Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2013 | Page 45

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lives in recovery
by Annette Heinrich LaPlaca ’86

With training by the Billy Graham Center’s Institute for
Prison Ministries, Chaplain Tammy Turcios mentors those
who have often given up on themselves.

Tammy Turcios had just closed
up a business when she met the chaplain
from the only women’s prison in Hawaii.
So when the woman urged Tammy to help
out in a new faith-based recovery program
at the prison, Tammy, born and raised
on the Big Island, dived right in, leading
a team of inmates to paint a classroom’s
walls with murals.
“I knew God promised he had a purpose
for my life,” Tammy says. “I began to pray
that purpose would include becoming a
chaplain.” She trained on the job, helping
and counseling women in a program that
grew—and grew.
Twelve years later, Tammy’s job has two
facets. She acts as chaplain, responding
to the spiritual needs of all 300 inmates,
handling requests for counseling,
materials to read, and help in crises. “If
a family member dies or is hospitalized,”
Tammy explains, “one of us will attend the
funeral or visit the hospital.”
Tammy also heads up the Total Life
Recovery program, run entirely by
volunteers (chaplains are unpaid in Hawaii,
so Tammy’s work is volunteer), providing
classes for inmates five days a week,
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Classes include teaching

about domestic violence, recovery,
boundaries, search for significance, love/
sex addictions, and Bible studies, as well
as hula dance, sign language, and crochet.
“The goal is to change their lives,”
says Tammy, “because they come with
enormous trauma, including every kind
of abuse and neglect. Other people have
given up on them, so they want to give up
on themselves.” Tammy meets them on the
common ground of her own brokenness.
Her childhood failure in the school system
(diagnosed too late as dyslexic), her
experiences of isolation and personal
trauma, her year-long bout of despair and
substance abuse following the sudden
death of her brother—all the pain of
Tammy’s past gives women inmates hope
as they see her joy, her passion to serve,
and the effective purpose God gave her.
a recent graduate of the Billy Graham
Center’s School for Correctional ministries,
Tammy is “implementing a long, long
list of tools” she absorbed from faculty
mentors. “Now I have confidence in my
gift for strategic planning,” says Tammy,
“and something to offer when I sit down in
a meeting with the warden.”
Tammy’s dream is “to see the women out

Tammy Turcios (left), a chaplain at the Women’s Community
Correctional Center in Kailui, Hawaii, mentors inmates (l to r)
Maile, Lillian, Sai, and Cat, who serve as volunteers in the Total
Life Recovery Program. Tammy completed coursework at
Wheaton’s School for Correctional Ministries, at the Billy Graham
Center’s Institute for Prison Ministries, which offers collegeaccredited coursework to professionals and volunteers who
serve in jails, prisons, and re-entry programs all over the world.

of prison, in the community, speaking to
others about how their lives have been
changed by Christ.” That dream is already
coming true. Lillian, an inmate who has
graduated from the recovery program but
stays active in it as a mentor, currently
teaches other inmates using materials
from one of Wheaton’s seminars. another
inmate, Jessica, is using Tammy’s course
materials to lead a group of girls in the
youth correctional facility.
“It’s about mentoring,” says Tammy. The
one-on-one counselor assigned to each
participant in the program sticks with that
inmate, becoming her first mentor on the
outside, once she is free. “I had a letter
from a woman who came through our
program. She told me everything good
she’s doing with her life now comes from
something she learned in our program.
That makes everything worth it!”
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