ERICH KUSSMAN: I had a box cutter on me.
And I said, you know, if any of y'all try to touch me,
I'm gonna kill one of y'all.
[AMBIENT MUSIC]
I grew up in inner city Plainfield, New Jersey.
My mother was a drug addict.
I had grew up without a father.
We grew up in such dire poverty.
My mom was in and out of jail and, you know, me
and my older sister were stuck in our house--
and we have no food to eat.
You know, I'm nine years old.
We're breaking into the neighbor's house
just to get food.
We were always on the run from the cops
and just fighting all the time.
And, you know, eventually that'll
catch up to you-- living the day-to-day lifestyle.
And it did.
I was selling drugs with somebody else
in a strip club in New Jersey.
The person that I was with had an altercation
with three gentlemen.
So when we walk out, all three of them
were out there, waiting outside for us.
So two of them jumped on the guy I was with.
Wound up beating him almost unconscious.
And I had a box cutter on me.
And I said, you know, if any of y'all try to touch me,
I'm gonna kill one of y'all.
And, of course, sure enough, one guy takes a swing at me.
And I wound up stabbing him a few times in his gut.
And, you know, he hit the ground,
everybody stopped, and we left.
I'm thinking to myself, "Everything's good.
Got in a fight, you know, taught people a lesson."
When, at that time period, I was--
had a little part-time job at a appliance dealership.
Two weeks after the incident, and I pull in to the job.
And there was, like, an army of cop cars there at the job.
I made a right and tried to book for the highway.
And they caught me.
The cell that they put me at in the county jail,
they used to use it as their, like, chapel.
And they used to come in there when the gates popped
at 6:00 in the morning and come have
their little Bible devotionals.
So I got out of my bed and I was like, "Guess what, fellas.
I'm about to pray to your God today."
So I pointed my finger dead in the sky, like this.
I said, "Yo, God, if you're real,
you're going to let me out of jail."
Quickly they turned on me, said "You can't pray that."
I was like, "Whatever.
I prayed it.
Deal with it."
So the very next morning, the alarm buzzer
goes off in my cell, talking about "Kussman,
pack your stuff.
It's time to go."
So I'm like, "What?
Time to go?"
I was like, "Go where?"
Gates started busting open.
Got all the way down to the reception area,
where they actually told me "Go and put your street clothes on.
You're leaving.
Sign this paperwork."
And I said, "Oh, this is for real.
This isn't a joke."
So I got mistakenly released from jail.
So I'm like running up the street.
And I run into this man who looked out of place.
And I went up to him, and I said, "Dude, you lost?
Man, you need help?"
And he told me, "No, son.
You're lost.
You don't know Jesus."
You know, that kind of opened my eyes to,
you know, to faith, to spirituality.
Like, wait a minute.
Maybe there is a God out there.
I was only out for about 20 minutes
after I met this man and the cops
came up the street squad cars and everything.
And they brought me right back to the jail.
Literally the very next day, I got brought into court.
I got sentenced to 12 years with 85%.
By that evening, I was off to state prison.
Like, I knew all hope was lost.
All the guards don't even call you by your real name,
you know?
They call you by the state number that they give you--
and mine was 380556C.
And that was my name for about 12 years.
That's when you really start to lose a piece of yourself.
That's when I ran into Reverend Emmanuel Beaujolais.
This is my father, the Reverend Emmanuel Beaujolais.
And without this humble, humble man,
I wouldn't be where I'm at today.
Well, when I first met Beaujolais,
we just started talking and he's talking about potential.
I thought he was a crackpot.
I was like, "This guy is nuts."
And he had the audacity to tell me that--
and he said it in his thick Haitian accent--
he's like, "My son, you're going to go where I went to."
And automatically, I was like, "Haiti, dude?
I'm not going to Haiti."
And he's like, "No, the school--
Princeton.
You're going to go to Princeton."
Man, I never laughed so hard in my life.
But the genuineness of him, you know, was contagious.
REVEREND EMMANUEL BEAUJOLAIS: When I met Erich,
he has a skill.
He talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
But Erich loved to listen.
And I discovered that listening is an art.
So I stick with Erich through the process
of this restricted environment.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ERICH KUSSMAN: He was also the first person that
was staff that called me by my first name, which meant a lot,
you know?
And I'm always going to cherish that because that
was like that bright spot.
You know?
He helped me read, got me books to read.
And he challenged me to get my GED, challenged my thinking.
For people to think you can go through prison alone-- let's
be honest-- nobody really can.
The only way to survive something like that
is to have people around you that still care.
Then, eventually, two years short of my sentence,
I had the opportunity of going to a halfway house.
I had an opportunity to either go work minimum wage--
if that-- or go to school.
And Reverend Beaujolais says, "My son, are you ready?"
I'm like, "Ready for what?"
And he goes, "I told you, you were going to go where I went."
So that Monday-- graduated on a Saturday.
That Monday, he had me an appointment at Princeton
Theological Seminary.
And I was nervous that they wouldn't accept me.
But then I got a letter--
they accepted me.
I felt that calling.
I knew I needed this degree to continue,
to see how far I can go.
Graduation at Princeton was surreal.
When I walked in with the rest of my graduating class,
just thinking about the journey of where I came from to where I
was at, at that moment in time was unbelievable to me,
you know?
And I shed some good tears that day-- because I made it.
I was appointed to this church in Trenton, New Jersey.
You know, the neighborhood in which I was ministering
had drugs, crime, you name it, poverty.
So people needed hope.
You try to let them know what God wants, to know, that they
are loved, that they are accepted no matter what
station in life they're in.
And to me that's preaching the gospel, you know?
That's living the calling.
To try to inspire others--
not only to be changed, but also to be the change
in their communities.
And now here comes the love story.
My wife, Ashley, she's retired NYPD.
And we met, we just started talking, we stayed in contact.
She knew I was in prison and that didn't offend her.
And I knew she was a cop and that only half offended me,
so we were married in 2015, and Reverend Beaujolais
officiated our service.
Every time I wake up, my outlook on life-- it's a brand new day.
You know there's hope.
I take every day as an opportunity to hopefully bring
some kind of life, some kind of love, some kind of positivity
to the-- to the world.
You know, what is it John Lennon said?
All you need is love, right?
So then, what better way to live?
[MUSIC PLAYING]