Former ‘Uptown Burglar’ finds the inmate who saved his life

DALLAS — The trajectory of Damon West is already a lovely compelling story of redemption. But the previously meth-addicted burglar-turned reformed jail inmate was once nonetheless on a adventure to officer public redemption for anyone else: the guy liable for the “coffee bean” alternate of course in his life.

We’ve offered you to Damon West prior to. He was once a celebrity quarterback for UNT in Denton. But a knee harm resulted in ache drugs. Pain drugs resulted in addictions. Addictions resulted in a life of crime to make stronger the ones addictions. And that life of crime ended with a 65-year jail sentence for the guy dubbed the “Uptown Burglar” in a Dallas County Courtroom in 2009.

“I was a bad guy. I was a scumbag,” he instructed me once we first met in 2020. He was once launched on parole via TDCJ after serving simply seven years in the Stiles Unit in Beaumont as a result of he’d discovered a solution to totally flip his life round.

“This is like the place where I was reborn,” he instructed me pointing to an higher stage window outdoor the Dallas County Jail. “If rock bottom was the day I got sentenced to life in prison, the rest of my life began in that cell up there.”

Because that was once the place an older inmate presented him some pleasant recommendation. That inmate, a person he simplest knew as “Mr. Jackson”, instructed him he was once now in a pot of boiling water. And, that jail may just flip him cushy and vulnerable like a carrot thrown into that boiling water. Or, the turmoil of jail may just harden him like boiled egg: make him emotionally far away, vacant, cutoff from life. Or, that inmate instructed him, he may just make a choice to be a espresso bean as a substitute. Boiling water does not essentially alternate a espresso bean.  A boiling espresso bean adjustments the water to espresso. Mr. Jackson was once telling him that his enjoy in jail would all be as much as him. Change the international, the surroundings, round you as a substitute he was once instructed.

“I changed the water. I became a pot of coffee,” West stated.

In jail he says he was a pressure for excellent. He were given remedy for his addictions. The parole board took understand and launched him. And in his seek to be able to proportion this new espresso bean recommendation, he was a public speaker, a a hit creator, in call for via companies and school sports activities methods. He has even returned to TDCJ prisons to supply a direction in accordance with his books, developing extra “coffee beans” amongst prisoners who hope to be identical to him.

But there was once nonetheless one thing lacking: the redemption that “Mr. Jackson” deserved.

West employed a personal investigator and he discovered that the inmate who gave him that recommendation in 2009, was once in truth named James Lynn Baker II, a person with a protracted felony file and a historical past of drug offenses. But, a person from a famous circle of relatives in southern Dallas.

Baker’s mom, Bertha Baker Hilburn, labored at Parkland Hospital as a nurse, opened Dallas’ first authorized African American Nursery known as Mason’s Lullaby in 1948, and bought the South Dallas Good Samaritan Hospital in 1951 to ascertain housing for African Americans who migrated to Dallas for higher employment. Once referred to as the Baker Residential Hotel it nonetheless stands as a Dallas town landmark.

Two of James Lynn Baker II’s sisters had been a few of the first actual Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Three sisters labored for Southwest Airlines. One nonetheless does as a flight attendant.

And Damon West, hoping to supply the redemption their brother deserved, reached out to them and presented to satisfy.

“I realized that James Baker II and Damon West are very much alike,” West stated. “And I truly believe it’s one of the reasons he found me, because he found me in the Dallas County Jail. The only difference is that I got into a program of recovery where he didn’t. James and I are both addicts. I just found a recovery, he didn’t.”

“That character was his character,” Vanessa Baker stated when instructed of the recommendation he presented Damon West. “And that was my brother.”

Vanessa Baker and Vetia Smith are two of James Baker’s surviving sisters.

“Something positive has come out of his troubled life,” Vetia Smith stated.

Because years after James Lynn Baker II died of an opioid overdose in 2017, medication his circle of relatives stated had been prescribed to him after a most cancers analysis, Damon West in any case discovered the Baker circle of relatives and instructed them the tale of the easy recommendation James presented that modified his life.

“He did not meet a stranger,” Vanessa stated of her brother who was once an outgoing and a hit pupil in class.

“He probably knew that he could not help himself, but he could help others,” Vanessa Baker stated. “He saw Damon, he saw the fear, and he wanted to ease that. And he would have done that.”

“Pay it forward,” Vetia Smith added.

And paying it ahead is what Damon promised the Baker circle of relatives he would do subsequent.

“Integrity requires me to go do something to honor this guy,” Damon West instructed a gaggle of scholars final month at Dallas’ Lincoln High School. James Lynn Baker II was once a 1968 graduate of Lincoln.  So West introduced a scholarship at Lincoln: the James Lynn Baker II Coffee Bean Scholarship. The $10,000 scholarship shall be awarded to a worthy Lincoln graduate once a year. The Baker circle of relatives will choose between the candidates.

“The last words he ever spoke to me in person,” West instructed the scholars, “he said ‘West, be a coffee bean.'”

“Somebody in this room is gonna get a better chance at life through education because these two guys had a chance encounter in the Dallas County Jail in the summer of 2009,” he stated.

“I want Damon to know that I really appreciate the love that you are showing to my brother,” Vetia Smith stated. “We are ecstatic. Oh, we are so grateful and thankful for the world to know that even though he may have had a few missteps in life, he had more correct steps in life, and those correct steps are going to help other people make the best and correct steps in their lives.”

“Here we are years after his earthly being,” Vanessa Baker stated of her brother, “and we’re still learning from him because that’s what God put in him to share.”

“It will bring a whole different chapter, not only in my brother’s life because his is closed, but a new chapter into his kids’ lives and to their kids’ lives, and for generations to come,” Vetia Smith stated.

And the Baker circle of relatives appreciates Damon West’s efforts such a lot that they’d a wonder for him as neatly.

“We’ve talked about inviting Damon to one of our family dinners and making him an honorary Baker,” Vetia Smith stated after the Lincoln High School presentation.

“Oh my God. Are you serious,” Damon stated seated subsequent to her. “Are you serious? I would love to be an honorary Baker. I would be so grateful to be an honorary Baker. I mean I would wear that like a badge of honor.”

James Lynn Baker II, whose circle of relatives says was once a super guy with addictions that resulted in dangerous alternatives, was once by no means in a position to practice his personal recommendation – that espresso bean recommendation.

But now, with Damon as his voice, he is chatting with folks throughout the international.  Damon’s newest ebook ‘How to be a Coffee Bean’ features a willpower that claims “in loving memory of the man who taught me about the coffee bean, James Lynn Baker II, the real Mr. Jackson.”

“I admire him a lot,” Vetia Smith stated of Damon West. “I think what he is doing is a blessing. Not only to our family but those who will receive the scholarship.”

“I truly believe this is just the beginning of a lot of other very good things to come from the interaction that these two men had in the Dallas County Jail in the summer of 2009,” West stated. “He saw a person in need. And the kindness of one human being to another human being has become a movement spreading all over the world.”

“It gives me a sense of additional pride to know that this legacy is going to continue,” Vetia Smith stated of her brother.

A legacy, and that long-sought-after redemption, one espresso bean at a time.