Woman's compassion for inmates earns CNN's attention

Norfolk resident Carolyn LeCroy looked at Dolly Parks, a New Yorker and mother of two who has been locked up for a decade.

"You ready?" LeCroy asked.

"I'm ready," Parks answered.

She had been waiting eight years to do this, since the last time she had seen her two children.

"Just talk from your heart," LeCroy said.

She stepped out of camera range in a darkened classroom inside the maximum-security Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

The recent videotaping session was one in an effort LeCroy started nine years ago to record messages from Virginia inmates to their children. Some 3,000 messages later, LeCroy has been chosen as one of 10 national finalists for this year's CNN Hero of the Year award, to be announced Thanksgiving night. She will receive $25,000 and will be given another $100,000 if voted the overall winner.

She'll also be feted today at an 11 a.m. rally at Old Dominion University.

LeCroy long ago made a huge mistake in her own life: She allowed a former boyfriend to stash marijuana in her storage unit. He fled. LeCroy, a middle-aged, middle-class professional without even a parking ticket to her name, received a 55-year sentence, with six years to serve, a pronouncement that caused her knees to buckle in court.

She earned parole her first time up, 14 months later, in November 1996.

"Somebody was looking out for me," LeCroy said. "What did I discover? I discovered that there were things I want to change.... I saw things that broke my heart."

Things such as fellow inmates who never heard from their relatives, because of distance and finances and anger. Or children growing up not knowing their imprisoned parents.

LeCroy had entered prison with a background in film and video. She left with a passion to create something good from the bad. She calls it The Messages Project.

She began to record, usually for free, inmates' messages to their children and mailed them to the families.

The lack of relationships - family, community, romantic - is a big reason behind recidivism, LeCroy said.

"That's why the messages are so important," she said. "We know if the bond is kept, it helps the family. I t also helps the offender."

It took some convincing of corrections officials to start, but she has won them over.

Family support "correlates to law-abiding behavior afterward," Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said in an e-mail.

LeCroy now travels to nine prisons across Virginia in a 1992 Toyota Camry with 175,000 miles on the odometer. She uses her own time and largely her own money, supplemented with some donations, and volunteers who include her ex-husband.

As a result, Traylor noted, children see that their parents are OK. Parents encourage their children not to make the same mistakes they did, a positive message that's also therapeutic for the inmates.

LeCroy's day job is running programs on parenting, relationships and substance abuse for the state prison system. She also has provided training in other states and for the federal government.

But she has found her avocation. If she wins the CNN Hero award and its six-figure cash prize, she said, no one would have to pay for a video, and she'd expand the program beyond Virginia "to anywhere and everywhere that would have us." Since her nomination, she has received e-mails of interest from across the country and around the world.

Back in Fluvanna, east of Charlottesville, LeCroy left the classroom and returned with toilet paper she pressed into Parks' hand.

"Hi, Austin and Alura," Parks began, speaking to the lens a few feet in front of her. "Both of you encourage me. I see your report cards, and you both make me so proud."

She joked about her baggy prison denims. She pointed out the classes she was taking to learn how to transcribe Braille.

Later, her voice wavered: "I know I've been away from you for 10 years, and that's a sore point for me.... I love you. I miss you so much, and I hope you get a piece of what your mother wanted to show you."

Eleven minutes after she began, she hugged and thanked LeCroy in the hallway, wiping her eyes.

When LeCroy wore the prison denims, just about every Sunday her two grown sons drove a couple of hours west to the Virginia Correctional Center for Women in Goochland County, waited 45 minutes for their mother to be brought to the visiting room, visited for an hour, and then drove back to Hampton Roads.

They had to see that she was OK, David LeCroy said. Show their support. For Carolyn Le-Croy, it was important that she remained connected to her family and to the free world that she hoped to rejoin soon. She never lost her identity.

Still, LeCroy usually doesn't watch the inmates record their messages. It's too emotional.

She teared up quoting a letter from an inmate: "Thank you for sending me home for the first time in 13 years." She pointed to hair standing up on her arm while relating how some children touch their parents' faces on the screen when they watch. Some parents read books on camera - LeCroy keeps a stash of garage-sale children's books in her trunk, along with holiday tinsel and other props - and some children listen to the videos every night before bed.

"I do it for the kids," said Kevin O'Sullivan, a Messages volunteer for more than 10 years and owner of Dominion Productions in Virginia Beach. "I don't do it for the inmates."

He worked in one of two makeshift studios at the recent Fluvanna shooting. Nothing fancy: camera, chair, a few lights. The DVDs they'd send home would be holiday presents, so Christmas lights were strung up along with snowman and "Rugrats" cartoons, to soften the plain prison walls.

O'Sullivan taped a handwritten sign with a happy face directly beneath his lens: "Your Family," to remind the parents whom they were addressing. He daubed makeup on some. He stressed making the most of the 15 minutes: Let them know how you are, say hi, wish them a merry Christmas.

Lisa Shores of Marion opted for shorter. Her 9-year-old son's a "very busy little man."

"Hey, Greg, how're you doing?" she asked. "I want to tell you I am very proud of your report card. And your handwriting we'll work on."

She read "Little Jackrabbit," holding up each picture to the camera. She's due out in 2016, pending appeal

Lorrena Harris of Franklin began crying before the camera rolled. The empty chair next to her soon filled with crumpled tissues.

"Mom, I'm sorry for all the wrong things I did," she said.

She read "Biscuit Wants To Play" to her 4-year-old daughter, Arionna. With four years left on her sentence, she is desperate for her daughter to remember her.

"It just - it hurts being away from you all. I love you all so much. It would be nice if I could get a letter."

Harris paused, out of words. "Talk to your child some more," O'Sullivan coaxed. Finally, Harris thanked her mother for watching Arionna, and moved to end her session.

Suddenly she brightened, remembering the season: "Oh - merry Christmas!"

Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com