THE PRISONER was brought into the Thurston County Jail on Christmas Day 15 years ago. Only 18, she was heavily under the influence of drugs.
 |
“She was really bad on drugs,” Smith recalls. “I found out she had started drinking and doing heroin when she was 14. She had turned to stealing to get the money to support her habit.
She had no diploma, nothing to show for herself.”
Smith monitored her progress as the woman was sent to rehabilitation. “I got to know her grandmother and her mom and dad,” Smith says.
“It took two or three months to get her clean and sober. She later earned her GED and today she is happy, employed and doing well.”
Every year Smith receives a Christmas card from the woman as a reminder of how she helped her turn her life around.
Smith can recall many such stories over the 37 years she has worked at the jail, 23 of them as medical liaison officer. They are stories of inmates who kicked addictions while in custody and of lives that have been changed.
No wonder then that the American Jail Association recently honored her as Jail Supervisor of the Year at a national award ceremony in Sacramento.
“It is great to see one of our union members recognized for the hard work she does,” says Council 2 Staff Representative Brock Logan in the Olympia office.
Smith says she was blown away when she heard that she had received the award, only one of five national awards presented at the ceremony. She has a special word of thanks for her former supervisor, Karen Daniels, who nominated her.
“It was quite an honor,” she says. “But I totally did not expect to receive an award of this magnitude. I like to work in corrections and to make a difference in people’s lives. If they have medical problems or special needs, that’s the part I like to do.”
Smith says inmates are incarcerated for a variety of reasons and are not all bad. “Some of them make mistakes, as we all do. We are all human and it takes a bigger person to try to turn them around.”
For her, the reward is to receive a letter or card of thanks from an inmate, Smith adds, or to see a former prisoner earn a high-school diploma and a college degree.
“Don’t give up on people,” Smith says. “There is good in everybody. Look for it and you will find it. That will be a reward in itself.”
