A prison newsroom mourns its former editor in chief, recently released and then killed in a crash
Down past the prison yard, where blue lilies grow near a fence topped with barbed wire, the men who manage one of the nation's only inmate-run newspapers were mourning.
The front page of their next edition would mark the death of Arnulfo Garcia, who had been their editor in chief — and so much more.
Garcia had come to San Quentin State Prison as a heroin addict and burglar. He had transformed himself over more than 16 years into a beloved leader and living, breathing symbol of hope and redemption.
At the prison, they called him jefe because he ran the San Quentin News. They called him pachuco because in his youth he used to walk with such swagger. They loved his dry chili peppers, which he carried in his pocket and passed out to them like candy.
And they felt such hope for him when he walked out to freedom in July, full of big plans for not just his but their future.
He was deep into those plans two months after his release when he got in a car with his sister. She was driving. They were in a crash. Both were killed.
Garcia was a three-striker whose sentence was cut for good behavior from 65 years to 16. He used to tell men serving decades for robberies, assaults and murders to focus not on getting out of the infamous penitentiary but on becoming better men — men who moved forward and thought big.