Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Fresh out of jail, a 23-year-old heads for home

Freedom, Day One: Mike Sipes is determined to turn his life around and confront the man he’s becoming.

By JACOB H. FRIES, Times Staff Writer
Published September 16, 2007

	A Pinellas County Sheriff removes the handcuffs from Michael Sipes wrists at the Pinellas County jail. He is moments away from freedom and another chance.
Willie J. Allen Jr. | Times

His head lowered, Mike Sipes shuffled across the lawn and stopped at the door. Home. Or the closest he had to one.

Hours earlier, the 23-year-old had walked out of the Pinellas County Jail, penniless but free, after a month behind bars.

No one came to pick him up. And so, like most people fresh out of jail, Sipes made his way back to his old neighborhood, the place where he got in trouble in the first place.

Here, at least, he had family who might help him. But by returning he would also have to face his father, an old jailbird with a long rap sheet, and look hard at his options: continue in his father's footsteps or find a new path, one that didn't lead back to jail.

Sipes knocked on the door and waited a moment before pushing it open, hopeful that given a chance, he could start over and become a man, not just his father's son.

* * *

Every year, 50,000 inmates are released from the Pinellas County Jail. Most leave with the same drug, alcohol or mental health problems they had when they arrived.

Once outside, their issues go untreated, and they quickly end up in handcuffs again, a cycle that drives much of the jail's crowding problems. Sheriff Jim Coats has called his facility a "dumping ground for society's social ills."

Sipes, a high school dropout, was well aware of the traps and temptations awaiting him as he left the jail on July 10.

For the first time in years, he would have no ankle monitor, no probation officer, no one looking over his shoulder. Except, of course, a reporter and a photographer with the St. Petersburg Times whom he allowed to follow him through his first day of freedom.

That day began at 4:23 a.m.

The sky was still black, and as Sipes stepped outside, he kept his eyes locked on the sidewalk leading away from the jail.

"I won't look back," he said. "Whenever you look back, you end up coming back."

* * *

As he walked to 49th Street, Sipes squeezed the free bus token he got from jail. He found a bus stop and sat on a bench. It advertised Help Bail Bonds, with the slogan "Freedom at last."

Sipes, a St. Petersburg native, has collar-length black hair, a pierced eyebrow and forearms tattooed with the words "Liberate" and "Maddness." He spent the month in jail on charges of violating probation related to marijuana possession and forging checks -- small-time, knucklehead stuff.

His plan: go to his ex-girlfriend's house, borrow $20, buy cigarettes and work his way home to the south side.

Suddenly out of the darkness, from the direction of the jail, came two running figures, also just released. They scavenged ashtrays for unfinished cigarettes and disappeared down the road.

Sipes wanted to smoke, but he wasn't about to dig through trash.

A third man came down the street wearing shorts and bright-white "indigent" socks, the type the jail gives to poor inmates. Sipes had worn a pair himself and now said "indigent" aloud, like a kid awkwardly muttering a curse word.

"I smell food," Sipes said, sniffing the air.

A pickup pulled into the parking lot next to Sipes' bus bench, a woman headed to work at a Frito Lays distribution center.

Sipes approached gingerly, not wanting to scare her in the dark.

"You don't happen to have a cigarette?"

The woman turned to ignore him, then reconsidered. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it for him.

In jail, Sipes had somewhere to sleep and three meals a day, but on the outside, at least he could smoke. He took a long, hard drag, then contentedly blew a cloud up toward the sky.

The No. 52 bus pulled up at 6:18 a.m., nearly two hours after Sipes walked out of jail. He plugged his only token in the slot and took a seat in the last row, against the window.

Finally, forward progress.

* * *

Block after block flew by. Sipes stared out the window, talking to no one. Dawn was approaching.

In front of him sat a woman in nursing scrubs reading a paperback. Across the aisle was a man with a mullet, a deep tan and a long scar across his cheek. Two or three times, the guy took a slug from a liquor bottle. The rest of the passengers slumped in their seats, half asleep.

Sipes bolted up. While daydreaming, he had missed his stop. It wasn't the first time in his life he had gone down the wrong road. Nothing ever seemed to come easy. Mom split when he was a kid. Dad was in and out of jail. Sipes ended up in the care of an uncle, himself no stranger to incarceration.

At 12, Sipes smoked his first joint. At 16, he started selling drugs.

But today was supposed to be different. A real-life do-over. Sipes decided to ride the bus all the way downtown and then take it north again, backtracking to his ex-girlfriend's house.

At Williams Park, the last stop, everyone got off. The driver, seeing Sipes in the back, said he would have to pay again to stay on. Broke, Sipes jumped off and walked through the park to a friend's house nearby.

His friend Cathy answered the door. She didn't invite him inside or offer a hug, and when he asked for $1.50 bus fare, she shook her head.

"No, I'm about to go to work," she said before quickly shutting the door.

Sipes shrugged. No one had visited him in jail -- not his friends, not his siblings, not his father -- and he couldn't help feeling shunned and abandoned now.

He started his march north on Fourth Street. The sun was high, the temperature already in the 80s. Sipes walked past restaurant after restaurant and, every few blocks, he would raise his nose toward the sky.

"I smell food again."

His shirt was soaked with sweat.

Fifty-two blocks to go.

* * *

Sipes knocked lightly. This was the house of his ex-girlfriend, Teressa Thomas. He didn't want to come here, but he knew she would help. She was the one who persuaded him to stop selling drugs three years ago.

The door creaked open.

"I'm not wearing pants," Aaron Lowe, one of Thomas' housemates, said through the opening. "Hold on."

Lowe is 23 and extensively tattooed, an unemployed computer geek and father of one with a second on the way. Half asleep, he came outside shirtless. The two men stood in the driveway, littered with cigarette butts and broken-down chairs.

"I lost a lot of weight," Sipes said, patting his belly. "That's the good thing about jail."

"I think I'll try by other means," Lowe deadpanned.

Lowe said he had lost his job, but had two interviews later that day, one to sell motorcycles, the other to sell vacuums.

"At least it's $500 a week," he said, complaining that he had to compete with teenagers. "You know, I vote for year-round school, so it doesn't affect the job market so much. I'm going to start a petition."

Sipes tried to get Lowe's attention with talk about jail. He leaned back in a chair and pulled up his pants leg, lifting it in the air.

"Hey, check it out."

"You have a foot."

"Look, no ankle monitor. I'm free."

Lowe went inside to wake Thomas, who is also 23. She came outside in her pajamas and slid into a plastic lawn chair. A night cashier, she got off work at 7 a.m. and wasn't happy to be awake.

Nor to see Sipes' smiling face.

"I want my shirts back," she demanded. "One of them shirts I had since I was 12 years old!"

She later loaned Sipes $20. He used her cell phone to call home and said he would be there soon.

It was time to go. These were Sipes' friends, but he often felt like the butt of their jokes.

"Best of luck," Lowe told Sipes as he left. "You know where I live."

* * *

After a couple of detours -- one to buy a pack of Newports -- Sipes couldn't put it off anymore. He took another bus to the south side and walked to his family's house.

He smiled like a kid home from school when he finally pushed open the front door. Inside, his pregnant sister, Brandy, sat on the living room couch smoking a cigarette. On the TV was Judge Mathis, above it a picture of Jesus.

His father, Mike Sr., sat shirtless at the dining table, also smoking. He did not get up.

"We weren't sure when you was getting out," his father said.

Sipes nodded, said he had been walking all day.

"Didn't they give you a bus token?"

His father snorted when he explained.

"I wouldn't be walking," he said. "I would be hitchhiking. Last time I got out, I went to a red light and when a truck pulled up I'd say, 'Hey man, can I get into your truck?'"

Sipes' father knows the jail. He has been arrested 14 times in Pinellas County on charges like disorderly intoxication, spouse battery and night prowling. Last year, he spent more than three months in county lockup, his home away from home.

"Where'd they have you?" he asked his son.

"B Barracks for a while."

"Upper left?"

"No, center, then upper right."

"They always put my a-- in Charlie wing," the elder Sipes said.

His father went into the kitchen and began to scrub some dishes. Over his shoulder, he asked about his favorite jail deputies and the ones he hates.

"Did you see Sue? How about Russell? And Cpl. Bradley?"

Sipes got two hot dogs out of the fridge and microwaved them, his first meal of the day. He told his father he had been broke in jail and couldn't buy any snacks from the commissary.

But at least he didn't have to pay the jail's fees, he added victoriously.

"I mean, they charge you $8 for a pill."

"If you go back, they'll get you on those," his father warned.

"IF? What do you mean, 'If I go back?'"

"I said if."

"I'm not going back."

His father put down the dishes, turned and shook his head.

"Once you get in the system, you just keep going back."

* * *

The front door opened and in came Sipes' 20-year-old sister, Sandy, and her boyfriend, T.I. They plopped on the couch and lit cigarettes. Sipes sat down next to T.I., who was looking at doing time related to a marijuana charge.

Sipes, talking like a streetwise uncle, advised T.I. to opt for jail rather than probation.

"They'll throw you 15, 30 days. It's not that bad."

"Really?"

"Sandy, I don't mean nothing by it, but he should take it," Sipes said, turning to his sister.

Sipes leaned a little closer, as though he was going to share a secret with T.I.

"Don't accept nothing from anybody. Not even a cigarette. It'll get around, and you'll get another 30 days," Sipes warned him.

From the kitchen, Sipes' father chimed in, mocking his son's paternal advice.

"It ain't nothing. I smoked every day."

"That's because you're a dumba--!" Sipes shot back, silencing his father.

Sipes felt like celebrating. He asked Sandy if she had any liquor. She dug out a bottle of brandy and poured Sipes and T.I. each a shot. Then a second round, which they chased with Dr Pepper.

"That feels better."

Sipes returned to the couch. He laid his head on the armrest and his eyes got heavy. He was home and tired and still had a lot of questions. How would he get money? Where would he live? Would he make it this time?

Or was his father right, that once a jailbird, always a jailbird?

Sipes didn't think so. If you believed that, then what's the point of starting over? He wiggled deeper into the lumpy couch, trying to get comfortable.

Tomorrow was just around the corner.

Epilogue

Since his release, Sipes has stayed out of trouble. He lives at home and works in construction alongside his uncle and his father. He says he doesn't drink much, smoked marijuana only once and paid back the $20 he borrowed from Teressa Thomas.

He hasn't registered for school, despite vowing to do so. But every week, he's putting away money so he can move into his own apartment. He says he has learned to walk away from his father whenever the two of them begin arguing.

Staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Jacob H. Fries can be reached at jfries@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8872.

[Last modified September 18, 2007, 09:48:36]