Exactly 13 years ago today, I was released from a Massachusetts prison.

Early in my confinement, as I talked about my eventual release, I bragged to other prisoners that once outside the prison gate I’d turn around and hold up both middle fingers to the prison that would mistakenly release me. I intended to come out and rob more banks to show the Federal Bureau of Prisons that I could be knocked down but never counted out.

But standing outside the prison gate, I opted not to sully the moment with a vulgarly aggressive gesture. I was a different man than the one who walked into prison seven years earlier.

I lifted two boxes of books---all the property I owned---through the gate, then walked to my friend Father Mark Serna and gave him a bear hug. He would be my companion for the day, and ride to Boston’s Logan Airport.

Mark helped me carry the boxes to his black Lincoln Continental in the parking lot. There was a brief moment while Mark fiddled with a lever in the car for popping open the trunk when I turned back to steal a last glimpse of my prison. I felt peculiar, like I was betraying my friends with my freedom.

I placed the heavy boxes inside the trunk and slammed it shut.

We immediately drove to the local bank from which the prison check was drawn. I stepped out of the Lincoln, turned to face the bank, then froze in my tracks. It was an odd feeling to realize that the last thing I did before I was arrested was walk into a bank and make an illegal withdrawal, and now the first thing I was doing as I got out of prison was walking into a bank to make a legitimate withdrawal.

Are you all right, Joe? Mark asked as I stood and gazed at the bank. He walked around to my side of the car. I told him to look at the bank. Then I recalled to him the first time I robbed two banks within 5 minutes. I walked out of the first bank furious that the teller had slowly handed over the loot. I checked my fanny pack on the sidewalk and loosely counted two thousand dollars. By this time I was in front of the bank next door. I knew that the cops were coming, but in that fluid moment of criminal contingency I felt like I was the top of the food chain. So I walked into the second bank and robbed it too. Three minutes later I was driving on Interstate 5, blasting Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” (soundtrack to all my getaways) on my recently installed ten-disc CD player.

Now those days were long gone. I was relieved. “It’s time,” I told him, “to be the new peaceful me.”

As we approached the front doors of the bank, I placed both my hands firmly on the handles. I’d leave evidence everywhere. On glass. On the pen attached to the lobby desk. I’d looked every employee in the eye. All seven cameras mounted behind the teller stations photographed me dumbly staring at them like a heavily medicated mental patient. I wanted to be seen, known, to withstand daylight scrutiny—in that way, I thought, I’d also become less suspicious to myself.

I walked to the window of a young, pretty black female teller.

How are you today, sir?

I smiled broadly, loose in the neck, eyebrows slightly raised, both hands in front of me, trying to show her that I posed no threat.

Fine, thanks. I just need to cash this check, but I just got out of prison so I don’t have a driver’s license.

I slid the check to her and then placed my open palms flat on the counter. I measured her reaction, waited for the shifting eyes, or flinch of panic. She simply picked up the check, turned it over, and then slid it back to me.

No problem, sir. Just sign the back again. Do you have your prison ID with you?

Yeah. I got it right here. I continued smiling warmly.

The ID was the typical mug shot; one picture of me in profile, the other facing the camera. My hair was shaved low to the scalp, my eyes were a menacing dare, my facial muscles flat, corpse-like. The teller several times compared the photo in her hand to the more animated face in front of her.

Please don’t take this wrong, Mr. Loya, but you look much better now. She smiled.

I chuckled, Yeah, I know. I wasn’t trying to make myself look pretty in there.

Her laugh was the first sign that I was going to be all right out here. She created the occasion for me to feel normal. Our encounter made it easy for me to tell other folks that I had just got out of prison. Her willingness to compliment me, to smile at me, to treat me kindly, made it possible for me to imagine good will in other people’s hearts as I was introduced into their strange world. She encouraged my new optimism.

In that way, that teller baptized me into community. I had transgressed in all those banks years before. So it was singularly surprising to me that I would find my redemption in a bank within 20 minutes of my parole.