Inmates Rebuild Pride by Helping to Rebuild L.A. : Volunteers: At Frontera, prisoners collect food, clothing and money for riot victims. ‘We become more whole when we give,’ says one woman.

In prison, memories make the clock tick faster. So it hurts to think that what you remember won’t be there when you finally walk through the prison door.

The nights of the Los Angeles unrest, Sharelle Holt sat in front of a television set and watched her old haunts go up in flames.

“I saw all those places where I used to be burnt up, and it got to me,” Holt, 39, remembers. “It was like, ‘God, am I going to recognize any of this when I get out?’ ”

It had been nearly 10 years since she was locked away for murder and robbery. But watching televised images of those on the outside helping their neighbors made Holt feel she had to do something. So she joined hundreds of her fellow inmates at the California Institution for Women in Frontera, collecting cans of food, donating clothes and raising money for those affected by the unrest.

Now, the prison has honored the inmates for their contributions to the place they call the “free world.” A banquet held in a prison dining hall last week recognized those who participated in the riot relief efforts, as well as volunteers in other year-round projects at the state facility.

“They’re no different from anyone else,” says Susan Poole, the prison’s warden. “They like to feel what they do is important and recognized. Often, no one’s recognized these women, said they were good people.”

She explains, “We can’t change their past. All we can do is influence what they do with their time here. We’ve got to begin the process of healing.”

It could have been a dinner honoring any group that gives to the community: About 60 inmates and staff members donned their best outfits for the occasion. Representatives of the Los Angeles Women’s Foundation and First AME Church also attended, each receiving checks for $636 to add to monies already donated by the inmates. A guest speaker talked about the value of giving. It was a night of testimony, tears, applause.

But you needed an escort to leave the room. And when the lights were turned off and the plates cleared away, the guests of honor couldn’t go home.

That’s why giving feels so good, some inmates say--because for a little while, they can feel like part of the outside community, living and contributing like everybody else.

“We become more whole when we give,” says Vonda White, 53, who has spent the last 14 years in prison on a charge of murder. “It’s not so much atonement. It’s being as powerful and able to do good and right as anybody else.”

Leslie Van Houten agreed. Like White, she too killed someone once. And at 43, she has spent more than half of her life paying for it. But she was different then, she says, young and foolish, letting a man named Charles Manson control her mind.

“I like to think that I’m the kind of person (now) that would’ve been out there with a broom,” Van Houten says of the riot cleanup efforts. “Over a prolonged period of incarceration, you start to lose your sense of value. So to be able to give gives you the opportunity to get out of your misery. (And) we just don’t get that many chances.”

Barbara Jackson-Gray, a prison counselor who headed the facility’s riot relief effort, has seen the effects of volunteerism in small ways, “from a person who walked around with her head down to a person who walks around with her head up. . . . It boosts ego, self-esteem, and it makes this a better place for us to work.”

She does not deny that some inmates may get involved in the voluntary efforts so they can increase their chances for earlier release. “Of course, some do it because they may get a commendation in the file, and it may help them before the parole board,” she acknowledges. “But I think most of it comes from the heart.”

About half of the prison’s 1,600 inmates participated in the voluntary riot relief efforts, according to Jackson-Gray.

Inmates used free time after work or between classes to participate, combing dumpsters for clothes discarded by others. Some bought food at the prison canteen, then donated goods to the food drive. One group, Sharing Our Stitches, sewed quilts out of car covers and other cloth and gave their first batch to various charities.

Debra Jones, 28, says she donated virtually everything she had to wear. “I only had two pairs of 501s, (another) pair of pants and some nightclothes,” recalls Jones, who is serving an indeterminate term for robbery and murder. But “I took everything and gave it to them. It made me feel good that somebody could use them.”

Like Holt, Jones had once hung out in some of the neighborhoods that suffered the most damage during the unrest, so the scenes of violence flickering on the television screen were chillingly familiar.

“I used to gangbang, and those things people were doing (during the riots), I used to do to people for no reason,” Jones says. “It made me feel small.”

Some might say the inmates were rehabilitated--suddenly wanting to do right after years of doing wrong. But the women say prison didn’t change them. It just showed them the kind of people they were all along, removing the veils of drugs, alcohol and peer pressure that once blocked their vision.

“This is the first time I really gave of my time, my sweat,” says Romarilyn Baker, 28, who collected clothing and canned goods. “This place didn’t change me, (but) it gave me the opportunity to give. When I was in the free world, I had so many of my own problems, that took up all my time.”

Indeed, the women say it doesn’t really matter whether people know where the donations came from--who collected the cans, trimmed the cloth, sold the food. But, some add, it wouldn’t hurt to be on the mind of the free world every once in a while.

“People pass and they say, ‘I wonder what that place is,’ ” Holt says. “They don’t know, until they see the barbed wire.”

Still, no need for thank-yous, she says: “Just know we exist.”