When Maria Alexander moved to LA at age 18 to go to film school in the 1980s, she never imagined the perilous journey that awaited her. Within a few years, she went from a hopeful college student full of aspirations to the depths of despair due to substance abuse.
“I was in college for film production and theater, and involved in the art scene … and I ended experimenting with drugs,” recalled Alexander, who lives in Reseda. What started out as curious dabbling in social drug use slowly led to trying harder drugs. Alexander eventually found herself “really physically dependent on heroin” – and battling its dire repercussions.
“That was the first drug that I just couldn’t stop [and] I started facing consequences,” she said, describing the severity of her addiction, which she said created a seemingly endless cycle of short-lived sobriety and multiple relapses to avoid the anguish of heroin withdrawal symptoms.
“It just began to affect my life more and more – I was just going down,” described Alexander. “I dropped out of school and eventually I lost my job. … [Years] later my daughter was taken away from me, I ended up homeless and went in and out of the county jail, mainly for drug offenses.”
It took many years – and lots of tries – to successfully navigate her tumultuous road to recovery.
Center for Living and Learning
That’s exactly what national Second Chance Month in April is all about – to encourage fair chance opportunities in education, employment and housing for individuals with arrest or conviction records who want to turn their lives around. And these days that’s precisely what Alexander does: she offers a helping hand to others as the executive director of the Center for Living and Learning (CLL) in Van Nuys – the very same nonprofit that helped her more than two decades ago.
Established in 2001, CLL offers services for adults and at-risk youth (including youth transitioning out of foster care) who are seeking to rebuild (or start) their lives after incarceration, substance abuse treatment or homelessness. People in these situations often end up being stigmatized or perceived as “unemployable,” said Alexander.
To help individuals overcome these and other barriers to finding jobs and starting over, CLL provides job readiness assistance (job search skills, resume writing, application and interview techniques); apprenticeships (including paid on-the-job training in computer skills, data entry, customer service and administration); health services (enrollment in Covered California, Whole Person Care and Medi-Cal); and other support services or referrals to partner organizations.
Like Alexander, many of CLL’s 30 staff members are former clients as well, including Jose Carrasco from Van Nuys. Looking back on his childhood, Carrasco, now 35, said he was “a good kid and a good student” in elementary and middle school. Unfortunately, things “started going sour” in high school, when he got involved in gangs and was expelled for tagging. He never went back, and instead fell deeper into the gang lifestyle.
Following years of short jail stints for gang-related crimes, he was sentenced to five years in prison for gang enhancement and commercial burglary in 2018. He ended up splitting his time between Wasco State Prison and Sierra Conservation Center in Tuolumne County.
When he got out of prison in the Spring of 2023, Carrasco had good intentions, but was soon hanging out with old gang friends and quickly slipping back into his previous life. A parole violation resulted in Carrasco being forced to wear a GPS ankle monitoring device.
That finally set him straight.
“I got lucky – I could have ended up back in prison; that was a wakeup call for me,” he explained. “It made me realize … God was giving me a second chance. He had given me so many chances before; this time I really wanted to take advantage of the opportunity.”
Carrasco finally distanced himself from his past gang associates, including his younger brother, determined to become a better person and a worthy parent to his 14-year-old son. He went to CLL, where he received career coaching and financial literacy training; and cognitive behavioral intervention (CBI), which focuses on coping skills for job readiness.
Carrasco was accepted into the 300-hour paid work experience program and worked on-site at the CLL offices in partnership with LA Regional Initiative for Social Enterprise (LA Rise). He learned about case management work and became a certified CBI facilitator.
Now he is putting his newly-acquired skills to good use. In December, CLL hired Carrasco as a career coach and CBI facilitator. He looks forward to going to work every single day.
“It’s wonderful – it’s so exciting to learn new things and get to help others,” said Carrasco.
Second Chances (or As Many as it Takes)
Second Chance Month was launched as a bipartisan effort by more than 75 organizations in 2017. More than 70 million individuals in the U.S. have criminal records, according to the nonprofit Prison Fellowship. Unfortunately, having a criminal history can make it difficult to land a job, find a safe place to live, receive quality health care or secure a loan to buy a home or start a business.
In fact, three-quarters of former inmates are still unemployed one year after their release, and joblessness is a top predictor of recidivism. That’s what Michael Altamirano is trying to avoid.
During a recent April morning at the CLL main office, Altamirano of San Fernando sat speaking with Alexander about the pitfalls of looking for work given his recent lengthy prison sentence and tattooed face, which bears the letters “SF” – symbolizing both his hometown and gang past.
Altamirano has only been out of prison for 60 days, but he knows he’s done with his former life.
“When I first went to prison, I was 19 years old – I’m 35 now. So I went in as a child, but I’m a grown man now, who’s married with four kids,” said Altamirano, who said he spent most of the past 16 years incarcerated. “I went to prison as a drug addict who tried to take somebody’s life, but I’m not that same person anymore; I’ve been sober for over 10 years.
“That helped me [change] my entire way of thinking,” he continued. “That person that went to prison is not the same person that was paroled from prison. … That’s why I’m here, getting knowledgeable about the things they can ask [as I look for a job], to learn how to respond … and navigate around certain questions about having been in prison.”
Although most clients are referred to CLL by local drug treatment centers, homeless shelters, re-entry programs, social service agencies, or probation and parole departments, walk-ins are also welcome (as long as they meet the criteria for the services and programs they offer) – and their services are always free and “completely voluntary,” said Alexander.
“People are here because they want to be,” she said. That’s exactly how she ended up at CLL.
“They helped me [get through] sober living, helped me get a bus pass and [they] took me into a paid work experience program,” said Alexander. And CLL’s support made all the difference.
“I had to completely start my life over. I had no one helping me. … I don’t know what I would [have done] without them,” she said. “Actually, I do know – I would have been running around on the streets of downtown LA again, because I knew how to do that.”
After completing the program, Alexander joined the CLL team as a staff member – and the rest is history, she said. Alexander has now served as executive director of CLL since 2005.
“Sometimes we need as many chances as it takes,” said Alexander. “As I’ve said [before], ‘Thank God for a million chances,’ because that’s what it felt like – like it was a million chances [before coming to CLL]. We all deserve more chances at life and we’re all worth saving.”
Carrasco said he’s grateful for the support he’s gotten and the opportunity to start over.
“I’m now making something positive in my life out of the negative and I have so much gratitude,” said Carrasco. “I can’t even describe how it feels to be doing something good.”