'I'm grateful prison saved my life': Juan Martinez now helps the incarcerated

He changed for the better in prison.

“Growing up in Texas, I had a huge imagination,” said Juan Martinez. “I always imagined someday I would be a pilot. Later in my teens, I wanted to be an architect but also considered that I may be useful helping troubled teens someday. I never imagined I’d be doing what I do.”

Today, Martinez is the director of development and communications at Kindway, a Westerville-based organization that helps people who are coming out of the state prison system.

First, however, Martinez took a very different path.

“I used marijuana as a teen and sold it to fund my habit. At that time, my girlfriend was 15 and I was 17. We dropped out of school to work in dead-end jobs to take care of her younger siblings, younger nieces and nephews and mother. After some time, child protective services came to our house to remove the nieces and nephews because we were unfit to care for them. So we struggled to find better work and a larger home to recover the children," he said.

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“A week before my 21st birthday, a family member visited me and offered an opportunity to make $4,000 per month to sell marijuana . I saw this as the ticket to get our loved ones out of foster care. I started to sell $20,000 per month in marijuana, and I progressed over the next 10 years to the point where I was selling up to $250,000 each month.”

Martinez moved to Ohio in 1993 and was arrested for drug possession in 2003.

“My fiancee was arrested as a co-defendant,” he said. “We were facing 21 years in prison, and I was convicted of federal drug charges stemming from the same conduct while serving my state prison sentence.”

But things changed.

“I wasn’t a religious person,” Martinez said, “but it didn’t take long to realize it was only Christian volunteers who visited us at a time when we were not much use to anyone. So I surrendered to be a follower of Jesus Christ. My heart was to eventually work in a ministry, so I graduated from the Winebrenner Theological Seminary at Marion Correctional just as I was leaving prison in 2018.”

It came full circle for Martinez working with Rev. Tim Smith, a former prison chaplain and current worker at Kindway.

“Juan worked for me for nearly 10 years as an inmate,” said Smith. “Juan’s humor, simple humanity and active faith in God made him fun to be around and an asset for our team. His insight into what helps and hurts people is shared raw and real because he’s honest.”

“I’m grateful prison saved my life,” Martinez said. “I’ve learned things on this journey that I could have never learned otherwise. The danger, discomfort, desperation, loneliness and other stressors have made me more self-aware.

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“I sympathize with others who are where I was. When I preach or speak to those in prison, I let them know I arrived in prison as a hot mess and I left a warm mess. It gives them realistic expectations and real hope that they, too, can be changed.”

Drew Bracken grew up in Upper Arlington, was a TV news anchor for years and is a longtime freelance writer for Gannett newspapers. If you have a suggestion for a future inspirational profile, email Emily Rohozen, entertainment and things-to-do editor, at erohozen@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: 'I'm grateful prison saved my life': Juan Martinez now helps the incarcerated