DEL.ICIO.USGEORGIA
‘Mama Dot’ gives helping hand to former inmates
Macon woman has run halfway houses for years, helps inmates back into society
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Macon — They murdered, robbed and terrorized. They spent decades behind barbed wire. Now they are Dot Pinkerton’s tenants — the unsalvageable in need of salvation. And a place to sleep.
Pinkerton, the founder of the Lighthouse Missions, runs two homes in downtown Macon where parolees coming off life sentences decompress from prison and reacquaint themselves with the straight and narrow.
Elissa Eubanks/eeubanks@ajc.com
A former inmate turns on the television at one of the Macon homes run by Dot Pinkerton’s Lighthouse Missions. Residents must follow the rules and work to become good citizens.
Elissa Eubanks/eeubanks@ajc.com
‘Mama Dot’ talks to an inmate. She has helped killers and others return to society, but she puts their sincerity to the test.
Elissa Eubanks/eeubanks@ajc.com
Dot Pinkerton, shown after speaking to a Lifer’s Group at Central State Prison in Macon on Monday, runs halfway houses giving paroled prisoners a path back into society.
The homes are immaculate. One looks like a Laura Ashley showroom, complete with an Oriental rug, a grandfather clock, doilies and decorative throw pillows.
“They’re walking into a home, not a mission house,” said Pinkerton, a wisp of a woman with pulled back silver hair, dangle earrings, an easy smile and a withering stare. The 75-year-old great-grandmother figures the change of scenery from cramped cinder-block cell to a home with silk flowers instills a message: You are somebody.
Cheyenne Yakima, aka Johnny Riley, a bank robber in his criminal heyday, still recalls the excitement he felt walking into the tidy bungalow three years ago after spending 24 years in prison. It was his own home. With his own bedroom.
“It was like coming out of hell and into heaven,” said Yakima, a former Atlantan who is 53. He stayed a year (the unofficial maximum for tenants) and works as a caterer for Wesleyan College in Macon. “It was like living at Grandmama’s house. But with strict rules.”
“Mama Dot” doesn’t suffer foolishness. One of Yakima’s roommates, a murderer paroled after 36 years, had a woman over to the house — a no-no listed along with several other fouls on the refrigerator.
“He asked me, ‘Where will I go?’ ” Pinkerton recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know. But you’re leaving this house.’ “
Without a place to stay, he had to return to prison for another year.
Working from the gut
Pinkerton’s formula of tough love and religious inspiration is a model that has worked well for over 20 years, state officials say, and it’s especially needed now with budget cutbacks causing prisons to pack in inmates and furlough chaplains.
Garfield Hammonds, a retired lawman and former state parole board member, said inmate bed space is at a premium “because they haven’t built any prisons in a while.” Parole frees up space for more current miscreants.
“Lifers make your best parolees,” Hammonds said. “They’ve matured. They’ve done their time.”
Hammonds calls Pinkerton the Mother Teresa of Corrections. “Her calling is to be with killers and murderers. She’s dealing with degraded, desecrated, profane exhibitors of what is wrong with mankind.”
Pinkerton agrees that programs like hers are a relief valve for the system. But she complained that the parole board has recently turned down several lifers she had hoped would be released to her homes.
She has two parolees staying at one home. Three tenants have recently moved on, and she was hoping three or four new parolees would replace them.
“All these men had great accomplishments in prison, great portfolios,” she said. “I don’t know what the board is doing.”
Pinkerton said transition centers have asked her to take parolees from shorter sentences, but she has refused. “I don’t take people who’ve been in and out [of prison], in and out. Been there, done that. Causes problems. Our focus is lifers.”
The logjam of new parolees is hurting her ministry, she said, because the tenants help pay rent. Her nonprofit operation has no paid staff and gets help from churches and individual donations. Government grants are few and, with the economy, “we’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth.”
By all accounts, Pinkerton has been able to determine who’s genuinely seeking redemption and who’s a con. Hammonds said she brings the board prisoners who will succeed on the outside. None of several state officials interviewed could remember any Pinkerton-backed parolee committing a serious crime.
Word on “Mama Dot” has spread among Georgia’s 8,000-some lifers. She gets as many as 200 letters a month seeking help, so she must be picky. Druggies, sex fiends and fraud artists? Don’t bother asking.
She checks their prison records, researches their accomplishments. Did they earn a GED? Did they attend AA? “Even if you never drank, it can’t hurt,” she said. Prison doesn’t change people. People change themselves.
Part of her selection process is based on her gut. “I have sort of a sixth sense. You can’t con me very easily,” she said. “I’m not going to be some steppingstone for him to come back to the community and commit a crime.”
Prisoners watch her back.
“People in prison know each other; nobody’s going to let her be misled,” said John Crane, who was convicted of a 1991 Hall County killing and lived in one of her homes last year. If a parolee screws up, “it reflects on the next man she’s trying to help.”
Crane now lives in Tennessee and recently called a painting contractor in Macon for whom he worked to get a job for a new parolee in Pinkerton’s home. Parolees are expected to work and pay rent during their stays, and they are almost religious about looking after each other. “I asked them to give him the same chance they gave me,” Crane said.
From baker to boss
Pinkerton came to prison ministry by way of hairdressing, which is not as random as it may seem.
“When you’re a hairdresser you’re like a counselor or a psychiatrist. Hairdressers hear it all: divorce, spousal abuse, child abuse. It was a good training ground.”
Pinkerton, who learned her craft in the era of big hair, keeps her stylist license active just in case.
She started volunteering more than 30 years ago with lay ministers going into a local correctional facility. She baked cakes, brought punch and provided moral support. But one day, those who were to conduct the religious service didn’t show.
Terrified of public speaking, Pinkerton tiptoed to the front. She had butterflies and thought she would pass out. But the fear dissipated when she started speaking and she hasn’t stopped since, addressing parole boards, legislative appropriations committees and even governors.
Post-prison ministry was a natural progression. “People would be fixing to leave prison and they’d say, ‘Miss Dot, do you know where I can go? Is there someone who can help me?’ “
She figured she should be that “someone,” and in 1988 she bought a four-bedroom Victorian. It cost $48,000, needed work and came with unhappy neighbors. She said she never missed a payment and has won over those living nearby. Six years ago, her ministry bought a three-bedroom home.
A breast cancer survivor, Pinkerton spreads a story of hope and inspiration in prisons. But her big worry is about the system. “I’ll tell you, I’m concerned about prisons today. They’re stacking them three bunks high, giving them two meals a day and are cutting chaplains. Chaplains and volunteers are the glue that hold prisons together.”
When she visits, Pinkerton wades into the crowds of inmates like a celebrity. They are happy to see her. She’s not afraid of those in prison or those in her two Lighthouse homes. But she fears crime. “I’m afraid of drug dealers, of carjackers shooting up neighborhoods.”
A widow, Pinkerton lives in a gated community.
She knows society fears and hates criminals, often with good reason. But a blanket throw-away-the-key attitude draws her ire.
“People are ignorant to the facts; they are uninformed,” she said, her voice shaking. “We stand in our own little circles and talk about what is wrong but are afraid to go to the front lines.”
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