Sewing Project Helps Mend Inmates’ Unraveled Lives

The hands work quickly, deftly, stitching the edge of a pink infant gown. They are nimble hands, well-trained. They are also tattooed.

Dario Trevino is the young man attached to these hands. Trevino, 17, lives at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility in the Sierra foothills. He’s doing time for assault with a deadly weapon. And he’s a budding seamster as well.

Trevino and about 40 other Preston offenders are participants in one of the most unusual programs in California’s correctional system. Coached by a teacher convinced of sewing’s rehabilitative benefits, the youths stitch, knit and crochet clothing for premature babies.

Their crimes range from armed robbery to carjacking, arson and murder. But in Classroom 38, their violent pasts and rough talk fade as they turn balls of yarn and bolts of fabric into booties, hats and blankets for newborns with heads no bigger than their fists.

At first, most of the youths were skeptical, figuring that sewing is “women’s work,” and dreading the taunts of friends. But then they tried it--and saw pictures of the tiny, helpless infants who benefit from their labor--and soon were hooked.

“Everything I did before I got here was for me or my friends,” said Trevino, his eyes focused and fingers steady as he guided a flannel gown beneath a sewing machine needle. “Now I’m helping the little babies. I’m giving something back.”

Giving back is one of the program’s primary goals. Beginning last year, state law required wards of the California Youth Authority to perform 40 hours of community service while incarcerated. Sewing with teacher Anita Hatfield is one way to earn those hours.

Most of Hatfield’s pupils, however, have gone far past the 40-hour mark, and have stuck with the program nonetheless. Jaido Uribe, 18, of San Jose, has 240 hours. Brandon Ramos, 19, of Fresno, has logged 500.

Why sew? Rickie Arrington, 17, a convicted armed robber from Los Angeles, summed it up as he crocheted a powder blue receiving blanket one recent morning: “It’s calming to me,” Arrington said as he painstakingly hooked stitch after stitch. “It takes away the tensions of this place.”

For Hatfield, those words are confirmation of a hunch she had back in 1991, when she first tried to bring her idea to life. A gray-haired, motherly figure who can command respect with one well-timed look, Hatfield says sewing has always helped her relax, so she figured it might work for the young wards as well.

Her reasoning did not instantly convince the powers that be. It took six years of persistence--and, eventually, a supervisor with faith--before she was allowed to give the program a chance.

After handpicking two students to launch it--youths who could weather the inevitable harassment from others--she set forth. Now, one year later, administrators heap praise on the teacher and her unorthodox program.

“They’re learning a skill, but more important, they’re learning what it feels like to be of value to society, to someone in need,” said Preston Supt. Allison Nicholson. “Hopefully, they’ll carry that feeling with them when they get outside.”

Program Draws Criticism

Not everyone views Hatfield’s class with such fondness. When a local newspaper wrote a piece about it last year, critics spoke up, questioning the value of teaching youths how to knit.

“Is this kind of training supposed to rehabilitate the youth at that facility?” one reader wrote. “I do strongly feel that the taxpayers’ money is being wasted by a training program that offers no marketable skills and therefore no rehabilitation of these young men.”

In fact, no taxpayer money is used. Hatfield bought sewing machines with grants from a local Ford dealership and an Indian reservation, and used her own money to purchase the first batch of fabric and yarn. Since then, donations have poured in and the Preston class has become part of a national nonprofit group called Newborns in Need.

As for rehabilitation, that is tough to measure. Some Preston staff members say that they observe a lower stress level among the sewing set. And in Sacramento, youth authority officials say Hatfield’s project typifies the sort of “character-based education” they have emphasized in recent years.

“These kinds of programs are designed to work on the heart, the human element,” Youth Authority Assistant Director J.P. Tremblay said. “If we just give these wards an education and don’t try to change their heart and way of thinking, all we’ll have when we’re done is an educated criminal.”

A Feeling of Helping Out

The best evidence of a rehabilitation payoff lies in Classroom 38, where the peaceful hum of sewing machines blends with the chirping of Hatfield’s two cockatiels. Voices are low, words are few. The youths are intent on their work.

In one corner, Kentare Garrett, 19, and Carlos Stewart, 18, both of San Francisco, crochet side by side, making blankets of purple and rainbow-colored yarn. Across the room, Hatfield’s two pioneering students--Uribe and Jose Sanchez--are stitching patterns on baby quilts.

Sanchez, 20, of San Jose, is serving time for assault. A former gang member, he said he was “real doubtful about this program” in the beginning, because “I just couldn’t picture myself crocheting.”

But Sanchez was a premature baby himself, and he recalled that his mother told him “she had trouble finding clothes for me, because I was so small--small enough to fit into a shoe box! So when I think about those tiny babies, I like the idea I’m helping them out.”

Uribe is motivated by another force--his daughter, who will turn 2 on Aug. 26. Uribe, a smiling teenager with tattoos snaking up his arms, got in trouble--assault with intent to commit great bodily injury--right around the time his child was born.

“I haven’t been there for her, so this is a chance for me to do something for somebody else’s kids,” Uribe said. “This is a positive thing. If I weren’t here, I’d just be sitting in the [residential hall] doing nothing.”

Armando Avelar, 18, views helping premature infants as a way to atone for his days of dealing drugs in Long Beach, his hometown. He has seen pictures of infants born to drug-addicted mothers, “and I feel a little guilty about that.”

Preston, an hour’s drive southeast of Sacramento, is one of the Youth Authority’s more secure facilities, a place for older wards and those who have not fared well at other institutions. Trevino, a South San Francisco resident, was transferred to Preston from a lower-security facility because of discipline problems, and says Preston’s rules are stricter and privileges few.

For that reason, Hatfield’s sewing program is treasured by those permitted to take part. Initial fears that the crochet hooks, knitting needles and scissors might disappear from class, only to turn up later as weapons, have not materialized.

The youths’ handiwork is sent to several Sacramento hospitals with nurseries for premature infants. At one, UC Davis Medical Center, nurse Jeanette Harrison said the personalized clothes help parents cope with the stress of having a pre-term child struggling to stay alive.

“The special care nursery is a foreign, overwhelming environment for parents, with lots of tubes and technology,” Harrison said. “When parents can see their son or daughter in hand-knitted booties or quilts, instead of an institutional hospital T-shirt, it helps a lot.”

Harrison is one of several grateful nurses who have sent thank you notes to the youths, along with snapshots of preemies wearing clothes they have sewn. Such pictures--collected in binders and labeled with phrases such as “Made by Tonio” or “Made by Eric”--are a source of great pride for the wards, a permanent recognition of their work.

It is Hatfield’s hope that such feedback--combined with the sense of accomplishment the youths feel over a tricky double-stitch or a nightgown hem neatly sewn--will, in some small way, help set them on a new course in their lives.

“Sewing may seem like a small thing, but I believe success breeds success,” she said recently, as the youths set down their knitting needles and filed from class under the watchful eye of a guard. “At least I hope it will.”