Portraits of a New Beginning: Legend Tarver

«I built my character along the way. My life almost got taken away from me, and now I got a second opportunity. Sometimes you have to have everything taken away from you in order to, you know, be grateful for the things that you do have.»

Two weeks into his incarceration, Legend Tarver learned that his 33 girlfriend, Amanda Santiago, was pregnant. “In prison, I was kind of like in a state of shock,” he says. “When I got the news that I was having a son, I was like, ‘Okay like, this has to change now.”

As a young man, he aspired to become a pharmacist. However, he abandoned this goal following his first arrest. “There’s like no way they’re gonna let me be a pharmacist with a drug charge, so I ended up just getting my bachelor’s in communications,” Legend says. The same year he graduated from Florida International University, he was sentenced to four years in prison. “It sounds crazy,” he says. “I felt free the moment I got locked up because I was really just stuck into what I was doing.” His time was reduced to two years after he attended drug treatment court. He completed his sentence in 2017, at the age of 27. He became

a personal trainer and is currently employed at a gym. “I am now building my name in fitness and making clean money to provide for my family in the right way,” he says. Along with Amanda, now his wife, he is forming the 300 Letters organization to help formerly incarcerated individuals reestablish family ties.

^{The testimonies in "Portraits of a New Beginning" were collected and edited by Ana María Carrano, María Gabriela Méndez, Olivia Liendo and Tamoa Calzadilla, under the coordination of Olivia Liendo and Ana María Carrano.}

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