Posted on 11/26/2006 8:19:12 AM PST by DogByte6RER
November 24, 2006
Stolen Dinner Costs Mother Thanksgiving Behind Bars
By ERIC FERKENHOFF
VALPARAISO, Ind., Nov. 23 — For most people, Thanksgiving is a day to be surrounded by those dearest to them. For Donna Shelby that would have included fawning over her daughter, who was 6 months old on Thursday.
Eventually, Ms. Shelby, 19, did get there. But it was early evening before she received her walking papers and was set free from the Porter County Jail, where she spent some of the day scrubbing dishes for a crowd of inmates.
That time with thieves, thugs and addicts instead of her mother, child, boyfriend and three younger sisters was her punishment for skipping out of a Valparaiso restaurant without paying her bill last summer.
“The bill? I think it was like $18.96,” Ms. Shelby said in a brief jailhouse interview. “My cousin, she ate the steak and eggs. I got a salad. And it wasn’t even that good.”
Still, it was a lesson learned, she said.
“If I had to do it again, I’d either never walk into that restaurant or I’d just pay the bill,” she said. “But I didn’t have the money. And when my family showed up at the restaurant to get me, they paid the bill. So I was like, what am I getting arrested for? But they said I left. I did.”
Wanting a quick meal, Ms. Shelby said, she and her 15-year-old cousin had stopped at the restaurant, the Round the Clock, a popular spot in this pocket of northwest Indiana, on Aug. 12. After cleaning their plates, the pair simply got up and left. They made it to the parking lot.
“Our waitress chased her down,” said the restaurant manager, Milan Radinovich. “We called the cops, and the prosecutors and judge took it from there.”
This month, rather than simply sentence Ms. Shelby to six months of probation, which is not unusual for a minor offense, Judge David Chidester of Porter County Court went a step further. Harking back to the old idea that if a customer cannot pay his tab, he can work it off washing dishes, Judge Chidester gave Ms. Shelby a choice: work in the restaurant’s kitchen until the debt was paid, or spend a day in the lockup.
“We said no,” Mr. Radinovich said. “We wanted nothing to do with her. Get out. Stay out.”
So off to the county jail it was for Ms. Shelby, who had to leave the baby at home for a full day of washing dishes for inmates spending Thanksgiving behind bars.
After being dropped off at the jail promptly at 9 a.m. by her mother, who “was not very happy,” Ms. Shelby said, she donned the dark red jail garb and headed to the kitchen, where the turkey was being prepared.
But maybe 30 minutes into her shift, Ms. Shelby took ill, and was told by jail officials to sit down and rest. Before long, she was consulting with the medical staff, who thought she had perhaps come down with the flu, according to Ms. Shelby and a jail guard who escorted her.
The dishwashing was over, but the sentence was not. Unable to reach the judge, jail supervisors told Ms. Shelby they had little choice but to keep her in a cell until her scheduled release at 6 p.m.
“Do I think I deserve this?” she said. “I didn’t pay. We ditched. But they told me I wouldn’t have to wear the jail clothes, and look at me. They told me I would wash dishes, and I’m in a cell, locked up.”
To make matters worse, Ms. Shelby said, the publicity surrounding her sentence cost her a job. A high school dropout, Ms. Shelby completed a course to become a certified nursing assistant and was hired at a rehabilitation center in the weeks after her arrest.
“But all the news, they just fired me,” Ms. Shelby said. “I had made enough to pay back my family the $325 bail they put up for me to get out. But I have no job now. Looking for work.”
Sgt. Michael Grennes of the Valparaiso Police Department said the punishment was just.
“They decided to get up and leave,” he said, noting that Ms. Shelby’s 15-year-old cousin, who is pregnant, was charged as a juvenile in the case. “The judge decided to do something unusual here, to teach a lesson. Perhaps it’s an important lesson learned.”
Ms. Shelby said she understood her family’s anger and embarrassment, and even the punishment the judge gave her — if only in part. But Thursday was Thanksgiving.
“My baby’s at home, and I want to get back to her,” she said. “That’s what I’m looking forward to. I can give thanks.”
Flake & Bake over the hot dishwater. I know one like this, unfortunately.
It's interesting how her sense of value is quality dependent. "The salad wasn't even that good." What does that mean, really?
and I do too, now. Sort of.
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