LEXEY SWALL-BOBAY / Staff

“Kids looked up to me before, but they looked up to me in a bad way,” says Nick Chandler, seen here in front of the Gordon River Apartments in Naples' River Park where he grew up. “Now I let them know that drugs only lead to two places: to prison or the grave.” Chandler, who got into drugs and crime as a young boy, now lives in Sarasota. He goes to church and counseling, works laying tile and is writing a book about his life.

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He’s wasted nearly half of his life behind bars. Wasted, that’s his word.

But now, after 22 years in prison, Nick Chandler is determined to transform a life of poverty, abuse and violence into a story of redemption.

Today, Chandler, 46, wears a white, button-up collared shirt and black dress pants. Prison tattoos peek out of his rolled-up shirt sleeves. Scars mark his face. He’s a formidable man, with a thick, strong frame from years of weight lifting.

If you didn’t know him, you might be frightened by his imposing physical presence. But, then, he smiles and his face softens. That’s when you see a different person: The person he wants to be today.

He tells his story in a strong, quiet voice, slipping in and out of the accent of his childhood. It’s a melodic way of speaking, one that shortens some words, like “’em” for “them,” and lengthen others, making “loved” into “loveded.”

He knows it, too: “I talk country, don’t I?” he says, laughing.

Look up Chandler’s name in the Collier County court records and you’ll see misdemeanors, criminal traffic, felonies. After decades in and out of prison, Chandler, who works as a day laborer now, faces yet another charge: a misdemeanor for possession of marijuana. The arrest was in March, one year and three months after he got out of prison.

“That’s when I learned that the little things can ruin my life,” he says, voice low and earnest. “Because of the lifestyle that I built, all of my life. One little thing can set me away from the rest of my life, easily.”

He hasn’t forgotten where he came from. He visits River Park to talk to kids who are growing up like he did. He wants them to see that there’s hope. A better way to live.

___

The following is Nick Chandler's story in his own words:

I know they used to do something wrong in the house, but I never seen what they did until one day I went to go ask my brother for a dollar. When I went in there, I seen him with something round his arm like a piece of rubber tied on his arm. He was aggravated. This was in McDonalds Quarters when I was little. At this time he was 27 and I was ... around 12, 13.

He had the syringe and blood everywhere cause he couldn’t hit his vein. He told me, “Leave, boy, leave.”

He didn’t want me to see that.

I stood there. When he released the drugs with the syringe, he reached in his pocket (for the dollar) ... and gave it to me. And I just peeked at him and he went to nodding and slobbing out the mouth.

And I knew right there that I would never do that drug. That’s one drug I never touched.

I done smoked the rocks and I done got hooked on this. I done smoked the reefer. I done did cocaine.

I did all of that.

• • •

I was born in Copeland, Fla., in 1961. ... We growed up in a little wooden shack that sat up on concrete bricks. ... I got 11 brothers and sisters. I was the ninth. No, I wasn’t the ninth. Yes, I was. God there were so many of them, ain’t that sumthin’.

My dad worked in the fields, my mom worked in the fields. ... Then the house got burnt down and my brother, right over me, got killed. It caught on fire by the kerosene heater.

We moved to Naples during the summer of 1965 to ... McDonalds Quarters. It was the rat-infested place that the blacks stayed here. It was located right behind Naples Daily News. It’s tore down now.

We moved in ’em thinking it was going to be a better place. ... But it seemed that all the rats and roaches, they followed us.

There was more gunshots, there was more prostitution. There was more drugs. There was more everything. So, I, as a kid, moved nine steps away from the juke joint where the piccolo (jukebox) played all night long. My daddy, that was his favorite place.

Back then police didn’t come to the hood. ... They have more control of it now. Back then, you’d very seldom see one unlessen somebody was dead.

Guys shot each other at night. They shot each other, cut each other. But nobody went to jail. ... That’s the way it was.

I started going to school and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world because I got a chance to meet friends in school that was not in the Quarters. The Quarters was so rough.

• • •

My father Willie was an on and off drinker.

He’d beat us through the house, cussing and drunk. Come home and hit my mom and I’m too little to do anything but just cuddle up with my other brother and we cry together and hope that one of my older brothers stop it. But I know if they did he’d probably kill ’em, if they try to stop him.

He kept a gun behind every door. No telling when he gonna shoot. Sometimes he’ll come home drunk and you’ll hear gunshots in the room and I’m scared that he done kilt my mom. But he done shot it in the ceiling and I go in there and he’s asleep. So he’s so drunk that he done shot the shotgun and fell right asleep.

Them the kind of things that were going on in our household.

My mom went to church all her life and prayed. She had not only me gettin’ in trouble. She had all us, all us getting in trouble.

I didn’t know what to do with myself, or why I did the things I did. So all of this, its growing up in me.

Twelve years old was the first time I got in trouble. Me and a couple of other kids we went up to Kelly’s Fish House and we went into the cash register. By the age of 16, I got sent away to the Okeechobee Boys School.

But when I got there it was worse. ... It was more crime talk, more how to get away with crime, how to do more wrongs. Nothing positive.

After that, my life just went to wrongdoing.

• • •

I did drugs to fight the pain. To fight the misery. ... The pain my momma goed through when I looked into her eyes. I was hurt inside. ... Drugs was the only thing that would stop for that moment.

I never had a real job. Not back then.

At this time, we done left McDonald Quarters and we moved over into Gordon River Apartments.

I started doing coke when I was 16. I went to selling ... and I seen the fast money and I got hooked on that and the coke, and then I had to support my habit. Things just went like that until I wasted 22 years of my life.

I wasted 22 years not really knowing the real me and the goodness of my heart and the benefits of life that you could have if you got out of this and you had your own way of thinking. I was just trapped.

Drugs, grand theft, burglary — these charges I’ve been convicted of. Drug sales. And possession.

My brothers are in prison now, as we speak. Two got 25 years now for drug sales and ... for battery. One is abusive like my dad. He picked up the ways like my dad. He beat on women and that’s what he’s in prison for now.

My son started to pickin’ up the ways that I did.

If I had choices back then (I think I could have changed). But I was so bad. And I guess the court feeled like I couldn’t change. Because I was always right back in front of them.

• • •

The last time I was sentenced to seven and a half years. This was 2000. I was in there for drug sales and drug possession. Crack cocaine. It hit Naples, Fla., really bad. And I was trapped into that once it hit. But this time, when I went, I prayed.

My mom died when I was in prison and I came to the funeral in cuffs. ... and I prayed. I was left in this world with nobody. I had brothers and sisters, but they had addictions, problems of they own. ... I feeled like I ain’t have nothing to live for and everybody was talking about this God.

My heart was good, I know my heart was good. My mom breeded a good heart in me. ... She always prayed for me.

My son made a great difference, too, because he was 9. I had just got sentenced and I didn’t want him to go down the path I’d been through.

When I got out, I wanted to change, but where to run, where to go, what to do?

I went to St. Matthew’s House. I stayed and slept on the floor with winos and peoples that had been 18 days straight with no shower. I slept right beside them and I know I didn’t want this life.

The only peoples I know was over there in the hood.

One day, I got in the car, and I had a joint on me. One joint. And that’s when I learned that the little things can ruin my life. Because of the lifestyle that I built, all of my life. One little thing can set me away from the rest of my life, easily.

• • •

I met this wonderful lady, who I seen driving through the hood to see an older lady who she helped. ... I said to myself, that’s the type of woman that I want. I didn’t know that I could get her. I didn’t feel I was capable of having a woman like that.

I knowed I had to let go some to let go of my bad ways, to even have her. And that’s what I wanted in my life anyway. To be around a good person, you have to be a good person. Ain’t no way a good person is gonna want a bad person.

I asked her out and she said yes. ... Then after some weeks, she told me she was fittin’ to move to Sarasota. So I said I got to really make a change right now. At this time, I was doing wrong. Slight wrongs.

There was one night I stayed up all night. She was gone three weeks. ... I called her. She could sense that I was crying. She said, “What’s wrong.” I said, “I want to give up this life.”

I said, “Will you please come get me.”

She said, “Nick, I can’t,” and I said, “Will you please come get me.”

“OK,” she said.

It was 6 in the morning. I woke her up out of sleep and she drove all the way from Sarasota.

She had a great impact on me. Now, we’re engaged.

Up there, I have all kinds of support to get myself together. I started going to church, healing myself by going to church. ... I also go to counseling once a week.

There are choices and you have to think before you do things now. That’s the way I move now. I’ve become a role model to others, too. ... I live for my lady, I live for my son, I live for my God.

I don’t just live for me no more.