By Amber Jurgensen | Associate Editor
“I became an addict in an instant,” Plant City native Glenn Long says without blinking.
The matter-of-fact delivery echoes in the room. He is used to sharing his story.
Today, Long, whose past includes a crack cocaine addiction and convictions for a bank and store robberies, runs Shiloh Baptist Church’s Kairos Club. Through the club, Long uses his stories to share the Christian faith with prison inmates.
And because he’s been there, because he’s lived it, his message is one that can reach beyond the bars.
DOWNWARD SPIRAL
Long’s story starts on a night in his past. He was 24 years old. Like many young professionals, Long was a social drinker who spent weekends in bars with his friends. But one night, he took it too far.
A friend offered him crack cocaine.
“You get such a euphoria,” Long says. “But it’s so fleeting.”
It was just as fleeting as his freedom.
Hooked on the drug, Long began to make up lies to get money for his habit. He held more than 50 jobs — and he quit each one after earning just enough money to finance his addiction.
“I soon started borrowing from family and friends until I had used them all up,” Long says. “If I couldn’t get any money from them, then I had no use for them. Isn’t that sad? That I chose a drug over family and friends.”
His mother, Kathryn Wetherington, owner of T and K Produce, a well known food stand off James L. Redman Parkway, always covered for him out of love.
“I saw my mother cry on many occasions because of the things I was doing and the shame I was bringing to her,” he says. “I was blessed with a mother who loved me, so much she never gave up on me — even when she saw the monster I became.”
Long knew he needed help, and one morning in 1991, he went to the police station after a five-day crack binge, looking for a way out by finding a way behind bars. He wanted to be arrested, but the police told him they couldn’t do anything unless he committed a crime.
So, Long robbed a bank.
THE CRIME
After leaving the police station, Long noticed a bank opening for the day. He wrote a quick note asking for money.
“As I walked into the bank, I knew I must have looked like a monster, because I had not bathed, eaten or even slept in five days,” Long says. “My lips were burnt from the crack stems, and I had brillo smut on my lips.”
Sliding the note to the teller, she gave him the money, and he left.
“As I walked out, I was expecting — and maybe even hoped — I would be shot in the back,” Long says.
But he got away, even passing a law-enforcement agent as he left the parking lot. After a few miles, he pulled over and counted the loot.
“I laughed out loud,” Long says. “The teller had given me five $50 bills. I had risked my life for $250.”
The money tempted him. Instead of going to the police as planned, Long spent the money on drugs.
Then, finally, Long returned to the police station to turn himself in. Long was sentenced to 56 months in federal prison. He tried several drug-rehabilitation programs in prison, but nothing helped.
“I still was an addict,” Long says. “I still felt it wrapped around my soul.”
Long was released just eight months later — right back into the life he had tried so hard to escape. After several more years of crack binges, he robbed two grocery stores — and then turned himself in. Again.
He received an 84-month sentence for those crimes. And ultimately, prison saved his life.
FINDING SALVATION
Every day was the same in prison. Long felt like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.”
But that changed when he heard of a group that came into the Zephyrhills State Prison and gave the inmates cookies.
Long signed up for the group’s meeting just to do something different. He didn’t expect to make it. He was No. 11 on the alternative list. On the day of the meeting, Long was called in.
“God knew he had a plan,” Long says.
The group was Kairos, a prison ministry with more than 30,000 volunteers worldwide.
As Long saw one speaker talk he felt a light coming over him.
“I wanted what he had,” Long says. “I had been through six different rehab programs, and nothing helped me the way I was helped when I finally asked God to come into my life.”
A man from Kairos gave Long the address of a pen pal in Indonesia, so Long could share his newfound faith.
The pen pal, Yetti Sumardin, and Long became close friends. She came to visit him, and after his sentence was reduced by three-and-one-half years, Yetti came again to see him get out of prison in December 2000. In February 2001, they were married.
“She came around the world and faced prison to see me, a crack addict, serving 12 years in prison,” Long says. “No, she came to see the Christian I had become.
“God gave someone to love me — for me,” he says.
SHARING HIS MESSAGE
For Long, life has turned around. Yetti and Long have a 7-year-old daughter. Long has been active in Shiloh. He and his wife are Sunday school teachers, and he leads his own Kairos Club.
The church makes cookies for Long’s Kairos Club to take to the prisons they visit.
“It’s been great for me and my family,” Long says. “When I go and talk to the prisoners, every eye is focused on me.”
Long also collects letters from children to take to the inmates.
“These men are hardened, but a simple letter from a child will break them down,” Long says.
His club has 120 people involved in the meetings. About 36 to 40 volunteers go on the weekends to visit the prisons. Twice a year, the group goes on a three-day trip.
“I wrote a story called ‘Tarnished,’” Long says. “Tarnish is decay. And that’s what I did to my family name — I tarnished it. It hurt, because I love my family.
“The shame I brought to my family back then has been replaced by pride,” he says. “I speak at churches, men’s breakfast meetings and visit people in jail by request. But my story touches the men in prison the most. They are my brothers in blue.”
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.