Shawn Hagwood's young life had been marked by poor choices. Starting in middle school, he got in with the wrong crowd and started drinking and experimenting with drugs. By the time he was 16, he had dropped out of school and already had a growing criminal record. No one expected much good from him, nor did he expect it from himself.

But on Tuesday, August 27, 1996, Shawn began a journey of learning that would turn his life around.

Earlier that week, 19-year-old Shawn made a cross-country trip to visit a friend in Rochester, Minnesota, a quiet, conservative community known for the famous Mayo Clinic. One night, he and his friend accompanied a group of local guys to an apartment complex inhabited mostly by Somalian residents. They were headed there with bats to settle a score with some of the residents for beating up one of their friends the night before. When they arrived at the complex, a group of guys came out to meet them with golf clubs.

Things got out of control and a young Somalian kid from the apartments was seriously injured when someone in Shawn's group swung a baseball bat. By the time the police got there, everyone involved had disappeared and the episode was classified as a racial gang crime of white guys against the ethnic residents.

Racial problems were a growing concern for Rochester's community leaders. In recent years many different ethnic groups had moved into the community, and the growing disturbances were casting a shadow on the community's upstanding reputation. In order to crack down on the problem before it got out of hand, city leaders, with the help of the local news media, made the skirmish a huge story. There were town meetings, a citywide march, and a stream of newspaper articles demanding immediate termination of the perceived "racial gang problem."

Shawn was definitely part of the fight that summer night, but he never held a bat and was not the person who injured the kid. Still, when the authorities came knocking, the local guys Shawn had hung out with that night used him as an easy scapegoat, since he was from out of town. When the police brought Shawn in for questioning a few days later, it would be his last day as a free man for the next eight years.

Shawn says the origin of the fight was not so much about racial conflict as it was the stupidity of angry young men caught up in the moment. "When we showed up at the apartment complex," he says, "I believe the motive was mostly revenge, but the racial factor definitely added to it."

Even though Shawn was basically on the fringe of the crime, and the only one put on trial at this time (two were brought to trial three years later and given a much lighter sentence), the jury came back with the verdict: Guilty.

"When the judge handed down my sentence, I couldn't believe it," Shawn recalls. "Eleven years of my life would be spent in the Minnesota corrections system. To say I was angry about the injustice of it is a huge understatement."

Shortly after entering prison life, Shawn got his first visitor—one of the men from the jury. He thought maybe the man was there to help him get a new trial, but soon discovered he was simply there to be a friend. Though he initially put up a tough exterior, Shawn was happy to have company.

Shawn remembers, "He introduced himself as Dave Stensland, a clinical psychologist. He had driven four hours just to see me and to find out how I was doing. When he stood up to leave, I felt disappointed, but Dave promised to come again soon."

Dave began regular monthly visits. They talked about everything from Shawn's life goals after prison, to Dave's evident faith in God, to how Shawn could cope with the sometimes paralyzing stresses of prison life and his bitterness over the injustice of his sentence.