SET FREE Gigi in front of San Quentin State Prison, where her story had resonance
MARTIN KLIMEKOne day about 35 years ago, I stood in line to enter one of America’s most notorious state prisons: San Quentin in California.
From the front gate, the prison looked like a fortress perched high above San Francisco Bay. Multistory cell blocks were guarded by razor wire and surveillance towers. The prison’s Death Row housed dozens of men condemned to die.
Today the prison has been refashioned as a criminal rehabilitation facility, and there’s a moratorium on the death penalty in California.
Back then, San Quentin housed some of America’s worst criminal offenders. It was a fearsome place. Waiting to go inside, all I could think was, Why on earth am I doing this?
I was a single woman in my late thirties. I volunteered with an addiction recovery organization that sent people into hospitals and prisons to share recovery stories and offer a message of hope.
Seven years sober, I had volunteered to join my organization’s four-person delegation to San Quentin because I lived nearby in
