Daniel’s Chronicles Episode 2 – What Helping Incarcerated People Really Means

Towards the end of August 2025, I was asked for help in locating the mother of a person incarcerated in the United States.

She had no phone number.
No address.
No contact information at all.
And there was no certainty whether this mother even knew that her daughter was in prison.

This story is not an exception.
It shows very clearly what helping incarcerated people truly means.

Hello, my name is Daniel.

In this article, I want to talk about what real support for incarcerated individuals actually looks like.

Some people believe that helping inmates means only one thing: money. Deposits to commissary accounts, media accounts for tablets so they can subscribe to music, buy games and movies, or phone accounts like pin debit. Everything depends on the services offered by a specific facility.

Personally, I disagree with that definition.

Helping is not just about giving money.

By the way, I don’t know why in today’s world the word “support” has become almost exclusively associated with financial support, and not emotional support. But that’s a topic for a completely separate article.

I’ve helped incarcerated people in very different ways — with contact with lawyers, in medical situations when prescribed medication was not provided on time, and when facility staff completely ignored requests for help.

Very often, an intervention from someone outside the system, if done politely, is surprisingly effective.

And I want to emphasize this clearly: politely.

Without entitlement. Without arrogance. Without a demanding tone.

If you want to get something done in jail or prison, starting with a calm, respectful, and courteous tone makes an enormous difference.

The Hardest Task I Ever Took On

Towards the end of August 2025, I was approached by an incarcerated young woman who asked for my help in contacting her mother.

For the purpose of this story, let’s call her Megan and her mother Brooke.

Megan had her mother’s phone number, but it was inactive. Later, it turned out that Brooke had changed her number — and that change happened at the same time as Megan’s arrest.

They live in completely different states.

I first tried to contact Brooke through Facebook. I found two accounts belonging to her and sent messages. As most people know, such messages often end up in the “other” folder, which almost no one checks. Facebook rarely sends notifications about messages waiting there.

I also found Brooke’s comments from two weeks earlier and replied to them, hoping she would receive a notification.

Time passed. There was no response.

The only information I had was her first name, last name, date of birth, and city of residence.

I started checking court records in different counties in the state where she had previously lived. Then I used the Whitepages website.

Whitepages showed several phone numbers — none of them were current. It also showed several residential addresses, but they were historical and didn’t consistently match real places of residence.

Overall, Whitepages is a mixed tool. Some information is real but archival. The rest is indirect — based on various connections rather than direct data.

Brooke’s Facebook profile picture didn’t show her or her surroundings — only a motorcycle.

However, I noticed reflections in the shiny chrome elements. In those reflections, fragments of the surroundings were visible. The problem was the low resolution of the image — zooming in revealed mostly pixels.

I used Topaz Gigapixel to enlarge the image and extract more detail from the reflections.

Knowing the city where Brooke lived and having fragments of the environment visible in the reflections, I started a virtual search using Google Street View.

The town was small, which helped — but as it often happens in situations like this, I found the correct house on the very last street.

That’s how I determined the address where Brooke lives.

A Letter Instead of a Flight

There were two options.

The first was to fly to that city — which was practically impossible, since I am not in the United States.

The second was to send a letter.

I suggested that Megan write the content of the letter to her mother. I added a few words of my own on a separate card and sent the letter to the USA.

The tracking option wasn’t working properly. At one point, it looked like the letter had been lost.

Then, on December 9th, I received a text message from Brooke.

It contained her thanks, her gratitude, and the information that she herself didn’t know how to contact her own daughter.

I immediately gave Megan her mother’s phone number so she could reach out to her.

Later, Megan called me — full of joy — and told me that she had finally spoken with her mother.

What Helping Really Means

For me, it was a truly happy moment.

Despite the distance, the obstacles, and all the difficulties, two people were finally able to reconnect after months — especially in a situation where a mother had no idea what was happening to her daughter.

And this is what helping truly means to me.

Not money.
Not transfers.
Not commissary.

But real support.
Presence.
Action — where someone no longer has the ability to act for themselves.

It is truly worth helping others.