At the age of 16 Corey Purdie was convicted as an adult and placed in the custody of to the NC Department of Corrections. With the help of prison ministry volunteers, Corey committed his life to Christ while in prison. After serving 8 years, Purdie was released. Following his release, Purdie developed a friendship with Jeff Smith, a local pastor who mentored him as a father figure. Smith instilled hope in Purdie through Biblical text like Jeremiah 29:11 and reminding Purdie that he still had a purpose beyond his past.
At 24, Lynn Burke was struggling to feed her four children. She had moved to North Carolina to be closer to her mother, but her mother died less than a year after her arrival. Desperate, she reached out to her husband’s family in Tennessee, hoping that a sister-in-law would come to Raleigh and help. Instead, Burke said, that phone call brought her husband and his drug problems back into her life. Burke was depressed. She began writing bad checks and stealing. Within six months she was arrested, and soon she was headed to prison, sentenced to 10 years for eight felony counts of false pretense and writing bad checks. At the time, her children were 5, 4 (twins) and 3, and she was a student at N.C. State University. It was 1987.
Rev. Reggie Longcrier has been the Chaplain of Catawba Correctional Center in Newton, N.C. For 22 years, and it’s hard to believe that one of the most respected community leaders in this area spent 25 years going in and out of prison while addicted to heroin and cocaine. In “From Disgrace to Dignity” his journey begins on the street corners of Atlantic City, N.J. where he began his life of crime as a young boy with purse snatching, shoplifting, and breaking and entering. He began serving time in reformatories at age eleven and graduated as an adult to some of the roughest prisons in the country including Rahway and Rikers Island.
Along with his notable book, “Campaign 4 Change Testimonials”, Otis Lyons composed a new curriculum,
“Street Life Education” on DVD. His prevention and intervention methods have been used throughout the state educating audiences on gang awareness.
Wonis spent most of his childhood and impressionable years in Brooklyn, New York. His outgoing nature and the desire to have the “finer” things in life were instrumental in his decision to earn some “fast” money as a drug dealer.
Dennis Gaddy graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and the Campbell University School of Law and built a 20 year career in sales. However, due to some poor decisions and choices, he found himself in the NC Department of Corrections for five years and eight months. With strong support networks of family and friends, Dennis took the valuable and positive insights from the past and brought to fruition the Community Success Initiative (CSI) in 2004.
