Arkansas ex-con's redemption story resonates with YouTube community

LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Jessica Kent was nine months pregnant when she woke up with severe back pain.

It was 4:30 a.m. and she was going into labor. But she wasn’t at home or at a hospital. She was in prison in Fort Smith. After almost 10 years as a drug dealer in New York and Arkansas, the 23-year-old was spending two years in prison for drug and gun convictions.

The women in her cell told her that because she was a convicted felon, she wouldn't get custody of her child. So she prepared to let go. On her way to a delivery room, she told herself that if she didn't look at her daughter, she wouldn't grow attached.

"If you just take her away,” Kent told herself, “I’ll be OK.”

They did take her daughter away. But Kent got her back.

After being released from prison, Kent overcame a heroin addiction, won custody of her daughter and built a new life. She shared her story online -- and the response has been overwhelming.

Kent’s YouTube channel now has more than 215,000 subscribers who have created an uplifting community where they share their own stories of struggle and recovery.

“When I watch her videos,” one subscriber said, “it makes my day a little better.”

On the run

Kent was running from felony charges in her home state of New York when she wound up living in an unfurnished trailer in Fort Smith. That’s where nearly a decade of addiction, parole violations and drug dealing caught up with her. She was arrested for delivery and possession of meth and simultaneous possession of drugs and a firearm.

Kent began smoking weed and drinking at the age of 12. She began dealing drugs around age 14. She said she grew up in a poor neighborhood, and as a kid, money was the only thing that mattered to her.

“I knew the worst thing for a person to be was poor,” Kent said in an interview. “I very closely associated money with success and I became obsessed with it.”

As a teenager, she worked at a pizza restaurant in Sidney, a village in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. She quickly realized she could make more money dealing drugs. A high school classmate overdosed on pills she sold him, but it didn’t stop her from dealing.

“At the time, I thought that he was weak ... I grew very cold from that,” Kent said.

Kent became addicted to heroin at 17 years old. She got clean during a jail stint and was released. But her sobriety -- and her freedom -- wouldn’t last.

After Kent’s boyfriend robbed a store to cover a drug debt, Kent was charged with grand larceny. She fled to Arkansas, where she met up with a friend who was struggling with a meth addiction. Feeling hopeless, alone and angry, Kent decided to get high on meth for the first time. She overdosed but survived.

“I told myself, ‘Wow, you’re alive, that was awesome,’” Kent said. “Once I realized I was alive, I chased that feeling for the next seven months.”

Kent began dating a meth dealer. She and her boyfriend were leaving a Fort Smith motel one morning in 2011 when she noticed a police car across the street. As they drove away, they began stuffing bags of meth under the steering column. More officers soon appeared, stopped the car and pulled out Kent out of the passenger seat.

Kent recognized one of the officers as he arrived on the scene. He was a DEA agent and had been following her for weeks.

After being booked in the Sebastian County jail, Kent recalls, she thought to herself, “How the hell did I get here?”

Everything changes

Kent was sentenced to five years in prison.

She didn’t know at the time that she was pregnant. Six months later, her protruding belly left her unable to sit and squat during a body search. Kent said the guards yelled at her.

She was put into a cell with other pregnant women and mothers who told her that if she was going to be in prison for over a year, she wouldn’t be granted custody of her daughter. So Kent didn't think about being a mother. She just focused on being a convict.

“I just had to get through prison,” she said.

On June 12, 2012, Kent went into labor. She was lying in bed in her cell when contractions began. A few hours later, she was strapped to a bed in a hospital. Kent thought about what her cellmates had told her -- she wouldn’t have custody of the child.

“I told myself that if I didn’t look at her, I wouldn’t love her,” Kent said.

A prison guard in the delivery room changed Kent’s mind.

“Girl, you better look at that baby,” the guard told her. So she looked.

“When I saw my daughter’s face for the first time, that was it for me,” Kent said. “It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about this beautiful little girl who needs me.”

She named her daughter Micah. Kent was given 24 hours with her baby after giving birth. The doctor allowed Kent another 24 hours after she declined pain medication and instead asked for ibuprofen and strong coffee. Kent wanted to spend as much time with her daughter as possible.

Those 48 hours went by fast. When officers came to take Kent back to prison, she told them they’d have to pry Micah out of her hands.

“Nobody told me where she was going, who she was going to be with, if she’d be OK, if I’d be able to see her, call her on the phone I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again,” a tearful Kent says in one of her YouTube videos.

Authorities took Kent away from the hospital and placed her in a van headed back to prison.

But before they did, she told her daughter, “I’ll be back for you.”

Building a life

Kent was released from prison on a spring morning in 2013.

She didn’t have an ID, a place to live or anyone she could trust. But she had purpose. She was going to fight for her daughter.

Kent found a halfway house, ordered an ID card and began building a life suitable for raising a daughter. Within days of being released, she had borrowed enough “street clothes” to secure minimum wage jobs at a telemarketing company and a tobacco shop. She scraped together enough cash to borrow a car or take a bus from Springdale to Searcy once a week to see Micah.

At one point, an old friend called and asked if she wanted to start dealing drugs again. She knew the money would be better. But she refused. She had something to lose now.

For a year, Kent worked 12-hour days and drove seven hours round-trip for weekly visitation. She took drug tests, attended court hearings, went to counseling and eventually pulled together enough money to get an apartment.

Kent was given full custody of Micah.

“For the first time in a year of regularly seeing this judge, she smiled at me,” Kent said. “I almost hit my knees crying. I couldn’t believe I got to do this. I got to be a mother to this beautiful little girl.”

After gaining custody of Micah, Kent told her daughter, “We did it."

A story to tell

Years after leaving prison and gaining custody of her daughter, Kent began making videos about her recovery for a prison re-entry class.

Someone she worked with told her to post them online because they could help people in her position. She initially declined; she didn’t want to share her story with strangers.

But now, Kent calls more than 215,000 of those strangers (her YouTube subscribers) the ride-or-die crew. Her fans share their own stories of addiction, crime, prison and custody battles in the comments section of her videos. Like any fan group, they have inside jokes, know her friends and family by name and offer feedback about her life, from the way she does her hair to how she raises her two daughters.

One of Kent’s fans is Paige Thomas, a paralegal in Littleton Co., a small town south of Denver. Thomas, 31, is a recovering addict who has been clean for 11 years. She was on YouTube when Kent’s videos appeared on the “recommended” page.

“The algorithm thought I would like it, and I did,” Thomas said.

Thomas watches YouTubers daily, usually female lifestyle vloggers and gamers. But she said they are rarely as authentic as Kent seems. And even more rarely are they recovering addicts.

“A lot of [recovering addicts] want to hide their past and Jessica is just real and raw about who she is and where she came from,” Thomas said.

Thomas has notifications set up so that she never misses a new video. Her favorite is the story of Kent giving birth.

“A lot of people wouldn’t be brave enough to tell that story to thousands and thousands of people on the internet,” Thomas said.

Kent said she spends a lot of time blocking people on YouTube in order to keep the comment section a positive place. She has more than 36,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts photos of Micah, her boyfriend of six years and their 3-year-old daughter. The photos usually include inspirational messages and heart emojis.

Kent, 30, said she never thought she’d live this long. Now she’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in science and criminal support services. She is also celebrating eight years of sobriety. Kent said she’d like to work with people who are fighting the same battles she has.

"I think the more we talk about it, and the more we normalize the consequences of addiction or breaking the law, the more people won't make bad decisions," Kent said. "A split-second decision can land you in prison. Maybe my viewers won't make those decisions."

Kent posts a few videos a week. The videos get hundreds of comments and anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 views. Commenters have weighed in from countries including England, Romania and Australia.

"Thank you so much for making this video,” one person commented on a recent video about relapsing. “It came at the perfect time for me. I’m currently in that same position you were in the 1st year, struggling with staying sober and not returning to my old lifestyle. I’m also doing it for my daughter. It makes me feel so much better and not so alone to see you went through the same thing.”

Kent said the most rewarding part of sharing her story has been learning that it has helped others. Some have told Kent that they’ve gone to rehab because of her videos.

"Thank you for this channel,” one person commented on the video about relapsing. “I'm 31 and been struggling since 15 and right now I'm in it. But I sit and wait for your uploads all the time. It's my few minutes of not just sanity, but feeling understood and loved even though we've never met. Thank you for what you're doing.”

Like Kent and many of her subscribers, Thomas spent time in jail for drug charges before entering rehab at 20 years old.

“She is really useful for people across the spectrum of addiction — deciding to go into recovery, recovering, recovered,” Thomas said. “When I watch her videos, it makes my day a little better. It reminds me that other people are struggling, and recovering, like me.”