A former criminal finds his way and is now teaching law at Georgetown University H

is only history with the law was breaking it. In August 1997, Shon Hopwood, then 22, and a friend stormed into a bank “and ordered everyone to the ground, then grabbed as much money as we could,” he tells In Touch. He left with $50,000 that day and went on to rob four more rural Nebraska banks, making off with around $200,000 in all. The next year, after finally getting caught, a judge sentenced him to 12 years in prison. That’s when Shon vowed to turn his life around.

But he never, ever expected it would turn out quite like this. While serving time, Shon started studying law books, first to try to help his own case, then to help others. In 2002, he wrote a petition to get a fellow inmate’s case heard by the U. S. Supreme Court and made jaws drop when it was one of eight cases out of 7,209 that the court chose to hear. (The inmate ended up getting a four-year sentence reduction.) Shon went to law school after his early release in 2009, and now, nearly 20 years after pulling out a rifle in that first bank, Shon, 42, is preparing to join the faculty at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., (where he’s on a teaching fellowship) as an associate professor of law. “I hope that my job here will inspire people who do not believe a second chance is possible,” he tells In Touch. “I feel blessed every day.”

He once felt beyond hopeless. After losing a college athletic scholarship for skipping too many classes, Shon spent two years in the Navy and then moved back in with his parents and worked on a cattle farm. “I robbed banks because I was a stupid and foolish young man,” he says. “I had no direction and no purpose in life. Mix in some depression and drug and alcohol use, and that was my life — rebelliousness and sin.”

Shon says he “grew up” behind bars. He also started corresponding with Ann Marie, a woman he knew from back home (they’re now married with two kids, Mark, 7, and Grace, 5), and discovered his purpose in life. “In prison, when I started helping inmates win cases, I found I really enjoyed helping people with their legal problems,” he says. After his release, he got a job at a familyrun legal printing business, then got his undergraduate degree before attending law school at the University of Washington on a full scholarship. The bar exam proved difficult: Because of his criminal record, Shon had to undergo a lengthy hearing in front of the Washington State Bar Association before the Washington Supreme Court allowed him to take the exam.

He passed and proved a lot of people wrong. “I can’t tell you how many lawyers told me I never would become one,” says Shon. “I’ve been afforded second chances that many people haven’t. I don’t ever forget that.”

I’m just not that person anymore. I grew up, found direction and now have people who rely on me.”