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Cup of COFFEE A Second Chance, And New Hope
Cup of COFFEE A Second Chance, And New Hope
By Sean Clancy
Arrests piling up—theft, a drug charge, more theft. Under house arrest. Probation officer had come and gone for the day. A prison sentence loomed.
Jules Stowell yearned for a big night out, one final run through the gauntlet.
She hit the town, the bad part of town. West Cape Canaveral, Florida, Between Rockledge and Cocoa.
“One last hurrah,” Stowell said. “Three friends. I wouldn’t call them friends now, doing things we shouldn’t have been doing.”
Florida State Police pulled over her Honda Civic. Not for speeding, not for any traffic violation, just because they were in a suspicious area. One of the cops ran her name through his computer and read her rap sheet…parole violation…driving with a suspended license…drug possession.
Stowell floored it. She took the cops on a 15-minute chase and then jumped out of the car and fled into the dark streets.
“You’re not thinking it through,” Stowell said. “In the moment. Just get away. I got to a dead-end street, and I took off. Just ran.”
Helicopters swirled. Spotlights beamed. Stowell hid under a carport on a dead-end street. In a deadend life.
“I waited. I waited. I waited,” Stowell said.
Once she thought it was clear, she called her mom to pick her up. Mom knew the drill.
“My mother,” Stowell said. “My poor mother.”
Police had staked out the area, saw her mom circling the streets and arrested Stowell on the spot.
“It was over from there,” she said.
A three-year prison sentence at Lowell Correctional Institute near Ocala, Florida, turned to a six-year sentence.
“What I was trying to avoid, not going to jail, it did quite the opposite. Doubled my time,” Stowell said. “You’re just numb, quiet, observant. And in the beginning, it’s a little rougher because they want to make an impact. It’s like boot camp. So, you’re getting screamed at. They make a point to, if you’re talking in line, put you on the fence and humiliate you. You go through all the emotions of that. But it’s really based on the individual, on how you behave, how you’re going to be treated at the end of the day.”
With nowhere to run, Stowell began a long, slow climb. She took a paralegal course, a dog-training course while waiting for a spot at the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Second Chances program. She could see the horses on the hill but with a sixyear sentence, she wasn’t eligible for the program. She waited.
“It was just occupying my mind with something. ‘OK, I’m going to prison for six years. I don’t want to just sit there and have idle hands. What can I do with this time to prepare myself to come out, to set myself up for success when I come out?’ ” Stowell said. “Going to prison really saved my life. It gave me a purpose. And as crazy as it sounds, when people ask me, do I regret going there? Well, I regret the things I did that ended me up there. I regret the people I hurt, not that I killed someone or anything. But my crimes, there are victims from theft. So, I do regret that. But I don’t regret the experience and where it’s brought me.”
It eventually brought her to the 50 horses on the hill and a member of the 15-strong team of women who take care of them. Asked for a favorite, Stowell hesitated.
“There was a handful,” she said. “Shake You Down. He is a big iconic horse out there. So, I got the pleasure of handling him. But Mr. Angel, he was probably the most impactful on me. He was an older guy. He was very misunderstood. He hospitalized his previous owner, put her in ICU, but she still didn’t give up on him. So, he came to us. And I can relate to the ones that are a little bit off, a little crazy that need more time because…you know.”
Yeah, she knows. Released from prison in 2023, Stowell got a job at Stephanie and Niall Brennan’s stable, mostly because of the skills she learned under the tutelage of John Evans at Second Chances. Farrier work, intravenous shots, driving the tractor, fixing the fence, you name it, she can do it.
Stowell made her way to Saratoga this summer to speak at the TRF’s Barbecue. She told her story. A day later, she continued it.
“I went down the wrong path, veered off it.” she said. “I was being fueled and run by foreign things. I was in there deep down, but I was just suffocating, drowning. The people I was around, of course, played an impact. But ultimately, it was me. I was the one that made those decisions. I was lost at the time, broken. If you’re broken and if you struggle with addiction, you’re running from yourself. Wherever you go, you’re there.”
From hell to horses to hope, Stowell’s ride continues.
“The hope of saving someone’s life, saving a horse’s life,” Stowell said. “You can relate to them because they experience trauma in their own way. And we don’t know what they’ve been through. They can’t voice it. Looking at individuals, you can’t tell what that person’s been through. Everyone goes through trauma in their life, whether they go to prison or not.
“But there is that opportunity. It’s an opportunity to turn it around, to make a difference and to be successful. It doesn’t stop at one failure. You’re going to fail many times. But what are you going to do with that failure? So, yeah, hope and success, a second chance.”
Originally published in The Saratoga Special Aug. 24, 2024.
