Pioneer

Issue date: 6/3/10 Section: Feature

Media Credit: Krizia Rodriguez Stogsdill earned college credits through programs available in prison and continued his education after being released.

Media Credit: Kristen Larkin Wolfe He holds an Associate in Arts and Sciences, a Bachelors Degree in Science and Psychology and a Masters in clinical psychology.

Media Credit: Brandon Stogsdill/Courtesy Photo Brandon Stogsdill (right) was in prison for three and a half years for assault with a deadly weapon. He was 17 when he began to serve his sentence at McNeil Island.

"I grabbed my gun and went to meet these people. Words were exchanged, adrenaline was pumpin', everything started to happen; and I thought, 'My friends are expecting me to do this. Nobody's gonna get hurt because nobody's gotten hurt in the past. Even if I get in trouble I'm just a kid.'

So I fired twice just to scare them, and one of the bullets penetrated into the trunk of the car and lodged into a speaker-inches from somebody's neck. So thank God nobody was hurt, but unfortunately at 17 they sentenced me to nearly four years in prison."

Brandon Stogsdill, now 28, was incarcerated just after graduating high school for assault with a deadly weapon.

He served his time at McNeil Island Correctional Facility where he had no other alternative but to eat, breathe, and sleep next to sex offenders and other criminals for three and a half years.

"I lived with people that make you wanna sleep with one eye open every night. Every night I didn't like to sleep," he said.

It was in this place of confinement and fear that he decided to construct a bridge for himself to a higher, brighter future.

"While I was in prison I saw a kid getting charged for the same crime I did and I thought, 'How could you do something so stupid when you had your whole life ahead of you?' Then I thought, 'Wait a minute-why did I do something so stupid? I had my whole life ahead of me.'

That was the moment I instantly discovered my purpose in life was to prevent that kid from standing in the very prison cell that I stood."

Stogsdill started to take education seriously for the first time in his life while behind prison walls. He graduated from high school with a 1.87 GPA and no plans of ever going to college.

Then in prison that all changed. The boy who had girls do his homework for him in high school just so he could scrape by, earned over 180 credits through Pierce programs within the prison.

The boy who never even considered college received the Pierce College Foundation Scholarship.

At 21-years-old, Stogsdill had completed his sentence and within an hour of his release, he was sitting in a college class alongside other students at Pierce.

"I was really concerned what people would think about me coming from where I just came from," Stogsdill said.

He had to adjust from being an inmate to being a classmate.

"I was used to going from point A to point B, seeing familiar faces, slow-paced and not even thinking of where I'm going," he said. "I went to Pierce and everything was chaotic. People were bumping into me, touching me and talking to me. My anxiety on a scale of one to 10 was a nine-point-five where ten means you're dead."

He needed someone to express his concerns and anxiety to. One of the first to offer their ear and friendship was Paula Henson-Williams, Capital Campaign and Alumni Relations Manager.

"From the moment I met him I knew Brandon was special and destined to do great things if someone just gave him the opportunity," Henson-Williams said. "He did not prove me wrong."

Stogsdill did adjust in time and in June 2003, he graduated from Pierce with honors and an Associate in Arts and Sciences Degree. He then transferred to University of Washington Seattle on a full-ride scholarship.

At UW he continued to reap rewards including the Martin Honors Scholarship, Mary Gates Leadership Award, Newsome Humanitarian Award. When he decided to go study abroad for a quarter in Paris, it was paid for too.

For Stogsdill, it seemed that life might never be difficult again.

However, while living in Seattle and attending UW on his honors scholarship, Stogsdill considered dropping out. His car broke down, his cell phone got run over by a car, his bike was stolen, he was failing every single class, and to top it all, he had recently become homeless when his roommate girlfriend broke up with him.

He started going to the campus library in the evenings to sleep.

"I remember walking to the library one night and thinking, 'Who did you think you were kidding? Did you really think you could make it? You're just a welfare, bastard of a kid, inmate scum bag and that's all you're ever gonna be."

Just when Stogsdill thought he had failed himself, he was awarded a $4,500 grant for extensive volunteer work he had done, and with the money got housing, a phone and bike.

He brought all his classes up to passing grades and went on to graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Science and Psychology in 2006. He then earned a Masters Degree in clinical psychology from Argosy University.

Faith in God was an anchor Stogsdill says kept him in school and got him back on his feet. He found his faith while in prison. Prior to prison he had distaste for anything religious.

"My mom used to quote the Bible from the book she used to carry around while she was smoking a cigarette and getting up off the ground from being hung over," he said. "I remember feeling like, 'how is anyone gonna tell me that somebody's up there loving me while I'm down here going through hell?'"

But after being in prison for a year and feeling abandoned by the outside world, Stogsdill sunk into depression while his friends moved on with their lives, leaving him behind.

He attended a church service at McNeil, and even though he didn't pay attention to the speaker or sit next to anybody, it was a defining moment in his life.

"I just had this comforting feeling. It was like being alone at night and then having a warm blanket just put around you, nice and warm. Can't prove it, can't really explain it. But I felt something," Stogsdill said.

Stogsdill said his plans for the future are in accordance with what he believes God has called him to do and those plans all involve working with teens.

His goal is take alternative sports like BMXing, snowboarding, wakeboarding and surfing and utilize them in therapy as a bridge for at-risk youth to plug their risky behavior into a constructive outlet.

This new type of therapy is unprecedented.

"All the research is opposed to it, but it's all out-of-date. With two skate parks going up per week, obviously things have changed," Stogsdill said.

For now, while his goals and ideas are still in the planning stage, Stogsdill has put his education to work by becoming a clinician case manager for children and adolescents at Sound Mental Health in Seattle.

He is now taking steps to attend Pepperdine University to gain a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and is working to get his manuscript published under the title "The Boy with the Gun: From Incarceration to Higher Education."

"Before prison, I applied myself into finding and selling drugs and guns," Stogsdill said. "Now it's all about pushing education, doing projects, giving talks and presentations. It's two different worlds-completely different worlds."

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