Four Feet Tall and Rising (9 page)

His accusation alone made things harder on me in the eyes of the jury. I kept hoping they’d offer me a deal, but the prosecutor came back with outrageous numbers: forty years to life, thirty-five years to life. Then to make matters worse, I was accused of taking part in a foiled escape attempt.

We were being bused back to County on these really old, big, long yellow school buses that were fortified and converted for prisoner transport. Normally, I was seated up front, in the cages with Bloods, but for some reason, the deputies sat me in the back with the Mexican gangs. I was actually handcuffed to two Mexicans instead of to Bloods. During the ride, the Mexican gang started ripping out the backseat. I saw it happening, but none of the deputies up front noticed. Eventually, they ripped a hole big enough to bust out of the back of the bus. We were locked together in threes, so the three guys that had been ripping all disappeared out the hole. Then one of the guys chained to me decided to make a break for it. For a split second, I thought about it, but I knew it would only make matters worse. If the third guy chained to us had decided to bolt,
I’d have had no choice. I couldn’t hold back two grown men, but thankfully, he didn’t bolt. He stayed put, so our handcuffed third ended up halfway into the hole, unable to move. As soon as the escapees busted out of the back of the bus, there was a cop car behind them. The bus swerved over to the curb and cops swarmed in. They saw the guy connected to me halfway down the hole, and they charged us all with attempted escape.

They took me out of the gang module and put me in the high-security row with Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker murderer, and Todd Bridges, who played Willis on
Diff’rent Strokes
. Ramirez was there ’cause he was a scary mother. Bridges was there ’cause celebrities are very rarely mainstreamed into gen pop. It’s too dangerous for them. Todd Bridges was the biggest crybaby. He’d purposefully plug up his toilet and flood out the tier. It was hard for him, very hard for him, to be in jail.

Even though the gangbanger testified that I wouldn’t jump out of the bus with him, I became known as an escape artist. From that point on, I had to wear handcuffs with chains around my waist, hanging down to my ankles, and chains around my ankles. ’cause I was “pint-sized,” the deputies were afraid I could “fit into anything,” so they decided to keep me in a one-man cell for twenty-three hours a day for the next six months of my trial. Being in solitary for those six months made everything even harder. I had to get up earlier for trial and ’cause I was now labeled a “high-security risk,” I had to be put in a cage by myself on the bus. With those chains around my ankles, it was hard for me even to get on the bus. I’d need a little bounce to hop up, or some guy would have to
lift me. If an inmate lifted me up, it was better. The deputies would always make a joke out of it and piss me off.

Being on the high-security tier, I spent a lot more time alone, and had a lot less time outside my cell. It was depressing and a mind game. I had to find some way to occupy my thoughts. I started reading more and got a copy of Donald Trump’s
The Art of the Deal
. Trump talked a lot about using negativity to motivate himself. I wondered if there was a way to use my surroundings, dismal as they were, and make them into a positive, motivating force for myself. I liked that Trump had an ego. He didn’t mince words, and he wrote with such authority that I couldn’t help but be impressed by him. He was bigger than life. He was a character. I could relate. I wanted to meet him and pick his brain.

His life was exactly the life I had dreamed for myself when I was a kid, selling mice to the pet stores and dressing up like J.R. for Halloween. The opening chapter of his book walked me through a typical week in the life of a mogul, and all the important people he’d talk with or meet. I could picture that life for myself. I wanted it. I memorized the eleven steps for success he outlined, from Thinking Big to Maximizing Options to Fighting Back to Delivering the Goods. His book started to feel like my bible.

I just wanted the third trial to be over and done with so I could get out of County and move on. Janet, Mama Myrt, and Cerisse attended most of the trials. It was hard to see all of them crying. Mom and Linda came once or twice, but Dad never showed his face. I’d have pleaded guilty to the accidental
shooting of the bystander, but they wouldn’t drop the other charges, and the prosecution was going full-court press. Carol told me if I pled guilty, they’d throw the maximum time at me and that letting a jury decide my fate was my best shot at going home before I was ninety. Carol didn’t want me to testify in my own defense, but I wanted to clear my name about the things I hadn’t done. I was being accused of a lot more than what actually happened on that night.

I got on the stand and Kevin McCormick, the prosecutor, asked me point-blank, “Did you ever gangbang?” I said, “No.” Then he said, “Can you explain these photos?” He projected photos of me, in County with my homies, all of them gangbangers, all of us wearing our County blues and red bandanas, throwing up gang signs. He was good, that guy. I had to hand it to him.

The other prisoners told me, “If the jury comes back quick from deliberations, you’re screwed. If they take several days, it might go to a hung jury” (which happened during my second trial), “and if they take a day or two, you’ve got a chance of an acquittal.” My third jury went out and took forever. For four days, I sat in the holding tank for nine hours while they deliberated, had some lunch, and deliberated some more. There were so many charges still pending against me for the jury to consider. There were still twenty-one gun charges alone, not to mention the attempted-murder, robbery, and conspiracy charge for the shooting of the bystander. In total, I was facing life in prison.

When the jury came back, they started reading their
decision. I was found guilty of attempted murder and guilty of the attempted robbery. I was found guilty on a bunch of the gun allegations. But I was found not guilty of conspiracy and that was the big one. That charge came with an automatic twenty-five-years-to-life sentence. I was so relieved, I almost passed out. The bailiff came over and helped me sit down in my shackles. He heard me say, “Oh, thank God. I’m actually going home now.” He thought I was crazy. He corrected me, “You’re not going home today, sir.” I looked up at him. “Yeah, but someday, I get to go home. No life sentence. No life.” In some weird way, I was happy. When I got back to my cell, the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, congratulated me. “You were convicted, but you didn’t get life.”

Four weeks later, I took one last ride to the courthouse. The sentence hearing lasted six hours and I was sentenced to twenty years, eight months. That sounded pretty bad until I started doing the math in my head. I remembered Big Will’s lesson about doing good time. I realized I’d be out in half that time. Actually, less than half. I’d already been in prison for nearly two years by the time my third trial was over. With the California Department of Corrections policy of one day off for one day served, I could be out in eight years or less.

As I was doing my mental calculations, I was shocked to hear Kevin McCormick actually advocate for me during sentencing. He stood up before the judge and said, “Mr. Rossi has a chance to correct his problems and learn from his mistakes. It’s our recommendation he be housed in the California Youth Authority.” I couldn’t believe it. This guy, the guy who
prosecuted me, was trying to help me out. I stared at him in awe and wondered why in the hell he’d just done that.

The judge agreed with him, and they gave me a second chance. Even though I was technically a California Department of Corrections commitment, they were gonna ship me to the California Youth Authority. The judge made it clear: “If you mess up one time, we send you straight to CDC. Got it?” I nodded. Got it.

hey shipped me to DeWitt Nelson in
Stockton, California. The facility was named after a forestry official, and part of its rehabilitation programs included training juveniles to handle flooding in the San Joaquin Valley or to fight forest fires in the Sierras. All the Youth Authority lockups offered vocational training and psychological counseling services. Their mission was to reform kids, not just imprison them. We weren’t even called inmates. We were called wards, and we were even allowed to wear our own clothes on the grounds.

There were four juvenile prisons near Stockton at that time. Karl Holton and O.H. Close were for high school–aged kids. DeWitt Nelson was for the college-aged kids, eighteen to twenty-five, and then there was N.A. Chaderjian, which was a max-security youth prison for the serious fuck-ups. Those were the violent kids that had to be isolated. To get sent to Chad, you had to stab somebody or rape somebody. You had
to have mental problems, and if you screwed up too many times at any of the other three facilities, they’d send you to Chad.

Every youth prison had a school, which we called the Education Department, as well as a vocational training department, a kitchen program, and religious services. DeWitt had a bunch of other offerings, including a gym, a track, and a field for football and soccer. It functioned like a self-contained city. The grounds looked like a college campus, with trees and grass. We even lived dorm-style, in halls with long rows of beds instead of cells. There were eight dorms holding three hundred kids per dorm. Nobody was separated ’cause of race or gang affiliation. It may sound like going to college, but there was still violence at DeWitt. Every year, on some specific day, the northern Mexicans and the southern Mexicans would have a bloodbath. There was still some gang activity, but for the most part, kids tried to share a mutual understanding of each other. For some reason, it worked.

Lassen was the intake dorm, where new arrivals were housed and most of the kitchen workers lived. Tahoe was the fuck-up dorm, where they stuck the kids who had behavior problems. There were two other dorms for the California Department of Forestry kids, who were training to fight fires. They had a lot less time and were in a lot less trouble than the rest of us. There was no way I could physically keep up with the demands of the fire training program and they didn’t see me doing yard work or working the kitchen detail, so I was housed inside both the Pumas and Klamath dorms during
my stay. They were the “good” dorms, dorms for those focusing on their education or on vocational training. They were smaller dorms than the rest, with more privileges and rewards built in, like a TV in the dayroom.

The dorms themselves were basically wide-open wings with rows and rows of bunk beds. Each unit had a security office, an entertainment/dayroom, and then an A wing, a B wing, and a C wing of bunk beds. The floor plan was completely open. There was no restriction on movement from wing to wing, and there was absolutely no privacy. We kept our limited belongings in lockers.

If you screwed up once or twice, they’d throw you in a wet room. Every unit had a wet room, a small cell with a bed, a toilet, no windows, the lights on twenty-four hours a day, and a camera watching your every move behind a solid steel door. It was solitary confinement in the midst of a pretty social, lenient environment, which made it that much worse. To know your buddies were out there, shooting hoops or going to school, and you were stuck in the wet room was hell. If you caused real trouble, with a weapons-related altercation, a rape, a stabbing, or assaulting an officer or a teacher, they sent your ass immediately to Chad, and nobody wanted to end up at Chad, so everyone tried to avoid conflicts if at all possible.

After being in high-security lockup at County for six months, I felt lucky. At County, I was miserable. At DeWitt, I felt almost free, but it still took me six months to start acting right. I got into fights. I got into trouble. I got in an argument with a guy and he hit me in the head. I said, “Okay, I’ll
be back,” and back I came with soap in a sock. I whacked him hard and knocked him out. They stuck me in the wet room for that one.

I didn’t wanna talk about my crime. I used the excuse that I was “going through the appeals process,” but really, I was being defiant and arrogant. I had anger problems and I couldn’t control my temper. They kept sending me to a psychiatrist, and he finally just laid into me, “You’re mentally competent. There’s no problem in your head. You’re not fooling anybody anymore. You can turn this around.” I realized he was right. I wasn’t a psycho. I’d made a huge mistake but I wasn’t a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Richard Ramirez. I was just stubborn as a mule. And that was a choice.

It took an inmate named Pinnock to set me straight. He pulled me aside one day and said, “Shorty, you got a lot here. Don’t fuck it up.” Here I was, being given a second chance in a place where the corrections officers and counselors and teachers were actually there to help. The corrections officers were not as violent or racist or bigoted as the guys at County, and if they were, they kept it to themselves. They didn’t treat me like shit, and they didn’t have carte blanche either. I started to get it. If I could act like a civilized human being, I’d be treated better by the guards and by all the staff. I started to understand their notion of “being a product of my environment,” and started to believe that maybe I didn’t have to act like an asshole all the time. Maybe I could do something good.