Former Bank Robber Finds Road to Redemption

RON WORD
The Associated Press

(AP) — JACKSONVILLE, Florida - A slug from a .357-caliber Magnum ended Ken Cooper's 13-year career as a bank robber and started him on the path toward redemption and a network of five prison ministries.

Cooper describes the moment when he encountered a sheriff's deputy as he walked out of his last score in 1982.

"As if in slow motion, fire flashed from the shooter's pistol. The plate glass exploded into fragments, coming at me like glistening darts. A slug slammed into my chest, knocking me backward. Shards of glass pierced and sliced my skin. Fire burned in my chest. Someone screamed, the sound bouncing around my mind like an echo. Everything faded to black," Cooper wrote in his book, "Held Hostage: A Serial Bank Robber's Road to Redemption."


Cooper details his double life as a respectable husband, father and "gentleman bank robber" and the punishment for his crimes: Spending a few years in "The Rock," Florida's toughest prison, known for its murders, rapes and suicides.

But before he got there, he says he found Christ in a county jail while awaiting sentencing. He wrote that his conversion occurred after he fell to his knees and prayed, "Jesus, I'm a horrible sinner; please come into my heart and change me. I've made a terrible mess of my life-and the lives of others."

After being released from prison about four years later, Cooper co-founded five prison ministries, which have sponsored more than 2,000 men coming out of prisons.

They are Prisoners of Christ and 20/20 World Vision, Ken Cooper Prison Ministry, in Jacksonville; House of Hope in Gainesville and Mercy House in Tallahassee.

The ministries provide inmates with a place to stay and help with their adjustment to life outside the bars. They teach classes on overcoming addiction at Lawtey Correctional Institution, one of the state's four faith and character-based based prisons. There are also seven facilities with faith-based/self-improvement dorms. Together, they can house 4,855 inmates.

The faith-based prisons are an effort to reduce the number of people returning to prison by offering character-based programming for prisoners.

"A hundred times a year, my wife and I conduct worship services and discipleship classes in prisons where we share the good news that God will save and deliver 'a wretch like me' through Jesus Christ," Cooper said.

He's donating 1,000 copies of his book, published by Chosen Books, to Florida's 67 prisons in hopes of helping current inmates.

"Ken Cooper is the real deal. He is a prison success story who holds out hope for inmates who want to make changes and family members of inmates who hope change is possible," said Chaplain Alex S. Taylor, the head chaplain for the Florida Department of Corrections.

Now a mild-mannered 72-year-old grandfather of six and great grandfather of nine, Cooper began holding up banks for the thrill it provided.

"Pulling holdups is about that adrenaline rush-staring down death. It's not in me to hurt people, and it's really not about the money," Cooper said, adding he averaged about $8,800 per bank.

His "banking job" ended when he was shot July 26, 1982, by a Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy who was responding to an alarm at the Exchange Bank in Tampa.

Cooper remembers his terror of the possibility of being raped and assaulted when he entered jail. He was sentenced to 99 years but under Florida's laws at the time, he only served a fraction of it.

"They lurked like vultures eyeing roadkill," Cooper wrote. "In my fear I grimaced but continued to pump myself up. I will not show weakness. God is with me. I'm not afraid."

He was later transferred to the Rock, a notorious walled fortress inside Union Correctional Institution in Raiford. Cooper said he learned his lesson.

Throughout his ordeals, Cooper said he turned to two books: the Bible and a book by Dr. Robert H. Schuller, when dealing with angry inmates and tense situations.

He said he told a parole examiner: "Well, two years of hard time at the Rock convinced me that prison is not the place for me, and I'm determined to never do anything again to get myself locked up. I won't even spit on the sidewalk, much less look at a bank."

When he was released from prison, Cooper worked as a newspaper reporter before beginning his ministry.

"I believe God released me at His chosen time, however, so I could fulfill His plan for my life. To express my deep gratitude and devotion, I am serving a life sentence as a prisoner of Jesus Christ," Cooper wrote.

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Violinist Re-Emerges From Tragedy - Giving Back & Pursuing Dreams

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By the age of 10 Rachel Barton Pine was playing for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But a tragic accident almost shot her dreams of playing the violin for good. After 40 surgeries she has re-emerged from her near-death experience and she's not letting anyone stop her from pursuing her dreams which includes a music program for underprivileged kids and taking classical music overseas to Haiti and Ghana. Pine's supporters say she's taken the "stuffiness" out of classical music and made it appealing for the masses.

Coaxing High School Drop Outs to Go Back To School

The Boston school district is trying something different to cut its dropout rate, which last year was double the state average, as it has been for years, with 40 percent of students in the class of 2008 failing to graduate.

School officials have begun a concerted effort, which they hope will become a national model, to reach out to the thousands of students who disappeared. They opened a small office with an overworked staff at a community center in Roxbury and have been reenrolling hundreds of dropouts.

Much of the hard work of trying to lure students back into the system falls on Marvin Moore and Emmanuel Allen, both former dropouts who went to college, earned degrees, and now call themselves “dropout outreach specialists.’’ They have been reaching out to dropouts for the past three years as employees of the Boston Private Industry Council, a public-private partnership between the city’s schools and employer community that has sought to blunt the dropout rate.

But this year the school gave Moore and Allen the help they have needed to get the job done. They now have a budget of about $325,000 and a full-time staff that includes a guidance councilor, a teacher, a truancy specialist, and a director, each of whom has played a role in trying to find students, examine their academic record, counsel them, place them in the appropriate school or program, and follow up with them to make sure they stick with it.

Here from the dedicated counselors and the at-risk students themselves in this candid video form the Boston Globe:



Full Story @ link : http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2009/09/18/coaxing_dropouts_back_in/

This Week's CNN Hero: Rabi Iqbal

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Toward the end of her marriage, Rabia Iqbal said she feared for her life.

Iqbal, a native New Yorker, had a strict Muslim upbringing. Her parents immigrated to the United States from the tribal areas of Pakistan and when she was 16, they arranged her marriage to a 38-year-old man. She claims her husband turned violent during their 10 years of marriage.

When she finally left him, she did not know where to turn. Going home wasn't an option, she said.

"My parents ... made clear that they would disown me," Iqbal said. "My father even said ... 'You're lucky you live in America because if you lived back home, you would have been dead by now.' "

She was hiding out in her office at work when a friend put her in touch with Robina Niaz, whose organization, Turning Point for Women and Families, helps female Muslim abuse victims.

"It was such a relief ... to speak about things that ... I thought no one would understand," said Iqbal, who has received counseling from Niaz for more than two years and calls Niaz her "savior."

"Robina understood the cultural nuances ... the religious issues," Iqbal said. VideoWatch Iqbal tell her story »

A devout Muslim, Niaz stresses that there is no evidence that domestic violence is more common among Muslim families.

"Abuse happens everywhere," said Niaz. "It cuts across barriers of race, religion, culture."

But, she said, Muslims are often reluctant to confront the issue.

"There's a lot of denial," she said. "It makes it much harder for the victims of abuse to speak out."

When Niaz launched her organization in 2004, it was the first resource of its kind in New York City. Today, her one-woman campaign has expanded into a multifaceted endeavor that is raising awareness about family violence and providing direct services to women in need.

Niaz said she firmly believes that domestic violence goes against Islamic teachings, and considers it her religious duty to try to stop abuse from happening.

"Quran condemns abusive behavior of women," she said, noting that the prophet Mohammed was never known to have abused women. "Allah says, 'Stand up against injustice and bear witness, even if it's against your own kin. So if I see injustice being done to women and children, I have to speak up. It's my duty."

Niaz's mission began after a difficult period in her own life. Born and raised in Pakistan, she had earned a master's degree in psychology and had a successful career in international affairs and marketing when she moved to the United States to marry in 1990.

"It was a disastrous marriage," she said.

As Niaz struggled to navigate the American legal system during her divorce, she said she appreciated how lucky she was to speak English and have an education. She realized that many immigrant women without those advantages might be more likely to stay in marriages because they didn't know how to make the system work for them.

"If this is how difficult it is for me, then what must other immigrant women go through?" she remembered thinking.

After volunteering with South Asian victims of domestic violence, Niaz, who speaks five languages, got a job using those skills to advocate for immigrant women affected by family violence.

But Niaz's focus changed on September 11, 2001. "I was no longer a Pakistani-American ... I looked at myself as a Muslim."

Niaz said the backlash many Muslims experienced after the terror attacks made abuse victims more afraid to seek help; they feared being shunned for bringing negative attention to their community. VideoWatch Niaz explain the effects of 9/11 on abused Muslim women »

"Women who were caught in abusive marriages were trapped even more," recalled Niaz.

In 2004, Niaz used her savings to start Turning Point for Women and Families. Today, her work focuses on three main areas: providing direct services to abused women, raising awareness through outreach, and educating young women -- an effort she hopes will empower future generations to speak out against abuse.

Crisis intervention services are a critical element of Niaz's efforts. Through weekly counseling sessions, she and her team provide emotional support to the women while helping them with practical issues, such as finding homeless shelters, matrimonial lawyers, filing police reports or assisting with immigration issues.

Niaz has helped more than 200 Muslim women. While most of Turning Point's clients are immigrants, the group helps women from every background.

While Niaz has support from many people in New York's Muslim community, she acknowledges that not everyone appreciates her efforts. She keeps her office address confidential and takes precautions to ensure her safety.

"There have been threats ... but that comes with this work," she said. "I know that God is protecting me because I'm doing the right thing."

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Gates Foundation On New Mission To Bring Banking to the Poor

From the Associated Press:
SEATTLE - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, best known for its work combating malaria, AIDS and other diseases, announced an effort this week to bring banking, including savings accounts, to the poor.

It may be hard to understand how savings is even an issue for the people who live on less than $2 a day, said Bob Christen, who directs the Gates Foundation's financial services initiative. However, access to a safe place to store money is a top priority of poor people around the world, he said.

That's why the world's richest charitable foundation announced a $35 million grant to help facilitate agent banking services already being developed in Africa, Asia and South and Central America.

Christen said the Gates grant will provide assistance to numerous organizations through the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, whose efforts are historic in the world of banking, and will help people climb out of poverty, save for their children's education, build their businesses and plan for the future.

The ideas for bringing savings accounts, insurance and other financial services to the poor include transferring money by way of mobile phones and setting up banking kiosks in markets and post offices.

The Gates Foundation has invested a total of $350 million so far in other financial services for the poor, including micro-credit, which involves small loans for poor entrepreneurs.

Saving money
Christen says savings accounts are a more basic need of many people. An estimated 2.5 billion people — more than half the world's adult population — do not have access to savings accounts and other financial services.

People are forced to buy and pawn jewelry or make other poor investments to keep their money safe.

Foundation research identified this as an area that is not getting investment dollars and turned its attention in this direction.

"It became very obvious that the single service that is least developed that most people need is savings," Christen said. "People really want to be able to save in a safer place."

The Gates Foundation is providing an infusion of cash to facilitate the sharing of ideas among the innovators and to make sure the new systems offer a wide range of financial services.

Alfred Hannig, executive director of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, said banking innovation is happening in developing countries without the foundation's help, but the money will help speed implementation.

The alliance has a goal of reaching 50 million of the world's "unbanked" by 2012.

Paperless transactions
In a phone call from Nairobi, Kenya, where the alliance was hosting a meeting for representatives of 42 countries, Hannig said that plans are being made for a delegation from Kenya to go to Brazil to learn about that country's efforts to bring banking services to small villages along the Amazon River.

"People were waiting for this," said Hannig, who works for the German Technical Corporation and is based in Thailand. "This was very timely. They have been waiting for such a mechanism for such a long time."

Hannig said 60 percent of the money from the Gates Foundation will be redistributed in smaller grants to groups like the delegation from Kenya to Brazil, and the Bank of Thailand, which wants to measure banking access around the world through a survey.

He predicted that the ideas percolating in Africa, Asia and South and Central America will leap-frog existing systems in Europe and the United States.

For example, banking in industrialized nations is paper-based — people still use checks and cash for most of their financial transactions. The new technologies being tried out in the southern continents will lead to a paperless, cashless system.