fellow inmates who is up for parole. “I got a Christmas card.”

Stroup, like the other women, has a well-lined face that hints at a life filled with cigarettes and sorrow. A chance to celebrate was not something any of them took lightly.

Decked out in a Minnie Mouse Christmas hat, Robin Keeble had drawn No. 1 from a brown gourd, which meant she got to go first in the annual gift exchange. With her friends egging her on, she pondered the stack of Christmas presents from which to choose. Each woman had brought a gift to the exchange.

Keeble, 48, estimates that she spent 20 years in a 24-year period going in and out of Chino for a series of drug-related crimes. She has been out now for eight years.

“When I first got out, I didn’t know this was happening,” said Keeble, who came across an online link to Killian’s nonprofit organization, Action Committee for Women in Prison, by chance when she was doing research for a college paper. The group of freed prisoners, she said, assembled “by word of mouth. We come from all directions.”

Keeble pondered which gift to pluck from under the tree. She put a palm on each cheek and made a face. “Umm .... What about this one?”

She picked up a square box with a shiny bow atop it. In a second, she was displaying its innards -- a crystal bowl -- to her friends. “Oh, cool!” she exclaimed. “It’s beautiful!”

Most of the gifts were what Killian called “girl stuff”: chocolates, lotions and potions.

Killian was sentenced to life in prison for a 1981 robbery-murder based largely on the testimony of one man. But she fought that conviction, filing a series of appeals.

Ride, the mother of astronaut Sally Ride, worked tirelessly to gain her release, having become convinced of Killian’s innocence after visiting her repeatedly in prison. She dipped into her savings to hire an investigator and attorney to help Killian’s cause. And in 2002, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Killian’s conviction, saying that the witness had lied about her involvement in the crime, and freed her from prison.

But by then, Killian had spent 16 years in prison. A former law student, Killian, 58, has devoted herself, both inside and out of the penal system, to helping other women, both those who are guilty and others who say they were wrongly convicted.

A recent government study found that California’s correctional system is failing female convicts and parolees more than any other group of criminal offenders. The bipartisan Little Hoover Commission reported last week that the number of women in California prisons has increased fivefold during the last two decades -- and that despite that surge, the state continues to run a system with policies, practices, programs and facilities designed mostly for violent men.

Stories told by the women about life on the inside seemed to reflect that reality.

They are still haunted, they said, by the prison conditions and still get chills when they hear a loud horn or the heavy, clinking sound of keys like their guards’. And they now revel in the “girl stuff” -- the kinds of things they rarely got when they were in prison.

“Everybody got the right idea,” said Cheryl Sellers, among the women Killian helped. She was granted parole by Gov. Gray Davis in 2002 after serving 18 years for killing a husband she said was abusive and had threatened to kill their daughter.

Almost every detail of the party was arranged with the women’s sensibilities in mind.

Take, for example, the party food. Nachos were not just corn chips covered with melted Velveeta. Instead, they were high-quality chips, carefully layered with sour cream, tomatoes, meat, salsa, black beans, olives, avocado -- and what Killian called “good cheese. I wanted to make it with all the things we couldn’t in prison,” she said. “I wanted it to be a memorial feast.”

Light, fluffy meringue cookies were the same kind Killian often got in care packages and shared with her fellow inmates. “Sugar and grease,” she joked. “That’s what kept us going.”

The women were not, by any means, over their time in prison. Some were fighting with parole officers about visiting other friends still in prison. Others said even after years away, they were having trouble adjusting to the new world of 2004.

Sellers said that the No. 1 concern for most of her friends was the real-world practicality of finding a job. After more than two years, she said, she was still looking for work. “I’ve applied at factories, warehouses, for secretarial work. You name it, I’ve applied for it.”

Every time she fills out an application, she said, she is confronted by the box that asks whether the applicant has been convicted of a felony. Potential employers aren’t interested in the circumstances, she said, especially when they find out it was for murder.

So in her friends, she said, she finds some support. Not answers -- “most can’t find jobs unless they lie” -- but a friendly ear, an understanding soul who knows what she’s up against.

Each time the women gather, it seems, their numbers have increased. One guest had been out of prison less than two months and reveled in the attention.

Minichilli’s Christmas gift to her friends was a calendar she made, with pictures of the moments they have shared together since prison. She used a digital camera and new computer skills to make the calendar.

On the cover was a beautiful sunset and a caption: “Friendships that Last Forever.”