DEBBIE JACOB
Kenrick Richardson often thinks about his turbulent past and his life of crime.
He has experienced where that lifestyle leads, and he also feels qualified to speak about redemption.
“In my quiet time, I like to think,” said Richardson. “I am sitting in the house I grew up in – my mom’s house in Belmont. I’m looking at her picture now, and everything she said has come to pass.”
Richardson was always a “wayward, resentful person, but not a violent person. I talked a little violence. I hurt people of course, but I was a kind person too. I did violent things, but I have a compassionate heart.”
Richardson credits prison with turning his life around – not prison here, but in the US, where he served time for house break-ins. Of all the opportunities he had in life, the one he says he made the most of was prison.
Born in San Juan, Richardson grew up in Belmont.
[caption id="attachment_990869" align="alignnone" width="867"] Kenrick Richardson: “I know it’s time to get up and do the work I have to do, which is giving people the knowledge and understanding I have from my experiences in prison and in life.” - Angelo Marcelle[/caption]
“I didn’t have a father, but I am not blaming that for my life in crime,” he said. “My mom had 11 of us. None of them was a vagabond but me. They all made something of their lives. One brother was in the US navy. One worked with American Airlines.
“I didn’t go to school. When I didn’t pass Common Entrance, my mom paid for me to go to a private school, but all I wanted to do was go up in the hills in the back of the house and smoke marijuana with my friends.”
His mother would not give up.
“My mom said, ‘Kenrick, everyone gets up, and walks down the road to do something. They go forward. You go backwards.’
“My mom was a motivator. She loved me, and always said, ‘Kenrick, you have a piece of my heart.’
But, he said, “In the 60s, I rejected everything, because that is what I believed you were supposed to do. I rejected education, but you need the education to understand what people are trying to say.”
Like many single mothers searching for ways to improve their economic means, Richardson’s mother, Thelma, migrated to the US to work, first as a seamstress and then as a geriatric nurse. Eventually, she sent for all her children. Richardson was 25 when he migrated to the US.
“I only went because my mom wanted me up there. It wasn’t my decision.
“When I left, I took Trinidad with me. I didn’t leave Trinidad to change. But they don’t play up there. They have prison for you.”
He arrived in New York City in 1982.
“Within three years, I was out on the street, doing drugs, selling drugs, robbing people. For my first arrest, I was charged with 13 felonies, and I went to trial for all of them.
“My mom said, ‘I know you didn’t do this,’ and of course, I lied and said I didn’t, so as not to disappoint her.”
He served five years in prison, beginning in 1986.
“In prison, I did programmes. I faked it to make it, so to speak.
“I came out, and seven months lat
