Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue...

Knowing that I had been fully approved by the Arapahoe County Community Board to be released to move home and live with my family (after 16 months apart) was such an amazing feeling. Although we had been living a halfway together life for 7 months, I was so ready to sleep in my own bed...with my wife.

I met with my case manager a few days after the meeting and was fully expecting her to tell me that I could leave the halfway house any hour. But she informed me that upon approval by the community board, there was still a lengthy process for getting me moved through the system - government bureaucracy at its finest. When I asked her how long she thought it would be, her response was a breath-taker, "4-6 weeks". I called Sallie and broke the news to her - even though I had been approved, we still had to wait for the paperwork to be processed - we had to wait for the government to do their thing.

Normally, Sallie and I wouldn't have been too worried about waiting a little longer to bring the family back together but we were up against a deadline - Sallie and the kids were moving back to Logan, Utah.

Long before I was sentenced to prison, my business partners and I had decided that we wanted to move our company (Spartan) headquarters back to Logan. We recruit a lot of engineering  and construction management majors out of the Utah and Idaho schools and Logan offered a central location for that. We also all have family ties back to the area and after living away from family for so long, we were all ready to live back closer. Fortunately, Spartan is now at a point where we are all comfortable moving the operation back there. Once we knew that I was getting out of prison, Sallie and I started contemplating selling our house and were eventually approached by some good friends about buying it. In turn, we bought a house in Hyde Park, Utah from some good friends and the trifecta real-estate deal was done. We pushed off moving out of the house in Colorado as long as possible but ultimately, our new buyers needed to move in and our kids were anxious to start our new lives in Utah. So we set a moving date of May 5.


I was approved to move home on April 11 so we figured that I would get some amount of time at home before everyone moved. As a matter of reference - I will not be able to leave the State until early September (assuming that I am granted parole in June).  Anyone that is sentenced to prison will have a period of time after their sentence is over called "parole". Parole is a time where you are still monitored by the state but  are free to live a pretty normal life. I will see the parole board in June and they will determine if I am rehabilitated enough to be released from the Colorado Department of Corrections. Going before the parole board is one of the most dramatized events in movies involving prison. When I think of the parole board, the most classic movie scene that comes to mind is Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption -



Parole Board : Ellis Boyd Redding, your files say you've served 40 years of a life sentence. Do you feel you've been rehabilitated?

Red : Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.

Parole Board Man : Well, it means that you're ready to rejoin society...

Red : I know what you think it means, sonny. To me, it's just a made up word. A politician's word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?

Parole Board: Well, are you?

Red : There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bulls**t word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a s**t.

Movie Excerpt  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5wHe-B7JJ4


As much as I love everything about Morgan Freeman's response, I'm thinking that's not the way I'll respond to my parole questions. Anyways, I digress - even if the Parole Board approves my parole, I'm not going to be leaving the state before September 4.
So...after weeks of waiting for the Department of Corrections to release me from the halfway house, they finally gave me a date where I could move back home - May 6 - one day after Sallie and the kids left. It was totally disheartening - my bed, that I had been dreaming about sleeping in alongside of my beautiful bride, was on its way to Utah (with the girl and our kids) before I ever got a chance to sleep in it again.

So now, for the 2nd time in less than 18 months, I am living alone, miles away from my family. Fortunately, we have some amazing friends, who had an empty house (nor far from the one we just sold), that they are letting me live in. I did request that our dog Zeus get left behind to keep me from being too lonely.

So for the next 3 moths it's just me, a Canine Greek-God, an empty house and a lot of patience. But for the first time since this whole ordeal began, the end is in sight...yes, the end is in sight.


Brandon Stephens, Weld County Jail, Wood Group, Sentenced, 5 Years, Prison, NFL, DRDC, Rifle Correctional Center, Colorado Department of Corrections, Jail, Judge Quammen, Steve Wrenn, Weld County, Executive, Oil, Gas, White Collar, Wood, BYU, Masters Degree, Colorado State University, SWIFT, Firefighter, Wildland, Sawyer, Fire, Inmate, Brandon Stokey, Miracles, Centennial Community Correctional Center, Delta Correctional Center, DRDC, Denver Diagnostic and Reception Center, Felony, Sallie Stephens, Greeley Tribune, Judge Thomas Quammen, DA Steve Wrenn, Weld County Court, Oil & Gas,. Halfway House, Centennial Community Correction Center, CCTC, Centennial Community Transition Center 

Me and my daughter Elizabeth

Me and my daughter Navy




Brandon Stephens, Weld County Jail, Wood Group, Sentenced, 5 Years, Prison, NFL, DRDC, Rifle Correctional Center, Colorado Department of Corrections, Jail, Judge Quammen, Steve Wrenn, Weld County, Executive, Oil, Gas, White Collar, Wood, BYU, Masters Degree, Colorado State University, SWIFT, Firefighter, Wildland, Sawyer, Fire, Inmate, Brandon Stokey, Miracles, Centennial Community Correctional Center, Delta Correctional Center, DRDC, Denver Diagnostic and Reception Center, Felony, Sallie Stephens, Greeley Tribune, Judge Thomas Quammen, DA Steve Wrenn, Weld County Court, Oil & Gas,. Halfway House, Centennial Community Correction Center, CCTC, Felon, 416 Fire, Silver Creek Fire, Spring Fire, Cabin Lake Fire, 

So close, Yet so far...

Three weeks ago, I sat down for my weekly meeting with my Case Manager at the halfway house for our weekly meeting. The case managers use these weekly meetings to gather information on how residents are doing with their employment, finances and social behaviors - for so many people the transition back from prison to life is a HUGE undertaking - and these meetings allow the halfway houses to gauge inmate readiness for full release back into the community. My case manager is a sweet, kind, Chilean, middle-aged woman who has been very helpful and accommodating during my time at the halfway house. As I sat down to begin our meeting, she was broadly smiling and I sensed that she had something to tell me. "Mr. Stephens, you have been selected to go before the Community Board for release from the halfway house". It was kind of cute just how excited she was to tell me the great news - she knew that I had been waiting 6+ months for those words to come out of her mouth, and here we finally were.

In Colorado, when you have completed the programs associated with the halfway house, show stability in your employment and finances and have non-violent crimes, you can transition to "ISP or Intense Supervision" which is a dramatic way of saying that you can move home, live with your family but must wear an ankle monitor. It's something that Colorado has gotten right with their criminal justice system - inmates who earn the right to be back in society sooner than their sentences indicate are given the opportunity to do so.

So, a few short days later, Sallie and I drove to the building where the Community Board meets. Although you are not given the opportunity to speak at the meeting, you are asked to be there in case the Board has any questions. The Board consists of judges, attorneys, businessmen and other community reps that can hopefully provide an objective decision on inmate readiness. I dressed how I would for any business meeting (jeans and a sport coat) so I didn't think I was trying to hard to impress - but it was funny to Sallie and I because when I first arrived some of the board members thought that I was one of the new members of the board and asked me to sit at the conference table (they were expecting a couple new members that hadn't been introduced yet). I quickly informed them that I was "Candidate A", they all awkwardly went back to reading their dossiers and Sallie and I diverted from the invitation to sit at the table and instead sat down on the aisle of shame.

Sallie is actually quite familiar with some of the members of the board and the approval process because of her tireless efforts lobbying to get me moved from prison into the halfway house. She was relentless in calling, emailing and visiting the board - just trying to get me closer to her and the kids. Of course, unlike Washington, lobbying the Department of Corrections is an exercise in futility, but Sallie was relentless and unwavering - and I can't help but think that at some point the board thought, "she could probably manage this guy better than us"... and gave in. (This community board is the same one that decides if inmate candidates are eligible to transition from prison to the halfway house, and just 7 months earlier, this board had approved me to be released from Rifle Correction Center (Prison) to the Centennial Community Transition Center (Halfway House)).

As the meeting was called to attention, I found myself going over different inspiring one liners that I was ready to spew out to show my readiness to move home. I even considered just invoking my inner-Mel Gibson ala Braveheart and just looking them all in the eye and yelling, "FREEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!" but as it turns out, none of my cheesy, inspiring speeches were required. The meeting opened, they presented my file, asked for a vote and just like that, unanimously, the 12 members of the Arapahoe Community Board voted for me to be released to my family. It had been 16 months since I had first entered prison, 16 months since I had slept on a real mattress, not worried about missing a check-in, not worried that a poppy-seed muffin could cause a failed drug test...After 16 months of dreaming of spending the night in my own bed, it was finally within reach.

But little did we know, father time had another trick up his sleeve - and despite our excitement coming out of that meeting, spending that night in my own bed with my beautiful wife was not nearly as close as we thought...


Brandon Stephens, Weld County Jail, Wood Group, Sentenced, 5 Years, Prison, NFL, DRDC, Rifle Correctional Center, Colorado Department of Corrections, Jail, Judge Quammen, Steve Wrenn, Weld County, Executive, Oil, Gas, White Collar, Wood, BYU, Masters Degree, Colorado State University, SWIFT, Firefighter, Wildland, Sawyer, Fire, Inmate, Brandon Stokey, Miracles, Centennial Community Correctional Center, Delta Correctional Center, DRDC, Denver Diagnostic and Reception Center, Felony, Sallie Stephens, Greeley Tribune, Judge Thomas Quammen, DA Steve Wrenn, Weld County Court, Oil & Gas,. Halfway House, Centennial Community Correction Center, CCTC, Centennial Community Transition Center