Some Probationers Get a Second Chance, but It’s Entirely Up to Them to Succeed : Computer Program Blazes a Trail

Connie Marshall spent a decade using cocaine and heroin, and repeatedly went to jail for it. “I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve been in and out of jail in the last 10 years,” says the Anaheim Hills resident. “It’s been a long time since I had a job--a long time.”

Taking advantage of a unique program being offered by Michael Brinda, founder and president of the New Horizons Computer Learning Center in Santa Ana, Marshall and about a dozen other probationers are using the computer as the path out of their former lifestyles.

“There was a time in my life when I thought I would never change. I was always worrying about my next fix. I believe that I’m here to encourage others who are in the same position,” the 35-year-old Marshall says.

Brinda says he has wanted to help people like Marshall for a long time. A former hardware and software instructor with Sperry Univac, he started New Horizons in December, 1982, offering one- and two-day computer-training sessions. At the time, it was “me and the answering machine,” he says.

Now he has 15,000 square feet of office space and 47 employees offering 640 classes on roughly 100 topics.

Brinda’s rewards, in addition to the Ferrari 328 GTS he had always wanted--was that he could at last contribute to the community.

But he wasn’t interested in simply handing over a wad of money to a charity. “I like to see a direct relationship between my money and the benefit,” he says.

“I was watching a show called ‘Scared Straight-Ten Years Later,’ ” he recalls. “It hit me like a lightning bolt. I could do this (rehabilitating addicts) for adults.”

Last December, Brinda began to provide computer training for adults in trouble with the law. He would give probationers the opportunity to take, as one probationer put it, up to $18,000 worth of computer classes free.

“I talked to the county,” Brinda says. “Talk about skeptical .”

But there were reasons for this.

“This is the only program we have like this, as far as private industry goes,” says Kathy Miller, supervising probation officer for Orange County. “Everybody was surprised that there were no catches to this.”

Once he was taken seriously by the county Probation Department, Brinda began discussing the kinds of people he wanted in the program: “I said bluntly, ‘Don’t send me any ax murderers with a high profile.’ ”

As Brinda soon discovered, most probationers--regardless of their crimes--needed motivation to be able to handle the program.

“A lot of our people don’t have many job skills,” Miller says. “They don’t follow up on things. That’s why a lot of people are on probation, because they don’t have that motivation.”

Connie Marshall says that probationers generally don’t take advantage of self-betterment programs “because of low self-esteem. I think a lot of people don’t follow through with things because they think they can’t do it.”

Brinda’s only demand was that the participants stay with the program. “We don’t want bodies for the sake of bodies. If they won’t make the commitment, they screw up my business,” he says, explaining that classes are usually filled with paying clients.

No one in the classroom can tell who is part of the probation program. “You’re all treated just the same,” says a participant on probation after her second drunk-driving conviction who asked that her name not be used. “That’s what I was afraid of--was I going to have a different kind of computer because I wasn’t paying for this?”

“But they let me take the classes twice. I’ve made a point not to miss a class,” the 38-year-old housewife says.

To get people in trouble with the law into the program, Miller receives recommendations from probation officers, then talks to potential candidates on the phone. If they appeared interested and motivated, she asks them to call Brinda.

“If it’s a case that includes drugs, I make sure they’ve been testing clean for a long time,” Miller says. “We’re not going to jeopardize the program.”

To date, about 25 probationers have shown enough interest to make it through the Probation Department’s informal screening and move to the next step--an appointment with Brinda.

Of the dozen people who have participated in the program, Brinda has offered jobs to a few. Some have worked out well. Others he has had to let go.

Brinda says he would like to help other companies develop their own community-support projects. “My goal is to present a year’s worth of history to other companies like New Horizons,” Brinda says. “I’ll be able to tell (them) about the good and the bad.”

Chet Allenbeck says he is steering clear of the kinds of situations that landed him in jail. Allenbeck, not his real name, is on three years’ probation for his first offense, a “typical drug situation.”

He spent five months in the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange--not an experience he wants to repeat, he says.

“It was a one-time thing. I got my hand bit off, and I got out of it. I knew the difference between right and wrong, and I knew I wouldn’t be back.”

Allenbeck, who is 26, heard about the New Horizons program from his probation officer. He was working as a tow-truck driver at the time. “The hours were lousy. I told my probation officer I was quitting.”

When Allenbeck went for his initial interview, Brinda offered him a job as a technician. At the time, Allenbeck had no computer experience but was mechanically inclined.

Although he’s not sure how long the association with New Horizons will last, “he’s given me a great opportunity,” Allenbeck says about Brinda.

When Connie Marshall talked to Brinda about taking computer classes last December, she had just begun working part time for an answering service. The job was one of her first steps out of a 10-year drug rut during which she lost custody of her two children.

“Sometimes I think about drugs, but I think about walking down the street, needing a fix,” she says. “If it happens again, it’ll be the same thing again, and I’ll never get out of it.”

Just before she went to jail the last time, she had gone to live with a family in Westminster, an experience that she says has helped her pull away from the drug influence. She was sent to the James A. Musick facility in Irvine and released on probation in November.

When Marshall said she wanted to go to school, her probation officer referred her to Kathy Miller, who told her to contact New Horizons.

Marshall had earned the equivalent of a high school diploma in jail, but she had no background in computers. “At first I didn’t like it. I hated computers,” she says. “I felt stupid.”

She worked at the answering service for four months. In March, Brinda called her, offering her a job readying the classrooms for students and answering the phones. He offered a bit more money and she accepted.

Even with four months’ experience in tackling the intricacies of the computer, her new job almost proved too much. On her second day of learning the complex phone system, she wanted to quit.

She talked with Brinda and then changed her mind.

“ ‘If you think you can do it, fight for it,’ he told me. I decided to stay, and I’m glad I did.”

At the Probation Department, Kathy Miller views the New Horizons program as a model of how business can work with government.

“It is such a wonderful example of what someone in the community can do,” she says. “He’s giving these people a chance for success in their lives, and that’s what probation is about.”

Dan Logan is a regular contributor to Orange County View.