 Good afternoon. Today is August 3rd and the program is coronavirus in our mental health. I'm Ken Burtis coming to you from Haleiva on the North Shore and today is a warm summer day and our North Shore surf is quiet and serene up here. If you're looking for surfing waves, place to go is the South Shore. That's what I keep reminding the tourists but the tourists don't listen to me and they keep coming up here in droves. We have a lot of them today up at the North Shore. People also don't listen to me much about coronavirus either. Coronavirus is still with us. We are still in the pandemic. Now we are much lower than our highs but more much higher than our lows. If you take a look at the numbers since January when we had that big surge, we were having about 4,000 new cases every day here in Hawaii. Now we dropped down to in March when we had our lows we were down to 20 per day which was terrific news but today not only today but in all of July we've been averaging about 500 cases a day so that's much lower than the 4,000 but much higher than the 20 that we had in March. So we're still here but to everybody we're out of the pandemic. I mean people are not wearing, not many people are wearing masks, we're gathering in large groups and we're traveling a lot. That creates problems and you know well take a look nationally for instance. Nationally in 2020 we had 400,000 Americans die in that year. 2000 and 21 we had another 400,000 Americans die. This year in 2022 so far we were over 200,000 deaths in this country bringing us to over a million which I reported on a couple shows ago. By the end of the year the experts expect that we'll have another 50,000 to go with that 200,000 so 250,000 deaths in 2020 is what they're anticipating. So we're still not out of the woods and we still have to take precaution and that's hard. People are just tired, they're tired of the lockdown, they're tired of coronavirus, they're tired of wearing masks and they're tired of staying home, they want to get out so people are doing that and people are getting sick. I think many of you probably have had a close friend or a family member who in this past year and maybe recently like myself had family and friends who came down with COVID and it's not for most people it's not a pleasant experience. So we still have to look for ways to deal with this and one of the ways that we do that and we've been doing it on this program is we've been looking for things that are positive because our world now is full of negatives. I mean we've got the coronavirus, we've got the war, we've got mass shootings, we've got climate change, we've got a whole bunch of things to make us feel very negative. Well we need to start feeling positive about things and there's a lot of positive things happening. So today we're going to talk about the positivity about helping people, the joy that we get from helping people and to help me with that is my good friend Tony Barron who's an expert in this area. Welcome to the show Tony. Thank you my dear, I'm glad you invited me. It's just wonderful having you here. Now Tony is a woman of many talents and many skills. She's a minister, she's also a health care professional. For many years she ran a very successful tobacco cessation program and for the last 38 years she's been a volunteer in our prisons here on Oahu and I've asked her to talk about that today because there's something very special about volunteering at our prisons. Our inmates are very at risk, they're what I call the forgotten population. They're locked down and they're not going any place, they're not traveling like we are and they're going to be there for a while and it's just very difficult. They're in close quarters and they really need some helping hand and Tony's been doing that. Tony could you share a little bit about your some of the history of your experience you've been with the prison system for over 20 38 years. It's just a total joy. I look forward to every I go to Halawa on Friday mornings and Wayava on Saturday mornings and it's just like getting together with family. We really are and many of the men I'm the only non-staff person they see not only for years but sometimes decades and one of the things that I wanted to share was my initiation into the system. The volunteer coordinator he said well you know I'll let you go in but if if you think you want to come back I would ask one commitment from you and that would be that you will commit to six months of once a week coming in to see the many. Many of them have been taught trained belief that they are throwaway people and that's what I want to share with everyone is in the first place the people that come to my group it's called a spiritual rap group not rap as in singing but in the old days because everything I do is old. So rap just used to mean talk so we have a spiritual rap group we read one word the word might be prosperity or freedom or pets it might be anything and there's just a few paragraphs on it and then we sit in a circle and the men go from one man to the next saying what that idea that concept that thought is to them and I thought for example that oh pets what a what a humbug word for these they don't have their pets they're not going to get any pets what can we possibly talk about well it was one of our best sessions because it lifted their spirits to remember their true loves you know their dogs and being young again and all that so and that's terrific Tony what just being there you know I did a you know I did nothing like Tony did but I did a couple years volunteering way back when I hate to admit it to the in the 70s at the prison and just having somebody that listens to you and having some some venue that you can talk and share your ideas with is incredible and so I mean I can see where pets were being very uplifting and I'm sure you've talked about many different things that if you've found uplifting with your men maybe you can tell us some more of those uplifting things oh it how many days do you have so so this is what I want to communicate to your listeners and that is these are the same people that live next door to you that are relatives that are your best friend son daughter whatever and because they're in prison and because they come to my group in they are people who are sober they're not on drugs not that you can't get those in there but that's another group of people that wouldn't be coming to my spiritual rap group so and this is the feedback that I get from the men because there's all kinds of churches and various folks that go in to save you know the inmates and the feedback that I get is that it's just so nice for them to be able to speak and have somebody listen to them so you really nailed it when you said uh give them a chance to talk I I haven't been to the other ministers that serve the inmates but I feel sure that they stand up and give a sermon just like you do in church well ours isn't like that everybody gets to talk they all get to say well I believe it I don't believe it I like it I don't like it and and somebody says I heard you oh my goodness it must be Christmas absolutely I was really interested uh if you could talk a little bit about the differences between Lava and Wayaba I with my short term of volunteering for a couple years I volunteered at OCCC and a little bit at Wayaba and they were quite different uh and I was wondering if the two populations that you're with the two groups that you're with if they they differ or if you find a lot of similarities between them yes and no they're similar because they're locked up and put away and they're the throwaway people yeah so uh let's see what I where I want to what I want to tell the difference for me is OCCC is when they're just getting into the system many of those people are pre-sentenced uh why Halava is long term they're there they're not just one or two years they're they're there for a while and a lot of lifers and then um and they're mature and many of them have been you know started out and not not orphanages but foster homes and things that um they haven't had the same kind of background that you and I have with a family and stability and that kind of thing and then that's the Halava and then the Wayaba uh those are people that have been probably in OCCC then in Halava for years and now when they go to Wayaba they can get into a work program you know you see the guys on alongside the road you know clearing the brush and mowing the yard and all that stuff so uh they their mindset would be that they're just getting into it and they're probably scared to death because they you know watch too many James Cagney films but it is a scary place for them and then the um Halava they're pretty well set or settled in that they can unpack and know they're gonna be there for a while and then the Wayaba they're scared because the the world they knew no longer exists they don't even know how to use a telephone you know anything there's there's our world changes so fast out here um so my heart really bleeds for them that uh they get out of prison they have no job they have no home they have no money they have no you know springboard they have no you know you can imagine yeah this is the thing that really concerned me the most because when we look at statistics recidivism is always high uh here in Hawaii as it is with every place else uh person gets back into the real world so to speak outside of the prison system and the first thing they want to do is celebrate and oftentimes that celebration causes a parole violation and they land right back into prison uh and I know one of the key things that I talked about when I was volunteering and I'm sure you did too is is how do we adjust how do uh how can they get ready to deal with this uh new world like you're talking about without being bounced back because that's the last thing that most of them want is to come back to prison right so these people are scary they're to the population and they're they have no confidence they have nobody to trust them anymore because they've heard so many people in their past so what we need to do as as the civilian population is give them whatever avenues are available to you to incorporate them into our everyday life for example one of the men that got out used on parole but one of the men that got out no money no job no id no driver's license no nothing um so uh um I gave him $20 to weed my garden big whoopee well it is a big whoopee because I spent the afternoon with him and we had a meal together and the bottom line is just incorporate them in anything and everything you can whether it's giving them a menial job or uh uh offer them a ride to church or to a bingo game or whatever you can to say yes you are uh an important part of our community um we you're not damned forever because you made a mistake when you're 20 years old and you're just getting out when you're middle aged it's they they need your acceptance they need you oh now here's something I really want to share with your with your audience you know those tears that people uh get tattooed on their face for the most part not always but for the most part that means somebody died you know ganglame foolishness whatever so I want to get with the powers that be that say if you're getting out and they all do sooner or later let's erase those tears you go to rent a room or get a job uh they're not going to want to see that on a server's face just make that much more scary yeah yeah and that's sort of uh what I was always thinking about was that when we come back to the real world we have to abandon some of the negative things that we who are dealing with before we got into prison and we've got to increase all the positive things that we were doing that we may have may have been avoiding for instance uh oftentimes I found that people had burned their bridges with their families and friends before uh committing an anti-social act and winding up in prison yeah that was one thing that I was always if we could sort of re-help them build those bridges again and be connected with people who could support them uh that always seemed like a great way but it's very difficult and I don't envy you your job because that's really hard to do and you don't want them to go back to their friends who got them in trouble in the first place either so it's a double-edged sword this is what I tell them on a regular basis I think this is the drum that you're going to hear me beat just about every time I talk to you and that is when you do get out volunteer I know that your your self-esteem is probably very low your self-confidence may be lower so when you get out volunteer to cut the old lady's lawn next door volunteer a church to be an usher volunteer with a uh any place all the time just to say hey I am a contributing person to this community so volunteering is the name of the game for me absolutely you know and for people who are not uh in prison there's so many of us during the the coronavirus that have just become filled with feelings of impotency of not being able to you know not having any confidence in ourselves and constantly being aware of our shortcomings and when I talk to these people I try to convince them to go out and help other people so that they get thinking about other people not just themselves and by helping other people they start feeling better about themselves about what they're doing and yeah it may not be a job it may be volunteering but it's very important stuff during this particularly difficult time so that that would be great if you could get them to do that and you probably have some examples of some people who wound up volunteering at and improving because of that absolutely whatever we whatever they can give back they don't have money for the most part they uh a lot of them don't have jobs that they can go back to they don't have respect the and the people that they heard are usually the ones closest to them their families and sweethearts and kids and all that so nobody wants to trust them they say yeah you've told me you're sorry about a thousand times you told me that you wouldn't do it again now this is your sixth time so but I think one of the things that changes with the men is when they age as they get into real maturity real adulthood they're not trying to be the top gun on the on the block you know so that makes it easier for them but they still have to have our what's the word receptability they still have to have us say yes you're welcome you know I trust you to come into my house I trust you to move my lawn I trust you to wash my car you know it sounds like they only do menial jobs and it's not true it's just that's what's coming to mind for me but these men are many are highly intelligent creative they're been business owners bosses you know so yeah and they do have that you know that was the one thing that I really noticed especially it was that although they may have low self-esteem at this point although other people may not trust them or that they do have skills but most of those skills they haven't used for a while right they've been into other things that got them in prison rather than utilizing their own skills so if they could you know reach back and touch upon those skills that they already have like a lot of men that I know can really fix things well yeah you know I never could so I was so I was always an outlier in that field but a lot of men can can fix things and a lot of people need things fixed during the pandemic for instance and to give them an opportunity to volunteer to help people fix things that are broken that aren't easily replaced because of the problems we have with shipping and all these other sort of things can be a great way to do that some of them are artistic you know and they can do things with music and with art and if we can get them involved in that that would be terrific yeah well even in prison they said well this is going to cost a lot of money to get somebody to come into the prison and it's a medical thing to have a tattoo I said you are loaded with artists tattoo artists in prison I mean that's that's they're not allowed to do it but they do it anyway and they just you know have fabulous artwork you know I told him I said make Christmas cards sell those get those to your family so yeah that yes yeah and those are special you know everything you know we do so much online and there's so little connection of us you know even before the coronavirus pandemic we were much less in touch with people and much more in touch with them virtually rather than in person something special about that Christmas card coming in the mailbox that I think oh yeah okay this is not just an email or a text that somebody's sending me they're thinking enough about me where they're sending me something that is beautiful yeah I'm when when they let me back into Hulava they locked me out of Hulava for two years I went to Wayava the whole time but when I went back to Wayava one of you know we go in the chapel area and then there's a visitors area and there was a man with I presume his wife and I don't know a 10 year old 12 year old little boy that he hadn't his son he hadn't seen for two years you know imagine isn't that just horrible yeah exactly and what does a person say to that son that they hadn't seen it two years and I'm guessing that that's something that your wrap group could probably help them with you know talking about how do you communicate with people how do you communicate with how do you wrap to people that you haven't seen in a long time you know yeah and and that's what gets back to maturity again too is that these every man will say well I'm not coming back and then I'll say okay well what's going to be different this time and and then we get down to you don't go back to the old neighborhood you don't hang with the same friends you and I said what are you going to do for fun if you drank and did drugs for your good time charlie's what are you going to do now if you think that that's what fun is you have a plan does that mean you can never go to a party again what what is your plan so you know all this kind of stuff is things that they can be thinking of for sure yeah and of course for many years as stony knows I worked in substance abuse counseling and if you go out and you leave prison and you celebrate with drugs or alcohol you're very likely to wind up with the dui which will send you back to prison it's a violation of your parole are you're likely to wind up in a busted party with drugs available which also violates your parole and boom you're right back in halava our old triple C or wherever back in the system again and that was always you know they said you know I would get sort of the light bulb that would come up and they would think about that and say yeah and then later on they'd forget about it and they get pressure from if they go back to the old group they get nobody wants to be the last smoker the last drinker the last drug user so they don't want you to leave the the group yeah so they how do you help them deal with that with that pressure they they just have to decide what their priority is you know and I tell them hey if you come back here and this is lifestyle you're used to and you know how it works and you you belong here and you know how to work it for you so be it but if you don't want to come back here then you have to start over again you're a baby and find friends find friends volunteer again that's where you're going to meet nice people volunteers do what they do not for pay not for glamour not for notoriety they do it because they have big hearts and those are the people you want to hang with yeah absolutely Tony I notice we're running down on our time we've got our half hour show goes by very quickly but since we're getting toward the end maybe you could tell us a little bit about how this makes you feel good make it a little you know how did we've been doing it for 38 years you much get reinforced a lot and have kept that up for 30 38 years so tell us a little bit about the joy so that people can understand that you know they are they are nice people that love me so I tell them when people say oh aren't you afraid to go in there and I'm doing you know have they killed people are they robbers you know I said they're they're the same the same person that live next door to you only this now they're not on drugs and they're not drunk and I get to go into prisons where there's however many men that love me and I said I'm I'm an old lady but to them I'm good looking well Tony to me you're always good looking too so that's terrific well and it truly gives me a sense of purpose yeah yeah so what's up in the future what are things how are things going to change I mean they've changed already like you said you couldn't get into Halava for two years because of the coronavirus right we're going to do things differently and if we are what are some of the different things that we might be able to do in the future with to help inmates I think that all of these major changes that our country needs now and I think it was Barack Obama that spelled it out for me it's got to come from the grassroots it's got to be when when somebody gets out you say okay we'll come over to my house for lunch or let me volunteer you know they even have classes how to teach men to write a check or fill out a job aptly well I guess you did that yeah uh well I would yeah I was sort of doing uh not particularly that but I was doing more of uh psychological you know therapy sessions yeah so yeah you definitely need those skills otherwise are you going to survive out there and so it's not complicated and you don't need to be uh as educated and qualified as you are as wonderful as that is um just to pat them on the back shake their hand look them in the eye have a conversation with them have a meal with them you know give them examples a lot of these men don't know anything well if somebody gets in your face you punch them that's what they grew up with so you know and talk about the lightbulbs going on for them to say oh yeah I never thought of it that way you know just well I hope that not only they but the audience also thinks of it uh that way as well and I see we've really went out and run out of time and Tony I just really appreciate you coming here it's like I said at the beginning I think that our inmates here are the forgotten population and they're easy to sort of set aside and you've been working so well with them over the years and doing so much good that I can't thank you enough uh not only for you know for them as well as for me uh it's it's been terrific uh and I hope that we can talk Tony into coming back to another program sometime to talk to us about tobacco cessation of the topic that's uh near and dear to my heart as well but Tony thank you again my pleasure and just one more reminder they are not throwaway people yeah they're ohana they're ohana absolutely thank you and thank you again Tony and thanks everybody for watching and thanks to the staff at think tech Hawaii uh thanks to Eric and to Hailey and to Jay and everybody who helped make this program possible and hope to see you again in two weeks aloha aloha thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii dot com mahalo