“From 27 Arrests to a New Life” — David Heiber on Redemption

In this powerful episode of What in the Health is Going On?, we sit down with Dr. David Heiber to hear a story that will completely change how you think about failure, redemption, and second chances.

From being arrested 27 times to becoming an educator, leader, and founder, Dr. Heiber shares the raw truth behind his journey — including the trauma, setbacks, and defining moments that shaped his life.

This conversation dives deep into:

- The reality of recidivism and reentry
- How childhood trauma impacts life decisions
- The turning point that changed everything
- Why having a plan after prison is critical
- The importance of mentorship, education, and community

Dr. Heiber also shares how he went from incarceration to earning his degree, becoming a teacher, and eventually building organizations focused on transforming lives and giving back.

This isn’t just a success story — it’s a message for anyone who feels stuck, counted out, or defined by their past.

No matter where you started, your story isn’t over.

Learn more about Dr. Heiber and access his book here:
https://www.thevtfcollective.com/davidheiber

Subscribe for more real conversations that matter: https://youtu.be/hW8TIrZKXnI

#SecondChances #Redemption #Reentry #PersonalGrowth #Motivation #Inspiration #WhatInTheHealthIsGoingOn

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back. This is your host, the Quentin Jenkins of What in the Health is going on. Mm-hmm. I like that. Today, we're going to touch on some subject matters that are dear and dear to my heart. It kind of maps out a journey of understanding that where you've started and mistakes that you may have made at an earlier stage in life, how it doesn't define the outcome of what the rest of your life is to be like. Everyone loves a story, the success story, the story of the hero, the story of those individuals who've overcome. In our own lives, many of us have overcome many. If you have any level of success in your life, if you have successfully reared a child without going to jail for child abuse, you have been successful. I say that jokingly, but the young man we have in the uh studio with us today, Dr. David Hebrew, he's going to share with you the journey. And as I receive this book today, we're going to put the link to the book in our in our description below. We're going to give away, we're going to buy 10 copies and share those 10 copies with the audience. In the last several, several years, I've been dealing a lot with lucid vision and re-entry. And the truth of the matter is just broken my heart. I go into the institutions and I have conversations, and at first it's a shock. I mean, I actually stopped going, I have zoo passes. I actually stopped going to the zoo because the same look in the eyes of the lions, of the tigers, of those animals that were accustomed to wanting wild and free, it's like they're just in a fog. The essence of who they are are not there. They were not created to be in cages. And when I started going to the institutions of higher learning that has bars that restrict your freedom, I saw the same look. I saw young men who and that have hope, but all the men that I saw for the most part that had been there for a substantial amount of time. It's like, you know, dead man walking. It's like there's, there's, it's been taken out of them. The thing that blew me away, and I want to ask you specifically about this as you share with us about uh your background and your story, is how are you able to overcome that environment and have such a positive spin on your life? Because we often hear about those who they get in and go back, but at some point you had to make a decision that that wasn't gonna be your life and your legacy. What was it that that drove you from that space to be different?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

No, so no, I appreciate the opportunity to share. I I don't think that, and I don't want to portray that it was this linear journey that I got I got arrested, did my time, something happened, and then I came out. No, like I was that statistic. Like I was a repeat offender constantly. I've been arrested 27 times. So it wasn't couple of times. Yeah. And so it wasn't one and done. Like it was, it was by the grace of God. You know, but those 27 arrests can be very misleading. One was for attempted theft of gas that I'm still trying to figure out when I was 18 years old. Uh, another one was for hypodermic needle because my brother, R. Frat brother, was a diabetic and a racist cop accused me of deal of dealing heroin. This is an undergrad, right? But that's an arrest. These like these are circumstantial things that that happened. But my longest stretch, because we do all have those stories, so it wasn't this one moment. It was more of a buildup in different people coming into my life that that really poured into me. And so for me, I didn't just grow up and become a become a criminal, but there was there was a circumstance. My my father, who was really my grandfather, he had a heart attack while Christmas shopping, my senior year in high school. Wow. He died December 21st, 1993. So then, you know, I mean, that was a traumatic experience. We didn't have a stable home. So then six weeks later, my mother, my grandmother, was diagnosed with a brain tumor and lung cancer. So it just kind of spiraled out of control.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

So it's interesting you say that because as I talk and interview more men that are in those, as they come out in their situation, I would say 80 to 90% of the people that are incarcerated is from childhood trauma. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. 100%. And is it's even I I was there two weeks ago, and the gentleman was 43 years old in age in his statue. But I could have sworn you I was still talking to a high school dude.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Oh, yeah. Well, you become literally trapped at that age and that moment when that trauma happened. Continue when that trauma reached you.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

So what was what was the defining moment for your for your to decide, this is it, I'm done?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

I would say when my so my grandfather dies, my my grandmother gets diagnosed with brain tumor cancer, and I'm just kind of aimlessly in prison. Like, and she used to always come up and sing, my grandmother. And she came out usually every Wednesday. And this particular Wednesday, I guess you're only looking to forward to three things when you're in prison commissary, meal times, and visits. Those are three things that you look forward to, right? And I remember going down to, and we knew she had been diagnosed with cancer. That was uh told to me. But then I go down for a visit, and you you wait 15, 20 minutes. After 30 after 15 minutes, it's called no-show visit. I go back to the cell, and my grandmother, but when I'm finally able to use the phone, my grandmother, I was told my grandmother went into a coma. She passed away. I couldn't go to her funeral, and that was decided on that. I said, I'm by myself. My the parents who had raised me were gone. Something has to change. And then I just start getting um more focused.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Can you can I ask you this? You so I can ask you anything. Yeah. Um part of it's for curiosity, and part of it's for relatability, because a lot of us had to talk to men, they were being reared by their grandmothers or an aunt or an uncle or something of their nature. What transpired with your parents? Why they were not a part of your life?

SPEAKER_00 6:04

So I never knew my biological father until uh I became Mr. Lincoln years later, 1998. It was a lot now. My mother was very young. Uh she was she's white, and so she was 18 when she had me, and she was just overwhelmed. So she left me with my her parents, my white maternal grandparents.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

That was an interesting upbringing. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Hell yeah. Yeah, very, very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

You know, you meet people, and my daughter would tell you, I'm very passionate about being kind. You never really know what a lot of people would experience in life to get them to where they'd be. Correct. But oftentimes I I read put this out there for when it a lot of those who have had uh challenges with the justice system. Like in our household, my I'm the submarine, I'm the oldest. The worst thing I've ever done is gotten a traffic. My brother has 12 felonies. And from the age of maybe six, fifteen or sixteen to the time he was in his early 40s, majority of his time was spent on being being incarcerated. What is it, what is it that you can recommend or that you can suggest or that you can impart on those who are being released to make a change. And from there, I want to transition to what I call the good life. The the point where you decide you were gonna go to school, you decide you want to make it this because the real conversation of the day is we for relatability, we we talked about those those things. But I really want to get into the work that you're doing now. Absolutely. The impact you're making now to serve as a as a as a symbol to the audience of what you can do with your with your life. So, what advice or what recommendation would you give to someone who's saying less than a year to go on similar time?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

You gotta have a plan, right? You you have to have a plan of when you're gonna be released. Because the the high majority are released. Those who do not have a plan, a foundation to go back to. So for me, uh I got my GD and high school deployment in prison. My judge at the time, Norman Barron, I was the first person he had been on the Delaware Superior Court bats for 15 years. I was the first person that they changed their sentence, amended the sentence. And he let me out of prison August 9th of 1996. The reason that's so impactful is I went to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, first HBCU. It was, I was only let out nine days before freshman started. And he did that intentionally, because he was like, I'm not gonna give you any time to get into any trouble. So literally I got out that fried that Friday before the next week I had to go to Lincoln. Did he see something in you? Did he saw something in you to give you that opportunity? That's a great uh question because four years later, when I graduated, I graduated Lincoln with a triple major, history, black study, and education. And I couldn't get a job. In fact, I was hired at a school system, but I had not disclosed my felony. And I when I did, they rescinded the offer. But during my time at Lincoln, I had been sending Judge Baron my transcripts. And he would always get them because his clerk, Pam, would always respond, but he never responded. So after the job was rescinded from that school district, uh, I called his chambers and I spoke to Pam. And she invited me up. And for the first time since I had seen him in the courtroom, he uh I met him in person. And he I still have it to this day, this African stature he gave me, and he got me my job, my first job to vouch to the school board for me. You saw something. God takes care of babies, fools, and noobs. But I mean, I I was truly blessed. And as I look back at it, I mean, there's been those crucibles in life, and that was defin that was definitely more than him.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

So tell me a little bit about the work that you're doing now and what you want to get across. And I want to do a follow-up. I know now you gotta catch a plane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to do a follow-up within the next week or so to go see. Because that's gonna give me a time to read the book in its detail so we can be talking more about the specifics. What is it about the work that you're doing now that you really want the audience to to gravitate to and understand?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

So so my life's work has been pouring back into uh students that were like me, kicked out of five high schools, written off for whatever whatever reason it was. So when I came out of prison uh and went to Lincoln and graduated, and then became a teacher for a year. I was a history teacher. And then the very next year I became an assistant principal. What? Yeah, the very the very next year I became an assistant principal.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

I can't get a job. Can you count me? Yeah. Someone boxed me to get a job. I teach for one year and now become an administrator.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Became an administrator. And then became a principal. Then became a principal. Yeah. What time frame was that? Uh all within two years. All within two years. What in the hilt is going on? Yeah. And so it it it was that. It was the experience of going through incarceration, of losing my parents, all those different things. It it allowed me to connect with students and relatability to it, right? But it also showed me how systems, and this time I was I finished up my master's at Temple under Malefey Asante. So Malefe Asante comes up as the modern-day father of Afrocentricity, which is putting African Americans and African Americans at the diaspora at the center of social phenomena. So concentricity is putting students at the center of school phenomena. So I left the school system and created my own company 17 years ago, concentric. Concentric is the company name for my theory of change, concentricity. So if you look at the cover, it's literally putting the students at the center of what we do. Right. And so when I started the business 17 years ago, it was literally, we have got to dismantle a system that was never meant in creative for us.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

And I grew over 17 years at my height, we had 280 employees, most African, mostly African-American men from the D-9, or African-American sisters from the D-9, 14 states. And in 2000, in 2023, we got the largest Series A investment in the history of Maryland for a black company. Got$10 million.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Well, so when he says D9, Divine I, he's talking about those nine Greek organiz uh organizations, which take us back to how we're going to always end our communication. It's something I believe in greatly, is that our D9 need to come together and strategically work in our community. All of our organizations in a way of service. Absolutely. When we're in college or when you're go grad, they they're teaching those principles. Yes. We need to start teaching come together from the perspective of strategies. Yes. In terms of how we're going to impact our community. And I think it starts there. Yes. Because the respect of those organizations are owned in our community, then we bring in the church because we're going to have people that are that are part of the church. We bring in the nonprofit. We bring bring in the private companies, and we start solving our own issues.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

If we leverage our collective capacity, we could eradicate or deeply impact so many of the things that are happening and have happened to us right now. If we did that with intentionality.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

So do me a favor. I know where you gotta go. Tell the audience how they follow you.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Yeah, so so I always thought with this. I have the same phone number for 20 years. Like I'm a I'm old school, right? I just got my AA uh AARP card last month. Welcome to the club.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, I looked like I opened it up. I was like, what is this? And like, no, you're 50 now. You you unk. You okay. They track into you. Yes. Yes. They track into you. You start early.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

But you can, I create another organization. So concentric is the first organization I created, but the one that I'm really intentionally putting effort into now is called Redemption Social Solutions. Therefore, it's not just focused on education because we have got to be able to bring in all different aspects. Much of what you're doing, like the work that you're doing is so profound, so needed that we got to pour into. And then you can always call me at 202-330-1753. And I'm on LinkedIn, David Gieberg, Dr. David Gieberth. Gotcha. I'm on the Instagram stuff. You know, I'm kind of new to all that stuff. But it's really less about likes, less about shares, and more about impacts.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

And that's and that's what we hope to do with redemption. So this is my challenge as we as we prepare to go. Over the next seven days, I want you to think about how do we partner, what we can do together, what our organization can do to support you. We want to serve you first. And then we look at ways we can collaborate later. And that's my our philosophy. Our philosophy is to serve first, add value first. All these things is going on as you pay me, pay me, pay me. Why am I going to pay you if I want you if I want to better our community? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yes. Yes. I hope more, I hope more brothers and sisters can can follow, you know, your example of how you do this.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Absolutely. 100%. I I want those, I want God's favor. And uh I do that. I know that I have that because I first seek to give and to truly need help. Yes. I mean, it truly, every time we help anybody in our community that's trying to do to do right and trying to help us be better as a collective, we'll win. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

And I promise you, I'll come back next week. We do part two. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

You've had me all day. Absolutely. So Billy LeBond, yes, yes, yes. I appreciate your time. He came down in this TS TSA credentialing. Yes, brought his son. What that's I love that. Yes. I used to take my daughter on apartments with me.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

They see this thing, they'd never forget it. They never forget it. My daughter, who's at Prairie View, she, when I was a small, small business, she would go on home business with all across DC, Baltimore, and I mean that those lessons, and that's why, whether it's DJ, whether it's Prince, Jacim, my other son, you know, they've been blessed so much, but they gotta see the work from the ground up. Like that, that is what meaningful impact is like.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

So, so as we close for the day, thank you once again for spending a few moments with us. Um, those one of the things I've noticed is I've dealt with re-entry and recidivism. I recommend this to all of those who are currently either recently out or about to get out, you heard him mention several times, my son, my daughter, my children. I think that connector to stability is going back and connecting to your family, to your children. And if you're able to create a situation, be in a situation where you're looking out for those other than yourself, absolutely incredibly and painful. Potential, promise, purpose. Potential promise purpose. The new ping ping ping. That's it. God bless you, and you have an amazing day.