brain fragments and i remember the smell of blood. that s the first actual vivid memory as a child that i have. sometimes when inmates tell our crews stories from their past, we can t always immediately confirm that every detail is true or accurate. in desiree s case we did a little research later and found some newspaper articles from 1979, and they did confirm that her stepfather did shoot her mother in the leg and killed himself shortly after police were called. but according to those newspaper articles, he had actually gone out into a field. there was no mention that he did any of this in front of his children. but we just can t know that for certain. now 37 years old, stalbird says her 20-year-long battle with drugs has put her in a revolving-door relationship with the jail. seeing old friends here, now on the other side of the law, have been reminders of how far off-track her life had gotten.
when shooting lockup you see multiple sides of many inmates. and you know, often people use comedy and jokes as a defense mechanism. but really deep down inside they really want to get something off their chests. they have issues just like everyone else. such was the case with desiree stalbird, an inmate we met at san antonio s bear county jail. drugs led her to a variety of crimes. and frequent stays. my meth addiction is what got my kids taken away. i love the feel of making dope. i love selling drugs. it s like when i cook a batch, make a batch of dope, to me, it gives me like when a person has a baby for the first time, the feeling s like, wow. i created that. i miss it. i miss the smell.
and you have to try to select the ones who will be on the show. at first it s kind of overwhelming. but you start talking to people and you start really finding the people that will probably be good for the show. during our shoot in one of the female units at the jail in san antonio, desiree stalbird stood out from the rest of the women. i was scanning the unit and noticed desiree. she was holding a sign say free me. free me, of course. me and my signs. finding the inmate that s the comedian is oftentimes good for the show. they re very outgoing. they draw a lot of the inmates around them and participate and joke around. she had mentioned having pets. every now and then you ll see somebody who adopts a mouse or some insect of some kind and they call it their pet. in this case, it wasn t a mouse or an insect. these are my cats. they re just like my hair.
we spent a lot of our childhood together. when i first saw desiree in jail i was kind of like like wow, what are you doing in here? what happened to you? i remember when you were a little girl, i remember this this, this and this. we grew up together, lived in the same neighborhood for a long time. we went our separate ways. she chose to work here and i chose to live the life of a criminal. she feels bad for what she s done. you know? she looks embarrassed most of the time. even though i m wearing this uniform and she s wearing that one, she still doesn t treat me any different. she told me something out there does get better. it doesn t have to be this way, stalbird, it doesn t have to be this way. coming up this is a major mark in her life, cementing into her spirit and her mind that she has vendered her whole self to god. desiree stalbird s baptism. then once i got the money in my hand i wanted to do another one
desiree stalbird, awesome, desiree. looking at desiree, we could actually see that she was engaged and she was really into what she was doing. wasn t like she was there joking around. she was taking it serious and you could tell it actually meant something to her. this is a major mark in her life cementing into her spirit and her mind that she has surrendered her whole self to god. we re going to baptize desiree in the name of god the father, jesus the son and the holy spirit. and then we just raise to walk in a newness of life. you re not going to dart out of here. you re going to sit there and let it sink in what has just happened to you. desiree has a real feeling for the spirit of god. the things we re talked about here, i ve picked it up right there. when i was crying, i felt like a peace come over me. one of the few times that i felt