A troubled life turns around

A series of unfortunate events in Derrick’s Bedford’s adolescence – an incident with his bike at the corner store, his mother walking out on his father without the children – shifted his attitude from generally good to bad. While still a teenager, Bedford, of Oakland, started selling marijuana, buying his first stock of plants with money received for his birthday from family.

After enjoying the spoils of the dealer life-style through most of his teen-aged years, however, he found himself fatigued from the other extreme of the pendulum as he was repeatedly arrested and made multiple trips to juvenile hall. Finally, he asked for help from the same judge who’d sentenced him every time and, just like Bedford, Judge Larry Goodman was tired of Derrick’s recurring trips as well.

Bedford assembled a dedicated group of colleagues and formed the Crossroads Program with a mandate to change the lives of troubled youth genuinely interested in change. Today, at thirty-five, the very Derrick Bedford who spent his adolescence in and out of juvenile hall supervises several of the officers who once stood guard over his incarceration.

1 changes… from Tony Wilson on Vimeo.

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