Joseph

"At Rubicon they accept you for who you are and encourage you.”  

Joseph Sickler is the kind of guy who sits on the shore of the San Joaquin Delta all night long, braving the elements and the fatigue and the mind-numbing boredom, to catch a single, perfect bass. The kind of guy who leaves home at 5:30 a.m. and walks until his “ankles bleed” to get to college. Who left prison with a checklist of what he wanted to accomplish—get a birth certificate, get a job, find a place to live, pursue his bachelor’s degree—and proceeded to check every item off the list.  

Simply put, “Joseph is not a quitter. When he tells you he is going to do something, he does it,” says Masio Rayfield, his Rubicon Impact Coach. Joseph was a member of Rubicon Concord’s founding cohort in August 2019, and to this day, Masio still marvels at Joseph’s resolve: “Where does he get his ambition from? What’s inside of him telling him to be a man of his word?”

It’s a mindset that Joseph, 41, says is all about making up for lost time. Eighteen years he can never get back. “My drive comes from a fear of failure. I feel like I wasted so much of my life in prison. Now I have to get everything right.” 

There is a contradiction here, one Joseph himself is quick to acknowledge. On the one hand, prison was “wasted time”; on the other, his voice rings with pride when he remembers everything he achieved during those years: learning five trades, earning an associate’s degree from Lake Tahoe Community College, and applying and being accepted to Sacramento State University. “My accomplishments stack up to anyone’s in the real world.” Long pause. “But I feel like my college degree gets degraded because I earned it in prison.” 

When Joseph’s parole officer told him about Rubicon, he was skeptical. What could he get out of the program that was not already encompassed by his own exhaustive checklist? His first semester at Sacramento State was underway, and he had his hands full trying to cover the distance between Antioch and Sacramento without a car. But he gave it a shot. “What’s three weeks?” he remembers asking himself. What he found surprised him: Rubicon was community. It was a support system. After 41 years feeling like he was alone, Joseph had finally found peers and mentors who “got him.”  

Joseph describes his incarceration as a lonely time, especially when he started hitting the gas on his education: “Most of the people in there, their direction is not your direction. They’re on a different path.” But it was after his release that the real sense of isolation kicked in; he did not feel supported by his parents and ultimately cut ties with them. Relationships from his youth he now found “toxic,” and his college classmates had a very different set of life experiences.  

“I didn’t have a network of friends or people out here who understood the impact of incarceration. A lot of people are ignorant to reentry,” Joseph says. That all changed when he met his Rubicon support team. “I was not judged; I was understood. At Rubicon they accept you for who you are and encourage you.”  

It was as if the Rubicon staff formed a jigsaw puzzle, each person a vital, perfect piece of the big picture. When Joseph’s Social Theory class was kicking his butt, or when he was not sure he could claw his way through a tough math class, Masio, a Sacramento State alum, was there. “He gave me advice to stay focused and not give up, but just to do my best. He’s been there too,” Joseph says. Deanna Young provided emotional support; he turned to her to talk about family and relationships. Jasmine Penney had the optimistic attitude he sometimes needed. And in Reggie Boyer, he found someone who understood the difficulties of adjusting to the world outside of prison. “Reggie knows what it feels like to go through that,” he says.  

The team also made sure Joseph had all the basics needed to succeed in his education: a laptop, money for books, and gas cards once he got a car to tackle that daunting commute.  

Joseph talks a lot about the stigma he feels coming out of prison—the sense that he is being prejudged, that no one knows what he went through. The physical markers, like the neck tattoos he is having removed, are easier to deal with than the self-doubt he carries with him every day. What if, in spite of his hard work and accomplishments, he can never measure up? 

Which brings us to his experience with Financial Coach Sam Hearnes. Joseph sounds reverent when he talks about sitting in Sam’s class and soaking up his expertise. “It really is possible for you to be taken away for so many years, be at a disadvantage starting off, and still end up a pillar in the community,” he says. Sam’s example gave him something to strive for. “I want to get to that point where I can blow people away based on my past experiences.” 

Joseph is an Ambassador at Rubicon Concord, and before the onset of COVID, when Rubicon started delivering services remotely, he loved speaking at Stepping Stones ceremonies, looking out into the audience and seeing the effect his story has on funders, politicians, and other stakeholders. “I want them to know that helping people who are formerly incarcerated is not a waste of time,” he says. 

Joseph recently interviewed with the sheet metal union, acing the aptitude tests, and is excited to pursue the opportunity. He also plans to continue on at Sacramento State, where he is studying sociology.  

The pandemic has thrown a wrench into some of his plans, but he now has healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with his frustration that were not available to him before, including dipping his fishing line into the Delta. “Out here if I need to, I can get up and go to the water.”