Lockdown

Instead of cake and candles on her 28th birthday, Baby Girl got khakis and handcuffs, courtesy of the Denver County jail.

Just a couple of months after graduating from the Chrysalis Project, a twelve-month drug-treatment program for crack hos (“Lost and Found,” June 2, 2005), Baby Girl was already back in the game. She said she wasn’t hoing, but the rock’s lure was too strong, and she started smoking crack again while making a living supplying the neighborhood crackheads.

About 1:30 a.m. on January 10, Denver police responded to a complaint about noise and possible narcotics distribution. An officer pulled over Baby Girl’s jeep in an alley a few blocks south of East Colfax Avenue, and there was a joint in the middle console. Under her seat they found a loaded .22 handgun she’d bought for fifty bucks. They took her in, but she had enough money to bond out.

Later that same month, she got pulled over and was tapped for driving without a license. Baby Girl was again taken to jail after giving the officer a fake name, but she was released one day before she was scheduled to appear in court on the gun charge. She never showed.

When she went back to the apartment she had been sharing with her boyfriend, eviction notices covered the door. The new entertainment center she’d bought was gone, her apartment stripped of everything worth anything. Baby Girl had no money, and her boyfriend was in jail again.

“All of it, easy come, easy go,” she said.

She bounced around among family members a bit, and her son moved back in with her grandmother. One night she found herself at a crack house near Detroit Street and East Colfax when the police kicked in the door. Again she gave false information and was arrested. She says she was so high she could barely speak to the officers.

Back in the system, Baby Girl knew she would have to face the judge for missing her gun-charge court date. “I want the six months. I don’t care. I know that I deserve it and that’s the consequence,” Baby Girl said. “I’m kind of glad I’m locked up now, because I’m dangerous. I would’ve shot somebody, for real.”

She went before Judge Christina Habas on March 28, her 28th birthday, and Habas gave her another thirty days in jail and two years’ probation to include random drug testing for the Class 6 felony of being a previous offender in possession of a gun. If Baby Girl violates her probation, she could face up to two years in the state penitentiary.

Of the 94 women who have participated in the Chrysalis Project, ten have graduated so far. Program coordinator Judy Lopez says Baby Girl is the only alum in trouble with the law again.

“I just always think I’ve got it topped off, I think I know what I’m doing,” Baby Girl said after her court appearance. “Chrysalis gave me a little bit more control over my addiction. A little bit, but that’s it.

“I’m just glad I ain’t dead yet, I guess.”