Inmates’ stories aim to help teens choose well

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WALDOBORO – Medomak Valley High School students received a Choice assignment Friday morning.

A clean-cut young man stood before some 120 students seated in the auditorium that day, asking them to guess his age.

Russell Day didn’t look much older than 25.

“I’m 36,” he said, obviously surprising students.

“I’ve been locked up for 20 years,” he added.

Day was one of three inmates serving the last few years of their prison sentences at Bolduc Correctional Facility in Warren who came to the high school to tell their stories.

His crime: murder.

His sentence: 30 years.

The men belong to the Choice Education program at the Bolduc unit, located on Route 97. The program teaches inmates to make good decisions, and they, in turn, talk to youths about how bad choices can affect their lives. The inmates’ only gain for participating is self-satisfaction.

“They really feel that by going out and telling their story they’re contributing to society,” Warden Jeffrey Merrill said recently. “It’s very rewarding for them.”

A group of mostly freshman students, and a few older students in sociology, psychology or health classes, listened intently to the tales the three men told of how alcohol and drugs radically altered their lives.

Prison caseworker David Boynton told the group if they were involved in drugs or alcohol, the inmates were there “to tell you to turn back – it’s not worth the trip.”

Day recalled his childhood as a time when he loved buying penny candy for his siblings. Growing up, he wanted to be a policeman, a firefighter and a doctor. He remembers himself as a giving person. He wants that part of his life back.

What led him down a path of ruin was watching his alcoholic mother beaten by her boyfriends, he said. At 8 years old, he screamed at one man to leave her alone. The man threw him against a wall. A family friend molested him when he was 12.

Day, of the Lewiston-Auburn area, told students he shares these experiences with others because he knows many people are dealing with similar tragedies. He doesn’t want them dealing with their problems the way he did.

As a young boy, he smoked a marijuana joint, he said. “I was actually happy for a change – that became my fix.”

At age 15, “I was in the Maine Youth Center,” he said. “I’ve been locked up ever since,” except for one year.

When a female student asked him why he killed someone, he said it was the abuse, violence and drugs that surrounded his life – “a world of pain and a world of drugs all came clashing together at once.”

The 57-year-old neighbor he stabbed to death was “just an unfortunate victim in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Day said, telling the students he did not know the victim.

Twenty-year-old Dylan Lord of Lubec is serving a three-year prison term for burglary, theft, criminal mischief and criminal trespass. His crimes also stem from alcohol and drug abuse.

“My story’s about progression,” he said.

From freshman weekend drinking parties to smoking pot, prescription drugs and shooting up, substance abuse and addiction ruled his life, he said. “I stole from anyone who would give me the opportunity.”

He missed out on his high school graduation because of his addiction, which he regrets not so much for himself, but for his mother, he said.

“I’m lucky to [still] have my family,” he said. “It’s the only assets I have.”

“I’m one of them hard learners,” habitual offender Michael Carney, 42, said, admitting to nine convictions for operating under the influence. “Drugs and alcohol beat me to a man I didn’t know.”

While serving his 15 years for aggravated OUI, he has worked hard to change his life, he said.

After a night at a Waterville bar mixed with cocaine and pills, he started driving down Route 202 around 8 a.m., he said, noting he could “barely keep his head straight.” He reached for a cigarette on the floor and ended up in a head-on collision.

He recalled the “sickening feeling” when he saw his passenger and friend covered in blood and a person in the other vehicle slumped over a steamy, smoking engine.

What alcohol and drugs had done to his life hit home, he said, when he read the victim impact statements and saw his 70-year-old mother crying in court for her son.

Carney’s biggest mistake, he said, was in not talking to anyone about his problems.