ROGERS COUNTY, Okla. — This year, Dusty Trammell is extremely thankful for her Thanksgiving meal because it is the first time she’s celebrated with family.
Trammell has been in the Oklahoma prison system for the past 17 years.
“In prison we get a Styrofoam plate that’s got your turkey your dressing you mashed potatoes and your green beans on it and then you get a sack lunch for dinner,” said Trammell.
While she says it’s not all to blame, a troubled childhood, got her stuck in a cycle of crime.
“I was abused as a child I was raped as a child and that set the onsets of my life and my future path,” said Trammell. “I started going to prison when I was 18 years old, I have 76 felonies on my record with 132 counts, I’m a five-time convicted felon.”
Now Trammels path looks different now thanks to a transitional program called Standing the Gap before her release in June.
The Standing Gap program helps people who were incarcerated transition into living outside of prison walls.
“It’s the most phenomenal thing ever and it makes me want to be more than what I have always been my entire life,” said Trammell. “Prior to my release I never made it past 6 months until I was right back in prison again.”
Now Trammell works at Shebrews Coffee House which partners with His House Ministries and Standing the Gap.
Rogers County Sheriff, Scott Walton, and his wife Rosalie Walton met Tramell in August and decided to join the Standing the Gap program to help her.
“She’s just so inspiring and you can see she really is working hard to stay on the right path,” said Sheriff Walton. “I think it would be next to impossible to just be able to go back into society with $50 that you’re handed when you get kicked out of the penitentiary to go out and be successful so it does take a village.”
“It makes me grateful,” said Trammell “It makes me grateful to know that God has literally taken me and said ‘once upon a time you spent years alone but now here you go.’”
Tramell now has plans to go to college to be a Drug and Alcohol Abuse Counselor.
“I want to help people who are in the situation I was once in.”
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