Messenger: Woman ready to give back after she got help when leaving prison | Tony Messenger

That’s what I thought when I saw Sister Carleen Reck on Thursday night. She was sitting in the front row of the annual dinner and fundraiser for the Criminal Justice Ministry, a nonprofit she founded. I was there to give the keynote address. I never would have been there if not for Reck, who retired several years ago.

She first called me in 2015, after I wrote a column about Kathy Acre’s Back@You nonprofit that fills backpacks for people who battle homelessness. It was one of the first columns I wrote as metro columnist of the Post-Dispatch. Acre, who started her nonprofit in her basement, had come across a specific backpack manufacturer in Chicago that included a built-in rain tarp to protect the backpack and its precious belongings from getting waterlogged, which can be a big problem when you’re living on the streets.

Reck was passing out backpacks, too, to the people who used the services of Criminal Justice Ministry, or CJM — men coming out of prison, many of them veterans. CJM helps them with housing, job training and social services. After Reck invited me to CJM, I met Brandon Reid, one of the employees there. He, too, came back to St. Louis after prison and needed help re-integrating into the community.

Not long ago, I wrote about Reid. He has a scholarship to Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work this fall to work on a graduate degree. He called me after a local landlord refused to consider him for an apartment because of a policy that the complex doesn’t rent to anybody who’s had a felony — and certain misdemeanors — in the past 100 years. After I wrote about the policy, Reid filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The complex, he tells me, has changed its policy.

He found a different place to live. A couple of years back, I introduced Reid to my friend Lashawn Casey. She first wrote to me from the Dent County Jail back when I was writing debtors’ prison columns about people who were being locked up in county jails because they couldn’t afford to pay their “board bill” for their previous time in jail. Casey spent some time in state prison on a drug charge, as Reid had many years ago. She needed a home plan as she left prison. CJM was starting to admit women to their programs.

Casey became their client. She’s been in St. Louis now for more than a year. She graduated from the CJM program and has moved to a rental house in north St. Louis. She, like Reid, is a success story. This is what happens when the community comes together to welcome back people who have battled drug addiction or otherwise served their time, provides some help and guidance, and tries to break generational cycles.

Casey is working. She’s doing well.

One of the people CJM honored Thursday was Bernie Sammons. We met a few years back at a craft beer bar in Ellisville. He’s a retired Monsanto scientist. Sammons and his wife, Kathy, live their Catholic faith by raising awareness about social justice issues and raising money for various charities, including building three tiny houses near Sts. Teresa and Bridget Catholic Church in north St. Louis.

The church is just a few blocks south of Ashland Avenue, where Casey found a house.

At the Thursday event, Casey introduced me before my speech. The next day, she texted me.

“I really loved the people I met last night,” she said. “I want to get involved.”

She emailed Thomas Casey, the director of CJM. We both attended Loyola University of Chicago around the same time, though we didn’t know each other. Now, one Casey will meet the other so she can give back to the organization that is helping her thrive.