Mary’s Journey

Oh Lato is I'm Gini Montaro. I'm senior producer for Futuro Studios and also moonlight occasionally for a Latino USA. I've been with the company since twenty sixteen, and I actually started as our company's engineer. I love all things audio and sound design, which means when I go to write stories, I'm always thinking about fun ways to play with effects and music, because how you hear a story makes a difference. The newsroom at Futuru was a breath of fresh air from the news spaces that I was

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The calls can come at any time of the day, multiple times a day. Sometimes it's early in the morning when Mary Strata is getting ready for her administrative job with the County of Los Angeles. Oftentimes it's during her lunch break, when she's eating alone in the car looking for some privacy. And usually it's in the evenings as well, while she's at home in Pomona, a suburb east of Los Angeles, where she lives with her sister and her dog, Coco, a nervous wife poodle.

When the phone rings, everything stops for Mary.

You have a prepaid call from an inmate at the Honatory Town of and Correctional Facility, San Diego, California.

It's her husband, Robert, calling from prison.

Mary has been picking up his phone calls and paying for them for forty years.

And recorded hello, Hello, Hi baby good.

Even though she's not the one who's incarcerated, prison rules Mary's life too. She lives on her husband's schedule, and so do thousands of other women in the United States whose partners are in prison.

From vudrou Media and pr X It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Nohosa Today. Mary's Journey an intimate look at the financial and emotional burden that women carry when they have a loved one in prison. One in four women one in four in the United States have a family member in prison, and those carrying this financial and emotional weight are disproportionately women who are not white. While over ninety

Here's Martha with our story.

Oh, good morning, how are you Macarty? That's fine.

You wouldn't tell how early in the morning it is.

By the way Mary Estrada looks, she has a perfect blowout with some waves framing her round, delicately made up face.

It is cold, yeah, very cold.

I can hardly see her dark eyes under the extra large eyelash extensions.

So today is Sunday. It is six forty one in the morning. We're in Pomona, California, leaving my house to go visit my husband in San Diego and R. J. Donovan prison.

Mary is fifty seven years old and she's been with Robert Estrada since they were teenagers. She started visiting her husband in prison some forty years ago. Robert has been in and out of prison all of his adult life. This is what most weekends look like for Mary. On Saturdays, she gets on a video call with Robert. On Sundays, she drives one hundred and thirty five miles each way to see him in prison.

So this is my ritual when I go see my husband. Sack out to get about three o'clock in the morning, just to make sure I get there on time. If there's no traffic. Because I'm drive fast, I get there about I would say an hour and twenty minutes. But if I go with the speed limit, I'll get there in two hours. So today I'll go with the speed limit.

Robert is currently being held at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, where he's serving a forty two year sentence involving the use of a gun during a robbery and voluntary manslaughter. We won't get into details about his case because that's not what this story is about. It isn't about the harsh experience of being incarcerated either, and we're not trying to undermine their reality or.

Compare with that of their partners outside.

Robert has served eleven years so far, and he's expected to stay in prison until at least twenty thirty seven. Mary is wearing what she calls her prison clothes. Dress code is very strict for prison visitors. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or CDCR, advises to dress conservatively and modestly, which means no short skirts, no tight pants,

On her chest hangs a silver crucifix.

Her nails are extra long and Barbie pink with glitter butterflies on her ring fingers.

Nails look great.

Oh thank you. I took them off for like about two weeks and in type and I told my husband. She said, oh, you're working on a car again. He caused my hands. My candleccounts when I don't have nails on. But yeah, I have to have my nails on. I think I'm a diva. I mean, you can't lose yourself to this life. It's like you still have to get up and get ready. I mean, I was brought up that way. You'll never catch me walking out of my house not made up. It's like I have to have

Tell me about your tachoo.

So I have a tattoo on my chest with his name.

It's a better Hawaiian flowers on the left side of her chest with Robert's name on top.

All in black.

Ink, and there's a story behind that. I had covered his name because we had broken up for a little bit, and then we had gotten back together and he said, why did you cover my name? Put it back on, and I said, no, I'm not a cow. I don't need to be branded. And then he said, no, to have my name by your heart means a lot. So I put his name back by my heart. Yeah. My husband too. He has my name all over his body and he has a couple of portraits of me.

Mary says she wants to cover the tattoo on her chest again and have Robert's name next to her color bone on the right side.

But I'm not going to get it big because because of work, I work with the public.

After many years working as an accountant for private companies, Mary recently started working for the County of Los Angeles.

She hasn't told her colleagues that Robert is in prison yet.

For Mary, being able to take care of Robert was always above any job requirement.

I've always told them during my interviews, I need to take phone calls when it comes in. There's no way can I miss those phone calls. And I have to take certain days off and if you guys can't meet that, please let me know now, and I won't take the job.

Mary says she turned down at least two jobs for that reason already. From the se Justice Group, a nonprofit supporting women with incarcerated loved ones, found that nearly half of the women who are taking care of someone in prison changed their personal plans and careers to support their loved ones needs. Many of them end up working more hours or switching jobs so that they can pick up their calls or visit them often.

I remember the first time that I went to go visit them because I've never been with anybody in prison, and I was nervous because I didn't know what to expect of it. But once I got through the process and I was in there with him, it was just like him and I. I was so happy to see him. I got to hold his hands, we got to hug, and we ate together there. The leaving part was hard for me for a long while because I would leave

So tell me what are we looking at?

So we're looking at my photo album on the glass table in Pomona where Mary lives with her sister and her dog.

There are three fat photo albums.

This was like one of his first terms, so this was I want to say, this was falsome. This picture.

Falsom is a prison in northern California, the first one Robert was incarcerated in as an adult. In the photo, both Robert and Mary are in their early twenties posing in front of a metal fence. Mary says. Robert has been held in all of California's state prisons except for Valley State Prison in Chowchilla. Falsam is the most beautiful one, Mary says, because it looks like a castle.

This is their first visit in a long time, so I was kind of nervous, but then I was in. I was just happy to see him. Your curly hair, my curly hair that's in the eighties, my big hair.

And these are pictures YouTube.

In the prison. Yes, and the visits, Oh my god, much so many.

There are hundreds of photos in them and they all look similar. Mary and Robert in a half hag looking at the camera and smiling, all with a prison in the background.

He's been in and out of prison all his life. I don't even recall him being home for two months.

Mary was born in the Philippines, but she grew up in Los Angeles. She went to high school with Robert's sister. Robert is two years younger than Mary. They were both teenagers when they started dating, but they would break up and get back together often.

I was a troubled child, rebellious. I didn't complete high school. I was molested, and it just took a lot out of me.

Mary started drinking when she was twelve years old. At the same age, a family member introduced her to drugs. She smoked PCP or angel dust. She also did cocaine, acid snorted heroin. She spent two nights in jail for the first time at the age of eighteen for stealing clothes at them all, I think.

With the drugs, I just buried my pain in there, and every time I thought of my childhood, it just, you know, it ripped me apart. And it still does.

Robert's childhood wasn't easy either.

He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, a majority Latino area. His mother is Mexican, his father is Italian Mexican.

His mother, she had custody of him, but she wasn't nurturing. His father introduced him to drugs at the age of ten. So my husband was like a throwaway kid, and he just he grew up in the streets just doing drugs. Everybody could tell me, why aren't you with him, He's bad news. Leave him. I didn't see that in him. I saw a kind gentleman.

Robert joined a gang, he started selling drugs, doing carjackings, robberies. When he was eighteen, he went to prison for the first time as an adult. He ended up in solitary confinement for about a week, so they couldn't talk, and Mary missed him. She says that's the moment she realized she was in love with him.

I never not had a boyfriend, and with him, it was just so different. There was a connection that I can't even explain. It's like this guy took my heart. I knew that I was going to be with him for the rest of my life. Whether he was out here or in there.

Mary started spending most of her weekends as an adult visiting Robert in prison. She would go wherever he was being held, like Sacramento, which was a nine hour drive for Mary.

What would your family or your friend's say.

That I was stupid for doing this journey for visiting him. They said that I could do better. But he can't control what your heart feilds, and this is who my heart wanted.

Mary's family would organize trips every once in a while to Hawaii to Memphis to visit Graceland Elvis's house, but Mary refused to join them.

Because I didn't want to leave my husband behind. He can't go, So if he can't go, then why am I going to go. I'm not gonna have fun. I'm just gonna think about him. So I'd rather be here with him where I could visit him. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Mary was working three jobs at the time, and she would juggle her schedules around so that she could leave early.

It was always on his schedule. It was about him. And you know what, ninety nine percent of the prison community with the wives and the girlfriends are the same way. We have to get those phone calls, we have to get those appointments, we have to see them.

Flipping through the albums, I see a photo where Mary and Robert are kissing.

Oh that one. Yeah, that's when kissing was allowed and now they don't allow it. It's not here's one of us. Here's one of us making out. Oh who uses that word? God? It was so long. This isn't in nineteen ninety two, November ninety two. That's his writing, his nice penmanship. This one. I was pregnant.

Mary had her daughter, Samantha, at twenty five years old, and she gave birth on her own. California is one of only four states that still allow conjugal visits. For Samantha, growing up while her dad was in prison was tough. All she remembers is going to visit him.

There, she because you stole my childhood away from me, and I felt bad. I felt bad. She didn't have a relationship with her dad for a long time. She hated him. She wouldn't speak to him because of what he's put me through.

The year nineteen ninety six was a turning point for Mary. She spent four months in jail on drug charges, Mary felt the only way she could work on herself and get sober was to leave Robert, who was still using drugs.

They were apart for.

Ten years, then in two thousand and six, she visited him in prison and decided to get back together. Things got better over time with Samantha as well. She has three children, and Mary says they visit Robert in prison when they're in California.

Everybody tells me, it's like you put your life on hold and it's still on hold. When are you gonna live? But this is living for me. I can't see my life without him. Speak of the devil.

While I'm talking to Mary in her home, she gets one of those phone calls that puts everything on hold.

Hello, you have a prepaid call from Robert.

Robert and Mary chat about the problems with the food sold by the prison cafe. Families could only buy their fresh foods for their overnight visits also known as family visits from one bender.

I'm taking great.

He married team tap with several other women to complain about the food vender. They say he was selling them rotten and expired food. They also point out that his prices are higher than at regular source. Yeah, Robert tells Mary that the news about the food complaints have spread inside Donovan as well.

Okay good.

Mary is the one leading this movement, as she calls it. Advocacy is a big part of Mary's life. She manages several Facebook groups for families of the incarcerated in California, and two of them are dedicated to R. J. Donovan, the San Diego prison. Mary says there are more than three hundred and thirty people in the Donovan group and they're allway.

That has to change as well, because the food is rotten in there, and then like when you guys have power outages, those machines go down, so all that melted ice cream is still sitting there, and then we're purchasing it. Why do you think I never eat the ice cream? I tell you stop eating it.

Mary created a food committee with six other women from her Facebook group. They reached out to the Department of Corrections and other agencies to complain about the vendor and ask if he was authorized to sell fresh food to families, among other issues. Mary wants the men inside Donovan to file a complaint on their end as.

Well, but I don't think well.

I need that started Babe.

I know.

It's harder for the men to complain. They're afraid of retiliation.

I can call it the health department and have them look at all that unit and does shut it down. And the only reason why I don't it's because we want our family visits.

It's not the first time Mary's being vocal about the problems at Donovan. She's organized protests in front of the prison and talked to the media about Donovan's mismanagement during the pandemic. She has served as a family representative at the prison, and she speaks regularly. We see the headquarters and all of that affects Robert too, But Robert is very proud of Mary and her advocacy for the families.

And I'm sorry because I know that this also puts you in a position. I'm not trying to get anybody in trouble. I just want what's right.

I had six.

I love you all right, Yeah, I'm fine.

Things. It's so dark at the picture.

Shut up with you in your stupid picture.

I know, I think.

I love you.

I love you.

God, bless you. Okay, bye, honey, God. I hate that prison always something. I'm sorry. I just get so passionate about it. You can call it puppy love. But he's my true love. He's my best friend. Even though he's in there, I can depend on him for anything. He's my backbone, he really is. I'm gonna get teary eyed.

Coming up on Latin the USA, we continue our journey with Mary to RJ. Donovan Correctional Facility, and along the way we meet another woman who's learning the ropes of being married to someone in prison.

Stay with us, mayes.

Hi.

I'm Nando Villa, host of Shoot the Messenger. I want to congratulate Latino USA on thirty years of great journalism. Over the past three decades, Latino USA has done an amazing job highlighting voices and stories that go unseen. The heart, creativity and empathy that the Latino USA team brings to their journalism is inspiring. On top of that, Mariaokosa's presence has been so important for journalists of color everywhere, finding their voice and place in audio from Shoot the Messenger

Hey, we're back before the break. We began our journey to accompany Mary Estrada in one of her visits to R. Jay Donovan. That's the prison in San Diego where her husband Robert is being held. Mary's been visiting and taking care of Robert in prison for forty years. Latino USA Senior producer Marta Martinez is back in the car with Mary, and we're going to join them.

Now, I hate driving. It takes a toll, but'd say we're not even halfways there. We're not even a quarter's ways there.

The sun is getting higher in the sky and Mary protects her eyes with the car's sunbiser. She doesn't wear sunglasses. The freeway is not busy, and we speed along the yellow hills, the suburban where houses and empty parking lots of southern California.

What do you do usually when because you do this most of the time, you do it alone.

Yeah, right, now I would have my music. I'm just singing, and then there's I go through like different spurts of music. It's weird because I'll start off with mellow music, and then I'll go into like dancing music, and then I'll go back to love songs, and then I start crying. And by the time I get to my Visitseck, my eyes are puffy from crying. But the drive, to me, it's not that long anymore because I'm so used to it. But there's other people that drive far, like Pelican Bay.

Next to her car seat.

Mary has a tiny plastic purse full of meds and doctor's notes. One of those notes, for example, states that she needs a special diet which allows her to bring her own food for family visits. Several women from Mary's Facebook group have doctor's notes too.

How cones of heart failure. Six seven months ago, I went to go visit him and I felt really off. So when I got to my visit, my husband was worried because I kept dozing off. Then I ended up my visit earlier, but I couldn't even drive out, so when I went to the doctor, it showed that I had a mild heart attack.

Whow Having a loved one in prison damages women's emotional and physical health. According to a study by the sy Justice Group, more than ninety percent of the women whose partners are incarcerated reported feeling anxiety, depression, migraines, insomnia, fatigue, and all of that can lead to more serious conditions in the long term too.

And there's been times where I was hospitalized and because I didn't want to miss my visit, I would check myself out of the hospital just to make my visit. But I actually ended up screwing myself because don't ever mess with your health. You can't.

Between the pandemic and Mary's health issues, she started cutting down on her weekend visits to San Diego for a while.

And my husband he had to sit down and really talk to me because he thought I had a boyfriend. It's like oh no, and he was just like, you need to come and see me, because when I don't see you, I feel empty and I don't feel whole.

Mary says, Robert gets depressed and he won't leave his cell. Dealing with the realities of prison takes a toll on him too. He says he often witnesses abuse fights even that, especially during COVID and without visits or phone calls.

It's even harder.

We're all that they have.

And if Robert is Mary's backbone, Mary is even more so for Robert. She's his biggest support, both emotionally and financially.

And I tell everybody, this journey is not easy. Evaluate or reevaluate your lives before you do this journey, because there is no going back. It's time consuming, it's expensive.

Mary says she makes seventy thousand dollars a year. It took her years to get out of debt keeping up with the costs of supporting Robert. A third of families who have a loved one in prison go into debt when they support them financially. According to our report of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit group that focuses on organizing black brown and low income people.

He goes full store. It's two forty a month.

Every month, Mary puts two hundred and forty dollars in Robert's commissary account. He can buy additional food like soups, tortillas, packaged meat, twinkies, and hygiene products. Mary says food serve that the prison is not enough and it's often unhealthy. No fresh fruits or vegetables, sometimes even expired or rotten, so many incarcerated people rely on commissary food for their diets.

I buy his quarterly packages.

Families can send care packages whenever they want. They can only do that every three months, but there's a catch. These packages can only be bought through third party vendors authorized by the prison. Through them, families are allowed to buy essentials like pre good foods and hygien products, but

And four hundred dollars on each quarterly package.

And then you have to pay for the phone calls. Before it was just straight collect calls, so when he was in County jail, a fifteen minute phone call would be like almost twenty five dollars for me.

Phone calls are one of the biggest money drains for families in California. At the start of twenty twenty three, phone calls became free of charge for people incarcerated in state prisons. Before then, families were paying an estimated sixty eight million.

A year in prison phone calls.

California is only one of four states in the country which have made state prison calls free. The Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research group, estimated that families across the US spent and nearly three billion dollars yes with a Bee every year in commissary.

Fees and phone calls.

And then, of course Mary has to pay for the gas to go visit Robert every weekend, and the food she'll get from the vending machine there because they aren't allowed to bring their own food.

A Hamburger, for example, is eight dollars, So.

On an average a month, I would spend maybe like a little over fifteen hundred plus I have to see what I have here, so it's been hard.

Mary lives with her sister.

They own the house in Pomona, so she doesn't have to pay rent, but she still has to pay for her own expenses, her car, her dog, all of that, making seventy thousand dollars a year. For a long time, Mary also took care of their daughter, Samantha. Seventy percent of women who have incarcerated loved ones are the only breadwinners in their families.

And there were times where I couldn't go because I didn't have any money, and he would just tell me, I don't have to eat, just come and see me because I want to see you.

So we would do that if that wasn't enough.

In the majority of cases, it's women who end up paying for their loved ones restitution.

Restitution is no joke.

Restitution is the money convicted people have to pay back for the damage they caused, both to the victims and to the state. The way Callifornia collects that money is that they take fifty percent of the money family's food in the incarcerated person's account like the money they use for the prison store or commissary.

So I would have to put five hundred dollars every three weeks for him to get full store. So a lot of the families couldn't afford that. That's highway robbery. It took me, I want to say, six years to pay off his restitution.

Robert's restitution was ten thousand dollars. The average dead families end up with for court related fines and fees is close to fourteen thousand dollars. Mary would often max out her credit cards without telling Robert.

But all the money that I put into my husband from the age of eighteen till now, I'd be a multi millionaire. I mean that's like hundreds and thousands of dollars that I've spent. I could be driving a freaking Mercedes and I'm driving a hund Die. They're a liability because they're money. We have to pay for them. We had to pay to talk to them, we had to pay to see them, we had to pay to feed them, We have to pay to have these family visits.

Family visits are another expensive piece of the relationship puzzle, but also one of the most coveted because it's the only time spouses can be together with their family members for two days and nights without supervision. Mary says she usually spends more than five hundred dollars on a family visit, the food, the gas, and she has them every three months or so. But for some women in her Facebook group,

I told my husband and excuse my friend, I said, babe, you're a freaking porn star. And he's all, why I have to pay you to screw you? I said, that's one expensive ass, but it's the truth. I said, I've never had to pay for sex, and that's what we're doing. Us families are paying for sex. But what are we going to do? Because we want to be there and the families will pay that price.

Less than an hour after starting our drive south, we take an exit into another suburban area.

We're also on the way to pick up my carpooler who is also going to RG Donovan. Her name is Yvette.

Yvette Carrion is also a member of Mary's Facebook group and one of the youngest wives in it.

She's thirty five years old.

So I'm getting off the acted to pick up my friend because I'm going to meet her at the walmart A life of a prison wife.

It's not even seven thirty am. The parking lot feels lonely.

We actually got her in good timing.

Yeah, that was fast.

A few minutes later, Yvette shows up by the passenger window.

Here she is, hi, Vett, Sorry, did I get her faster? No, you've got her. I'm okay, sitting like ninety. Don't we do a ninety You might get into an accident.

Yvette is petite with a square face and light brown, very straight hair. Her nails are long and made up as well, white triangles framing a summit on top of each finger. She's a second generation Latina. Her family is from the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

Okay, so I'm trying this new grown day Mary, So you know just in case.

Okay, well it's wireless, but it has the plastic clips on the straps.

Yes, will you set off teller?

No, A lot of girls wear them home.

Yeah, as soon as she gets in the car. This is the first thing Yvette asks Mary about her Brakay.

That dress code at the prison is it's crazy. You have to be with their guidelines, like you can't wear regular bra no, because of the wires, yep, and the buckles.

I didn't know that.

I hadn't realized how intimately prison rules these women's lives down to their underwear.

They just try their hardest to deter you from coming to visit, and they never make it easy. Never.

I used to come all the visiting days every weekend, but I stop doing that just because, like Mary says, they make it to where you don't want to come anymore. So, like we can't stand to walk on eggshells about everything when we come.

In here, Yvette says.

The weekend before, she waited almost two hours for her husband to get into the visiting room. She says guards made him change his clothes three times, and they wouldn't explain why. That's one of the things that makes Yvette mad that everything feels arbitrary. They're at the mercy of the correction officer who's in charge that day.

It's still grading you to say, I feel like they treat us the way like they treat them. They don't view us any differently. We're like inmates on time out.

We reached out to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation about this. In a statement, they said that they recommend visitors to arrive at least one hour early for processing. That's when anyone who enters the facility is searched for potential contraband. Prison officials say it is a necessary step to ensure the safety of incarcerated individuals and that they follow the same rules at each prison.

How did you beat Mary?

Do you remember the first I see Mary? She was pissed off sitting in that lobby, and I was just like what I was looking at her?

I was like, oh, dang, she really is me. And then I finally introduced.

Myself to her, and then we just started talking more and then carpulling together. I appreciate Mary because I would be so lost with this whole journey, because there's a lot of things we don't know, not even tell my husband sometimes like like, I'm gonna ask Mary, and he's like, you always ask Mary.

I'm like, well, yeah, she knows a lot. I'm like new to all this.

Yvette and Jonathan went to high school together, but back then they were just friends. Jonathan went to prison when he was eighteen. He's been in there for twenty years. Yvette had four children with another partner, then separated. She reconnected with Jonathan and they started talking on the phone more and more often. Four years ago, she started visiting him in prison.

I never came to visit anyone in prison. I ended up coming with him, and then I saw one of my husband and we got married.

Jonathan got married in March twenty twenty, right before COVID lockdowns were put in place. They weren't allowed to take any photos of their wedding ceremony because of COVID restrictions, and because of the pandemic.

They didn't have a conjugal visit until a year later.

By the time we met, ived says, they had had about three family visits since they got married.

Every few months we get to spend a few nights together. So it's not too bad because right now I'm still working on myself. So it works for me because Monday through Friday, I'm doing what I need to do at home, at work with my kids, and the weekends I see him and then it's back to my reality. So it's easier because, let's be honest, like having a husband or a boyfriend in general is like having another kid to take care of sometimes.

Yvet says she spends close to one thousand dollars a month to support Jonathan. She's also a full time mom four children under the age of nineteen, and she's finishing her bachelor's degree in social work. She recently started a new job as a social worker working with children.

That's one thing, he said.

He never wants to get in the way of my career, and he loves that I care about kids the way I do, he says, that's one thing he admires about me.

If it hasn't told many of her colleagues that her husband is in prison, not everyone.

Knows, because right when I started, I felt like I was judged right away just by the way I look my makeup.

Ivette has several tattoos on her arms and her chest. On the base of her right thumb, there's a rose and growing from its petals up to her knuckles.

It says Jonathan, I.

Don't want them to feel like me be married to him is going to get in the way of my job because I see how they talk about parents that are incarcerated. It's like they just look down on them.

If it actually sees her experience as something that makes her better at her job because she can see both sides in a situation.

Do you feel like you have a double life.

It is a double life. We have this life and then we have our outside life, and especially with work. You don't want to bring that out because you don't know what they're gonna say or think. It's like a big secret. Like my neighbors. She didn't even know my husband was incarcerated. So I told her like last month. She goes, how can I never take your husband? And said, because he's in jail. She said what I said, Oh, yeah, he's incarcerated. She goes, oh, I said, why is there

She has a very strong personality.

I could be very strong minded too, So I think that's why we get along as well, because other people are like very passive.

Like, oh my god, just leave it alone.

And no, you can't always leave things alone because then the thing's gonna change and people are gonna continue to get away with walking.

All over people. Yeah, people shouldn't be so cruel and people. They need to stop labeling others, just like with us, because we're with men incarcerated. That doesn't make us a loser. We have careers, We have a life out here. And if the correctional officers they look at us like you first come, like you don't know any better. We're not educated and just know you guys are wrong. We are educated and I'm happy with what I have. I may not make a lot of money, but I've accomplished a lot.

Mary isn't afraid to face a giant institution like the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or CDCR. There are more than one hundred thousand people incarcerated in California, the highest number in the country after Texas.

She will tell them how it is, and they don't even know what to say because they know she's right, and they know.

She knows her rights there more than anyone, and she just won't allow it.

So you're a badass.

No, I'm a softie. I just I believe in what's fair is fair, and you're not gonna mistreat me. And I know the law too because my dad was a police officer, and plus because I went to jail, I went to juvenile so I know all that. You can't tell me I'm wrong when I'm actually right.

CDCR has a budget of more than fourteen billion dollars taxpayer dollars, and it employs more than sixty thousand people.

They have so many restrictions for the families, and they're made up restrictions and they think that they can get away with it. Like with these women, I push them. I always though I'm exercise or amendment rights. If you're not sure of it, look it up. Don't let them deter you from doing what you think is right. That's what advocacy is. If you feel that they're in the wrong, call them out on it. But before you call them out on it, make sure you have proof, you have facts.

And that's Mary for a lot of us, Thank you.

It is everyone knows right if we really can't find the answer even if we research were Black asks Mary ask Mary, And I know sometimes she pig gets.

Overwhelmed with everyone bugging her, but.

We appreciate her.

Mary isn't only on call for Robert.

She spends more than three hours a day managing Facebook groups for families of the incarcerated, answering the questions, text messages, impromptu calls day and night. She sits in the car for hours during committee meetings while driving or just parked in her driveway when the meetings extend way beyond their scheduled end.

I just want to help people that need the help because I was in their shoes before and I didn't know what to do. And if it wasn't for the women that I hung out with, and they were lifer women, they taught me everything. And they've always told me, regardless of who you are, you stay tued to yourself, don't ever buckle down. If you believe it's right, then use down for it. And that's what I've done.

Because sometimes your regular friends or family, they don't really underst so it's hard to talk to them when you're going through something and you need to because a lot of times, you're just going to be judgmental and say negative things that you don't really want to hear. So it's helpful to have a friend that's another prison wife because they understand what you're going through.

Yvette is also part of the food committee that Mary created from her Facebook group. Remember the complaints the women had about the vendor who they say was selling them rotten food for their family visits and had no option but to buy from him. It's been over a month at this point since they started mobilizing around it.

We got the FDA and the Health Department and other agencies involved to get his business license and to find out that he's not even the owner. That another gentleman is an owner of Donovan Cafe. But they were under investigation because of all the allegations that the families made.

The women flagged over thirty complaints that families had been posting in the Facebook group over the last year and a half and sent them to CDCR. The women also called the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration and found out that the vendor didn't have a seller's permit.

Now he can't sell to the families anymore because he doesn't have a seller's permit and he's only contracted to sell to the staff.

We've tried to figure out who's responsible for vetting and approving the food vendor, but it's complicated. There are several state agencies and intermediaries involved. In this case, it was the Department of Rehabilitation, which is different from the Department of Corrections, who hired the food vendor to run Donovan's cafe.

That state agencies finally took action.

So this is the exit to get off to go to the prison.

On the left side of the freeway. There are two big Amazon warehouses behind them. Some impressive dark green mountains contrasts with the dry plains were driving on.

Also, it's super close to the border.

Oh yeah, Donovan is literally an exit away from the border.

A group of concrete cubes emerges on the yellow plane, all circled with bart wire. They're all two stories high, their windows long and unnecessarily narrow, like slacks on a wood floor.

It just seems like I've been driving all day.

Two hours after leaving Pomona, we have arrived at RJ. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. We're inside the car approaching the entrance cabin where a guard is standing. Recording isn't allowed on the premises.

You had to put your microphone only. Yeah, this is yard.

Coming up on Latino USA. We find out how Merry and Yvette's visits with their husbands went, and during that visit, women get some unexpected news from the prison. Stay with us, not say bye, yes, hey, we're back. Before the break, we were in the car driving with Mary Estrada and Yvette Carrion on their way to RJ. Donovan. That's the

The castle of old feeling concrete cubes is not a welcoming place.

Everything is gray and covered in barbed wire.

In front of the big concrete cubes, in the middle of the bear and sand, there's another rectangular structure. This one has only one floor and its gable roof makes it feel a little bit more like a home, if.

That's possible in the middle of so much barbed wire.

These smaller houses have two regular windows and two doors. That's where the family visits take place. Both Mary and Vette will be spending two days each inside one of these concrete rectangles next month. It's almost nine am when we pass by the entrance. Five women and one child are lined up waiting to get in for their visits. Donovan didn't allow me to go inside the prison because I wasn't an approved visitor and recording audio isn't allowed inside the prison anyway, So I waited for Mary and

Yeah, like I got it.

That'll stop.

Yeah, well, orange juice, I've filled one of.

Beverages since the previous vendor can't sell food to families anymore because the women's complaints revealed that he didn't have a permit. Now Donovan has come up with a new menu, a very limited one.

Or they had like frozen baged chicken tenders and stuff like that.

The new menu only has five items families can purchase for their two days days. Bananas a twenty five cents apiece, apples at fifty cents each, greenmel peppers at fifty cents apiece, bag salad for five dollars, and eggs six dollars for a dozen. That's all the fresh food families can eat for two days. According to cdcr's Operations Manual, each facility must provide at least five breakfast, five lunch, and five dinner and trees, as well as bottled water, milk, and soda.

But we need to sit down with Donovan to discuss the prices and also the selections. And we can't throw out a lot of stuff out there because they're going to reject it.

It's clear who the leader is.

Mary jokes about how much officers that Donovan love her.

I love you because you're.

Like, oh cut it out. Stop. Well, I'm glad that you guys were working while we weren't visiting.

You guys are busy all the time.

It never ends.

We park out a Mexican restaurant and the women discuss their plan for a few more minutes.

But it's past two pm and we're all hungry.

Can we call you guys back in about an hour and a half because we're going to eat. I guess you're trying to get ready enjoying AH.

The women are very upset about the new food menu and how limited it is. Mary worries about the families who don't have doctor's notes like she does, and who now might have fewer fresh food options than they did before. This is an unexpected consequence of their advocacy, but Mary still thinks they did the right thing by exposing the vendor. They've been fighting for what they think is right to be treated with dignity, and now maybe some families will

So tell me Mary how Little Visico this morning was hard and processing because they delayed me forty minutes. But other than that, after I got to the visiting yard, it was good. After seeing my husband, I always enjoyed my visits with him when he's behaving, and I got sick because I really don't like the food there, so my sugar was dropping, so I had to eat chocolate to bring it back up. But other than that, it

Robert had applied for a janitorial job at the prison hospital.

So he was disappointed and kind of hurt with that, but I told him that I was still proud of him for trying. And then we talked about our grandkids and how he wants to see them, so I said in the summer and they'll come, And then we talked about Yvette and her husband and that was about it.

So you bet, can you tell me about how you're visit From.

In the beginning, it was bad because I waited for an hour for him to come out, and then when he did, I was just so upset, so I wasted another like twenty thirty minutes just be mad at him and arguing with him instead of enjoying my visit. So he decided to wait last minute to take a shower, And I think I need to be more understanding because he does really have ocdu when it comes to his hygiene.

Well, not to make foot him, but always tell me he's.

Conceited because he will not come out un ass his clothes or iron and his hair is cut and comb instead of just coming out and joying the visit, he has to make sure he is like picture ready.

I guess I don't know, and that's not what you're care about.

No, but he is even if my shoes are dirty.

He gets mad.

Sometimes I feel like he's just so comfortable now that we're married. Sometimes I just feel like he just doesn't value my effort in my time. Sometimes, like I get it, he cares about his looks and all that, but at the same time, we only get limited hours to be together during visits, so I just feel like they shouldn't be wasted, and I feel like sometimes he just takes that for granted, and I think.

That's pretty selfish today, Yes I did.

I think he's say that I need to be more understanding that he can't control everything, and he's always reminding me that he's in prison and there's rules and they don't get to just do whatever they want when they want. But then he apologized, and then I apologized, and we finished our visit really good, just sitting there and talking about our upcoming family visit.

I'm gonna work on being.

More understanding and patient, because I know sometimes I could be impatient as well.

Well.

It's hard for me to understand these women's unwavering commitment.

I tell them, I don't think a lot of people could do it. They're also very.

Open about their frustrations with their husbands, yet here they are most weekends.

It's a big commitment.

Yeah, it is very good.

So why keep doing that? Why keep coming? Why keep taking care of him?

Because I love him?

Yeah, I'm in love with him, so I don't mind doing it. We can't help we love, and yes, like our loved ones had made mistakes, but people do change, and not everyone in those walls are bad people. They're human, just like us, and everyone makes mistakes.

Mary hents me a photo she took with Robert in the morning during her visit. Robert is in a light blue T shirt and navy blue pants with the letters C DCR in yellow across his right leg. He statooed arm holding Mary's and hers grubbing his shirt.

We took two pictures. He kept the ugly one. I kept the one that I thought was that I looked goods.

Thank you.

You have the same post as like all the said, Yeah, that's those are the only poses we have. I try to do more, and it's just like, should do one of those site by Yeah. He doesn't want to because he's too fat and I'm too fat, And I told him it's okay. We'll look like a double zero.

When she gets home, Mary's gonna place the photo in one of her many albums that is also part of her ritual. Both Mary and Davette are already planning and saving for their family visit next month. They'll be spending two days and two nights inside Donovan Prison, on the other side of the barbed wire. I tell them that in a way, even when they're out here, it's like they're in prison too.

Oh yeah. When I fight with my husband, oh my god, I tell him, you think you're the fucking only one doing this damn journey I said, I'm the one incarcerated with the financial burdens. You have it easy, and he gets all quiet because he knows it's true.

It's Sunday evenings, so traffic is getting heavier on the never ending freeway. Mary decides to take a shortcut and drives through some secondary roads and then about an hour later we arrive at the wall or parking lot to drop off your bed.

See, and your car is still hear you bet and Mary, we gotta like really to protest because yes.

They're anning already. Ye, any bananas and put peper and eggs.

That's hilarious. I was like, oh, be careful fire. See, we left in the dark and we're coming back in the dark. Yeah, that's free.

As the sky turns dark and the traffic gets heavier, the freeway becomes a strip of dancing white and red lights. Mary's face melts into the night as she drives, and then it gets illuminated again by the phone screen hanging below the rear mirror. The faces of three women appear on the screen. It's another impromptu meeting of the food committee.

What menu po sounds like diarrhea, eggs and lettuce.

The conversation makes the long journey back home more palatable. The questions for Mary keep coming, but so do the laughs, and there's also a sense of community. They're not doing this journey alone. Mary has found her calling. Mary says she's very proud of the women in her committee. It's the best committee she's ever had. The women are smart and.

Fearce Virginia, Jen Jasmine, Lisa yve at Wanaka. You know, they're all strong and they believe in the fight, and that's what I need. I can't fight for everybody. They have to fight for themselves and for their loved ones.

At the end of the cul de sac, we finally see Mary's house with its well kept long It's almost seven pm. It's been more than twelve hours since we started this journey.

Oh, it's good to be home. Yeah I made it. Yes, Oh thank god.

Once Mary gets inside, she's going to have to make more calls, answer more messages from her Facebook group, and then hopefully Robert will call to say good night. Luckily, tomorrow is President's Day, so she'll be able to rest a bit, but most weekends she won't be able to do that.

She'll just go straight back to work, back to her other life.

This episode was produced by Marta Martinez. He was edited by Daisy Contreras. It was mixed by Stephanie Lebo and Julia Caruso. Fact checking for this episode by Monica Morales Arcia. Special thanks to Sophia Mihias Pasco, Annie Nissensen and Julieta Martinelli. The Latino USA team includes andrelro Pez Cruzado, Mike Sargent, Victoria Strada, and Renaldo Leanos Junior. We had helped from Lori mar Marquez and raul Perezinojosa, additional engineering support by

Latino USA is made possible in part by Public Welfare Foundation, catalyzing transformative approaches to justice that are community led, restorative, and racially just. California Endowment building a strong state by improving the health of all Californians, and funding for Latino USA is Coverage of a culture of health is made possible in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Hello, Robert and Mary, what I do right now?

Name and number?

Well?

Let me baby, let me too go bye,