Unlikely Partners in a Buddy System

Three years in prison had been enough for Richard John, and, when the 30-year-old Orange resident was paroled in January 1996, he declared himself “a retired career criminal.”

But life changes are seldom so simple. Honest work was hard to find for a two-time felon, and the paydays paled next to his scores as a burglar. As the bills mounted, his former partners in crime would come by with offers of quick cash schemes and the easy escape of drugs.

“It would have been easy to fall in the old pattern again,” said John, a father of two. “But I had someone to turn to, someone who would listen and keep me on the right track.”

The someone was John’s mentor and friend, an attorney named Michael Buley, who was matched with the ex-convict through Volunteers in Parole (VIP), a program being honored this month by the Orange County Bar Assn. and awarded a $4,000 grant.

Using much the same model as the Big Brothers-Big Sisters program, attorneys become informal mentors for parolees and guide them through the difficult readjustment to free and lawful lives.

“The program has been a godsend for me,” said John, who is now attending college. “I could have gone either way, more than once, and it was Mike and VIP. If it not for them, I would probably have ended up in prison for the rest of my life.”

The VIP program began in California in 1969 after Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger challenged attorneys to step forward and help parolees transform themselves into law-abiding citizens.

In Orange County, the nonprofit group has made more than 200 mentor matches since 1994, and there is often a list of 30 or more parolees awaiting an attorney mentor.

The range of parolees who apply for the free program run the gamut from “very institutionalized” convicts to one-time offenders, according to program director Leslie Ocon-Wolfe.

They are screened by Ocon-Wolfe, who sizes up their earnestness and ability to benefit from the program. She uses the same careful eye on attorneys who want to volunteer as mentors.

“They have to have patience, and they have to have their heart in it,” Ocon-Wolfe said. “You don’t want people who are going to give up if the parolee misses a meeting.”

There is no rigid formula for the mentor partnerships. Typically, the matches are intended to last for two years, and the attorneys are told they should try to spend five hours a month with their parolees.

The attorneys often help their partners with simple workaday skills the parolees may never have learned, such as how to balance a checkbook or write a resume.

The partners also talk on the phone, share lunches, go to ballgames or--in the case of John and Buley--meet for weekend basketball games and life talks.

“We realized we had so much in common,” said Buley, 31, a business law attorney in Newport Beach. “The difference was I grew up in a real strong family that picked me up and dusted me off when I messed up. He’d fall down, and there was no one to pick him up.”

Another business litigation attorney, William Grenner, has spent two years with a parolee who has grappled with the economic challenges facing ex-convicts.

“That’s the thing that really stands out, the challenge these guys face when they try to find honest work,” Grenner, 31, said. “When they are able to work at a better wage, there’s always this specter of them being found out and fired.”

Six weeks ago, Grenner’s partner was arrested on drug possession charges, which landed the 52-year-old back in a cell. The partner used his lone jailhouse phone call to contact Grenner--not for bail, not for an attorney, just to say he was sorry.

Grenner is still in close contact with his partner, and the parolee’s lapse has not tainted the attorney’s view of VIP.

“It was devastating,” Grenner said, “But it’s not the end. Just another setback. . . . My life is forever enriched by the experience of the past two years. And it teaches you that you take a lot of things for granted in your own life.”

Many of the 10,000 attorneys who work in Orange County could find similar insights if they joined VIP, Grenner said. But, even more important, he said, they could put themselves in position to help people facing a crossroads.

“At the time they are paroled, their self-esteem is at the absolute lowest,” Grenner said. “They’ve got no friends, their family distrusts them, their spouse has probably left them--their VIP match might be their only friend in the world. And they need that friend.”

For more information about the VIP program in Orange County, call (714) 567-2839.