Snap Studios.

Welcome to Snap Judgment, the Fire Escape Special.

If you haven't listened to the Fire Escape previous episodes, going to want to start at Episode 1, sensitive listeners are advised.

When it's time for someone to parole from the firehouse, the whole team and the captain gather outside and there's a ceremony. What the firehouse girls would do for you was when they see the parole van coming

through the gates of the prison, they would line up all of the fire trucks and turn on the lights and sirens.

And everybody would be out there, like, loving you out, waving and crying.

And we had, we had seen so many people parole before me. And so for my day to come was,

it was a big thing. After seven years in prison, four and a half in the

main prison and more than two years of the firehouse, Amika's day did come. What I envisioned the whole,

I'm probably going to cry on this one. What I envisioned the whole time I was in prison, how I would reconcile with my kids.

I envisioned myself, like, giving them a lot of love to make up for all these years that I'd been gone.

She was shaking as she walked from the fire station to the parole van.

Lord.

I am definitely like that kind of endorphin rush,

like definitely butterflies in my stomach, you know, palms sweating, kind of just those visceral feelings of like you could feel the nerves the anxiety the

excitement I mean every you always expect like the worst to happen like you don't want to go

and thinking everything's going to be smooth because um what do you mean what's the worst

I don't know that no one will be there for you or that they'll send, you know, they'll be like, just kidding, head back in.

Like, you know, you just never really know.

In the holding area, Amiga was given her release clothes, sent to her by a friend.

It was sweatpants and a sweatshirt

from a skate shop in Yukaya that said freedom on the back. She tried to put on a pair of heels,

...