Donzell Taylor and Mario Godfrey
Once living a life of crime, Donzell Taylor and Mario Godfrey turned to God while incarcerated at the Illinois Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center where the seeds of entrepreneurship were planted. Their goals of baking and selling cookies to save youth from crime became a reality with the establishment of the Brigitte G. House of Hope named after Godfrey’s late mother.
Having paid their debts to society, Godfrey, 38, is now CEO of the Brigitte G. House of Hope, and Taylor is a company representative. They believe they can teach youth how to avoid the temptations of street life and are now baking and operating the Love Krave Cakes Company, creating products from recipes of Godfrey’s late mother.
While they didn’t know each other growing up, both led lives of crime and imprisonment. The road to success wasn’t easy, especially when they went from Cook County Jail to Stateville Correctional Center.
Godfrey and Taylor each wrote a 500-word essay, a requirement for participation in a lottery system to fill 250 spaces at the Kewanee center.
Taylor at Stateville Correctional Center, and Godfrey at Lawrence Correctional Center, a maximum security adult male prison, were chosen and transferred to the Kewanee rehabilitative low-level risk juvenile center.
At Kewanee they took classes in anger management, financial literacy and job readiness, courses designed to prepare them to re-enter society. “It changed my life,” Godfrey said.
Designed to assist youth in avoiding a life of crime, the rehabilitative facility offers after school programs including mentorship and non-violence programs.
The duo was interviewed Saturday, October 12, outside Dock’s restaurant, 321 E. 35th St., where they were selling their cakes and cookies on the street.
Godfrey, sentenced to nine years for having a gun, served seven years in jail and prison. He said, “I could not have changed without God. I prayed my way through it, and now I’m out and leading kids in the right direction to become entrepreneurs.”
Born in a gang infested area in the ABLA CHA housing development on the West Side, Godfrey said while he wasn’t in a gang he did lead a life of crime.
In a personal moment, Godfrey recalled his second cousin, Antione Godfrey, who died at age 42 of a heart attack. While his wife was cleaning out their garage, she stumbled across “some stuff” and called the police who discovered the remains of Mario Godfrey’s mother.
His cousin had once worked at a mortuary and was cremating bodies illegally in his garage.
“The police found three bodies and a bag of organs. He (his cousin) had already done a memorial service with some ashes in 2013, saying it was my mom’s, but all the time he started her cremation but never finished the job on my mom,” he said, acknowledging he was still grieving over his mother’s death at the time.
While his mother died in 2013, he was still incarcerated in 2015 when his mother’s remains were discovered. That is when he learned what his cousin had done, “opening up another wound because I was still grieving. I thought about my mom’s body being exposed to rodents…over a two-year period.”
In 2017, he was sentenced to nine years in prison on the gun charge which he appealed.
After starting his company which he named after his mother, Godfrey said, “I found a way to keep her legacy going, and I know she would be proud of me.”
Taylor is one of 272 people who filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Juvenile Detention facilities for allegedly being sexually abused and assaulted while incarcerated between 1996 and 2019, children ranging in age from 10 to 17 years old.
Taylor was first locked up in jail at the age of 14. “I had no schooling, no counseling, just locked up until 2021 when they sent me home. I want to change that,” he said.
“I lost my virginity in prison when I was 15 years old to a female guard,” Taylor told the Chicago Crusader in an October 14 interview. He is one of 280 former prisoners who filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Juvenile Justice Correctional Centers for alleged sexual abuse.
But Taylor’s life of crime actually began when he was just 9-years-old living in Chicago’s West Side “K-Town.”
“I used to wake up every morning and go around the corner and get my father some heroin from his buddy, put it in a metal cup, put the fire under it, put a piece of cotton in it, tie his arm up and shoot it in his arm because he was fixed on heroin.
“He couldn’t move in the morning. I had to give him drugs before I went to school,” he told the Chicago Crusader.
At 40, Taylor, who never received his eighth-grade diploma, still has nightmares about the life of crime he was engaged in for 31 years. “I started a life of crime when I was nine. I knew God, but I never sought him, but in 2021, I decided to give my life all the way to God. Life had just beaten me up.”
While in prison he received a call in 2021 from his grandmother who he described as his best friend. His grandmother had called him on the same day he was released from segregation.
“She told me in a very low, weak voice, “All the time you’ve been here for me and now you ain’t here for me when I need you,” recalled Taylor.
“That broke me because two hours later, she died. I started putting life into perspective. I realized I had to step up my game and do what I had to do.”
Surprisingly, a rope of hope came through a fellow inmate. Taylor met Godfrey while incarcerated at the Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center. Godfrey told Taylor he was too smart to go back to a life of crime. “We’ve been together ever since,” Taylor said, emphasizing he too has buried his past life of crime and lives to teach youth how to avoid the temptations of life that caused him to be incarcerated from 2015 to 2021.
Taylor’s heart softened, especially when he was locked up at the Cook County Jail before being sent to juvenile prison. When he heard about “Baby Miracle,” born three-months premature and who had suffered a gunshot wound to her chest along with her mother, 19-year-old Parasha Beard, who died, his heart was broken.
The mother’s boyfriend, police say, an alleged documented gang member, was wounded but survived and was allegedly uncooperative with the investigation.
Shocked at the brazen killing of the infant and mother, Taylor and six detainees pooled their commissary funds and donated $152.88 to the baby’s grandmother. He also helped to pay for the infant’s funeral.
“That story changed my life,” said Taylor. This happened in December of 2016.
But it wasn’t until 2021 that Taylor turned to God when he “thought about all of the things I’ve done wrong and all the heartaches and pain I have caused. I want to help our youth.”
Taylor hopes that “Black men will stick together and help them with their business.”
The pair are planning Thanksgiving and Christmas events for the youth and say they need help after paying for everything out of their pockets. Godfrey has invested more than $30,000 of his own funds into the program.
“We are on call 24-7 for the youth,” said Godfrey. “We teach them to respect themselves, their parents, and to put the guns down.”