"When I first got to prison I asked God to please allow me to do something either during my sentence or afterwards that would be for the benefit of someone or something, it did not matter what."
This is me at the prison library, where I went to work for Woody.
When I first got to prison I asked God to please allow me to do something either during my sentence or afterwards that would be for the benefit of someone or something, it did not matter what. I wanted to make this nightmare of an experience into something that I could look back and say, “well, it was horrible but I was able to at least help someone learn Spanish,” for example. Of course God’s timing is perfect, but I did not realize God would put me to work pretty much as soon as I got to prison.
I started working in the garage cutting grass for the summer in July of 2018, and one of the guys who would fix the lawnmowers was this really cool guy my age, although he looked much older, by the name of Woody. Woody was a self-proclaimed redneck and proud of it, as he liked to say. That was actually the attitude by many of the prisoners there, after all, the prison was located at the border of West Virginia and Tennessee. Woody had gotten in legal trouble because of drugs, like the majority of the prisoners there, and he had been addicted to one substance or another. He had no teeth, a salt and pepper gray mullet, and he was tall and skinny. He looked like he could play the part in a Western movie of a fellah by the name of “Slim.” He was the only person I really knew at first and so I asked him if I could sit with him at lunch. Prison can have some crazy issues with people of different races sitting together at lunch. Woody was cool and had no problem, and so we started eating lunch together.
One day during the start of the Fall season, an ambulance came to pick him up, and we were all worried about him. He was well-liked by everyone and when he did not come back for a few days I started thinking the worst. People die in prison every day. I mean, literally people just fall out on any given day never to be seen, that’s just how it goes. Woody came back with terrible news, he had stage 4 terminal lung cancer, he was dying. For the next couple of weeks he was in serious pain and he kept asking to be transferred to a medical facility to be treated but the Bureau of Prisons makes the Department of Motor Vehicles look like the most caring and wonderful place on earth, second only to Disney World. If you are sick in prison, you are screwed!
While sitting at lunch one day, Woody shared with a couple of us that the Bureau of Prisons had detected a growth in his lung when he was first sent to prison. I asked him how did he know and why had he never gotten treated? He said that the doctors at the hospital had gone over his records and had discovered the paperwork, but the less-than-stellar medical staff typical in a prison never followed up on it and they sure as hell were not going to share that information with him now. It took a pissed off outside doctor to reveal to Woody that when he came to prison he had stage 1 lung cancer and had been treatable. When he told me this I was flabbergasted, I was too new in the prison system to have realized that prison administrators and staff really do not give a shit about you as a prisoner, you are just another worthless inmate.
I immediately told Woody that he had to sue! He showed me all of his paperwork and I told him that he had a case, that he had to file a lawsuit. Woody was a country boy who did not even know how to use the copying machine, he looked at me like he was looking into empty space, and I realized then that I had to go to work for him. For the next week I became his paralegal, and went over all of his paperwork, making copies and writing in full detail what was happening to him exactly. I then contacted one of the few attorneys who I could trust with something like this who would not be out for just the money, but for justice for a human being, despite his mistakes in the past. In less than two weeks after that, Woody had a lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons.
Shortly afterwards things started moving quick. Woody was finally transferred to a medical facility around November of that year and in December I got word of some incredible news, he had gotten a compassionate release from the Bureau of Prisons and spent Christmas of 2018 with his family! I was so full of joy that I felt like I was the one who had been allowed to go home. God had answered my prayer, he allowed me to do something for the benefit of another human, it truly was a miracle from prison.
In February of 2019 I received horrible news and I immediately broke down to cry, Woody had died. His body could not fight the cancer anymore. I was both pissed off and upset that a life that could have been saved was gone because of prison negligence and outright corruption for hiding the medical records. However, I at least could hold on to the fact that I was able to help him be with his family one last time during the holidays.
Fast forward to a year and a half later, I received a call now at home from my attorney friend who had been handling Woody’s case. Just in time for the holidays for 2020, a year filled with so much emotion and pain for so many because of the pandemic, I got word of yet another miracle, Woody had won his case against the Bureau of Prisons. His family would receive money during one of the toughest economic times that this country has seen since the Great Depression, all because two complete strangers sat at the same table during lunch in prison.
Deep in my heart I know now that God sent me to that first prison to meet Woody and to help him get home before he died. How could I question God’s plan in my life from that point on, and how can I question his timing when his family will receive a nice settlement in the upcoming year after the crazy year we have had in 2020? I screwed up, I know I did, and there are many lessons that I have learned along the way. The crazy thing is that my prosecutor wanted to send me to prison for six years for what I did. There are violent offenders who do not even get that much time. In the end, my incarceration ended up costing the tax payers more money because of the negligence and corruption of the government in the death of my buddy than my prison sentence alone. As much as I hated going to prison, had I not gone I could not have helped out an entire family. Woody would have been just the next inmate to die in prison. That was the biggest message I got out of this one. Humans can do whatever they want to you out of hatred, malice, personal gratification, or whatever they choose to justify their actions, but if you lead the right path and surrender, God will have the final say. This would be one of the best things I did for another person since stepping down from office, all because two strangers sat together for lunch in prison. #prisonreform #miracles #justice #massincarceration #willcampos #activist
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