010 - My Firefighting Prison Penpal

Many of us are now learning what I only recently found out myself...

At the end of 2023, just as I was preparing to close up my Quiz Daddy’s vintage shop in Santa Monica, I received a mysterious rectangular package to the store from something called CMC San Luis Obispo. Looked it up: CMC stood for “California Men’s Colony” (the “Cell #" field on the return address should have been a hint). Inside was a 2’ x 4’ plank of stained plywood, zig-zagged with strokes of paint and wheatpasted paper and featuring a portrait of Richard Pryor with the phrase “the strangest folks have tha boringest $$$ tu spin” etched over the entire scene. The back was signed and stamped with what I took to be a stylized self-portrait of the artist.

In my mailbox I found an accompanying envelope, emblazoned with the phrase STATE PRISON GENERATED MAIL — no detective work needed here. Inside was a three-page handwritten letter from the incarcerated creator of my new favorite artwork, a man named Gerjuan (juhr-wahn) Harmon. Looked it up: in July 2012, Gerjuan was arrested for allegedly stealing fitness celebrity Jillian Michaels’ Bentley. In June 2014, after a jury failed to reach a verdict in the initial trial, Gerjuan was re-tried and found guilty of first-degree burglary with a person present and grand theft of personal property. In September of that year, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Wait, whaaaaaaaaaaat???? 17 years for stealing The Biggest Loser star’s car??

Also, she sucks.

In his note, Gerjuan explained that he had seen the HQ Trivia documentary on CNN while the channel happened to be randomly playing one night in the mess hall, and he vibed with career at the intersection of vintage and comedy. He shared the backstory of the contraband slab he managed to smuggle into his cell (technically a weapon!) and save from confiscation despite numerous sweeps. Over the course of nearly two years he had painstakingly gathered the necessary materials and tools to produce the piece, and after its completion in 2021, held it for another two years before graciously deciding to send it to me, thinking I could use better decor in my store.

I was incredibly touched by Gerjuan’s gesture, wrote him back with my sincerest thanks, and proudly displayed his art in my shop for the final weeks of its existence.

A few months later, I got a call from Nick who runs Berry Lee Shoes, my old retail neighbor in the building we shared on Main Street, saying he had taken in a package addressed to my orphaned storefront. I had moved out of Los Angeles in February, but on a return visit in May I was able to retrieve it, and wouldn’t you know: another gift from Gerjuan. This time, a true vintage denim jacket, customized for me with “ROGOWSKY” stenciled on the front and “INMATES STAY OFF THE GRASS” on the back, along with an old-timey, mustachioed, handcuffed and chained convict named Jill (referencing the central figure in his arrest) and 17 hash marks (one for every year of his adjudicated confinement).

NOT FOR SALE

He included another multi-page, hand-written with the jacket — which had an even more improbable origin/survival story than the wood. I returned the volley with an email to the address he provided, and thus it was official: I had a prison penpal.

Gerjuan and I exchanged several messages through the end of the year, and when he was released in November, we moved the conversation over to Instagram DMs. During the course of our correspondence, he enlightened me about the role he and many thousands of fellow incarcerated Californians played as firefighters, working side by side with federal, state, and county crews combatting the numerous conflagrations that crop up among SoCal’s dry brush and drought-ridden forests during “fire season” — the late summer and fall months when the Santa Ana winds are predominantly whipping.

I had heard of prisoners being conscripted into manufacturing license plates, and of course I was familiar with the sight of “chain gangs” picking up trash along the sides of highways, but I never imagined correctional authorities, in their infinite wisdom, handing axes and chainsaws to hardened felons and sending them to the frontlines of raging wildfires. Turns out, it’s quite common, and in the wake of the apocalyptic blazes that have burned through nearly 40,000 acres and displaced over 100,000 residents of Los Angeles County this past week, knowledge of this longstanding penal practice is becoming common as well.

24 STRAIGHT DAYS??? Well at least he’s getting paid overtime!

No. Gerjuan and his fellow inmate firefighters were paid about a dollar an hour for their valiant and life-threatening efforts. By my count there are four different unions representing firefighters in California and Los Angeles, but none include members from prison fire camps in their ranks, leaving inmate crews like the one in which Gerjuan worked underpaid, overworked, and exposed to the most dangerous assignments — the ones CAL FIRE turn down.

Granted, California’s carceral firefighting programs are voluntary and only available to those who pass the requisite vetting and training processes. And there are ‘fringe benefits’ to the job. Compared to the standard prison facilities, fire camps generally have better sleeping conditions, higher quality food, and provide a safer psychological and physical environment (less abuse from COs, fewer fights among the population). And for every day worked “on the line” — clearing trees and brush to contain the spread of fires — prisoners earn credits for time off their sentences, allowing them an earlier release.

Stay tuned for more from Gerjuan, in his own words — we spoke at length by phone today for my next podcast episode which I’ll be posting exclusively to Substack shortly — and stay grateful for these brave men in the danger zone, being worked to the bone, with no direction home, like a complete unknown…

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Messages between Gerjuan and one of his former roommates at the Cuesta Conservation Camp, currently “on the line” working to contain the LA fires