After an exhausting week, Jessica Robinson met friends for sushi Friday, Sept. 5, 2008. And while waiting for a table at the restaurant, Robinson had a drink. She had another at the table, then had a sip of beer but didn’t drink anymore because she knew she would be driving.
Robinson drove home after 1 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008. Minutes away from her home, she felt her eyes become heavy. The next thing she saw was her car approaching a truck on the road. The two vehicles crashed. Robinson emerged alive, but the other driver did not.
Robinson was sentenced to serve time in prison until April 2016 for vehicular manslaughter. Jeanne Robinson, Robinson’s mother, began volunteering at Perryville Prison, the Arizona state female prison, where Jessica is an inmate.
What began as donating books to the prison became writing birthday cards to inmates, which led to touching the lives of women in Perryville all under a “don’t drink and drive” campaign called Jessica’s Operation Orange.
Trunk Space, located on Grand and 15th avenues, is hosting a benefit concert Friday night for Jessica’s Operation Orange along with another organization, Gina’s Team, which provides education to juvenile facilities and prisons. Both organizations seek help and reformation for those in prison.
Gina’s Team was founded after the death of Gina Panetta, a 25-year-old woman who died of myeloid leukemia and poor medical attention while serving time in an Arizona prison.
Sue Ellen Allen, co-founder of Gina’s Team, was Gina’s roommate. In her prison memoir, A Slumber Party from Hell, Allen mentions how she was heartbroken that young Gina died, while she, a 57-year-old woman who wanted to die, lived.
Allen said she knew she was blessed. She had a great life prior to prison and she had an education. So, she began educational programs while she was in prison and came back to teach after she was released.
Carlos Villegas, a local musician, planned the benefit concert at Trunk Space and said his biggest fear for the night is turning people away at the door because there is not enough room.
The benefit concert, titled Welcome Back, will not only serve as a fundraiser, but also intends to raise awareness about the needs of people who are incarcerated or released from prison and spread their messages to the world.
“Getting out of prison is like being shot out of a cannon, blindfolded, into a brick wall,” Allen said.
Robinson said there is a need of support and opportunities for people when they are incarcerated and for when they get out.
“Ninety percent of women come out with $50 dollars and nothing but the clothes on their back, and they are told to get somewhere,” Robinson said. “They have no where to go, no food, no water. What are you going to go back to? You’re going to go back to what you know. There are good people in here but they have no support.”
Allen agreed that without support and opportunities people go back to a world of crime. “What we are doing in prisons is not working,” she said. “Education is the cheapest form of crime prevention.”
In Arizona, incarceration is a billion-dollar business, Allen said.
“What people don’t realize is that 1 billion dollars is your tax dollar, and if we don’t do something with this issue of prison reform and education, that billion dollars is going to go up,” she said. “Right now, in Arizona more money goes toward incarceration than education. That’s sad. That’s bad because right now the drop out rate is a pipeline to prison—You drop out of school, you’re going down.”
One out of 33 people in Arizona is under some kind of supervision, meaning jail, prison, probation or parole, Allen said. “We want to raise awareness with the young generation that committing a crime has very serious consequences, prison is not a good place to be,” she said.
Part of Villegas’s inspiration to create this event is his sister, Renee, who served three years in prison for her second aggravated DUI.
Villegas said he was horrified by the treatment in prison each time he visited his sister. He wanted to do something, so he reached out to Trunk Space, musicians, Allen and Jessica and Jeanne Robinson.
“I was amazed that this talented young man wanted to do something like this,” Allen said. “The fact that these young musicians want to make a difference in this cause, that’s not a popular cause, is stunning to me.”
Villegas said he has been reaching out to different people; from students, to adults, from former inmates to prosecutors. He wants the event to help “bridge the gaps,” he said.
The event will include live performances from Daryl Scherrer, Dogbreth and Wayward Horses, Villegas’s band.
These artists are featured on an album, along with Andrew Jackson Jihad, Jeff Rosenstock, Laura Stevenson and The Gunshy, that was compiled for this cause. The album can be download for $5 dollars with a download code that will be given at the concert. The money will benefit Jessica’s Operation Orange and Gina’s Team. Links to download the album will also be available on the organizations’s websites.
Wayward Horses will perform a song written for Robinson.
Robinson said she is honored that this event has sparked because of her and her story, but “blown away” because she does not “feel special by any means.”
Robinson is excited that the event is showing awareness, but that it is also honoring the family of her victim.
“That is very important to me,” she said.
The day she pleaded guilty, Robinson asked her parents to deliver a message from her to the family of the man she killed. Jeanne and her husband promised them that their family would do what they can to change so this wouldn’t happen to another family, Jeanne said.
“Jessica said, ‘Mom, I would take back the fact that I have taken a life, but I wouldn’t take back the life lessons I’ve learned from this,’” Jeanne said.
Robinson will speak to the audience at the Welcome Home benefit via phone call.
“If you can change one person, obviously you can change more,” Robinson said. “I hope that if someone is there, because I know that everyone knows somebody or has somebody who has been affected by a drunk driver, that they can forgive those people for their actions. It’s not just for people preventing it but it’s for people who have been affected by people like myself.”
Contact the reporter at alejandra.armstrong@asu.edu
