He didn’t look like a savior. He looked like the kind of man the system usually keeps away from children. But when he held Destiny up to the glass, my soul left my body.
Thomas was a volunteer at the hospital where Ellie died. He was part of a program for patients who have no one—people who are destined to die alone. He had sat with Ellie for the final two hours of her life. He held her hand while she wept for a husband who couldn’t be there and a baby who had no home.
“She asked me to make sure Destiny didn’t end up in the system,” Thomas told me through the phone, his voice a gruff rumble. “I told her I’d take care of her until you got out. She smiled, squeezed my hand, and then she was gone.”
Defying the Statistics
Thomas wasn’t just being kind; he was fighting a war against statistics. In the United States, approximately 2.3 million people are incarcerated, and over 5 million children have had a parent go to prison at some point in their lives. Children of incarcerated parents are significantly more likely to experience poverty and psychological trauma. Furthermore, Black children are disproportionately affected; statistics show that 1 in 9 Black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to 1 in 57 white children.
Thomas knew these numbers. He knew that as a single, sixty-eight-year-old biker, the state would rather put Destiny in a rotating door of foster homes than give her to him.
