Mark Wachlin

Mark Wachlin, Riverland Community College

Mark Wachlin is a "non-traditional" student at Riverland Community College, in Owatonna, Minn., majoring in Human Services. He said he could relate to the inmates at Steele County Detention Center, because he was once an inmate himself.

Wachlin, 51, was in and out of jail at different times throughout his life for alcohol and drug-related arrests prior to his recovery in 1989. Despite a host of personal tragedies within eight months in 2004, he has maintained his sobriety for almost 20 years. He plans to become a chemical dependency counselor.

He went back to school a year ago and decided to take the Inside Out course on the advice of his academic advisor. He said he was interested in taking the course because he knew from firsthand experience that "not everyone who is in the system is a bad person, they've just made bad choices."
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"One big thing I got out of it was how we could possibly take the low-risk offender[s] out of the prison system and put them in programs to help assist them and empower them with the knowledge to believe in themselves," said Wachlin, the former inmate.