Pamela Martinez served seven years in prison for pinching a $30 toolbox, yet authorities say she still hasn't paid her debt to society.
More than two years after she was released from prison, Martinez said, she has put her life in order. She quit drugs, got a job at Home Depot, rented a cramped apartment outside San Diego and bought a car. "I'm trying to be a poster child for rehabilitation," she said.
In a dispute that stems from the state's complicated sentencing formulas, the Department of Corrections and the California attorney general say Martinez owes the state 65 more days in prison.
She had been ordered to report to the California Institution for Women near Chino on Tuesday. But on Monday, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge granted her a temporary stay so she and supporters could plead their case before the state Supreme Court.
Martinez, 51, said she would lose everything she had struggled to build if she were returned to prison. "I lose my apartment, my job, my credit cards and I go back to poverty," Martinez said. "I'm paying taxes now. What good does it do if I go back to prison?"
By Martinez's account, her life has been a roller coaster that bottomed out with the toolbox theft.
By the age of 21, Martinez was working as a ski patrol paramedic in Aspen, Colo., a job that exposed her to many temptations.
"I kind of got up in the fast lane in Colorado," Martinez said. "I was hanging around with high rollers and taking planes all over the world. The next thing I knew, I was dabbling with drugs. I didn't know anything was wrong."
Chaos followed. Martinez said she became addicted to heroin and abused other drugs, and found herself in repeated brushes with the law. In 1978 she was convicted of robbery when, she said, she lent her car to friends, who held up a liquor store. In 1987, she was convicted of second-degree robbery for shoplifting at Sears and leading a security guard on a chase. In between there were bounced checks and petty thefts.
Martinez said her life fell apart in 1995, when her husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness and she tried to operate their landscaping business on her own. She showed up drunk and under the influence of drugs at a potential job site and a fight ensued with the homeowner. She was arrested for stealing the man's toolbox.
