CHRIS: Good morning.
JEH: Chris, can you tell me your last name, spell it please?
CHRIS: W-O-Z-N-I-A-K.
JEH: And how old are you?
CHRIS: Forty-one-years-old.
JEH: Well, Chris, good morning and thank you for sitting down for this redemption story, I appreciate it. Let’s start off with, where were you born?
CHRIS: Gardena, California.
JEH: Now, is that the same place you grew up?
CHRIS: Yeah, kind of, it’s still considered L.A. County.
JEH: Did you spend all your time growing up there in California?
CHRIS: Until I was twenty-nine years old, and then when I was twenty-nine, I moved to Rhode Island.
JEH: What part of Rhode Island?
CHRIS: Pawtucket.
JEH: Okay, lets talk about your mom and dad, are they still living?
CHRIS: They’re still living, they’re not with each other anymore, they got divorced a few years back. They were married for thirty plus years, maybe even a little bit longer if I can remember. I still talk to my mom every day, my dad probably like every couple of months I’ll give him a call.
JEH: How about siblings, do you have any?
CHRIS: I have a sister, but she passed away three years ago, and she was forty at the age of her passing.
JEH: I’m sorry to hear that. Are you folks still in California?
CHRIS: Yeah.
JEH: So, what brought you from California to Rhode Island?
CHRIS: My uncle lives in Pawtucket, and I’ve got a lot on my mom’s side of the family over here in Rhode Island and Connecticut. And one day my uncle gave me a call and was like, “Hey, I heard you’re doing kind of bad out there again, “and he said, “Why don’t you come down to Rhode Island and start over. You don’t have to work, you don’t have to do anything, just come down and start over.”
And I flew down two days later. And when I got to Pawtucket, my uncle’s really old school Filipino, and he probably literally has a chair, a couch, and a TV that’s not plugged in or anything, in the living room, no TV stand, nothing else. And it kind of drove me insane for the first half week, and then about a week into it I started looking for work and got a job with Labor Ready, which is a temp agency. You would go there early in the morning, 5:00 o’clock in the morning, and you wait there for three hours to get assigned. If you have a vehicle, you’re more likely to get assigned a job versus not having one, because obviously you can make it to the job versus the other guys.
I started doing that and they were paying me $7.75 at the time and I ended up getting a gig in North Smithfield for the opening of Denny’s, and to basically unload an 18-wheeler, full of all their restaurant equipment and all the gear and all the stuff that they would need for the opening. There were about a half a dozen guys that came from Labor Ready. I worked really hard, I wanted to work, and I wasn’t trying to impress anybody, but I was, just the mindset of how I work was just, keep moving, keep moving, keep going, keep asking, keep pushing basically. And at the end of the day the general contractor sent off the four guys and kept two of us and asked us if we wanted to stay for the rest of the day and he would pay us cash, and I agreed to that. And then after that day, he asked me what Labor ready was paying me and him, I told him, $7.75. And he said, “Well, forget that, come here tomorrow and I’ll give you $10 bucks an hour, under the table, and you’ve got at least two weeks of work here.
I did that and then about a couple of days prior to us finishing, I asked him exactly what I had to do to get a job at the restaurant, because I was trying to get a job that was secure, and I didn’t have to go to the temp agency early in the morning. I ended up talking to one of the district managers and I got hired instantly. I tried to sign up for dishwasher, but he signed me up for a cook right off the bat. And not even a year into working I worked my way up and got into management, and got the management position, and then opened up three to four other locations, Johnston, Cranston location, Springfield, Mass.
And as I opened those restaurants, I was actually building on them as well. So, in the daytime I would be building on them and then in the nighttime I would turn into basically a training manager for all the new employees. If was kind of a funny thing because the new employees, they were there all day and they would see me working as a construction worker and bouncing around in my construction clothes and then at the end of the day I’d switch over and they were kind of confused, they were like, “Who’s this guy.” The other assistant manager was like, “That’s your boss. It was funny, I just started doing that and just kept working. Like I said, we opened up the Johnston location, the Cranston location, Springfield, Mass. I worked at the Warwick, Coventry locations as a temp.
JEH: What age were you when this started happening?
CHRIS: About, thirty, thirty-one.
JEH: So, before we get into anything further, tell me about your teenage years, your twenties, in California prior to leaving California.
CHRIS: Okay. Well, my teen years in California were rough. I mean, anything in Southern California, being a teenager it’s pretty hard. There’s a lot of gang violence.
JEH: What decade was this?
CHRIS: I’d say early 2000.
JEH: Okay.
CHRIS: It was hard, it was challenging. A lot of times I would try and avoid being out in the streets because there’s always individuals in that area, in that part of the country that would want to do harm to you because they believe that you’re from another side of the neighborhood. And that was never my lifestyle, never anything that caught my eye that I wanted to join and be a part of a gang. All my friends are from a gang, but it never really caught my attention to be part of it. I was always the friend that hung out with everybody but wasn’t from the neighborhood, and I always kind of left it like that.
And as I started growing up and was getting close to the end of high school, my dad didn’t really guide me into what I should do in life and how I should do it and what I should do and what would make me happy. He just kind of told me all the time to, “Find a job that you like because you’re not going to want to go to a job that you don’t like.” And I kind of just took that as it was. And I hung out with a lot of my friends, a lot of the home boys, older home boys. And they’re from the neighborhood, they didn’t really teach me anything legal that would be helpful as to growing up in life. So, I learned the hard way and the wrong way, which my friend started teaching me basically how to break into cars. And then from breaking into cars I started stealing the cars, I started stripping the cars.
JEH: What age were you at this time?
CHRIS: I’d say about early twenties, late teens.
JEH: Okay.
CHRIS: I got heavy into it, it was something that I didn’t feel like it was wrong at the time, which I knew it was, but given the situation where I was coming from and not being told the right path, I kind of just ran with it and kind of just, I don’t want to say, progressed, but I became a professional at it. And it was really a time in my life that I didn’t want to do what I was doing, but I had to do it, and I did it for about a decade. And it was tragic for a lot of people, for me. I went to prison twice.
JEH: How long?
CHRIS: The first term was 16 months and a half, I did about 9 months. And then the second term was 2 years with half and did about 13, 14 months. And in between those two prison sentences, I’ve been arrested multiple times at L.A. County, I’ve been all over the L.A. County jail system, Twin Towers, Men’s Central, Supermax, Northside, Wayside, you name it, I’ve been in all of L.A. County. It was something that I don’t ever want to do again, and I felt like it took a lot of my life away from me because I fell in the foolish ways.
JEH: Did the prison stints, did that discourage you?
CHRIS: Well, you see, it’s weird because when I was about thirteen, I got caught with a 32-ounce Miller-Lite that I just got from a liquor store. I had someone buy it, it was me and a couple of buddies, we all got 32-ounce Miller-Lites. And we took off from the liquor store and about five minutes later we got pulled over by Downey PD. And I got arrested, my friends got arrested. They sent me to jail, my mom came like 3:00 o’clock in the morning, she was so mad at me.
And I had a court date, I went to court and when I went to court the judge assigned me to the VIDA Program, which is the Vital Intervention Direction Alternative, basically a Scared Straight program. It was run by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. And every weekend my mom would drop me off at the Whittier Station, which is where they train all the L.A. County deputies. So, she would drop me off and it was basically a day or a weekend, like she would drop me off on Sunday or Saturday, and then pick me up later on in the day and then the same thing on Sunday. So, it was every weekend, and it was run by the Sheriff’s Department, but it had Marines that were actually the ones running the show in the whole program. For the most part I always had a marine yelling in my face to, “Get down and do some more pushups,” or “Roll around in the dirt on the track.”
I did that for quite a while because I always kept failing the drug test for marijuana. I was a big pot head. It’s something that I started smoking when I was nine years old, my sister was eleven, she passed me the joint. And at first, I wasn’t inhaling it, I was just kind of keeping it in my mouth, and the one day that she told me to breathe it in, it was kind of a wrap from there. I kept failing the drug tests, so I kept going back into the program.
But the program really taught me a lot and I honestly should have become a sheriff’s deputy when I graduated high school I just, I didn’t follow through with what I should do which was right versus what I know which is wrong and it’s an easy and quick way of getting money. And it’s something I regret to this day that I should have done and never did. They took us to the Museum of Tolerance in Downtown L.A. we’d been to the coroner’s office, and Cesar Chavez Boulevard, like the main Coroner’s Office for L.A. County. That was basically a nightmare, I still have the remembrance of the smell of formaldehyde from all the bodies in the basement.
They took us to Corcoran State Prison, I think that’s where Charles Manson was at for a while. We walked the 1 yard, and they hit the bell on us, made us get down on the ground and had all the inmates yelling at us, a bunch of youngsters. That’s a Scared Straight program and honestly it didn’t scare me straight, it kind of opened my eyes to my reality and what was ahead for my life if I kept going in the direction that I was going, and sure enough I went in that direction.
In my twenties I was really bad, and I stole a lot of vehicles and I hurt a lot of people, I know I have. Out of the hundreds and thousands of people that I’ve affected, I’ve never met one of them, I’ve never heard one of them speak about me or anything like that. And it’s something that’s still a burden to me and I feel like I’m still paying a debt to society because of it, you know, my karma debt from that. I don’t know personally when it will be paid off, because I feel that I’ve done so many bad things in that time period that it’s going to take me at least a couple of decades to get it over with.
JEH: Have you asked Jesus to forgive you?
CHRIS: I haven’t.
JEH: Okay.
CHRIS: I don’t know if that’s something that’s possible or if that’s allowed or if you want to say if I qualify to be forgiven for something that I’ve done that it was obviously really bad sinning.
JEH: Chris, none of us qualify for Jesus to forgive us our sins, none of us. It’s only by His grace that he forgives us. And if you truly ask Jesus to forgive you for all your sins, then it’s done. He forgives them, he forgets them and know you’re a different person, because he will send you the Holy Spirit once you ask for his forgiveness and accept Jesus Christ into your heart. Jesus was crucified and took our sins. So, once you ask Jesus to forgive you, he takes those sins away from you, he forgives you. From that point forward you are living with the Holy Spirit inside of you, your sins are forgiven, and now you live a life that Jesus intended for you to live from the beginning. We’re all broken until that moment you give up and say, Jesus, I want you in my heart, please forgive me of my sins. Once you give it up to God, you owe no one an explanation, and once that happens then it’s done, you’re a new person.
CHRIS: How do I know when it happens?
JEH: You’ll know, and you’ll feel different, you will feel different. Let me ask you, Chris, you are no longer living the life of crime, you have changed your life for the good, but you haven’t asked Jesus Christ to be your savior, how’s that working out?
CHRIS: It’s a slow process, twelve years at it now, since I’ve been in Rhode Island. It’s always been a positive thing that I’ve been trying to do better, I mean, from day one, since I gave myself that choice to stop doing what I was doing and make better of myself and better for my life. And at the time, I didn’t have my daughter, but I always wanted a family, I always wanted, you know, the dog with my family and grow old with someone.
And I thought I had that going when I came down here. Two years into it I had the apartment, I had the job, actually two jobs, in construction in the daytime and manager at nighttime. And I had my daughter, Allison. And I guess I wasn’t there for her mom, she said I was never there. I get it, I worked two jobs and she stayed at home, and everything was paid for. That wasn’t anything close to what was supposed to be for her. I know I wasn’t there all the time. I couldn’t message her back every five minutes if she was asking me something, I might have had a full house at the restaurant. She ended up taking my daughter to Massachusetts without my consent.
And at the time, I had an apartment, I had a brand-new car, I was doing good. It was probably two and a half, almost three years in Rhode Island and from what I came from and where I was at, to how much I progressed in just that short period of time, I knew that I was unstoppable. And I travelled for eight years back and forth every weekend to pick up my daughter. My car when it got delivered to me it had 36 miles on it, and when they repossessed it, when COVID hit, I had half a year left on it and I had 79,000 miles on it. Yeah, I signed for a 7-year finance note and had half a year left on it and lost it.
JEH: All right, I want to go back. So, we were talking about your twenties, and then you had mentioned earlier that you left California at twenty-nine. So, pick it up just before you left, what made you leave California?
CHRIS: I got out of prison, I was out of prison for about two years, I discharged parole, and I was working for a telemarketing company in Orange County, I was taking like four buses to get to work and back. I lived in Long Beach in the ghetto, and I was paying $1,000 dollars a month for a cockroach infested one bedroom. My ex-girlfriend at the time, she cheated on me and basically was like, “I don’t want nothing to do with you, you keep the dog, you keep the place and I’m out of here.”
And about two weeks of me going to work and coming home and cleaning up after the dog and noticing nobody was home, I started getting to the point where I wanted to do something to try and get my mind off of the fact that, you know, I have nobody at home and I’m working for nothing, and the next thing you know I’m riding around with my home boys again and he’s got a gun and we’re driving around and we’re looking for cars and I started doing bad again, and I didn’t actually start stealing anything but that day as I rode around with my home boy, I knew it was only a matter of time before I get caught and do another prison sentence.
And I didn’t even explain anything to my mom, she just kind of seen my demeanor, and you know my attitude of how I was when I’d come in. She got a hold of my uncle and then my uncle got a hold of me, and he was like, “Hey, why don’t you just come to Rhode Island and start over new. I know what you’ve got going on right now is not good, and it’s only a matter of time before you get in trouble again, and that’s something you don’t want to do, I know you don’t want to do that.” I was like, yeah, I really don’t. And two days later I took a flight and landed in T.F. Green, and it was the first time I’d seen snow.
JEH: And what year was this?
CHRIS: 2013/2014, somewhere around there.
JEH: Have you ever been back to California?
CHRIS: It was like two years ago.
JEH: So, how long did you work for Denny’s in a management position?
CHRIS: As a manager, almost four years, in total about six years for Denny’s. I was around 35/36 when COVID started to kick in and all the stores started shutting down, and I ending up getting a construction job with Chris Jackson. Chris Jackson was building Cumberland Farms, I did a lot of masonry work, that’s like my specialty, I like doing masonry and stonework, I did all the stonework at the Johnston and Denny’s locations in Cranston. I ended up doing the Chris Jackson for two or three years.
At that point I went back to California, I stayed in California for about seven months, because I missed my child everyday that I was over there. I was able to talk to her over the phone.
JEH: Where did you stay when you went back to California?
CHRIS: My mom’s.
JEH: Okay, so after seven months, you’re missing your child.
CHRIS: I’m missing my child, I just told my mom that I need to go back, and I literally came back a week later and I only came with $1,000 dollars, and it didn’t last long. I arrived here at Logan, and I had nowhere to go, I literally had a duffle bag, a backpack, and a rolling suitcase. And I looked like tourist in Logan. In Boston at nighttime, I was so out of place.
JEH: Were you homeless at that time?
CHRIS: I was homeless, instantly homeless as soon as I arrived back on the east coast because I had nowhere to go. I had $1,000 dollars and a plan just to get back into it.
JEH: So, the plan was when you left California was to just back to Rhode Island?
CHRIS: Just get back to Rhode Island. There was no job or place or where I was going to eat, it was just, get over here and start working it, start getting into it.
JEH: Was that the first time you were ever homeless?
CHRIS: No. When I was in my twenties and I was stealing vehicles, my mom and dad was like, “Get out.” They knew I was doing bad and at that point I was like, all right, no problem, because I was able to steal a car and get enough money to pay for the motel for the night. And I did that for over a decade, and I was stealing everything and anything.
JEH: So, now you found yourself homeless again.
CHRIS: Yeah, I’ve been through the struggles of being homeless and being a criminal and being in some other person’s vehicle, and with all my belongings in it and worrying day to day of whether I’m going to get pulled over, how long is this going to last. That was just a struggling time in my life, where I never wanted to do that ever again. So, when I knew that I was going to be homeless again I knew that it wasn’t going to be that big of a deal because I wouldn’t have been in somebody else’s car. I’m not going to be in somebody else’s car, I’m just going to be rolling around in my suitcase.
JEH: So, you’re in Logan airport, what did you do?
CHRIS: I waited until about 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning until the buses started moving and got on the bus and went straight to my daughter’s place. And the stepdad was like, “What are you doing here, why are you here?” And I’m like, I made it back, dude. I told you I was coming back, I’m here to see Allison, where’s my daughter. And he kind of gave me the run around and then basically he told me I could see her in a couple of days.
At that point, I was just like, I’m here, I get to see her soon, I’ve just got to figure out the next couple of nights. And that night I had nowhere to go, nobody to talk to or do anything. I was like, I’ve got to get a room. So, I ended up getting like one of those couple’s rooms, like on the highway somewhere. I stayed there for a night and that costs me about $160 dollars. The next night I couldn’t find anywhere to go or anywhere to stay. I tried looking into a shelter in Lynn, and from what I heard it was a process and the process would have taken me months to get into. It.
So, I figured I’d get back into Rhode Island because I knew at least a few people in Rhode Island. So, I make my back to Rhode Island, and my buddy, he’s got a house in Cranston, I got a hold of him, and I ended up staying there for almost about a week. I paid him like $400 dollars to stay there for the week or so. Enough time to get my daughter for the weekend. I ended up taking Uber from Cranston to Lynn to get my daughter, to Lynn back to Cranston on a Friday night, and then on a Sunday night I brought her back the same way. At that point my income was drained, I used $1000 dollars within a week.
At that point I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’d worked with a couple of construction contractors, and I knew that if I could get back in the area, which is North Smithfield, which my boss previous to me working for the shelter, his name’s Jeff. I’d worked for him for about a year until Jeff was able to bless me and put me on with the shelter.
JEH: Where were you living?
CHRIS: When I did come back to Rhode Island I stayed with my friend for that week. After it ended, I ended up meeting my buddy who lives right here in Woonsocket. I was staying in my buddy’s car for three or four days in his truck. It was starting to get cold and maybe late October. His dad helped me out a lot, he got me a bed at the Harvest Community Church, and just to go down there and talk to Jeff.
And that night I didn’t know what to expect, and when I got there, I met Jeff, and Jeff was very pleasant in first meeting him, and the whole mix of me coming back down, I broke down in front of him. He was like, “Hey, don’t worry about it, buddy.” He was being really compassionate about the whole situation. At that point I started doing good, I got into the shelter, and I was working for my last boss, Jeff. I was working for him every day. I would go to the shelter; I’d get off around 2:00/3:00 o’clock and I’d be soaked in mud and sweat, and I would sit outside for three or four hours until we opened up. And I did that for a whole year. And then I just got back into the shelter again.
JEH: Now, this past season, how did you end of working for the shelter?
CHRIS: I always wanted to help out, I always wanted to pitch in, you know, see what kind of hand I could lend. It’s a natural state for me just to keep busy, keep cleaning and especially if I’m living somewhere where I’m not paying, I’m going to do chores, I want to do chores. Jeff saw the opportunity to use me that would be beneficial for myself and for the shelter.
JEH: When this season at the shelter ends in April what are your plans?
CHRIS: To be honest with you, I’m kind of juggling it in the air at the moment. I’m trying to get into Open Doors, which is another shelter that is more accommodating for individuals that are able to go to work. For the most, I’m thinking if I can get into another shelter would be the step one or some type of room and board or a room for rent, and step two would be going back to my last construction boss.
I have applied for Electric Boat, I went for two weeks for The Skills for Rhode Island’s Future, I joined that and completed that and got my certificate for that and I updated my resume. I just waiting for them to give me the okay because of my background. Hopefully it’s stuff that’s so far back.
JEH: Have you asked Jesus about Electric Boat?
CHRIS: No.
JEH: How long have you been coming to service on Sunday.
CHRIS: Probably for like two months, maybe three months now. I originally started going just to get out of the cold, and I would go in with Henry and Deshaun, they’re basically the other residents of the shelter at the time. And when I started going everything that was said in the service was pinpoint on my life in how everything was going. It was so emotionally overwhelming that I have to do it, I mean, I had to go in, I had to see if the next service would be different. And it hasn’t, it’s been perfect ever since.
So, the first couple of Sundays that I went was really emotionally like overwhelming to me to the point where it was hard for me to go to the service. I spent most of the service crying and whimpering and sobbing because everything that was said by Pastor Gene was so dead on, to the point where I couldn’t deny it. And at that point I just, I knew that I had to be there, and I have to get the next service and I have to know. I feel if I miss a service that I might miss something that was supposed to be said or spoken to me about. At this point in my life, I can’t miss any opportunities that would be helpful in my life. I know that if I don’t go and I don’t spend the time and I don’t listen that nothing’s going to change.
JEH: Chris, are you ready to ask Jesus to come into your heart, into your life?
CHRIS: Yes, I actually am, I just don’t know how to do it or any instruction on how to make it possible.
JEH: Okay, let me have your hand, just let me take your hand. This is literally the blind leading the blind. Dear Lord, I’m sitting here with Chris, who you know so well, you know about his past, you know about his struggles, and you know about his heart, and how his mind and his heart have been hurting for you Lord because he’s trying to do it by himself. Chris, talk to Jesus as if he was sitting next to you in the flesh right now, ask him to come into your heart.
CHRIS: Please Lord Jesus Christ, come into my heart, my soul, my everything. I want to do good; I want to make better of my life. Please accept me.
JEH: Chris, you have been searching for Jesus for a long time. Going forward, you will have troubles in life, but from now on you will not face those troubles alone, you now have the Holy Spirit in your heart to face whatever troubles come your way. I am no longer alone; Jesus has left the Holy Spirit in me. Chris, I feel that your story is going to be a blessing to whoever reads it.
CHRIS: I just don’t want anybody to see it and then feel like I’m not worthy or that I’m not part of the church because of what I’ve done. Like, when some of the church members, they see me and they’re like, “Hey, Chris,” like I feel so proud of myself. And then just the thought of like, if they only knew who I was back then.
JEH: Chris, who do you think makes up the church, all churches, a whole bunch of people with a whole bunch of pasts, myself included. That’s the devil messing with you, making you think you’re the only one. Is there anything else that you like to add before we close?
CHRIS: No.
JEH: Thank you so much, Chris for the courage to talk about your story.
CHRIS: No problem.