Husband and wife Eddie and Alice Perez are working together to change the way the community treats the more than 700 individuals housed in the two Santa Barbara County jails — Eddie through his nonprofit Impact Ministry and Alice as the new inmate services programs manager for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jails — and together the couple has partnered with area organizations to spread the holiday cheer in both facilities, gifting each and every inmate and staff member with a special “Christmas gift bag” in a tradition that is now going on its fifth year.
Before the two met, and before he was ordained as a pastor, Eddie had become all too familiar with the heaviness of the holiday season behind bars. For all of his adult life, all he could remember was Christmas in prison; he spent 38 years in California prisons, 31 of which were spent isolated in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement.
When he was paroled in 2011, after turning his life around and working a 12-step program that centered on deconstructing the mindset of those addicted to a life of crime, Criminals and Gang Members Anonymous, he found himself drawn to Santa Barbara. (Coincidentally enough, Perez said it was because of something he saw in a copy of Santa Barbara Independent that had been left in a McDonald’s in Fullerton, where he was living, and which featured an item on a transitional program for formerly incarcerated students at Santa Barbara City College.)