😮 I removed the handcuffs from a prisoner and recognized the tattoo of my dead father. He died in Vietnam three months before I was born; I never knew him. 💔 And this 67-year-old man, accused of stealing medicine from a pharmacy, had the same military badge on his arm that my mother has had framed in the living room for forty-eight years.

that the eighty-nine-dollar medicine he stole was for Güero.
Güero. The one next to my father in the photo.

The judge kept waiting. “Officer Ortega, do you have anything to say?” My mouth was open, and I couldn’t speak.

And then the old man did something I didn’t expect. He squeezed my hand, the one I was still holding on the railing, and said quietly,continue reading …