Cards for inmates say it all for you

The cards displayed on the bookstore rack stopped me in my tracks. They shared a simple cover drawing -- a delicate yellow rose with a barbed-wire stem -- but their greetings suggested an unconventional audience:

"Sorry to Hear About Your Arrest."

"NOT YOU!"

"Money on Your Books."

I was struck by the bluntness of the messages inside: "Honestly, I never knew anyone who was arrested before," one read. Said another: "I know that I have not visited you. But I still care about you. . . . When are you getting out anyway??"

I stood with my daughter, reading them aloud and joking about the comic possibilities they provided: "Sorry about your arrest. I guess the shoot-out wasn't such a good idea." Or, "Too bad I can't hide a file in your cake. Happy Birthday anyway!"

It's easy to poke fun at the notion of Hallmark-like greetings for miscreants. But Terrye Cheathem didn't create Three Squares Greetings: For Those Who Can't Come Home as a joke.

"When I hear somebody laugh at them," Cheathem said, "I know that person hasn't gotten the telephone call, yet, saying their son or brother or nephew has been arrested."

Cheathem is a lawyer from a middle-class family. She grew up in Compton in the 1960s and '70s -- before the city's streets were considered a pipeline to the penitentiary -- studied psychology at Pepperdine and earned a degree from UC Hastings College of the Law.

She's spent plenty of time in courtrooms and jails, as a criminal defense attorney in private practice and as a legal advisor for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

But it was her brother-in-law's incarceration seven years ago that sparked her entrepreneurial vision. She was asked to write to him, but didn't know what to say. She browsed her local Hallmark store in Ladera Heights, but "everything was way too cheerful," she said.

She spent several years, and $30,000, researching, designing and promoting her two lines of Three Squares cards -- one for families and friends to send, and another to be sold in prison canteens to inmates who want to express thanks or confess regrets. . . or just apologize for embarrassing family and friends.

The cards were a big hit at a national convention of prison officials last summer. Wardens appreciated their simplicity. No glitter or glue, no folding flaps or cutesy pop-ups that could hide contraband.