Carolina Landa’s story begins in the orchards of Quincy, Washington and takes a transformative turn within the walls of an Oregon prison. Raised in a Mexican-American immigrant family, Carolina’s curiosity and passion for science led her to champion sustainability initiatives behind bars. In this episode, she discusses how incarceration became a catalyst for her environmental awakening and advocacy for green rehabilitation programs.
Carolina Landa:
We were learning everything we could learn about this butterfly. It literally liquefies while it’s in the chrysalis, and then, starts to form these butterfly wings and these colors. And I remember just thinking like, “That’s me. That is what’s happening right now to me. I am metamorphosizing into this person, this person that I’m meant to be.” And I remember just thinking, “Where am I? This is not a typical occurrence that happens here in prison.”
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
I am Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, and this is A Different Kind Of Nature Show, a podcast about the human drama of saving animals. This season, we’re talking to all kinds of nature advocates. From a paleo anthropologist who hunts fossils in conflict zones to someone who helped save an endangered species while in prison, we’re going to hear from real-life heroes with widely different expertise and life experiences about what led them to be champions for the natural world. What transformation did they go through to create change within themselves, their community, and the world? Together, we’ll find out how these ordinary people fell in love with nature and became their most extraordinary selves. This is going wild.
Carolina Landa is an equity and policy analyst at the Washington State House of Representatives. She spends her days advising on bills, making sure that laws created by the state legislature are fair and equitable for all Washingtonians. We should say here that the views Carolina expresses in our conversation are her own and are not connected to her employer in any way. But Carolina hasn’t always been in government. In fact, her professional journey began in a very surprising place, while she was incarcerated at Mission Creek Correction Center for Women.
Carolina Landa:
I saw this description and it said, “You’ll collect data, work with scientists, and you’ll be learning,” and I was just like, “Wow, this sounds amazing. I have no idea what this is, but it sounds amazing and I want to do it.”
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Before she began supporting people with policy, she was supporting endangered butterflies at the Sustainability in Prisons Project, a program that brings science and nature-based education and employment into prisons in Washington state. Today, we’re talking with Carolina about her childhood in a small farming community and the wrong turn that led to her incarceration. We’ll discuss the complexity of living in prison as a mother, the strength it took to find her feet and the healing and inspiration she found in a small community of women and an endangered butterfly. Where in the world are we when we talk about you and your story? Where did you grow up? And then can you paint a picture to me about whether or not nature played a role in your life as a kid?
Carolina Landa:
I was born and raised in Washington state, a little small farming community called Quincy, Washington. Demographics growing up were probably about 70% white, 30% Latinos, and it was population about 4,000 people, so just to give you kind of a rough picture of how small the community.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Small, yeah, super small.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah. It used to have one stoplight in the whole town, and then, everything else is country back roads area. I love being outside. I spent most of my childhood always out in nature. I always wanted to rescue all the animals. I would find, I found a bunny once, a duck once. I always was really fascinated. I was remembering this the other day with ladybugs, but yeah, I have really fond memories of growing up and always trying to really just be outside because it was a lot of fun.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
And so, the story that we’re telling in this podcast is about education, because we’re going to get to a story of where you were learning a ton of science. In your early life as a kid, as an adolescent teenager, what was education like for you? What was your experiences with education?
Carolina Landa:
Education was something that was very important in my family. There was definitely an expectation to pursue higher education and to eventually pursue a career, something in life that would get me to the place of financial stability or wealth or status of some sort, so it was very important. I always enjoyed school. I remember liking science a lot and I did graduate and it was a very proud moment.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
And then, what happened? Talk to us about college.
Carolina Landa:
Right after high school, my brother had moved to Miami and he said, “Why don’t you come to Florida and come in love with me? It is completely different than what you grew up in and I will help support you, and all you have to do is go to college.” Me and my best friend drove across the US and we were 18. I was the only one with a driver’s license at the time. I remember letting her drive through the state of Texas, because there was just nothing for hours and hours. I could not take it anymore, and I was getting really tired, so I let her drive for three hours. Yeah, we drove clear across the states. That was a really, really nice trip. And yeah, we finally arrived to Miami and I started going to Miami Dade and everything was going good.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Carolina moved in with her brother and went to community college for about a year. But like a lot of students, she was targeted by credit card companies and it wasn’t long before she began spending money that she didn’t have. By the middle of her second year, she had picked up more debt than she could handle, so she took some time off school to earn some money and repay it.
Carolina Landa:
I remember working at one point three different jobs. Minimum wage back then was $5.25. And then, if you were a server, which I was at one of my jobs, it was $2.15 per hour and you had to rely on only your tips.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
You know what? I have to say, when I was in college, I was a waitress also. I will never forget that my salary was $2.50 an hour.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Isn’t that something?
Carolina Landa:
Yeah, yeah. It was, and I just working all of these jobs, and then, I started making friends and drinking more. I wasn’t even 21 yet, but it was easy. There wasn’t a lot of carding that was happening. And because I was with sometimes older people, I think it was easy to just kind of blend in and nobody asked any questions. I eventually did not return to higher education. My life just kind of went down another path, and then, eventually my brother just said, “You’re not going to go back to school, and you’re not going to do much here, so I am sending you back home.” That’s what I did. I returned back home to Central Washington with my mom, so I had to restart all over again and try to refocus.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
It was back in Washington that Carolina’s romantic life became hostile in ways that she wasn’t prepared for.
Carolina Landa:
I bought a lot into societal norms of finding your forever person, and I didn’t always pick the right people for me. With that came a lot of trauma, a lot of bad decision-making, and that went on for a while.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Would you say that there were changes in your self-esteem?
Carolina Landa:
Yes, definitely. I had lost that spark in me at some point in my life and I wasn’t pursuing school anymore. That was just like some past life, what the future and what I want that life to look like for myself, that just wasn’t there anymore.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Wow, interesting. That’s a big change from who you used to be.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
And at what point did you have your son?
Carolina Landa:
In 2007, I had Zach. I never imagined having kids. I grew up navigating systems for my parents. My parents are, they’re migrants. They came from Mexico, so English is their second language. I did a lot of translation for them growing up, and then, I helped raise my little brother. I just didn’t really, I never really thought about kids. And then, when I became pregnant, my purpose in life started to shift and I was just really pursuing a lot of things in my life that were really good and healthy. Me and his dad were separated at the time, and then, I started to slowly let him back into my life. And so, I ended up with him, and then, making poor decisions. And then, I eventually, when Zach was about to become three, I was arrested. That was really difficult. I don’t think anybody actually ever imagines that they are going to go to prison. It was a big shock for me. I didn’t know anything about the criminal justice system at all.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Carolina’s arrest happened almost 15 years ago and after her release, she testified in support of new legislation in Washington state, making it easier for certain criminal offenses to be vacated from formerly incarcerated people’s records. Since 2019, this law called the New Hope Act has helped countless numbers of people just like Carolina to move forward with their lives without the stigma of a label given to them by the court system sometimes many decades ago. In keeping with the spirit of the New Hope Act and to honor the amazing work that Carolina has done in this space, we’ve decided to keep the details of her conviction out of our story today as well. After she was arrested, Carolina spent about a year in the system awaiting trial. Then, in a courtroom in Central Washington, she was sentenced to a total of five and a half years in prison. She was then escorted from the building by armed guards and transported to the first in a series of facilities.
Carolina Landa:
You’re moving all the way from central Washington to, the two prisons that are in Washington state for women are on the west side of the mountains, and so, you’re traveling across the whole state and it takes a lot of transfers. You go from one van, bus of sorts to the next one, and then, you wait there in a holding cell then you go to the next one. And so, there’s a lot of moving that is happening. And mind you, none of these vans and transportations have any windows, so there’s no sense of direction, nothing. Now, of course, you’re handcuffed, and your feet as well at times too, so it’s just a very dehumanizing experience. You have these officers that are telling you to take off your clothes, to strip, to do this, and it’s all very fast-moving, like you’re moving through a conveyor belt or just moving bodies, like just go, go, go. It’s a really, really jolting experience and honestly traumatizing. I think that it is set up in that way on purpose.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Deliberately, mm-hmm.
Carolina Landa:
Yes. And then, you finally get to your location, they call it receiving. They basically are gathering all this information about you, and then, coming up with a score of sorts that they call classification. And that number dictates what kind of housing you’re going to live in, whether it’s maximum security custody, medium or minimum. And so, after those four weeks, I was transferred over to the minimum part of the prison. And then, when I finally got to Mission Creek, I remember very specifically standing next to the phone outside and I looked around and it just really hit me that this was going to be the place I lived at for the next five plus years.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
And you were challenged to ground yourself there, so not just accept it, but also try to find some sanity and some inner peace in a space like that.
Carolina Landa:
Exactly. I can see how it happens that people get overwhelmed with emotion and possibly escape, because in that moment, I felt like I needed to run and there was nowhere to run. I couldn’t breathe.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
After the break, we’ll talk about the reality of family separation and how Carolina found a pathway back to her son with the help of the Taylor’s Checkerspot Butterfly program. Can I go back a little bit? Because you’re going through this trauma completely by yourself and alone, but you hadn’t been alone for years and you had been fully in motherhood. What was it like to be separated from your son in addition to everything you were going through?
Carolina Landa:
That was the hardest part. It was me and Zach since day one. It was us together all the time, every day. So many stories of a first time mother or so many things that happened, so many firsts in that little one-bedroom apartment that we had that I was very proud of. Another part that’s really important here that I should say is that Zach, around two and a half, so a little after I was arrested, he was diagnosed with autism, so he’s autistic and nonverbal. I did not know anything. I was trying to learn my best how to support him, and then, I was leaving him with my mom and I was like, “There’s not a manual here, but these are all the things you got to do with him.” It was very heartbreaking.
For about two, three weeks, Zach could not really eat well. He was very, very sad. I decided that I did not want him to see me in county jail, because visiting there is behind a plexiglass or a glass, and I didn’t want to put him through that trauma of him wanting to possibly hold me and he could not. And so, I didn’t get to see him until about, I think it was eight months. I was terrified that he would not remember who I was anymore. There was a moment where he kind of paused a bit, and then, we had a little thing where I would apply pressure to his wrist or on his arm and do little little bites, like just little gentle cuddle bites like that and he would do it to me too. I did that and he instantly looked up at me and then he remembered who I was, and it just like, everybody started crying and all of the stuff.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Well, now I’m crying.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah, that was the hardest part for me.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
As hard as it was for Carolina to leave Zach with her mother, she says that she was also very lucky. Many of the other mothers she met at Mission Creek didn’t have family support and their children were taken into the foster care system indefinitely. Thankfully, Zach was able to visit with Carolina a few times a year whenever the family could travel across the state to see her. Although Mission Creek Correction Center is surrounded by woodland, Carolina and the other incarcerated women had very little access to nature.
The prison yard was the only real outdoor space, and they could only leave the building at assigned times, or when walking from one unit to another. Carolina was hurting and isolated. She was angry with the system that put her in prison, missing her son and wondering how on earth she was going to make it through the next five years of her life. And then, one day, after about three months of the same routine, she saw an ad for an unusual job on the prison messaging system. What was it that caught your eye about this ad? Did it say Sustainability in Prisons Project? Did you know what that even meant or what it was?
Carolina Landa:
Yeah, it did. And then it said, butterfly technician and this is what your job entails. I remember just thinking like, “Where am I?”
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
And just for our listeners who don’t know what we’re talking about, can you describe what is the Sustainability in Prisons Project?
Carolina Landa:
Yeah. They bring science and nature-based programs into prisons in Washington state. They have a turtle program, they have beekeeping, different plant restoration programs as well. There’s a lot of research out there that has been done that shows that bringing nature and science-based programs to people that are incarcerated are very restorative and rehabilitative to a person, and that is what happens with those programs. I’m living proof of that and so are so many other people as well.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
The Sustainability in Prisons Project, otherwise known as the SPP, is a partnership between the Evergreen State College and Washington Department of Corrections. It’s now well-established with multiple programs running in prisons throughout Washington state. But back in 2011, when Carolina first got to Mission Creek, the SPP was a relatively new experiment in connecting incarcerated people with work in the natural world. They were hiring their very first cohort of butterfly technicians, and if Carolina got the job, she would be building the program from the ground up along with scientists and researchers from all over the state. Future funding and the viability of the entire project depended on a small group of incarcerated women and a little black white and orange butterfly known as the Taylor’s Checkerspot.
Carolina Landa:
And I was just like, “Wow, this sounds amazing. I have no idea what this is, but it sounds amazing and I want to do it. I want to try.” So I did and I applied and we actually had an interview, which also does not happen, and I got hired, and I was just so happy. I finally got this gate card that was my access to right outside the barbed wire fence.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Can you tell us what was the job like and what did you think?
Carolina Landa:
There was three other women that were out there with me at the time. At first, we didn’t have planter boxes with the plantain, which is the leaf that they eat as they’re growing through their five larva stages. We would go outside the perimeter and we would search for this plantain that was naturally growing, so we got special permission to walk around the perimeter.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Were you accompanied? Were you kind of chaperoned or were you?
Carolina Landa:
There was officers out there walking the perimeter. We would usually just tell the officer we’re going to walk around. I think the first time they were really apprehensive about it and then eventually they were just like, “Oh, they’re just walking around and we can see them.” I remember I found a blackberry bush and it was just like, it was the best thing ever, because in prison you don’t get a lot of access to fresh food. Every time we got to walk, we go to the blackberry bush and then pick some blackberries. And it was just so many fond memories like that that I remember, experiences that I had with the other technicians.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
A lot of people don’t have experiences like that at all. A lot of maybe urban folks will never find a wild vine with berries, particularly not while looking for the food of an endangered species. What a unique experience.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah, it definitely was. There was a lot of people that would come from Oregon Zoo, US Fish and Wildlife, and they were basically teaching us all of these different protocols. We were learning everything we could learn about this butterfly. Its lifecycle, how to handle it, very, very gentle, sometimes with certain tools and how to feed it, how to chart everything. We could not use computers. We don’t have access to any of that inside of a prison, so we were doing this all by hand in these journals that they provided for us. I actually just went to Mission Creek last Friday, the current technicians, they pulled out our journals from 2011 and it just flooded me with so many emotions. They still read from them and it’s just amazing.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
At the beginning of our conversation, you talked about being in high school and liking science.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
And then, as you became a young adult, you were always very employable, but you were not doing high-level science work. The title technician wasn’t something granted to you in a lot of those jobs, and suddenly, you’re exposed to scientists and you’re working with them. What was that like?
Carolina Landa:
It was as though we were not in prison. Nobody was like focusing on this thing of how we got there or anything like that. It was just the work and us and just so much faith and hope and trust. That as well, I think, definitely for me, boosted my self-confidence, and I think it does for a lot of the participants. Yeah, it was a big jump. I was like, “What?”
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
I think it’s so interesting the way you said it that they treated you like you weren’t in prison.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah. They saw us as their fellow collaborators. That’s what we are in this work. Even for the scientists, there has to be a part of this too, where they’re deconstructing their typical views of what this looks like.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Yeah. I think it is doubly educational. It’s educational for the participants, and then, educational for those people with the privilege of not being incarcerated and being well-paid professionals to understand the humanity of the women in this program.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah. The women really started to build community with each other and we started healing with each other. That was a big focus that I think happens in that program, and I see it continue to happen. These women are getting to experience nature and science, and then, the actual lifecycle of the butterfly. I remember one time when one of the butterflies was doing its cycle, and it was my first time seeing it going to chrysalis. It literally liquefies while it’s in the chrysalis and then starts to form these butterfly wings and these colors, and it’s just so tightly-wrapped. And I remember just thinking, “That’s me. That is what’s happening right now to me. I am metamorphosizing into this person, this person that I’m meant to be in this moment.” A lot of the women have that experience. They, as well, feel like they are healing and going through a transformation.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Oh, my gosh. Wow.
Carolina Landa:
Yeah.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Carolina and the other technicians have left quite the legacy at Mission Creek. Since 2011, the program they helped build has reared and released over 55,000 caterpillars and butterflies back into the wild. Working in collaboration with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and other conservation organizations, incarcerated women are still breeding butterflies at record levels. The SPP has also grown as an organization. From just a handful of programs in 2011 to 155 programs statewide, incarcerated technicians are doing everything from beekeeping to turtle rehabilitation, prairie conservation, and composting. Many of these programs now offer college credit, opening the doors to higher education and reducing the chances of recidivism.
The SPP success is a great example of what can happen when we in the scientific community broaden our ideas about who a scientist or researcher can be. You don’t have to get a doctorate or track bears and mountain lions like me to contribute to a flourishing and sustainable planet. The more we give people access and opportunity to build a greener future, the brighter and more equitable that future can be for the planet and for participants like Carolina. In our remaining time, we want to make sure that your story includes a lot about your life post-incarceration. How long were you at Mission Creek before you were released, and then, what was that next couple of weeks, months like? What happened? What were your goals? How did you feel?
Carolina Landa:
I was at Mission Creek almost four years. I really took advantage of any opportunity that I could get my hands on that had any form of rehabilitation, healing. I did all of the programs I could while I was in there, and I said to the coordinator, “What would it look like if I went back to college? I want to pursue higher education again.” I know I have, by that time, I have close to 13 year gap in academia. It was like starting all over again, but I was like, “I want to do this,” and the coordinator was of course like, “Yes, you can and I’m going to help you, absolutely.” I knew that things were not going to be easy. With criminal charges, there comes a lot of barriers for employment, for housing, any area of just living comes with an extra added layer of hardship.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Were you reunited with your son upon release?
Carolina Landa:
I was. I got to go home and I got to release to my mom’s address, and my mom had Zach, and I just remember, oh gosh, yeah. I just remember getting home and he was just so happy. I hold that memory so close to my heart. He’s seven now and he’s so much bigger. His hair was growing these big curls, and he just gave me this hug and it just made me whole again. My other half, that’s what it felt like. It was just such an amazing reunion and it just kept on getting better and better as it went.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Carolina stayed with her family for a year before moving back to Western Washington with Zach. She received college credit for her work with the SPP and won a place at Evergreen State College, where she was able to secure financial aid. But even with support, Carolina had a long road ahead of her. Her criminal record meant that she had to fight for access to everything, from a driver’s license to the right to move across the state, and she was even prevented from visiting her son at school or volunteering on his campus. Despite all these challenges, she went on to get her Master’s in Public Administration, and today, she works in the Washington State House of Representatives as an Equity and Policy Analyst. That means that she reviews bills created by the House Democratic Caucus and ensures that they include equitable policy, protecting the rights of 8 million Washingtonians. Though her current job is not technically in ecology, Carolina sees a clear connection to her work in the Butterfly program all those years ago.
Carolina Landa:
I’m helping a different community. Giving back is what we’re doing in that program and helping, and I’m just now doing it in this way of helping different communities and moving forward.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Almost what you’re saying now kind of reminds me of what we hear echoed in a lot of indigenous teachings that human beings are a part of nature. And so, what I hear you saying is that you were working to restore and heal and support one little part of nature, but you’re still doing that on the human side. We are an animal in ecosystems on this planet, and you learned it at this micro scale with insects and plants, and now you’re working on human animals and those communities and those ecosystems and wellness.
Carolina Landa:
That was perfectly said. Yeah, that’s the way I see it. Having this story has a purpose. Being an effective agent for change for other people and using it in that way, giving hope to other people and them giving me hope. When I went to the prison the other day and I visited the program, that’s what we shared with each other. We shared hope with each other, healing with each other.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Oh, my goodness. Well, that is a perfect way to end. Carolina, thank you so much.
Carolina Landa:
Thank you.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
Thank you so, so much.
Carolina Landa:
Thank you.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant:
If you’re interested in learning more about the Sustainability in Prisons Project and all of the nature-based programs they’re currently running, you can find them at sustainabilityinprisons.org. We’d also like to extend our thanks to the co-director of the SPP, Kelly Bush, for all of her help with this episode.
