Jesus in a Mullet

On another front, things look even more promising. The TDCJ Director of Rehabilitation and Reentry Programs, Madeline Ortiz, contacted Hendrixson out of the blue late last month, apparently prompted by a reporter's inquiries. The department was willing to reconsider Hendrixson's ouster from Hutchins, Ortiz informed her. Hendrixson met with Ortiz and other prison officials on September 13.

"I apologized and said I just don't understand the policies," Hendrixson says. "I want to do things by the book, but I don't know the book, so if you'll teach me I'll work with you." She gave the visitors a tour of her facility, and they left Hendrixson with a promise of wholehearted cooperation. "They were ecstatic. They loved it. I gave them all a T-shirt," Hendrixson enthuses. "I was, like, in prison program utopia."

More than 8,400 state prisoners were released to Dallas County in fiscal year 2004. "There's a reality that needs to be recognized: If they're convicted in Dallas, they come back to Dallas," Hallman says. "They're not going somewhere else. They're not going to an island somewhere."

In fact, nearly one-third of prisoners released in Texas are back behind bars within three years. It is that prospect that haunts Hendrixson as she considers the fate of her best friend during her own prison days, Elizabeth Chagra. Chagra was famously convicted of paying Charles Harrelson, father of actor Woody Harrelson, to assassinate a federal judge in 1979. The judge was to have presided over Chagra's husband's drug trial.

"We promised each other that if we got out we would devote ourselves to helping others," Hendrixson says. Chagra, serving a 19-year sentence, was diagnosed with cancer in prison. "She never got out. She died in there." As Hendrixson tells the story, the tone of her voice conveys the implicit message that drives her: Bajito Onda is the only thing that has kept her from sharing Chagra's fate.

"Del will swallow you up," Hallman says. "She wants you to live and breathe Bajito Onda because she does--and that will scare some people off." That same intensity is what makes Hendrixson effective and what allows Bajito Onda to survive, because of and in spite of her. As Hendrixson puts it, describing the way she works with convicts, "I'm pretty awesome if I do say so myself." And she does, without hesitation.