Not Again?

At this point I would see T once in a while. I was moving forward, trying to make my foundation a success, and I had other people to help. I loved T. He would always be a part of my life, but I was finding more and more that he needed to learn the hard way. One day T’s girlfriend called to tell me that the FBI had broken into her apartment and had taken T away. She had no idea why. I tried to find out what I could but this was the federal government now, not the county. I didn’t know what happened but it didn’t look good. This time he definitely was staying locked up.

It turns out that when T moved away from the west side to the south side he got himself involved in something new. Not too involved, but involved enough. He’d become entangled with people who were part of a big sting operation and had gotten caught up in it. He was going to have to take the fall for this one. Now he was on house arrest with the county and locked up in a federal prison. T found a lawyer that would assist him with the federal case and asked me if he could continue working for me because it would help him with the case. I told him that if I helped him he had to come to work, enough was enough. If he wanted to spend any time with his daughter, now would be the time to change. I told him, the rest is just noise, it’s time to get working. Of course, by now you know this wasn’t going to happen. I tried and I tried to help him, but he just couldn’t break away from the streets. Once again the judge let him out on house arrest. He sent me a picture of two bands on his legs, one on each foot and said he couldn’t believe this is what he had done to himself. He tried this time. He really did. But I think it was all too much for him to even make sense of. Eventually the county case got dismissed for lack of evidence but he was still in trouble with the federal government and they weren’t backing away. They had evidence and he was going to serve some time. Finally, he made a deal and set up a date to surrender himself. He was going to have to go away to face his crimes. In June of 2021 he surrendered and went to prison. This was hard for me to take. I talked to him almost daily and I missed him, but these are the choices that he had made and I cannot help him. I am here to help people that want to change, not support someone who decides to continue to break the law. There will never be another T. If someone comes along and won’t follow the rules then they can’t stay with my foundation. With T I wanted to see what would happen if I stayed by his side. There is still a chance that he will change and come back better than ever. That is my prayer for him. That he really does see what matters most is himself and his daughter.

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