Hey, this is Trey. Thank you for joining us for another Tuesday with Trey. Our guest today is a gentleman by the name of Sam Lewis. And chances are, you don't know him.

Chances are he hadn't met him. Chances are maybe you're not familiar with it. He's not in politics or sports or entertainment, but if you believe in second chances, if you believe in the power of change of redemption of consequences coupled with forgiveness, that good can come even when things seem bleak.

Then you will get something out of my conversation with Mr. Sam Lewis with that. Sam, thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Trey. Thank you for the time. Greatly appreciate the opportunity to share.

All right, Sam. I want you to tell our listeners what you do and what led you to want to do it.

Absolutely. So what I do, I lead an organization in California. We do some national policy work, but we focus on reentry and rehabilitative programming inside prisons throughout the state of California and in our juvenile halls. And we also reentry that allows people to find careers in construction, entertainment, tech, and a number of other industries once they're released from incarceration.

The reason why I do it is because when I was a teenager, I committed a really bad crime and I went to prison for 24 years. And while in prison, I changed. I wanted something different. I saw that what I had done was wrong.

And I wanted an opportunity, a second chance to demonstrate that I wasn't the person that people thought I was, that I was really a person that wanted to give back to my community and I wanted to see a better community, a better city, a better state.

And I'm going to ask you a question that I actually ask every one of our guests, and I'm not going to treat you any differently. And that question is tell us about the younger version of yourself.

When I have people on from entertainment or sports, I say, all right, tell me what you were like in high school. So I'm going to ask Sam Lewis, tell us what you were like in high school or in the, you know, 14 to 18 year range.

Great question, Trea. I just guess I reflect back 14 to 18. I was lost.

What I know now is entirely different from what I thought and knew when I was a 14 to 80 year old.

When I was 14, I was caught up in gangs and drugs and stuff that was happening in my community. I was totally negative. And I was immersed in it.

I take full responsibility for all the choice that made throughout my life regardless of the age that I was, but the person that I was then was an angry person that didn't know how to verbally express what he was going through to anyone and how to seek out help to understand the why.

As I reflect back, that's part of why I do the work that I do to help people that come out of similar circumstances to understand the why. If you think about it, you know, when we're growing up and you get your feelings heard or something happens that really makes you want to express emotion.

Sometimes you just shut down with kids like kids, how they poke their little bow and angry. They said, why are you angry and they give you a shoulder punch? And that was me. I didn't know how to verbally express what I was feeling and what I was going through and how to ask for help.

And so from 14 to 18, I see them as as lost years of hurt and pain and anger that also caused others hurt and pain.

You know, Sam, what you said is fascinating. I had, she's become a friend, her name is Amy Bart. She runs a reentry program and all she wants are the are the newly released inmates that nobody else wants. She wants the toughest ones.

And she took me on a video tour and they were practicing even once they had been released, they were practicing how to deescalate in their own minds. And and so, I mean, that's what made me think. Okay.

The young Sam Lewis, you get frustrated, you get angry, you get disappointed. How do you react? How do you respond? It makes me, it makes me think that it can be learned that it has to be learned how to handle.

Disappointment. So while you were incarcerated, are there programs that you look back on and say, okay, that one really helped me or this one was well intentioned, but it really didn't do any good. What worked for Sam Lewis?

First, when I was incarcerated, first there weren't programs like that, who was available just what there weren't any programs you either were on a yard doing nothing working out running, exercise, no, you were in class. If you didn't have a hospital, plumbore, gd, gd, but things like anger management, cognitive,

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