Detention ministry honors a deacon for service

Intermountain Catholic

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Deacon Hector Mota (second from left), receives congratulations from Bishop John C. Wester (left), Illa Wright, and Salt Lake County Sheriff James Winder. Mota is the 2008 Detention Volunteer of the Year.

SALT LAKE CITY — "We are not there to judge, we are only there to take the Word of God to the incarcerated people," said Illa Wright, prison volunteer coordinator at the Father Thomas J. Kaiser Award Banquet Jan. 26, at Sts. Peter and Paul Parish.

Deacon Hector Mota, of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, was presented with the 2008 Detention Volunteer of the Year Award. He has been a volunteer for 10 years.

"I feel undeserving of this award," said Deacon Mota in a humble and quiet voice. "We try to be a bridge for the youth we visit at the Salt Lake Valley Detention Center," said Deacon Mota. "We try to give these people a sense of hope. Some of the youth are angry and do not believe there is a God. Many do not have families. All they see is abuse and neglect. We go to listen and inspire them. Even though there is suffering in the world, it is how we deal with it that makes a difference."

"Being a volunteer is a life of service," said Wright. "A lot of people think you would get burned out going year after year to visit the incarcerated. But you don’t, because each time you go and visit them, you meet different people and discuss different issues. The reward is giving part of yourself, and they really appreciate it. We are there to listen and to console them in a very spiritual way. We can learn a lot by listening.

"We put in 970 hours at the jail and about 300 hours at the various youth detention centers last year," said Wright. "I think that is very good with the volunteers we have. We can always use more. You do not just wake up one day and say you want to volunteer. This is a calling and a life of service. Sometimes our volunteers are the only friendly faces these people see. We pray the rosary with them, and by taking the Word of God to them, we can tell if we are making a difference when they return and begin to ask questions about faith."

Salt Lake County Sheriff James Winder was a special guest speaker at the banquet.

"Sheriff James Winder is a true friend of the volunteers," said Wright. "We can go to him with our needs because he is a sheriff who gets things done. He allows us to work together with his staff, and this is what it is all about. He supports our volunteers."

"I am pleased and honored to be here tonight," said Winder. "We house about 2,000 inmates in the country jail, where most of you volunteer. Sometimes that goes up to 2,200 or even 2,300. Of those, 200 or 300 individuals reside in the cells for less than 24 hours. Others are kept for a week or two weeks at a time. It is not a pleasant place to be in any way, shape, or form.

"With that said, however, I think it is important to understand the nature of the population of our facility," said Winder. "Our facility receives inmates from the Salt Lake County Courts, immigration violations, customs enforcement, the State of Utah, and other counties and states. We also house individuals who have been sentenced by the State of Utah for petty crimes, who are in and out in one or two nights. The average stay is six to eight months. These individuals are sentenced for fraud, theft, forgery, burglary, non-petty crimes, very violent crimes, and very aggressive offenses.

"That creates a challenge for us because we have to treat every individual in our facility the same," said Winder. "No individual wants to be treated like an animal. We try to treat individuals the way they allow us to treat them. Surprisingly some of the more violent criminals, once they are in our facility and treated with respect, become our more manageable individuals in the facility."

Winder said that brings to mind the many volunteers who come in with open arms, an open heart, and an open mind, and who treat the inmates with respect and dignity, not with a predisposition that these people are criminals.

"You volunteers come in and treat these people like human beings who deserve to be treated with respect, dignity, and help them find hope," said Winder. "Regardless of their denomination, the people who seek religious guidance, have lived a life of poverty, abuse, and a life of lies. When they come to our facility, they have absolutely hit rock bottom. They seek many things, but among them, they seek an education, opportunity, and they seek God.

"Everybody finds religion in different ways and comes to it by different paths," said Winder. "If we did not offer these people some kind of hope, imagine what we would be releasing when their week or six months was up. We have at least got to change a small percentage of these individuals. You never know if they are being real or genuine, saying the things you want to hear, or playing you like they do the people on the street. But the difference is, with you, they don’t have anything to gain like they do on the street such as money or power. When these individuals go to jail, it is not only them who are affected, it also affects their families especially if they are the breadwinners."