"I was a family man and a taxpayer—a law-abiding pillar of my community," he says. "If there had been a category for 'Least Likely to Go to Prison' for the yearbook, that would have been me."

Yet Michael soon discovered that sin doesn't discriminate. In 2006, he was arrested for attempted murder and received a 12-year sentence.

Michael's fellow prisoners were mostly confirmed gang members or prisoners sent from other units for disciplinary reasons. "I wanted out of there bad," he says. "That place was just death."