Michaela and second chances
Part two of three in our series on Angela Harris: ‘Grow or Go’
Angel Harris reunited with her mother on Nov. 18, 2005. She got in her mother’s car and went home with her, fell asleep on her couch and woke up safe Nov. 19, 2005. “That’s my recovery day.” Nov. 19 was also her father’s birthday. “That was a special way that God had made that better for me.”
She found out ten days later on Nov. 29 that she was pregnant with her daughter, Michaela Mahree, named after her son Kevin Michael Medlock, whom she called Michael. “I found out I was pregnant and I had been using the whole time. I hadn’t been using as much, but I had still been using the whole time.” After an ultrasound revealed that her infant was not deformed or impacted in any negative way from the substances, Harris’s heart broke with joy, relief and gratitude. “I went and had my ultrasound and my baby was healthy. She had ten fingers and ten toes and her organs were good. I was like, all right God, you got me. Whatever you want, I’ll do it. I knew that He saved her.” she remembered with tears. One step at a time Harris continued to work toward her recovery.
Michaela was born on April 5, 2006. Two days later Harris got a call from her step-brother that the Drug Task Force visited to serve a warrant on her. “So remember, when my house had gotten raided, they left me out so I could hang myself.” she laughed while wiping away remaining tears. “Well, in the mean time I’m basically saving myself, not knowing that that was what I was doing but that it was the direction I was going.”
She contacted Sheriff Tim Fee to explain her situation and confirmed that she wasn’t running from her charges, but that she had moved forward to try to heal. She wanted to try to get Michaela prepared for her time away because her mother worked and would be the one taking care of her daughter. He told her to call him when she was ready to turn herself in and agreed to go to the judge with her and said they would get through it together.
Harris returned to Kentucky for Thanksgiving and planned to appear before the Grand Jury on the first Tuesday of December when they met regularly. Sheriff Fee went with Harris as promised. Since she was not on the docket she had to wait for an opening that took most of the day.
Sheriff Fee advocated for her; he explained her situation and that she was making better choices. He confirmed that she had been in contact with him. They were hoping she could just get a bond and keep living her life.
Instead the judge ordered her to be booked to the jail at a $25,000 cash bond. “At that time my grandfather had never put up any money for me to get me out of jail. He bonded me out of jail but he never put up cash. He’d put up property
or something. He couldn’t do that this time. So I went to jail probably about 4 o’clock that day. I just remember thinking, ‘Lord, I am going to serve you wherever I’m at. Wherever I’m at I’m going to serve you. If that’s where He put me, I don’t want to be there, but if that’s where He put me I’ve got a purpose there.”
She spent the whole might sharing her faith with other people who were incarcerated at the jail and with some of the jailers. “We talked about God all night.” One of the chaplains she had met before met with her and prayed for her. She was anointed with oil and they prayed through a migraine headache successfully that night. “So that was like this miraculous thing that literally I was healed by prayer.”
Though she had experienced God’s presence with her through this ordeal, she felt free in a way she hadn’t felt prior. “I just knew how I had felt so different and so much better. I felt free. I told my mom I remember being 120 pounds and feeling like I am so heavy that I could barely walk around. At this point I’m 180 something pounds and I feel like I can blow away in the wind. I just felt so light and so free.”
Her grandfather bailed her out the next day; less than 24 hours after she was booked. She hired an attorney and began to fight her case. “I was looking at 40 to 50 years in prison at this point. I was charged with 10 or 12 felonies; trafficking, possession, just some crazy charges; an explosive device - just some crazy stuff.”
She traveled back and forth between Ohio and Kentucky. They started talking about plea options in July of 2007. They offered her a plea of 10 to 15 years in prison. Her attorney advised her to go to trial. The judge hearing her case knew her previously from Common Pleas Court. As she entered the court room she smiled at the judge. He asked her if she could pass a drug test for him. She responded that she could and submitted one. He asked to see both attorneys in his chambers. When the judge returned back to the court room he noted that she had turned her life around and recommended five years of probation. As the judge continued to speak, Harris began to weep with gratitude and relief.
When she returned back to Kentucky in August of 2007 for court it was determined that she could not comply with the legal conditions of probation so she was placed on “conditional release”. She needed to remain pro-social, be a productive member of society and take care of her family. She was also required to stay out of Kentucky for five years.
In 2008 she returned to college. She needed to be off probation to complete her internships and was released from conditional release.
In July 2010 Harris’s grandfather passed away. By this time, her grandmother had Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia and was bedridden and non-verbal. She had been deemed “failure to thrive” and was placed on a feeding tube. “Just no will to live.” Her uncle took over the administrative responsibilities for the estate; and put people in place to take care of her grandmother.
He then passed away on November 6, 2010 leaving Harris as her grandmother’s caregiver. She was in her next to last semester of college and put everything on pause to take care of her family’s needs.
Though she was met with a pessimistic outlook on her ability to close the estates efficiently and be granted permission to relocate her grandmother to Ohio with her, Harris beat the odds again. Her grandmother’s energy was revived during her stay at Riverview Nursing Home in Oak Harbor, Ohio. Working with a speech therapist for six months restored her ability to communicate. She started to feed herself again and learned to walk again using a walker. “She literally came back to life.”
Harris graduated with two Associates Degrees by May 2011. In July of 2011 her grandmother moved in with her so she could be cared for at home until she passed away on April 10, 2014. She started working toward her Bachelor’s Degree in 2012. During this time Harris was also trying to take care of her son, Kevin Michael Medlock.
Read more about Michael and coming full circle in part three of this feature in tomorrow’s Pilot News.