SALEM, Ore. — Barely a month after shedding the standard-issue blue T-shirt and jeans for the final time and walking out of prison, Vanessa Sherrod walked into the Oregon State Capitol building confident, smiling and ready to begin the advocacy work she had dreamed about behind bars.
"Right now is a really important moment in time for this program to be advocated for," she said on Wednesday, standing feet from Hearing Room E, where she was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.
It secures funding for a program called the Family Preservation Project, which lets kids visit and maintain regular contact with parents at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.
The program has been around since 2010, but funding fell through last year because the bill to secure it died during the GOP walkout over Cap and Trade.
This new version would fund the program for 7 years.
Sherrod arrived at the public hearing with her 10-year-old daughter Sophia.
During interviews for KGW’s three-part series "LIFE Inside," Sherrod talked about Sophia’s cancer diagnosis years ago and how it sped up Sherrod’s spiral into addiction and crime.
In 2016, Sherrod was convicted on multiple counts of theft and sentenced to 62 months at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.
While there, she went through addiction treatment counseling and participated in multiple skill-building programs, including LIFE.
Run and funded by Mercy Corps Northwest, LIFE is a nearly 9-month course that helps women build a small business plan and a re-entry plan: a detailed, step-by-step template to help them rebuild their lives upon their release.
Sherrod walked out of prison on Dec. 23, 2019 and surprised Sophia, who is now healthy, and her siblings at home.
"She was surprised!" Sherrod said laughing. "We just stayed home all day, watching TV, doing nothing much but just spending time together."
She added the anxiety she expected to feel walking out of prison was lessened by the work she had done in preparation.
"I had so much anxiety all the way up to the moment when I put my [normal] clothes on," Sherrod said, of the day she was released. "All the programming that I did do, the skill set that I was able to utilize once I got out, made that transition a whole lot different."
Since her release, Sherrod has enrolled in college, and, come April, she plans to start working toward her degree in social work.
Wednesday, Sherrod was excited to put her years of work to good use for a program that helped her and her kids stay connected.
Due to a packed agenda, her testimony was postponed to another public hearing Monday, Feb. 10.
She plans to be there to make her voice heard.
"It's important. It's doing the work that matters. It's our foundation," she said. "We're mothers before we're anything else, and our children mean the world to us no matter what circumstances we're in."