36, currently imprisoned
In 1995, Victoria was arrested for a murder she was involved in three years earlier, when she was sixteen years old. Although she was a minor at the time of the murder, she was tried as an adult, and was subsequently sentenced to life without parole. Victoria talks about her painful separation from her four-month old son Ethan upon her arrest, and how she tried to cope with this in prison by adopting several of the cottontail rabbits that roam the prison grounds. “I raised one for three years, potty trained and all. I became its mom.” Victoria also describes her relationship with a member of staff, which resulted in an extension of six years on her sentence, and how she overcame her battle with heroin to become an advocate for juvenile offenders.
ARE WE GOING TO TRY HER AS AN ADULT?
I was born in 1975 in Harbor City, which is near Los Angeles. Both of my parents are from Mexico, and they met here when they were teenagers. In Mexico, my mom started working when she was five years old at a place where they make tortillas, so she never really got to be a kid. If she didn’t iron my uncles’ clothes right, they would literally throw her on the floor and kick her. All she knew was, if something didn’t go right, there were beatings. That’s the way my mom was raised, so that’s how she raised me and my five brothers.
When I was around seven years old, I was molested by my uncle. He’d been living with us for a while, and anything I wanted he would get for me, so I loved him. But one Christmas Eve, he climbed into my top bunk and forced me to do it. I didn’t know about sex then. I was so naïve that I didn’t know what a virgin meant. All I knew was the Virgin Mary. I felt so ashamed, and I didn’t want to be around my uncle. I wanted to tell my mom, but I knew I wouldn’t be his favorite niece any more. Finally I just told her, and my uncle ended up leaving.
When I got to high school in 1990, I started rebelling and getting involved with gangs. At the time, my mom said, “One apple has gone bad, the rest are not going to spoil,” and she moved down to Mexico with my five younger brothers. My dad and I stayed so he could work and send money to them.
In ninth grade, I dropped out of school and I ended up meeting this guy who was in my cousins’ gang. I was sixteen, he was eighteen. He became my boyfriend and I ended up getting pregnant by him, but I had a miscarriage.
And then, in 1992, the incident that brought me here happened. I got involved in a murder. I don’t want to talk about what happened out of respect for the victim and her family. But I will say this: I was sixteen at the time. I personally did not use a firearm. I did not take a life. But my boyfriend did.
When it happened, my dad said, “You’re going to get killed yourself,” and he sent me to Guadalajara. I fell in love with the ranch life there. People are so different, so polite, and you don’t have to worry about going outside and being robbed.
Eventually I met a man. He played guitar in a band and he was very handsome. He was a very good man. We were in love, and then I got pregnant. I was eighteen at the time, and he was a little older. We lived in Guadalajara together, but when I was six months pregnant, I said, “I’d better go back to the States and have the baby over there, just to make sure everything is okay,” and he agreed.
I went first, and my parents paid for a coyote1 to bring my boyfriend over to the States, and we got married in 1994. My husband worked construction with my dad, and I ended up getting a job at Price Club; I was one of those people who demonstrates the food at lunchtime. My son Ethan was only four months old when I got arrested in 1995. It was for the murder my old boyfriend had committed three years before.
I went to Juvenile Hall. The people there were very, very nice, but I was so traumatized being separated from Ethan, who was still breastfeeding at the time. I was suicidal. I wouldn’t eat. The staff there were really watching me because they were scared I would hurt myself. They don’t give the girls visiting hours with their children, but the watch commander set up contact visits for me with my son. My mom came back to help me raise Ethan, and she would bring him whenever visits were allowed on the weekend.
It was very emotional to see my son. Every time, I would see him growing up and changing. This was my boy. I was his mom, and I was supposed to be there with him, changing his diaper, feeding him. It was hard. Every time he’d come to see me, I’d take off his little shoes because I wanted to see his little feet and see how much they’d grown. It got to where he was one or two years old and he knew I was going to ask him that, so he’d take off his little shoe and show me his foot.
My mother raised Ethan to know me as his mother, and every time he comes to visit me, I can feel that connection and that bond with him. I know a lot of women who are in the same situation and don’t have that bond with their children. I am so lucky.
The watch commander never asked for anything in return. The people who worked in Juvenile Hall genuinely cared about the girls and formed genuine relationships with them. They knew we were lost souls. But I was only there for thirty days.
At my hearing, the judge asked my attorney, “Are we going to try her as a juvenile because she was sixteen when it happened, or are we going to try her as an adult?” My attorney didn’t tell me that it was better to be tried as a juvenile. He told me, “If you get tried as a juvenile, you’re just going to have one judge deciding—guilty or not guilty. If you’re tried as an adult, you’ll have twelve jurors decide your fate. If I were you, I would go as an adult.” So I went with what the attorney said, and then they cuffed me and took me to a tank, which is a holding cell, with adults. I shouldn’t have listened to what the attorney said. That was a terrible mistake.
YOU WOULDN’T TREAT AN ANIMAL LIKE THAT
It was an ugly and drastic change when I went to that adult county jail in LA. When I was booked in, I had the ugliest feeling. All these women were there, talking about their drug use, prostitution, and other things that I really didn’t know about. I was terrified.
When I went to court, I had to be completely shackled with arm and leg restraints, and I had to wear a bright red outfit. I did my county time like that. I was there from March ’95 all the way to June ’96. I fought my case there, if that’s what you want to call it. My attorney didn’t actually fight for me. He came and saw me two or three times at the most.
County was an ugly time because of more than just my attorney. There was this bailiff from Pasadena. This other inmate told me, “He likes to talk to girls, and he’ll feed you. I’m gonna have him pull you.” The bailiff wrote court papers saying my presence was requested, and then they put me and the other girl on a bus to Pasadena. When I got there, I understood what was going on: the bailiff was having sex with the other inmate.
I didn’t have sex with him at first. But then he pulled me again when the other girl was not there. He wanted to have sex, he wanted nude pictures of me. Finally I let him, and we end up having sex in an office.
He kept giving me things so that I wouldn’t say anything. He would give me shampoo, lotion with perfume in it, good toothpaste, stuff that you don’t get in jail. I also knew that if I ever did say anything, he knew where to get me. He had other deputies that would get me, and I knew what deputies did. Everyone knew about the elevator rides. If a deputy had something against you, or if they didn’t like you, they would take you in the elevator and beat you up. The way that those deputies treated the women—we weren’t even like animals to them, because you wouldn’t treat an animal like that.
In October 1996, when my trial in LA County was over, they brought me up here to Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, Madera County. I was given a sentence of life without parole. My old boyfriend, who I had the case with, got life too.
YOU GET LONELY
When I got to prison I had to learn how to survive, how to live, how to not do something that was going to get me beat up, stabbed, or hurt in any kind of way. You have to learn and you have to be quick to learn.
You get lonely. Women who haven’t been with other women before, they do it in prison out of loneliness. Affection, you know? You just want to be with someone. I ended up getting a girlfriend—something I swore I wouldn’t do. Everything I swore I wouldn’t do, I ended up doing!
Laurie was a prison guard. She met me the very first day that I came, and she asked me a question that I was tired of being asked: “So what are you here for?” I didn’t want to talk about it, so I just looked at her and I replied, “Overdue library books.” That was our first encounter.
Laurie would make it a point to come around where I was. One lady walked up to me one day and straight out told me that Laurie liked me. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never been with a woman before, and I thought, Are you serious? Is this happening? One time I was sitting on top of a fire hydrant in the yard, and Laurie came over and told me that she thought I was pretty and that she wanted to get to know me. That was the beginning of the relationship.
She would make it a point to trade places with my housing staff so she could be close to me. It went on for a while this way, and I did start feeling attracted to her. She made me feel good. We never had sex, but we did kiss. Laurie and I were together for four years. She was a beautiful person. She made this not feel like prison, because of the treatment, the respect, the hope that she brought me. She was different. She didn’t belong working here.
Laurie ended up quitting the job in 1999. We never got caught. The staff were never sure, but they kind of suspected it, and they thought it was my fault. If you ever get involved with staff, it’s always your fault. You did it, you manipulated. After Laurie quit, she was close with my family. She would go and stay with my mom down south. She was also good to my son, and would help him out. She took him to Disneyland, bought him bikes and toys and clothes.
I was doing okay for a while after Laurie left. Then a few months later, I started hooking up with a new girl, and she used heroin. I had never seen it before, and I remembered I used to put down the dope fiends, I would talk really bad about them. Then my time hit me. First my grandpa passed away, and I was trying to deal with it as best as I could, but I started getting suicidal again. I thought, I can’t live like this. I can’t take being separated from my family. I thought about all the things that I had gone through.
A few weeks later, a cousin I was really close to passed away too. That just sent me over. I knew my girlfriend still had some heroin, so I took it, and it felt so good. I thought about my son growing up without me, my grandfather passing away; everything my family was going through because of me being here. I didn’t feel anything, and none of it hurt as badly as before. After that, my life revolved around drugs. Heroin numbed my sentence. Heroin became like my wife, my husband, whatever you want to call it. That was my life.
You can get it any way you want. If you have money on your books, you shop for other women. You give them hygiene, stamps, whatever they want, and they give you heroin in exchange. With me, it came easy. I found ways to get it, and people just loved to get me high for free. It’s just how I am, I guess. I’m talkative, a good listener, I sit around and have a conversation. Some gave me it because they wanted to have sex with me. Rarely was a time I would have to buy it. It would just come to me. Here, free high! Come, free high!
You could also get it from the staff. After a while I became involved with a medical technical assistant (MTA). I was really, really sick at that point. My knee hurt. My kidneys hurt. I’d pee and blood would come out. I would get these fevers out of the blue. Even on heroin, I knew I was sick.
One time, I was getting delirious. My roommates called the staff and got a wheelchair for me and took me to medical. This is when I met the MTA. Staff were not allowed to be in the room when medical checks you, so I was in there by myself with him. He checked my temperature. He touched my forehead and said, “You do feel clammy and hot.” Then he moved his hands to feel my neck, and then he put his hands down my shirt.
I looked at him. I couldn’t believe it. He said, “I’ve seen you before and I’ve checked you out. I think you’re so beautiful and I really want to get to know you and talk to you.” I told him I wasn’t feeling good, so he gave me medication—someone else’s medication—and then he said, “Come to the medical unit tomorrow and I’ll help you get some more.”
I saw him a couple more times after that. He would give me medication, and even nice lotions. I told one of my friends that this guy liked me, and she said, “Work him! Work him! You know you can get whatever you want. I’ll help you.” And then she told me to ask for a P.O. box on the outside.
He got it for me, and then we began to have sex and see each other a lot. He was bringing drugs in from the P.O. box he got me. After that first time when he touched me, I would numb myself with heroin every time I went to see him.
When I look back on it now, I see that the trade we had going on was wrong. We were humping, he was bringing me drugs in exchange. What the heck was I doing? That was just the same as prostitution.
I WAS HIGH EVERY DAY FOR SIX YEARS
I was high every day for six years total. During the time I was with the MTA, from 1999 to 2000, he would bring me bottles of vodka. So for two days I would use heroin and then on the third day I’d drink vodka. I was high for two days, drunk the third day.
I did end up having feelings for him, and we shared a lot of personal things. I wanted to believe he really cared for me. But we were just humping. And this time people noticed.
Laurie was the one who told on us. Since she was close with my family, she read a letter that I’d written to my brother. I’d told my brother, “There’s someone in my life. He got me a P.O. box on the outside, if you ever wanted to write me directly.” It was dumb because my brother never wrote anything that was wrong, so he could have just written me here in prison.
Laurie called up here and told on us. She didn’t give my name, but she gave his. An investigation went down, and the officers went to the P.O. box and found heroin, weed, and pictures of me and the MTA together.
In early 2000 I had to go to court again. I was taken out of CCWF and taken to Fresno County jail because the case was in Fresno court. I was there for nine months. The investigation unit here wanted me to testify against the MTA about the sex and the drugs. They said, “What he did was wrong. He should never have stepped out of those boundaries with you. He used you.” They made sense, but I felt so wrong about everything I had done. I felt so wrong telling them we’d had sex, so I refused to talk.
In the end I got six years added to my sentence. I never saw the MTA again or talked to him, but I was told he got a ninety-day observation. I’d already ruined my life, and now I’d helped ruin someone else’s. People have told me, “Victoria, he’s probably done it before! You’re not his first time.” In fact, I knew he was seeing another girl at CCWF. But I still felt so guilty.
After that trial, I was brought back to CCWF and put in lockup. I was watched 24/7. My mail was monitored and my food was brought to me; I couldn’t go anywhere. The COs2 began to randomly search my room, and they started verbally abusing me. The rumor was that I’d gotten ten members of staff walked off. They’d say things like, “Don’t look at Sanchez, she’ll hypnotize you!” They called me the Black Widow. But even to this day, even though they say that about me, staff try to get with me. They say things like, “We could go for a quickie here!”
The women staff were also much harder on me. When I hooked up with a man, they reacted so differently from when I was with Laurie. Today everyone says I manipulated the MTA. If they only knew the truth. He started it!
When I got back to prison after the case in Fresno, I went back to my old routine. Twice I almost OD’d. The first time my friends threw me in the shower, slapped me, walked me around, and kept me from nodding out. They put me in cold water and just kept walking me around. My friends brought me back. They saved me.
In 2004 I started using less because something inside of me was being fixed, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. My woman at the time, Sarah, she was a big-time drug addict. She always wanted to be high. It hurt me to see how she had to be high to numb herself from her reality, and it brought me back to the reason why I started using. I started hating the drug, and I began weaning myself off of it. I got to the point that if I did it, it was a recreational-type thing. And then it got to where it started to make me ill, not good.
In January of 2005, I ended up getting really sick. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. They kept giving me the runaround, doing X-rays on my lungs, until finally I was hospitalized here at CCWF. They isolated me because I had lupus and they didn’t want me to catch anything from anyone else. Being sick was like a spiritual awakening. I felt so much pain in my body, my lungs hurting.
I told God, “Just kill me, take me so I don’t feel me any more, so I don’t do this life sentence. Just take me away. And if I have a purpose in this prison, then show me and lead me to something. I’m sick of having to be high to live life, having to numb myself, so I ask You to give me the strength to live and show me my purpose. And at the same time, I’ll give You this addiction. Give me the strength to not want or crave this addiction, not to need that drug to make it every day in here.”
After that, I never used it again.
EVEN THOUGH WE’RE HERE, WE CAN HAVE A PURPOSE
In 2005, I felt this force to bring hope to these women in here, and show them that there is something out there. So many of them come in here like me, and become lost souls in addiction. Even though we’re here, we can live and have a purpose. Even though we’re here, we have to fight for our freedom. Who’s going to do it if we don’t? That year I also heard that finally a change had happened. The Supreme Court decided that there would be no more death penalty for juvenile offenders. As an advocate, it raised my hope and faith much higher.
I kept seeing battered women coming in to CCWF. I’d see youth who’d been arrested at sixteen years old. If you’re affiliated with a gang, you’re brainwashed, you’re manipulated, you’re a battered human. I kept thinking, How come we’re not looking at these cases? How come we’re not fighting these cases? It wasn’t just for me, but for future generations that are just being thrown away.
I didn’t know how to go about it, so all I could do was tell them about the injustices that happen in here. So I started helping women write 602s, which are complaints against prison or medical staff, and I started helping them find their way around the prison, to get real help. If you get arrested at sixteen, you’re stuck there, at the age of that child inside you. Your mentality and your ways are different from the other people who are here in prison. And even if your case happened at that time and you’re arrested later, you’re still traumatized, and it’s the same thing. The child is inside. The fear is inside.
I kept thinking, There are so many youths in here, and nothing is being done about it. They have Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, and battered women groups here, but never one for young offenders. So a few of us got together and said, “We need a group.” We worked on it for a long time. Different inmates, different staff were telling us there was no money for it. We fought from May 2008 until June 2009, when the group finally got approved.
The group is called the Juvenile Offenders Committee (JOC). Many staff support us. We get to meet once a month, we get to have visitors come in from the free world to talk to the girls. It’s costing the state no money.
The six co-founders of the group, we became the executive body of the group and we run it right now. JOC is my heart. There are 120 women in the group, and I try to keep a connection with all of them because it helps me also to remember, Victoria, you’re not the only one serving such a harsh sentence. Go to one of them and give them a hug, just talk to them, and they’ll understand. They’ll know they’re not alone.
I believe that one day I’ll leave this place. I’ll see my son again. Ethan is sixteen now, and he still lives with my mom in Southern California, near where I grew up. He has a new baby brother and sister from his father. His brother and sister live in Mexico, but he sees them a lot and goes there for summers. I get to see him once a quarter; I don’t want my mom to make the trip up here too much. He’ll be eighteen soon though, and then he can come up by himself.
MY SON IS AN ACTIVIST LIKE ME
Because of my case, my son advocates for the youth. Ethan’s gone to Sacramento and spoken to senators and assembly members on behalf of youth getting a second chance. When they ask him why he’s there, he tells them he’s not only there for his mother, who was sixteen years old at the time of her crime, but for all the youth and future generations that are being thrown away. All the attorneys and organizations tell me how articulate he is. He has a demeanor about himself; he’s only sixteen going on seventeen, but he’s so grown up. He always tells me, “Mom, don’t worry about me. I would not give you more pain while you’re in this place by me doing something stupid. You do not have to worry about me.”
He’s just amazing. He is in ROTC right now. He wants to be in the army. He’s an A student. He wants to become an attorney, his dream since he was five.
And now I’ve shared my life with him. Me and my son, we’re working together to change things.
1 A person who takes money to help others illegally cross the U.S./Mexico border.
2 Correctional officers.