In 1997, Nelson Ivan Serrano walked into Erie Manufacturing and gunned down 4 innocent people. I had never heard the name before nor had I ever heard of these murders. Nelson Ivan Serrano was about to become part of my life. A name I grew to loathe.
October 4, 2006, was a beautiful fall day. Slightly cool even though the Indian Summer sun beat down on my bedroom window, a gentle breeze blew in through the blinds. Exhausted from the stress and lack of sleep I had experienced while at the hospital with my son the previous night, I laid down in bed to take a nap. I turned on the TV and began surfing channels. A weekday off from work was almost as rare occasion for me as was a midday nap. Television viewing in my house usually meant the morning news shows or late night episodes of Law and Order repeats. I've never been a soap opera or game show fan and I quickly surfed through those channels in my attempt to find something interesting to calm my nerves and help me sleep. I clicked past Channel 52 and then back again. Channel 52 was Court TV. A station that aired reality courtroom trials. Something I had never watched before, and have not watched since that day. But this trial interested me. It was the trial for Nelson Ivan Serrano.
On the stand was a young man. I guessed 35 to be his age. Dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit, it was obvious he was an inmate. He was being drilled by a defense attorney named Norgard. The young man had been a cellmate of this Serrano guy and was testifying about what Serrano had told him about these murders. The young man was being held on burglary charges and the defense attorney, Norgard, was attempting to show the jury that the inmate's testimony was a ruse to have his charges reduced or diminished. The first thing that struck me was how eloquent and well spoken this inmate was. An inmate? I thought all inmates were ignorant thugs. I continued to listen as Norgard kept asking the same question in different ways in an attempt to trip the inmate up in his words. The inmate was too smart for him. Every time this defense attorney would ask the same question but in different words, this inmate would answer him with the same answer in different words. I laughed out loud as I watched these two in a match to see which one would trip the other up. The inmate won.
After this testimony was aired a news anchor came on to explain who this inmate was. Leslie Todd Jones. An inmate in the Polk County Correctional Institution in Florida. The news anchor added that the inmate was being held in isolation as a form of protective custody due to his willingness to come forward and testify in the case. I had some experience with inmates. I had volunteered as a Youth Court Counselor with my local Sheriff's department years ago. I had even visited a couple of prisons with youth in a sort of "Scared Straight" program. I quit my work as a Youth Counselor for that very reason. Prisons scarred me. I didn't like having to go in those places. Inmates scarred me even more. I had met a few on my tours with the kids and I had heard them tell their stories to the youth. Prison, wasn't a place for a young woman to visit. Inmates, weren't the kind of men I wanted to have in my list of associates. But on this particular day in early October, my heart swung in a different direction. This well spoken intelligent man had done a great deed coming forward to testify against this mad man. And right now he was alone, in an isolation cell. A scripture came to my mind though I didn't know the exact location in the bible. Something about, "when I was naked you did not clothe me, hungry you did not feed me, thirsty and you gave me no drink, imprisoned and you did not visit me. These things you do for others, you do for me". It was that scripture that led me to my next step. I had to find this inmate, whoever he was, and write him a letter of encouragement. It was my Christian duty. Or so I thought.
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